This is one folio from the precious “Blue Qur’an,” dating from about 850-950 CE. The indigo-dyed parchment is adorned with gold and silver lettering, a treasured example of the heights to which the Arabic-speaking Muslim world brought the art of calligraphy. The era in which this copy of the Qur’an was written overlaps with the […]
Al-Kindī, Calligraphy and Cryptography in 9th c Middle East Read More »
This Ancient Egyptian “shadow clock” dates to the Ptolemaic Period (330-306 BCE), but is representative of the earliest known timepieces. The earliest extant dates to about 1500 BCE, but this fragment is much more interesting to look at. Check out the parallel and oblique lines engraved on the sloping face: one would have placed a
The Earliest Timepieces from Ancient Egypt and the Hebrews Read More »
Europeans practiced cannibalism well into the 19th century, and one of the favored ways to consume their own kind happened with beheadings. Here you see close-ups of a 1649 painting by artist John Weesop called “An Eyewitness Representation of the Execution of King Charles I”. Notice in the second image the rush of people collecting
Cannibalism in Medieval to 19th-Century Europe Read More »
We who have been raised in a culture with microscopes and electronic microscopes take for granted the existence of a universe of minutiae that shape our surroundings (SARS-COV2, to pick an example we are all exhausted about). Before Antony van Leeuwenhoek developed his microscope around 1668, however, this was impossible.And so it was that a
William Ramesey’s Illustrations of Parasites Read More »
One of the biggest questions about our universe had long been just how big it is. Of course the stars we see are far away, but just how far was unknown for most of human history. Figuring out the answer to this question was an enormous challenge: it isn’t the case that the brightest stars
Henrietta Swan Leavitt and the “Standard Candle” Read More »
Back in school I didn’t understand that mathematics isn’t a bunch of static, objective “facts.” Rather, mathematicians work out their ideas in conversation with each other, and invent new concepts in the process. The manuscript you are looking at here was one of the most important math texts in history. Its author, Gerolamo Cardano, thought
Gerolamo Cardano’s “Ars Magna” Read More »
We might not realize it, but the Christian culture of today carries with it a footprint of the spiritual universe of the Ancient Mediterranean world. Although modern scientific models overlay most of our ideas about what the universe looks like, the pagan, Christian, and Jewish religions of Ancient Rome had undergone a sort of revolution
The Ancient Universe in Religion Read More »
The deep red color you see here decorated the wall of an Ancient Roman aristocratic villa in the first century BCE. The color was known as vermilion, and it was made of the mineral cinnabar, precious to Ancient and Medieval peoples. They loved the hue they could get by mixing it with various bases. But
Cinnibar and Dragons in the Ancient World Read More »
This is Jonas Salk, inventor of the first polio vaccine, ending the childhood disease that had killed or crippled so many Americans — especially children — in the mid-20th century. But Salk was important for other reasons. His approach to designing the vaccine was innovative, using a denatured version of the virus rather than
Here are four different species of finches from the Galapagos Islands. Although they look similar, their differences include their beaks — each one takes advantage of a different type of seed. Natural selection shaped the trajectory of these birds’ appearance, and one of the scientists who first figured out how this worked passed away yesterday
Edward Osborne Wilson Read More »
It’s pleasant, from where I write this post in my ice-bitten and wintery grey state of Pennsylvania, to look at this lovely plant. Here is _Indigofera tinctoria_ the most important plant to make the dye colored indigo — a color that meant beauty to some, but misery to many others. Indigo is one of
I’ve done loads of posts on human cannibalism, which might bring about some self-disgust for our species. Would it cheer you up to know, then, that it’s not just us moderns who’ve a legacy of eating each other?. Turns out, humans have a very long history of self-consumption, stemming back a million years to the
Ancestral Cannibals Read More »
Ah, the poor doomed philosopher Giordano Bruno. Whereas Galileo had been allowed to live after recanting his astronomical views that ran counter to Roman Catholic teachings, Bruno — himself a Dominican friar — was executed by the Church in 1600. His death and his willingness to buck the Catholic Church’s stranglehold on acceptable views about
Giodano Bruno, the Doomed Philosopher Read More »
Wanna be a smidge happier? Learn about an extremely rare illness discovered in 1882 by the French neurologist Dr. Jules Cotard — if you can read this post, you almost certainly don’t have it. And for that, you will be gladdened. At his hospital at the Pitié-Salpêtrière University in Paris, the doctor saw a patient
Cortard’s Syndrome Read More »
Take a guess as to what this Medieval illustration is a drawing of: upside-down fallopian tubes? Sea-creatures? Mirror-image diagrams of some planetary motion? The answer is below, but before you look — ask yourself how you are arriving at your guesses. The process of investigative inquiry to figure out the nature of reality is something
Hasan Ibn al-Haytham and the Scientific Method Read More »
I know a joke isn’t funny after you explain it, but at least after reading this you might find phlogiston humorous (and also, I just made a pun). Phlogiston isn’t real, but Early Modern scientists thought it was. They used it as a way to explain the ash or calx (for metals) residue after something
Paleo-anthropologists have recently analyzed the skeletons of two humans dating over 2,300 years ago from Ancient China which suggest that deliberate amputation of the limbs of one leg might have been done as a type of legal punishment. The skeletons came from the former Eastern Zhou Dynasty (771-256 BCE) near the modern city of Sanmenxia.
Amputations in the Eastern Zhao Dynasty Read More »
Yesterday, I was fortunate to experience the full solar eclipse from the Pymatuning State Park Reservoir in western Pennsylvania. The light turned silvery as the sun neared total obfuscation, and green colors emerged and reds dimmed, the effect of our eyes’ cones coming offline and employing the rods more. Shadows close to the ground sharpened
A new article from the science journal _Nature_ throws another wrench in the mystery about the origins of the greatest pandemic in history, the Black Death. Here you see the Chüy Valley in modern Kyrgyzstan and one of the tombstones involved in the recent study. Dating to 1338, and written in Syriac, the stone’s translation
One of the joys about cutting-edge studies that merge scientific data with the discipline of history is the chance to answer questions that we never thought we’d be able to. This photo of Greenland’s ice sheet gets at the way that climate scientists are trying to understand one of the most transformative aspects of earth
Younger Dryas Cold Snap Read More »
