Check out this early selfie: it’s a first-century CE Ancient Roman fresco showing a woman looking at herself in a mirror. The image is a rare subject in early art, largely attributable to the fact that mirrors were extremely expensive throughout most of human history. Often, they were made of polished stone, like obsidian, or
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This is the most famous Loch Ness Monster photo in existence. Taken in 1934, it wasn’t officially shown to be a hoax for another sixty years. Turns out, someone purchased a toy submarine and added a putty head to create this image. Much evidence has been put forth to suggest that there is not a
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An idea is only as influential as a society is able to appreciate. The invention of the steam engine bears this truth out. Here you see an “aeolipile,” described in the first century CE most notably by Hero of Alexandria (d. 70 CE). In the first image is a drawing of his machine – so
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Here’s a story for you: the oldest recorded story we know of, in fact. This smudgy cave painting made international headlines last December when scientists in Indonesia reported the discovery of a panel measuring about 14 feet depicting a hunting narrative — this picture is a detail. Dating the mineral deposits atop the pictures, which
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The earliest date that humans first settled in the Americas is something anthropologists do not agree upon – yet. Although whole-genome DNA processing might someday shed more light on the subject, some scholars favor an idea that people first crossed the Bering Straights less than 20,000 years ago, while others argue for an earlier wave
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Today’s beauty industry did not invent the idea of valuing people for their external appearance, and the Ancient Greeks’ estimation for what made a fine behind seems pretty in line with contemporary models. Witness this famous first-century BCE Roman copy of a Hellenistic sculpture from 300 BCE. She is known as “Aphrodite Kallipygos” with “Kallipygos”
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A Roman (1st or 2nd c CE) and 12th-century examples of foliage faces that became known as “the Green Man.” For centuries, these carvings existed, adorning buildings, as a man’s face surrounded by leaves, or spewing greenery, or having hair that morphed into plants. But it wasn’t until folklorist Lady Raglan wrote an article that
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Here’s a detail from a fresco by the early 15th-century painter Giovanni da Modena, showing Satan munching on some poor damned soul, while defecating some other poor damned soul from his mouth-sphincter. Eew. The grotesque body of the Devil would have been especially horrifying in light of the Medieval belief that Satan had once had
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Thinking ahead to Halloween 2020, I offer you you, dear reader, a suggestion, and one which is unlikely to be duplicated by your neighbors. Folks in Western Europe in the Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern periods would have been much likelier to identify this creature, because it was a type of monster that many believed
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There is a tradition of misogynist scholarship which traces continuously from Ancient Greece to the early twentieth century. Legal, medical, philosophical, and theological arguements promoted the idea that women were inferior to men, and this was sincerely believed by many educated people. Yet this scholar pictured here — Henricus Cornelius Agrippa (1496-1535) — stood in
Contrasting Opinions of Henricus Cornelius Agrippa Read More »
The Ancient Egyptian Goddess Sekhmet has a fascinating double role as both a vengegeful deity of destruction — especially bringing plague — but also a force that was thought to ward off disease. Her name can mean “The Mighty One” but she was also called the “Mistress of Dread.”. A particularly entertaining myth associated with
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This Ancient Roman wall painting shows an opulent domicile, and adorned a bedroom of a first-century BCE aristocrat. The plants in the scenery show a love of the natural world common in elite decor. We know that Romans of means took great thought in how they situated their estate homes, considering matters like which way
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We humans are innately social creatures, and even the introverts among us long to feel included in a community we consider our own. Feelings of isolation cause grief and sadness, both now and in ages across time. The Old English poem known as “The Wanderer” evokes these emotions, telling the story of a man far
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In the centuries before China was unified as an empire, petty kingdoms and warlords struggled for influence in a centuries-long diplomatic chess game. The bells shown here from the Late Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BCE) might have been owned by wealthy aristocrats engaged in such manuvers, and used for ceremonial importance, which would have
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The object featured here – a box carved out of whale’s bone – comes from Britain in the early 700s, which was an age of fragmented states and political destabilization. The scene shown is a rendering of the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans, but to the onlooker the most obvious activity is that of
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“The Thunder, Perfect Mind” is a mesmerizing poem dating perhaps to the second century CE. It reflects the mingling of many different belief systems in the Roman Empire, such as those ideas popular with the Cult of the Egyptian Goddess Isis, shown here in a Roman-styled rendition.It takes the voice of a female divine being,
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This little beauty is an artist’s rendition of a Placoderm – an extinct fish from close to 500 million years ago which had a significant feature that has played out into the lives of all humans today. Early fishes from this geological period had jaws, and evolutionary scientists have recognized jawed vertebrate fish as the
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The Ancient Romans often anthropomorphasized abstract ideas, and the notion of “Rumor” was one of the most concrete examples of this. In the Late Republic, when politicians jockied amongst themselves to win the votes of citizen men of the assemblies, knowlegde about basic political ongoings was dependent upon oral transmission. Patrons worked to have their
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Human evolution shows that Homo Sapiens evolved physical features suitable to long-distance running. About two million years ago, the east African landscape entered a drying period, and many forested lands turned into grasslands or patchy open woodlands. These conditions would have favored our ancestors’ development of characteristics that could run after animals and scavenge prey
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Carved out of marble in the first century CE, this Ancient Roman sculpture is one of the world’s most famous works of art. It showcases a tragic moment in the myth of Lacoon and his sons, when, in revenge for trying to alert the Ancient Trojans about a giant horse armed with secret enemies of
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