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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Hawai’i has generated many amazing things, but the trifecta of women featured here are superlative and worth knowing about. Alice Ball (d. 1916) is a scientist who created a way to end the suffering of people with Hanson’s disease — a.k.a leprosy. Published in a chemical journal during her undergraduate years, Ball went on to
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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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I would like to introduce one of “my” Medieval research area queens: Urraca, ruler of much of Spain from 1109-1126. I like her for many reasons, but one of my favorite things about Urraca was her tenacity. She really steered an unlikely trajectory, and kept reasserting her own life’s ambitions despite the ways her plans
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The Basque region of Spain in the early 1600s witnessed the largest witch-hunt in history. From 1609-1614, seven thousand women, children, and men underwent investigation by Inquisitionial judges. Unlike the Spanish Church’s readiness to prosecute heretics or Protestants, however, this episode fortunately was kept from escalating by sceptical educated clergy who tended to find the
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These shapely flowers come from one of the most peculiar texts from the late 19th-century Western world. _Geometrical Psychology, or the Science of Representation_, by Louisa S. Cook, smashes together mathematics, evolution/eugenics, Vedanta Hinduism, and Spiritualism. Shakespeare is also in there too, for good measure. Cook’s aim was as ambitious as physicists today who are
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Thus horrific scene is a Medieval illustration of a group of people with leprosy being burned at the stake. Government authorities in southern France were consumed with mass hysteria in 1321, and rounded up scores of people with this disease — they were convinced that the lepers were planning on poisoning wells in order to
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Here is a grim piece of testimony concerning the horrific ways that anti-Semitism played out in Medieval Europe, especially as the period went on. This is an illustration of the Third Crusade of Pastoureaux, or Shepherds’ Crusade, which happened in northern France in 1320. Trapped in a burning tower, Jews (identified by badges they were
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Here you are looking at a diagram of the Medieval universe. Or, a giant mystical vulva — your choice.In the Middle Ages, it was common to depict the macro-cosmos as a sort of expanded version of the micro, much like the fresco painted in the late fourteenth century by Piero di Puccio (4th slide), which
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The Morgan Picture Bible, a.k.a. “The Crusader Bible” is one of the pinnacles of 13th-century French Gothic illumination. Regardless whether it was commissioned by the saint-king Louis IX of France, as many art historians have argued, the 283 gorgeously painted illustrations certainly characterize the zeal of the crusader movement in Europe. In it, artists have
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Look closely, and you’ll see if you squint . . . Not the holy hand grenade, but the Holy Lance! You know — the artifact that in the Christian Gospel of John was used by a Roman soldier to pierce the side of Jesus after he had died on the cross? (John 19:34). A quick
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These cages still hang from the Church of Saint Lambert in the German city of Munster. Empty now, for many many years they contained the decaying corpses of three religious leaders put to death in one of the many bloody conflicts of the Protestant Reformation era. In 1534-1535, Munster became an epicenter of the religious
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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 while hiking, my friend Erin and I happily encountered a group of folks doing trail maintainace as part of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. This association has very long roots in the region, dating to 1927 when a group of people began with the goals to help build a section of the 2,100-mile A.T.
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In the Middle Ages, the lens of Christianity permeated the world view to a degree unimaginable today. We can see this with the descriptions and illustrations of animals like the lion, whom many authors considered king of the beasts. And, since they thought that God/Christ ruled over the universe, lions were compared symbolically to the
Some readers might remember the television show _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ from back in the day. The leading superhero Buffy constantly eviscerated all kinds of demons in her neighborhood in sunny southern California, because — unbeknownst to local residents — it was located right on top of a Hellmouth. Turns out, the show’s writers weren’t
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Knowledge about the existence of hormones was relatively new in the early 1900’s, but scientists were extremely interested in these self-manufactured chemicals that arouse or depress us, that make us grow or sleep or have sex, etc etc etc . . . This early stage of endrocronology was a sort of Wild West, and earnest
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“Lilith” is a sculpture I would pay money to take a pilgrimage to see. Created by artist Kiki Smith in 1994 out of bronze and glass, the statue of Lilith crouches, tense and fierce. Her eyes stare out with a contact that seems physical.The stories of the demon Lilith emerged over hundreds of years, but
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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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The imposing walls of the Masyaf castle in Syria speak to the formidable command of its Medieval occupants. This was one of the fortresses run by the Nizari Ismaili sect of Muslims — better known as the Assassins.Run by a charismatic leader sometimes called “The Old Man of the Mountain” (also Hasan-e Sabbah), the Assassins
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