The Great Pyramid of Giza is almost unfathomably old, but new information about its construction gets published with such regularity that it’s worthy of a post to review what some of the most recent studies have postulated.A great mind-bender is that Egypt’s largest pyramid was built about 2,600 BCE, and the last Egyptian Pharaoh, Cleopatra […]
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Here is an example of a heavy wheeled plow, and if you’re thinking “so what?,” that might be because the ubiquity of our modern technology has made us jaded to more ordinary-looking inventions. But this plow was responsible for allowing major agricultural change in the Middle Ages, as a recent study focusing on farmland in
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This is one of the most iconic scenes in Medieval art history: the death of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings of 1066 which sealed the deal for the Norman conquest of England. The embroidery here is of course the famous Bayeux Tapestry, created about a decade after that famous battle. And academics have
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This is Chief Oshkosh (ca. 1795-1858) of the Menominee Indigenous Americans, who occupied 10 million acres of land around Wisconsin until the US government forced a takeover. The Menominee had sided against the US in the War of 1812, but later helped the American government in a confrontation with the American Indigenous leader Black Hawk
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“Coyotes, like humans, are unusually adaptable to their environments, which is why they have been making homes in urban places, like you see here. Unlike most other wild predators in the U.S., their populations have continued to thrive: where they had once been limited to the southwest and prairies of North America, they are now
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“Sail to great Byzantium” (“Angels we have heard on high”)Sail to great Byzantium, eastern base of Ancient Rome.At the capital you’ll see St. Sophia’s massive dome.(Refrain): Goooooooooooold iconsBehold the great cityGoooooooooooold iconsHung up on the city wallsSilken robes the people wearFinest fabric anywherePurple color oh so rareRuler’s sign for those who bear(Refrain)Chariots in Blue and
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A trip to the Bisti Badlands (aka “De-Na-Zin Wilderness”) is a trip to an alien world, where it’s easier to imagine the eons of time past. Badlands are landscapes in which vast amounts of clay soils and sedimentary rock have eroded, leaving scant vegetation, and often leave behind unusual rock formations from the denser minerals
Sky City is the oldest part of Acoma Pueblo, and is today the oldest continuously inhabited village in North America. The Acoma Pueblo people date it to the middle of the 1100’s CE. Besides its antiquity, Sky City has the distinction of being situated on a small mesa on top of a 365-foot (106 meter)
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Here I am, situating myself in “giant sloth” position like my fossil friend here, a _Megalonyx jeffersonii_ knicknamed Sid. Dating from the Cenazoic Era’s Pleistocene Epoch (2.5 million – 12,000 years ago), this giant sloth was 9 feet 8 inches high (about 3 meters), making him “only” medium-height among the giant ground sloths. This exquisite
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The Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park is a small jewel of a wilderness restoration area found on the southwest border of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Before its foundation in 1975, locals called it the “Old Refuge,” and enjoyed the 305 acres for its hiking, fishing (the Rio Grande is adjacent), and bird-watching. Passionate advocates for
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This 1910 cartoon from the British _Punch_ magazine is a satirical portrayal of Edith Garrud, one of the most important martial artists in the history of the Western world. Captioned “The Suffragette that knew Jiu-Jitsu. The Arrest,” the drawing shows an unarmed diminutive woman fiercely turned towards policemen who cower in fear. Some of their
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Ever heard of the “neck-verse”? The kneeling man in this painting probably would have wished he had. It’s a detail from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s _The Triumph of Death_ (1562-1563). In it, the man with the blindfold on is about to be unalived by the skeleton with the sword in a public execution.Violence was rife
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Here is a 16th-century woodcutting of a witch feeding blood to her familiars. In the wake of the Protestant Reformation, which sparked violent religious confrontation, patriarchal governance manifested in witchcraft accusations. These caused the deaths of tens of thousands of (mostly) women across Western Europe. In England, the most infamous of cases were the Pendle
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Here’s a story about human evolution, and about how different human species have given us genes that allowed us to thrive in particular conditions.The study of ancient DNA has allowed scientists to figure out that two different human species that co-existed with Homo Sapiens interbread with us and passed along some of their genetic material.
This is a tale of two skeeters: perhaps the two most infamous individuals discovered to date. This predator surpasses peskiness – historian Timothy Winegard gives a ballpark statistic that mosquitoes have caused the deaths of 52 billion people, making them humanity’s most lethal killers by a very long shot.The first featured fiend is from 130
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Remedio Varo is much better known in Mexico than in the US, but she produced hundreds of paintings that evoke the subconsciousness. Her contributions to the Surrealist movement added not only lovely, dreamlike art, but also a perspective that imagined women as central figures with their own designs — definitely a break from the images
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Sex and sin have a complicated history in Christian tradition. In the Middle Ages in Western Europe, Church theologians argued that sex itself was not evil, but enjoying it was. As Pope Gregory the Great wrote to Augustine of Canterbury around 600, “lawful intercourse should be for the procreation of offspring, and not for mere
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Along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia is a fascinating rock formation called “Dragon’s Tooth”. It sits atop of a mountain by the same name, and is one of the three “Crown Jewels” of the state beloved by nature-seekers, backpackers, and the like.The photos show first the obvious tooth formation, and second is a rock scramble
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It might look like ordinary garden decor, but this “Blue Bottle Tree” exemplifies a magical practice called Hoodoo – an African-American spiritual tradition from the U.S. Southeast. Hoodoo – not to be confused with Voodoo – originally grew popular among people of West African descent whom the dominant white culture had enslaved.Hoodoo, also called “rootwork”
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Who wouldn’t be captivated by the Homeric rendition of the Goddess Athena? (-or this fabulous 6th-c BCE painting of her on display at the New York Met?) The Ancient Goddess of wisdom got away with behaviors completely off-limits to actual Athenian women during the city’s 5th-century “golden age,” when those born with XX chromosomes were
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