This image shows the creation of Pandora, subject of an Ancient Greek myth. Although Pandora’s curiosity was said to have explained the source of all evils for mankind, I think the story does a better job showing how misogynist the Ancient Greek world was. In Hesiod’s work (7th c. BCE), the poet tells how Zeus […]
The Creation of Pandora Read More »
Behold the Lycurgus cup, from the 4th c. Late Roman Empire. It is the most exquisite example of a glass-making technique used the the Romans to produce a color-changing effect. Viewed straight-on, the cup is green, but viewed with backlighting it appears red – the technique involved blending the glass with extremely fine-ground particles of
This wooden base for a small statue features Eve and Lilith, two primal females in Christian mythology. These characters also underlined negative assumptions about women’s basic nature. Eve on the left shows weakness and over-curiosity by consuming the fruit forbidden to her. Lilith, thought to be Adam’s first wife, shows disobedience perhaps arising from her
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This is the Pont du Guard, an aqueduct bridge made in the first century by Romans who used it to supply a colony where the modern French city Nîmes now exists. Think about the most recent modern cement structures that you have seen which have cracks and crumbles, and it will drive home just how
There’s a famous children’s book called _Everybody Poops_, and this photo might look like some sort of rendition of that. Here you can see birds, horses, dogs, pigs, and rabbits all in the act of defecating. Our own human species is represented in the second row, right next to the donkey. This visual diagram is
Here’s a giant ground sloth skeleton, unearthed from the modern state of Missouri. Sloths like this would have stood up to ten feet tall, which was typical of many of the enormous charismatic vertebrates that populated our planet up until the great megafaunal extinction which killed most of them off in the Late Pleistocene, about
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I think maps are really interesting, and often I think the older ones are the best. This is a picture of the very oldest known map of the world, and it comes from the ancient Babylonian civilization (700-500 BCE). Maps are by nature symbolic representations, and so looking at how the cartographer imagined the space
This is a medieval rendition of Porphyry of Tyre, a philosopher who lived in the late Roman Empire (c 234-305 CE), and one of the most articulate advocates of vegetarianism from Ancient world. Porphyry was renowned for many philosophical contributions, including writing the standard textbook on logic that lasted for over a thousand years, as
View of the Pallisades from the Medieval Cloisters at the New York Metropolitan Museum, where over 200 million years ago the supercontinent Pangea ripped apart.
Today (January 22, 2023) marks the lunar New Year in Chinese culture, marked by many festivities and foods as the celebrants hope to usher in a year of prosperity and happiness. This reel and the following images show the New Year Lion Dance, an ancient tradition wherein people (often martial artists from a local school)
The dome above the mirhab in the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordova, 965 CE. The octagonal-faceted dome is worked with gold and crafted with some of the finest mosaic tile-work in the world. The mirhab oriented Spanish Muslims to the direction of prayer. The fact that it was funded with gold from the Christian Byzantine Empire illustrates
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This 10th c. sandstone relief depicts the Hindu goddess Kali – the Goddess of time, destruction, sexuality, salvation, and protection. She has a horrifying image – bloody fangs, belt of human hands, necklace of skulls, with eyes bright red and skin blue or black. This appearance would have represented a completely uncontained female, something wholly
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The ruins of Suso Monastery in San Millán de la Cogolla look eerily beautiful in this image, evocative of a distant past whose details are lost to us now. Situated in northern Spain, they are some of the last surviving remains of the Visigothic Kingdom that ruled the Iberian peninsula from the late fifth century
Drought Conditions and the Collapse of the Visigothic Kingdom Read More »
You’re looking at a recreation of a funerary site from ancient Ecuador, where these three levels of human remains were unearthed in 1980 as builders were getting ready to construct an airport at the capital city of Quito: a total of nine vertical burial tunnel-chambers were found. These bodies date from 680 CE, to a
Chicha and Ecuadorian Burials Read More »
This is Acoma Pueblo, aka “Sky City,” and one of the oldest continually inhabited places of north America. Located on a nearly 400-foot mesa, it dates back as early as 1100 CE and has been a home to the indigenous Acoma people of modern New Mexico ever since, preserving ancient customs and beliefs even as
In an article published in the premier science journal _Nature_ earlier this week, a team of scholars announced their analyses of the operations of the first-ever discovered mummification workshop, and what they found was fascinating! This picture shows the layout of the “mummy factory”, first unearthed at the Egyptian site of Saqqara, about 20 miles
“PetThe political intrigues and love affair of Mark Antony and Cleopatra have captured the imaginations of generations, even before the famous couple’s deaths in 30 BCE in their war against the future Emperor Augustus of Rome. This statue is the only known image of their twin children, Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios. At least, that’s
Cleopatra’s Twins by Mark Antony Identified Read More »
These are the ruins of Hattusa, a capital city of the ancient Hittite Empire (1650-1200 BCE) located in modern Turkey. This week, archaeologists revealed that they had discovered a language that no one had even known existed. In our modern world, where languages are rapidly disappearing (linguists say that if things proceed at current levels,
Discovery of an Ancient Language among the Hittites in the Land of Kalasma Read More »
Valle de la Luna – the Valley of the Moon – is also called the Ischigualasto Provincial Park of Argentina, and there you can find fossils of the world’s oldest dinosaurs. They arose during the Late Triassic, as the planet healed from a mass extinction due to volcanic eruptions so severe that 90% of life
Valle de La Luna – Valley of the Moon Read More »
The Arthrashastra, an Ancient Indian text written in Sanskrit. Dating from as early as the 2nd century BCE, it is the first diplomatic text in India’s history. It has advice on things like taxation, governance, and warfare, and tells the reader that good governance is necessary to prevent society from following the “law of the
