Two fancy skeletons are my features today: one an homage, the other the actual man (as far as believers thought). Here I bring you the decorated corpse of Saint Maximus, brought to the village of Bürglen, Germany, in 1682. Turns out that in the Catholic Counter-Reformation, bedazzling the bones of the saints was all the […]
Saint Maximus’s Decorated Skeleton Read More »
The northeast part of Africa fascinates me: the history is so rich, but many places I’d like to go aren’t accessible. Take the Kassala region of eastern Sudan, for instance — the first and second images show breathtaking mountains overlooking an off-planet like desert scene. These images also get at the ancient past of the
Beja Nomadic Peoples Burials Read More »
“I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this,” says the main character of Andy Weir’s _The Martian_, and proceeded.to use every bit of his resourcefulness to harness the power of knowledge to save himself. That movie is fictional, but actual scientists have done this (Hello, COVID-19 vaccination developers, I’m talkin’ to you there).
Clair Patterson and Lead Poisoning Read More »
Fowler’s State Park is another example of the good work done to heal clearcut land and create wild spaces during the Great Depression. Located in south-central Pennsylvania, it is a 104-acre state park now, but was leveled in the first decade of the 20th century by a lumber company. Thanks to the Works Progress Administration,
Fowler’s State Park and the Works Progress Administration Read More »
You probably recognize the bird in this 13th-century Medieval illumination as the legendary Phoenix, who lived for 500 years and then cast itself into flames in order to be reborn. Medieval people had never seen such beasts, of course, but loved to imagine that fantastical creatures lived far away in exotic lands — and the
Medieval Phoenix and Prester John Read More »
This is a shitty post. Really, because it is about the first flushing toilet, which is one of my favorite human inventions ever and one which should never be taken for granted. You see here the “Queen’s Palace” of the Minoan civilization of ancient Crete (@2000 BCE). The top photo is a very renovated section of
Flushing Toilets of History Read More »
Wanna know a crazy thing that a lot of British and American people were interested in during the late 19th and early 20th centuries?: masturbation. Moralists and medical writers freaked the heck out over “onanism,” a term that Victorians liked using for wanking, jerking off, sailing the taco, flicking the bean, etc, etc.Anti-masturbation diatribes have
Anti-Masturbation Movements and Practices Read More »
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, almost the entire continent of Africa was taken over by various European states and business entrepreneurs. Among this area was the eastern state of Tanganyika, modern Tanzania. The two men featured here in chains are reflective of many who rose up against the German colonialist government in
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These are the white-capped rapids of the Youghiogheny River in the Pennsylvania State Park called “Ohiopyle.” One of the guides from our rafting trip there this weekend said the name came from a time when folks from the flat-land state of Ohio drove their cars too fast down one of the many mountainous roads and
Ohiopyle of the Youghiogheny River Read More »
Here is the banner from the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, one of the two major powers that engaged in China’s civil war between 1851 to 1864. While accurate records of casualties are impossible to tally, the Taiping Rebellion resulted in the worst civil war in terms of deaths: upwards of 20 million people — as many
Banner of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Read More »
Lots of animals love to play — many of us mammals will forgo food and sleep just to take part in exploratory fun. Humans have excelled at a specific type of play that comes in the form of games.Games are more formal than most types of play. They involve rules and have uncertain outcomes .
Ancient Chinese Board Game “Go” Read More »
These two images reflect the ancient Colorado peoples, who lived as the earliest nomads of the region. Some exciting research from this area is challenging entrenched ideas about how our human ancestors lived.The mammoth skeleton is from the very first peoples, known as the Paleoindians. Dating as far back as 13,000 years ago, archaeologists have
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Most of us cherish the beauty of wilderness, and I venture that a lot of our feelings come from our knowledge that humans have put the environment in great danger — therefore, any non-human engineered landscapes we now consider especially precious.But people have not always looked at the non-human world in the same way: although
The Beauty of Ancient Roman Wilderness Read More »
Sitting almost 1,400 feet/430 meters above sea level in the Poconos Mountains is this jewel of a 44-acre lake called Sunfish Pond. No roads lead there: you have to hike in to see it. A glacial lake, formed as the last Ice Age was ending, Sunfish Pond is a tranquil and lovely element of the
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Those of us who love travelling to new places enjoy the sensation of adventure and the way it makes us open to learning new things, but few of us today risk our lives for such experiences. However, Maria Sibylla Merian was different. In 1699, this affluent 52-year old divorced mother of two left her affluent
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If you are reading this post, I hope you can celebrate the fact that your profession is not as wretched as the Resurrectionists of Britain, and your post-mortem reputation as wretchedly public as that of William Burke, a Resurrectionist so desperate that he became a murderer for his career.In the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists
British Resurrectionists Read More »
Scientists with scruples make for some of my favorite heroes. Here is one of them: Frances Oldham Kelsey.In 1960, in her first assignment on the first month at her new job at the United States Food and Drug Administration, Kelsey stood up to powerful corporate interests and demanded scientific studies to demonstrate the safety of
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Everything has a history, including menstruation. Shown here is rock art from Western Australia’s indigenous peoples depicting two women dancing and menstruating.The cultural history of how societies have dealt with women’s menses is fascinating, but so too is the research done by evolutionary biologists. We have not all experienced periods in the same way throughout
Ancient Menstruation History Read More »
King Arthur never actually lived, but stories about him were extremely popular in Medieval Europe. One of the most well known today is _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_. The poem survives in only one manuscript that dates to the late 14th century. The language is Middle English, but belongs to a conservative rural dialect
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” Read More »
This first photo shows two of the roughly 1,300 specimens of minerals and gems on display in the Hillman Hall of Minerals and Gems at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. I had a chance to see the exhibit yesterday. It was wild to see jewels created out of the ash from Mount
Hillman Hall at Carnegie Museum of Natural History Read More »
