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 »
The Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail is a 70 mile stretch of forested lands begining in Ohiopyle and heading generally northeast almost to Johnstown. Begun in the 1970’s, it is an example of the invaluable natural patrimony of the state of Pennsylvania.
This statue of a worshipping man is from the third millennium BCE is from Ancient Sumeria, and I like the way his lips are pursed, almost like he has a half-smile. Judging his age by the long beard, I think his IRL corresponding figures would have had good reason to smile: they, unlike most other
If I had more time, I would read original treatises in mathematics. The reason is because — when I do get a chance to go over such writings — it is so much clearer to me that math isn’t just a bunch of static pronouncements that everyone agrees about, but a conversation built on emergent
Bhāskara II and the Pythagorean Theorem Read More »
I have a new historical figure that I want to invite to my imaginary dinner party with fascinating but dead people I wish I could talk to. And that’s this guy, Karl Pearson. A British Germanophile who lived from 1857-1936, Karl was a quirky, free-thinking mathematical giant in the field of statistics. He had a
Here are fine specimens of an unusual plant called ghost pipes (sometimes Indian pipes), or Monotropa uniflora (“one-turn one-flower”). Although they grow on three continents (both Americas and Asia), the conditions they require are not simple to come by and they cannot be cultivated. Ghost pipes lack chlorophyll, something all plants require, and so these
Things very old and very new feature prominently in this newly-released image from the James Webb Space Telescope. Going by the catchy name “Cosmic Cliffs,” this is an edge of a section of a nebula (the Carina Nebula, to be exact, appearing in our southern hemisphere) known as NGC 3324, first identified by James Dunlop
The limestone rocks that form the bedrock of the Bois Païolive come from the Jurassic Period, 180 million years ago. Aeons of erosion created unusual rock outcroppings, which the French government back in 1934 declared to be an ecologically protected area. There is incredible biodiversity in the Païolive, but the most notable trees are the
I love that as I get ready to write up my syllabi for this coming fall semester, perhaps a wee bit wistful of my fabulous summer coming to an end, I am reading about a time in the early 20th century when teaching college students was a lot more stressful. And that’s where the great
Conical Rebellions Read More »
Behold the Cairo Toe, the earliest surviving prosthesis ever made. About 3,000 years ago in an Ancient Egyptian chamber lying west of Luxor, Egypt, a high-status woman was buried, and accompanying her remains was an artificial big toe made of leather and wood to fill in for a missing digit. The site was at Sheikh
This is Hertha Ayerton, a British Engineer whose discoveries unveiled mysteries about the behavior of electricity and helped develop technology to protect soldiers in the trenches of the First World War from poisonous gasses. Sarah Phoebe Banks was born in 1854 to a family of eight children, her father dying when she was just eight.
Although my posts for the next few weeks are mostly going to be repeats as the website gets built, I couldn’t help but write up this story about willow tree bark and aspirin. Dear reader, you, like me, may have been under the impression that for millennia, people in different parts of the world relied
Willow Bark Medicine Read More »
The Robledo Mountains lie to the north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and to the east of the Rio Grande continental rift. Much of the exposed rock is from about 280 million years ago (Paleozoic), and the geological footprint is obvious and amazing. You can see a slot canyon in most of these pictures, when
These statues are some of the remaining examples of “mushroom stones” from the Ancient Maya people. They testify to the usage of psilocybin by indigenous Central Americans that goes back hundreds of years. The second photo shows a real-life example, called Psilocybe Mexicana. The Central American consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms for ritual purposes was brought
Hallucinogenic Mushrooms for Central American Rituals Read More »
These photos taken last weekend show vistas along the Loyalsocks Trail, one of the many stunning forested hiking pathways in Pennsylvania. Taking its name from the Loyalsock Creek (which translates from an American Indian name for “middle” creek), the Loyalsock trail is nearly sixty miles. The portions shown here include Sones Pond, which was built
These figures painted in the Manda Guéli Cave in central Africa in prehistoric times show humans amidst animals they have domesticated. They illustrate the importance of pastoralism in human history, which isn’t just something that changed some people’s food supply (instead of foraged plants and animals, pastoralists focus on the nutrients from their domesticated beasts).
Pre-History Lactose Tolerance Read More »
