Suicide has been met with approbation, criticism, horror, or distain, depending on the culture and circumstance of the act. In the Ancient Mediterranean world, elite people who were condemned to death by the state – or facing eminent death by political opponents – thought of suicide as a more honorable path. Pictured here is “Sofonisba […]
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Magic isn’t real, but people have believed it to be, and that makes quite a difference. For instance, at the seventeenth-century French court of Louis XIV, social anxiety among aristocrats jockying for power led to a tense and violent use of magic, fortune-telling, Black Masses, and secetive murders. Over 400 people were implicated in “L’affaire
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Sometimes the distant past seems exotic and remote, and sometimes it feels like today’s news headlines. The Ancient Greek myth of the prophetess Cassandra brings out both tendencies. Born into the Trojan royalty, beautiful Cassandra was cursed by the God Apollo after she changed her mind about sleeping with him. Although every utterance she predicted
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This is a contemporary rendition of the Ancient Roman leader, Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE), recreated by Dutch anthropologist Maja D’Hollosy. To make it, D’Hollosy referenced a recent analysis of Caesar by Tom Buijtendorp, two contemporary busts, and coin imagery. The upshot of the composite sculpture illustrates a man who got into power despite, not
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Here is the coat-of-arms designed by Niels Bohr, after he was awarded the Order of the Elephant by the Danish king in 1947: it has a yin-yang symbol and the phrase “contraria sunt complemementa,” which means “opposite things are complementary.” The heraldry speaks well in terms of the discoveries in physics that Bohr undertook in
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Here is a portrait of a young Sophie Germain, the French mathematician whose celebrated work involved the properties of elasticity and number theory (especially prime numbers). When we read about Germain, we quickly encounter a narrative that focuses on the multiple limitations placed on her life: her parents initially discouraged her scholarship, she was banned
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Yesterday (November 5) in the U.S. was voting day, but in the U.K. many people lit bonfires and threw in effigies of “the Guy” for Guy Fawkes Day. In fact, our slang word “guy” comes from the person who became the most well-known architect of the Gunpowder Plot. In 1605, Guy Fawkes, a discontent Roman
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In the Late Middle Ages, one chemical became a driving force in the economy, even forming the source of a cartel by the Papacy. Potash Alum [KAl (SO4)2] is a chemical compound that occurs naturally as crystals in some encrustacions (see second photo). It enables cell walls to harden – it can give a dill
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The scratchings you see on this picture are not my students’ writings, which makes me glad for two reasons. First, they are written in Ancient Romano-British Latin. Second, the lead tablet shown here records a ritualistic curse — it is a type of item found widespread in the Ancient world. 130 examples alone, dating from
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In Early Medieval Europe, to have a book meant you were fantastically wealthy. But to commission a book such as the one featured here meant you were at the pinnacle of society. This manuscript is the _Codex Argenteus_, and it is among the most important human-made objects created in sixth-century Europe. Parchment was expensive and
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Here you see a ginormous “Foo Dog,” as the guardian lions of Chinese architecture are known in the West. These statues began to flank the entrances to homes of the elite during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (14th-20th c). Standing for strength and power, they appear in pairs, with the left lioness (as indicated by
Foo Dogs and Protection of Ancient Chinese Elite Homes Read More »
This is one of the most famous pharaohs from Ancient Egypt: Hatshepsut (d. 1458 BCE). She was highly effective in all arenas — economic, foreign policy, religious affairs — but although those who lived under her rule recognized her authority, having a female ruler (even a super talented one) jarred too much with expectations about
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It’s almost New Year’s Eve, a time when many people gather for celebrations throughout the night and into the wee hours of the morning. Rationally we know that nothing really changes when the clock rolls from 11:59 to midnight – The new calendar year is a human invention, and yet we are conditioned to feel
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You are looking at Pinchot Lake, the defining geographical feature of the Gifford Pinchot State Park. A short drive south from the Harrisburg state capital, this recreational area is named after America’s famed environmental conservationist. Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946) worked with the likes of Theodore Roosevelt and female conservationist Mira Lloyd Dock to promote the
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Parents of kids besotted by the Disney channel might roll their eyes at how successfully the movies have mesmerized their children. But the practice of telling fanciful stories featuring youths who must navigate magic and non-human creatures is quite old. The genre owes its name, _Les Contes des Fees_, “Fairy Tales” to one Madame d’Aulnoy,
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On a lovely January morning, I walked the LeTorte trail, which runs along the eponymous nature preserve. LeTorte’s name comes from an early 18th-century French-Swiss explorer who built cabins in the area after receiving the land from William Penn. James and his wife Ann fought with the American Indians (probably Shawnee) in 1720, but
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Today at Shippensburg University I attended a fascinating talk by scholar Dr. Joshua Eyler, who presented on his new book _How Humans Learn_ (you can see him on the second photo). Eyler spoke about the ways science and evolution can help us best understand ways to obtain new knowledge.The aristocratic clergy writing books at the
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Hawai’i has generated many amazing things, but the trifecta of women featured here are superlative and worth knowing about. Alice Ball (d. 1916) is a scientist who created a way to end the suffering of people with Hanson’s disease — a.k.a leprosy. Published in a chemical journal during her undergraduate years, Ball went on to
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I would like to introduce one of “my” Medieval research area queens: Urraca, ruler of much of Spain from 1109-1126. I like her for many reasons, but one of my favorite things about Urraca was her tenacity. She really steered an unlikely trajectory, and kept reasserting her own life’s ambitions despite the ways her plans
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Thus horrific scene is a Medieval illustration of a group of people with leprosy being burned at the stake. Government authorities in southern France were consumed with mass hysteria in 1321, and rounded up scores of people with this disease — they were convinced that the lepers were planning on poisoning wells in order to
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