The Mexican flag flies over the city of Palomas, just over the border from the city of Columbus, New Mexico. Today Palomas is a town frequented by American tourists (like me) who cross over to shop and eat — the Pink House (second image) is its most famous establishment. (It even has its own Wikipedia […]
Just in time for the fall season, *and* Halloween, comes the news of a recent discovery in Poland of a 17th-century “Vampire” burial. An archaeological team led by Dariusz Polinsky of the Nicholas Copernicus University was conducting excavations around an Early Modern graveyard near Bydgoszcz when they unearthed the skeleton shown here. It belonged to
Today (September 16, 2023) several students from Shippensburg University’s history department travelled with Dr. John Bloom and me to the Meadowcroft Rock Shelter, an American Indian site in eastern Pennsylvania. The first slides you see come from the sandstone overhang that made a natural roof for the Meadowcroft encampment, as well as the main area
Meadowcroft Rockshelter Read More »
The title here “A brief discourse of a disease called the Suffocation of the Mother” is really misleading. Not a tract about matricide, instead it was the first English publication (1603) on hysteria — thought to be a disease that only infected women. And it’s pretty messed up from every angle. For instance, the intent
Studies on Hysteria Read More »
These statues are some of the remaining examples of “mushroom stones” from the Ancient Maya people. They testify to the usage of psilocybin by indigenous Central Americans that goes back hundreds of years. The second photo shows a real-life example, called Psilocybe Mexicana. The Central American consumption of hallucinogenic mushrooms for ritual purposes was brought
Hallucinogenic Mushrooms for Central American Rituals Read More »
What the heck. So this is an illustration of a pope (Innocent X, to be exact), who is having his testicles examined by a cardinal to make darn tootin’ certain that the newly-selected leader of Christendom is a man. Made in 1645, this print testifies to a long-lasting legend that all popes had to undergo
Papal Testicle Examination Read More »
The woman you see in this 15th-c illumination is mounted on a warhorse, and leading a surprise attack upon her enemies — this is Joanna of Flanders (c. 1295-1374), and so famed were her military ventures that philosopher David Hume called her “the most extraordinary woman of the age”. Joanna, born into the nobility of
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These digitally reconstructed faces attempt to regain the lost stories of 17 humans, whose skeletons were found in a well in Norwich England, but these images are robotic and not very convincing. A recent DNA analysis, however, has revealed a particularly sad and horrifying aspect of their deaths. After the bodies were uncovered by archaeologists
Medieval Anti-Semitism Read More »
The year was 1457, and the place the town of Sévigny in France. A five-year-old boy had been brutally killed, mauled to death, and the community sought justice. Turning to the legal system, a civil case was brought against the killer, and despite the horrific nature of the death of young Jehan Martin, court officials
The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art has a fantastic exhibition on the color of Ancient Greek statues right now. When we look at the statues of the Ancient Mediterranean today, we are familiar with the unadorned stone or bronze, like the sphinx from about 530 BCE featured here. However, a team of art
This African mask from the 1500s is on display this fall of 2022 at the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of an exhibit on the African origins of civilization. Exquisitely carved from precious ivory, it provides testimony to one of Africa’s more recent civilizations, the Kingdom of Benin. The capital city of Benin
The Kingdom of Benin Read More »
In 19th-century German-speaking countries, folktales about horrifying agricultural monsters became widespread. They picked up from even earlier local legends, streamlining beliefs into a general picture of Feldgeister – “field ghosts” and Korndämonen – “corn demons”. (First and second images). These stories involve a range of beasts that are sometimes humanoid, other times beasts, and additionally
Feldgeister and Korndämonen Read More »
This scene of a man-in-the-moon with thirteen stars might strike a vague familiarity with you. And perhaps if you were alive in the United States during the 1980s, it might evoke a sinister connotation. And if that’s the case, you were tangentially affected by the “Satanic Panic” of that decade. Dungeons and Dragons, various rock
The game of _Monopoly_ has been played by millions for over a century: my own kids learned a bit about adding and subtracting large numbers in their heads from it, while I learned how to only let the game go on until all the properties were sold, so as to prevent in-game death by slow
The Original Monopoly Game Read More »
These photos taken last weekend show vistas along the Loyalsocks Trail, one of the many stunning forested hiking pathways in Pennsylvania. Taking its name from the Loyalsock Creek (which translates from an American Indian name for “middle” creek), the Loyalsock trail is nearly sixty miles. The portions shown here include Sones Pond, which was built
These figures painted in the Manda Guéli Cave in central Africa in prehistoric times show humans amidst animals they have domesticated. They illustrate the importance of pastoralism in human history, which isn’t just something that changed some people’s food supply (instead of foraged plants and animals, pastoralists focus on the nutrients from their domesticated beasts).
Pre-History Lactose Tolerance Read More »
This wizened figure looks like a saggy Santa Claus, but in fact was one of the most ambitious Popes in the history of the Catholic Church. And “ambitious” isn’t a good adjective for the religious leaders of Christendom. But this guy had an even more secular moniker: he was Julius II, the”warrior Pope”. He picked
Flick through these three images, dear readers, and you will observe something that scholars have been looking for for over 2,000 years — finally brought to light via a student class project, the COVID lockdowns, and state-of-the-art multispectral imaging. It is the oldest star map of the universe. The manuscript you see is the _Codex
Codex Climaci Rescriptus Read More »
London’s East Smithfield Cemetery made news this week because of a recent study suggesting that the Medieval Black Death provided impetus for human evolution in a way that shapes many of our genomes today. With the advent of technology that allows for whole genome analysis of the dead, scientists and historians decided to exhume skeletons
The Black Death and Genetics Read More »
TIL that there are about 5,000 people in Argentina that speak Welsh. And how that happened is a crazy fascinating story, some of which involves the people featured here in this first photo. In the mid-19th century, the indigenous people of Wales were experiencing great hardships with the English occupation and the process of Industrialization.
