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Portion of the Italian Mosaic “The Procession of the Virgins in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo”

Medieval History / September 19, 2024 / art, Eurasia/Middle Eastern history, history of sex, religion

The Italian city of Ravenna boasts the highest concentration of mosaics from the Late Antique period of Roman history. And featured here you see one of the most famous — a scene from the Procession of the Virgins in Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Set against the tiled background of shimmering gold, these two women calmly march forward.

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Virginia’s First Landing State Park

Live Reporting, Long 19th- 20th centuries / September 19, 2024 / animals, environmental history, military history, U.S. natural parks

For some reason I thought Virginia’s First Landing State Park evoked a _The Pirates of the Caribbean_ vibe. With its dense canopy of bald Cyprus trees emerging from the swamps, the forest’s beauty was accompanied with the sounds of frogs, birds, and cicadas.First Landing, like so many other spots of preserved forest in this country,

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Virginia’s Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge

Live Reporting, Long 19th- 20th centuries / September 19, 2024 / animals, environmental history, U.S. natural parks

A lovely chapter in human history was undertaken with the formation and development of south-eastern Virginia’s Back Bay Natinal Wildlife Refuge. Formed in 1938 to provide a safe migration zone for migratory bird species, the Back Bay NWR was doubled in size to include over 9,000 acres in the 1980’s as the Virginia Beach area

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King Tut’s Blade

Africa, Asia and South Asia, Ancient History / September 19, 2024 / Ancient Egypt, archaeology, technology, weapons

The 14th-century BCE Pharaoh Tutankhamun’ s burial is the most famous in Egyptian history. Although the tomb was discovered in the early 20th century, it was only in 2016 that a team of scientists demonstrated that the object shown here was made of a substance more valued than gold: it is a dagger with an

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German Christian Mysticism – The Ephrata Cloister

Early Americas / September 19, 2024 / art, religion, women's history

Pennsylvania is known for its atypical religious history, but when you start to investigate, you begin to realize just how unusual this history is. For instance, there is a legacy of German Christian mysticism extending back to hermits who lived in the 1600s. In central Pennsylvania, this expression was dramatically marked by the foundation of

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The Complexity of the “Venus Mosaic”

Ancient History / September 19, 2024 / archaeology, art, Rome, social history

My most favorite ghost stories these days come from historian Robin Fleming’s new book, _The Material Fall of Roman Britain_. Nothing captures the immediacy of the disappeared Empire in the hinterlands of Rome’s remote northwest like it. Practically none of the evidence from this time comes from written documents, so Fleming utilizes archaeology to tell

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Ancient Roman Farming and Invasive Species

Ancient History / September 19, 2024 / archaeology, art, environmental history, Rome, technology

Where I live in south-central Pennsylvania, farmers and outdoor enthusiasts are well aware of new invasive species posing a threat to our forests and crops, like the Emerald ash borer and the Spotted lanternfly. It is easy to be lured into a myopic idea that the migration of fauna and flora mostly affects humans today

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Changing Pottery of Ancient Britain

Ancient History / September 19, 2024 / archaeology, art, Rome, social history

How you carry and cook your food and water has been the most important question of the day for most humans since Neolithic times. (A quick backpacking trip can serve to remind oneself of this truth.) So when containers change, it means your life does too, and this was certainly the case for the British

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Refashioning Iron in Ancient Britain

Ancient History / September 19, 2024 / archaeology, economic history, social history, technology, weapons

You know the Biblical saying about beating swords into ploughshares? Well, refashioning iron was a thing throughout history. The best sorts of iron tools were often not just made from steel (you would want that for the sharpest edges) but from a combination of iron alloys. And getting all of this together needed the sort

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Ancient Roman Infant Burials

Ancient History / September 19, 2024 / archaeology, Rome

TW: deceased infants; infant burialThere is so much that archaeology cannot tell us about the dead. We have piles of bones from the Late Roman and Early Medieval periods in Britain, artfully arranged, oddly located, age-specific, and unusually accompanied. But what the internment of the dead actually meant to the living is ultimately inaccessible to

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Renaissance Italy’s Competition of Power Through Jewelry

Medieval History / September 18, 2024 / art, fashion history, Jewish history, political history, social history, women's history

Renaissance Italy’s wealthiest groups competed for power in many ways, amongst them through women’s jewelry. It was a complex Game-of-Thrones-esque time, when many different ambitions came into play — the moralizing Franciscans who preached against conspicuous displays of wealth, the male merchants who often vied with the nobles for political control, and the elite women

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First Humor from Hierocles and Philagrius

Ancient History / September 18, 2024 / Eurasia/Middle Eastern history, literature

“Humor is just another defense against the universe,” quipped the great Mel Brooks, and the great comedian’s sentiments extend far back in recorded history. I like thinking about how long humans have been teasing, cracking jokes, and finding play with the absurd. The general scholarly consensus is that the oldest written joke goes back to

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Aristarchus’s Model of the Universe

Ancient History, Big History, History of Science, Long 19th- 20th centuries / September 18, 2024 / ancient greece, evolution, math, technology

The lunar crater you see here is Aristarchus, and we’re not going to be be able to get any closer than that to an accurate portrait of the eponymous Ancient Greek astronomer because most of his writings — as well as any contemporary sculpture or paintings of the man — are lost to the sands

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Dr. Polly Matzinger

Fabulous Females, History of Science, Long 19th- 20th centuries / September 18, 2024 / disease, history of education, medicine, women's history

This is Polly Matzinger, and even though this is a history Instagram post, she is an active scientist. But her discoveries about the way the immune system works have changed how scientists think about the ways living things fight off harmful pathogens, thus ensuring Matzinger a place in humanity’s historical records.Before I say anything about

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Saint Maximus’s Decorated Skeleton

Early Modern / September 18, 2024 / Christian history, Eurasia/Middle Eastern history, religion

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

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Beja Nomadic Peoples Burials

Africa, Asia and South Asia, Ancient History / September 18, 2024 / archaeology, technology

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

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Clair Patterson and Lead Poisoning

History of Science, Long 19th- 20th centuries / September 18, 2024 / environmental history, evolution, technology

“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).

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Fowler’s State Park and the Works Progress Administration

Live Reporting, Long 19th- 20th centuries / September 18, 2024 / environmental history, political history, U.S. natural parks

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,

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