The Ancient Greeks were right to have the story of how Prometheus brought fire to the human race front-and-center in their mythology. Fire is an amazing thing — most vertebrates flee from it when it happens in the natural world. But we humans learned to control it, and that revolutionized our existence. The control of
Fire and Evolution Read More »
I’ve done loads of posts on human cannibalism, which might bring about some self-disgust for our species. Would it cheer you up to know, then, that it’s not just us moderns who’ve a legacy of eating each other?. Turns out, humans have a very long history of self-consumption, stemming back a million years to the
Ancestral Cannibals Read More »
See the Vulcan “live long and prosper” sign on this tombstone from 1819? It really is, and this isn’t like the History Channel’s claims that aliens built the pyramids. But Spock, rather, borrowed from an actual human custom originating in Jewish tradition. Leonard Nimoy’s hand signal is half of a sacred gesture made by the
The Jewish Origins of the Vulcan Greeting Read More »
Paleo-anthropologists have recently analyzed the skeletons of two humans dating over 2,300 years ago from Ancient China which suggest that deliberate amputation of the limbs of one leg might have been done as a type of legal punishment. The skeletons came from the former Eastern Zhou Dynasty (771-256 BCE) near the modern city of Sanmenxia.
Amputations in the Eastern Zhao Dynasty Read More »
In the US, Mother’s Day is this Sunday, so I thought it appropriate to introduce this fine specimen, representative of what many Paleo-anthropologists consider the earliest known mother of all hominids (including us Homo sapiens). This is the Ardipithecus ramidus, and she lived about 4.4 million years ago in what is now modern Ethiopia. Her
Ardipithecus ramidus Read More »
Check out these Viking-era teeth, dating between 972 and 1025 CE. Discovered in 2009 in Dorset, England, they came from a burial pit of Scandinavian men who had all been decapitated after suffering violent deaths, as in, a mass execution (51 skulls were in the grave, and many of their accompanying bones were adjacent). These
Viking Dental Work Read More »
If you look for more than a second at the squiggles on this image, you will soon make out patterns of squares as well as some long lines joining them. These images made huge headlines in the fields of archaeology and history this month because of what they have revealed about an ancient civilization in
Ancient Civilization Discovered in the Ecuadorian Amazon Read More »
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 »
This lead Viking-era pendant of Norse God Thor’s hammer was unearthed this past summer of 2023 near the Swedish town of Ysby. Similar to others such as the 10th-Ödeshög pendant shown in the second image, it speaks to a continuity of the Norse religion in an area where Christianity was steadily encroaching. Like the crucifixes
These are elements of the necklace that is making news headlines today: the “Harpole treasure” discovered back in April of 2022. On December 6, news was officially released about the burial dating from 630-670 CE that archaeologists from the Vistry Group unearthed in Northamptonshire. One of the most significant of its kind, it contained a
Rocks! But wait, there’s more: the technology heralded by these Acheulean hand-axes that you see (noted for their pear and oval shapes) signify not just the very cutting-edge (groan) way to cut into bone developed between 2 and 1.6 million years ago, but also, the formation of human language and maybe even the genesis of
Acheulean Hand-axes Read More »
The Tyrannosaurus Rex had arms so small that paleontologists debate whether they were merely evolutionary leftovers. But research by Sara Burch, one of the world’s few leading experts on dinosaur anatomical structure, suggests that these puny extensions still functioned – the T-Rex held their prey while using their colossal necks, jaws, and teeth to do
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,
African Villages Fractals Read More »
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 »
These are the ruins of Hattusa, a capital city of the ancient Hittite Empire (1650-1200 BCE) located in modern Turkey. This week, archaeologists revealed that they had discovered a language that no one had even known existed. In our modern world, where languages are rapidly disappearing (linguists say that if things proceed at current levels,
Discovery of an Ancient Language among the Hittites in the Land of Kalasma Read More »
Valle de la Luna – the Valley of the Moon – is also called the Ischigualasto Provincial Park of Argentina, and there you can find fossils of the world’s oldest dinosaurs. They arose during the Late Triassic, as the planet healed from a mass extinction due to volcanic eruptions so severe that 90% of life
Valle de La Luna – Valley of the Moon Read More »
This is the Marduk Gate of the ancient city of Babylon, one of the world’s oldest urban settlements and now a UNESCO heritage site. King Nebuchadnezzar II built this gate about 575 BCE. Whatever beauty it contains now, where it lies in lonely ruins some 85 km south of Baghdad, is nothing compared to the
Poem about Ancient Babylon Discovered and the Marduk-Gate Read More »
The origins of human history keeps getting pushed further back in time, as a recent analysis of a wooden structure in Africa dating back almost a half a million years demonstrates. For reference, anthropologists now date the emergence of homo sapiens to about 200,000 years ago (although some argue for 300,000). The wooden structure discovered
Zambia Archaeological Site Has Earliest Known Wooden Structure Read More »
The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced this month (3/23) that archaeologists have recently discovered a small Sphinx statue dating to the Roman period with unusual features. Its facial expression has a slight smile, and some experts believe that its head might be a representation of the Roman Emperor Claudius, who ruled from 41-54
Roman Period Sphinx Read More »
I really enjoyed the Freer Gallery of Art’s small permanent collection dealing with the history of the southwestern part of the Arabian peninsula, or modern Yemen. The area has suffered from horrific warfare since 2014, which has endangered much of its historical heritage. This is tragic, because although the area never boasted the wealth of
