On today’s history menu we have a special duo-treat: art, as well as a revised theory about women hunters in early human cultures. And both stories are bound in the spear-throwing devices known as “atlatls”. An atlatl (the name is in the Aztec language Nahuatl because the Spanish saw the Aztecs using it, but […]
As indigenous peoples around the world encountered Westerners with increasing frequency in the 19th century, many distinctive aspects of their culture were obliterated by the tugs of globalized culture. The Yaghan peoples (a few shown here in this 1883 photo) of the southernmost part of South America in Tierra del Fuego experienced this, but at
Here’s the world’s smallest primer for a really fascinating topic in anthropology: ritual. We’ll take the “Healy Howl” tradition from Georgetown University as our case study application. Here’s a picture of a cemetery near Healy Hall, where the ritual howl happens every year on Halloween. At Georgetown on October 31, the 1973 movie “The Exorcist,”
The Healy Howl and the Significance of Ritual Read More »
We all know the man on the right — that’s Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of the 20th century. But to his left is another important scientist, Kurt Gödel, a mathematician so brilliant that Einstein said that he used to come to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton just “to have the privilege
Kurt Godel and Time Travel Read More »
Medieval people drank wine, and a lot of it. Some speculate that it would have tasted much worse than today’s drink, because it wasn’t stored in glass bottles, and corks hadn’t been invented. This might have made older wines murky with dead yeasts, and easily spoiled. The best wines likely were the newer ones which
Winemaking in Medieval Europe Read More »
What makes this statue of Buddha so different from any others? Location, location, location: it was recently unearthed in Egypt, where it had been buried at an ancient temple at the seaport city of Berenice Troglodytica. The state dates to the second century CE from the Roman occupation of Egypt, and showcases the far-flung trading
Buddhist Statue in Christian Ancient Egypt Read More »
This post is about a mathematical puzzle and a French astronomer-mathematician who tried to solve it: the Three-Body Problem, and Nicole-Reine Lepaute, an aristocratic woman working in Enlightenment-Era France. (See images one and two.) Practically as soon as Isaac Newton developed his ideas about gravity, he also realized that, while he could predict the orbits
The Three-Body Problem and Nicole-Reine Lepaute, an Astronomer Who Tackled It Read More »
At Shippensburg University, undergraduates have many opportunities to do original historical research projects supervised by faculty who are experts in their fields. Here you can see Jared Diehl and Anna Crawford’s poster presentation for the annual 2023 Academic Day, which commences the semester. Anna and Jared worked this summer to uncover whatever sources they could
We’ve all heard the term “rune,” but mostly in contemporary culture we think about runes being magical symbols, perhaps fitting into the worlds of JRR Tolkien. So I’m here to deliver some bummer history news to fight this stereotype and argue that runes could be much more mundane. However, this lead plaque (dating between the
Old English Runes and Their Magical and Ordinary Purposes Read More »
These are the views of Chimney Top, a Tuscarora quartzite outcropping at the end of the North Fork Trail on the similarly named mountain in West Virginia. Pictures don’t do this place justice – besides the immensity of scale that my photographic skills couldn’t capture, its beauty was enhanced by the wind and the solitude.
Chimney Top on the North Fork Trail of West Virginia Read More »
The Seneca Rocks formation comes from 425 million years ago, when the Tuscarora sandstone formed so much of the mountainous ridge extending through West Virginia. On September 28, 1965, the Seneca Rocks – Spruce Ridge became the first National Recreation Area in a U.S. National Forest. Some of the trees in this area are 200
Seneca Rocks in Virginia Read More »
In the fight against the Nazis, the British and their allies faced some of their biggest challenges with German U-boats sinking crucial supply ships in the Atlantic: at one point, 800,000 tons of Allied equipment a month was being lost to the submarines. The Nazis had developed a multi-staged process of code encryption for their
These People Helped Alan Turing Break the Nazi’s Codes Read More »
This is a shagbark hickory tree from New Jersey, and the likes of this species used to be far more common to America’s eastern forests than they are today. The same holds true for pignut hickory, black oak, and white oak trees (as well as beech, pine, hemlock and larch). And these all have some
How Indigenous American Burning Practices Shaped the Eastern Forests Read More »
This is a picture that ought to make us shudder even as we are grateful: it is a Mark39 thermonuclear bomb that came terrifyingly close to detonating on January 24, 1961, when a military aircraft broke up near Goldsboro North Carolina. It was holding a 24-megaton hydrogen bomb, which crashed into a swamp — three
The Almost-Nuclear Accident Near Goldsboro Read More »
Often revolutions are only recognized as such in the wake of their transformations. This was the case for the massive shift in human culture in accepting the fact that the earth orbits the sun rather than the other way around. Between the heliocentric model of Nicolaus Copernicus (d. 1543) and the Papacy’s condemnation of Galileo
Christopher Clavius and the Debate over Geocentrism Read More »
At the time of the Spanish discovery of the Americas, the Timucuan peoples were the largest linguistic group around modern Florida and Georgia, numbering about 200,000. They were not united peoples but lived in different groups, sometimes hunting and gathering, other times farming, but their culture was rich (see second image for Timucuan lands in
Timucuan Amerindians Record Their Written Language Read More »
Any gastro-historians out there? This post is about a favorite component of Ancient Roman cooking that likely was as pervasive as kimchee in modern Korean cuisine, and I am talking about garum, a sauce and made out of decaying, briny fish. The picture you see here is of a garum-producing factory in the Ancient city
Garum, Ancient Rome’s Favorite Flavor Read More »
This photo shows a Carthusian monk mixing ingredients for the liqueur known as “Chartreuse,” a beverage so famous that it gave its name to a color. The monks have been producing this drink for centuries. The Carthusian order has been consistently strict since their founding in the late eleventh century. The monks have prayed and
The History of Chartreuse Read More »
These two flowers from my neck of the woods both came out along the Appalachian Trail in May: the one to the left was from early this month and is known as a “Rattlesnake Plantain”. The other is blossoming right now at the end of the month and is called a “Pink Lady Slipper.” These
Evolution of Orchids (and Native Pennsylvanian Orchids) Read More »
Do clearer drawings of this image appear on the interwebs? They might, but I deliberately selected this one because the scene it depicts is maybe not one that a casual scroller would want to see — it’s widely considered one of the first extant depictions of a male circumcision surgery. The practice of male circumcision
Ancient Egyptian Men Were among the Earliest to Practice Circumcision Read More »
