Today I am discussing a little snippet, a slice (if you will), of an alleged Viking practice known as the Blood Eagle. Featured prominently in modern portrayals of Viking culture, the Blood Eagle was a horrifying method of execution in which the victim’s entire back was split open (perhaps by a spear with a hook
I’m not usually the kind of historian who gets ultra verklempt about weapons, not even Medieval ones. But these Viking-era swords were just mighty bitchin. From about 750-1100 CE, “Ulfberht” swords emerged in northern Europe, and they were different than the rest. Vikings and other peoples in northwestern Europe had already improved sword-making techniques: they
The Temple of Dendur is a must-see in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Hundreds of tourists check out this Ancient Roman-era Egyptian building every day, where it stands in an enormous glass-walled room, surrounded by a huge moat of water evocative of the Nile River from whence it originally came. The
These six images of animals depicted in cave art come from an ice age dating up to 20,000 years ago, when hunter-gathering Homo sapiens created many vivid paintings such as the famous ones at Lascaux (15,000 BCE). This month in an article in the _Cambridge Archaeological Journal_ a team of researchers argue that they have
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Ringing Rocks County Park contains a 7-acre boulder field with an unusual feature: about a third of these rocks clang with a metallic ring when struck. The boulder field reached its current position about 12,000 years ago when the last Ice Age melted the great Wisconsin Glacier away from this part of Bucks County Pennsylvania.
What is the luckier life? The one where you get to do what you want and live authentically, or the one that lasts longer? For much of history, much of humanity had neither of these options, but for the mother-daughter royal pair featured here, the options were split. In Denmark during the age of the
The Princesses Caroline Matilda and Louise Augusta Read More »
Check out this 12th century mosaic on the west wall of the Church of Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello, Venice, Italy. The animals that have eaten up humans have to barf them back up again when it’s resurrection time. Eww. But this picture gets at some of the crazy logic loops that Medieval people had
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This is a post about a legacy of surrealistic and evocative art that originated from a very old book and a nearly-as-old garden, which influenced a philosopher who lived hundreds of years later and an artist living even later still. Might I present to you, dear readers, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili? The famous printer Aldus Manutius
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Check out the exhibit “Empresses of China’s Forbidden City: 1644-1912,” at the Arthur K. Sackler Gallery, part of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.. This epic portrait of the last dowager empress, Cixi, was commissioned by her. I love the fingernails!
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A gargoyle, from Notre Dame (these famed water spouts were only installed in the 1800s). The term comes from old French “gargouille” meaning “throat” but also the gurgling sound made by liquid in the throat. This of course refers to the rain-spout functionality of the gargoyle. But it also pertains to a medieval legend about
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This finial crowning the top of an elaborately carved tusk from 19th-century Kongo depicts a nursing mother. A skilled artisan would have made the tusk as part of a commissioning by a community leader. The few women depicted on this tusk form a striking counter-narrative to most of the images. One woman carried a small
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This traditional African village in Camaroon is one example of many of the pervasiveness of fractals in many African cultures. Ron Eglash has documented the indigenous use of fractals – repeating patterns on ever-larger scales – in African religions, textiles, and village communities. Sometimes, as one approaches the smaller or innermost components of a fractal,
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Phytophthora infestans –the micro-organism responsible for potato blight, most horrifically with the Irish Potato Famine of 1845, which depleted the population of Ireland by 30%! (A million people quickly died, and over a million migrated to the U.S.A.) There is some interesting science behind the particular virulence of this outbreak. Scientists figured out that P. Infestans
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This is maybe the first computer bug, and relates to one of the more famous anecdotes adorning the legendary reputation of Grace Hopper, one of the most important developers of the computer in the 20th century. Hopper (d. 1992 age 85) earned her Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale and was working as a professor until
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This image of Pope Benedict IX (d. 1056) does not do his reputation justice. He was put in power by a male relative at the young age of 20, and lived such an immoral life that he was forced to abdicate twice. He managed to worm his way back into power, serving as pope for
“The Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower Came,” an 1859 painting by Thomas Mortan, illustrates a famous scene from an old Scottish fairy-tale, in which appears one of my favorite words: widdershins. “Widdershins” means to travel counter-clockwise, or in the northern hemisphere, in the path opposite the sun. It referred to a leftward-proceeding direction, and
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This painting by al-Qazwini (1203-1283) shows a monster from the Gog and Magog legend. The Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an each mention Gog and Magog as either monstrous people or wild places. Their stories evolved, but usually referred to a threatening, beastly pseudo-human group that threatened a righteous (usually Godly) and civilized
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The Mongolian invasions of Japan were famously brought to an end in 1281 when a tumultuous storm destroyed the entire Mongolian fleet. But it was not just the kamikaze or “divine winds” that destroyed the invaders. The Japanese samurai showed a surprising flexibility in adapting their fighting style, working together more than they had ever
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This image shows the moment before one Herman Maestas from Las Vegas, New Mexico, was hanged. In the background, you can see several men who had claimed a fence to get a better look at the event. And this was in 1894, decades after an 1835 law had been passed, which actually limited the viewers
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Happy Indigenous People’s Day in the United States! And what could be more appropriate to acknowledge the holiday than the study published just this month in _Science_ that confirmed the dating of these fossilized footprints — the oldest we have of Homo sapiens on North American ground? Using two new different dating methods, geologists Jeffrey
Footprints of White Sands Re-evaluated as Oldest Human in North America Read More »
