So much about human nature can seem depressing: we unthinkingly follow orders, allow confirmation bias to skew our views, and commit horrible acts of violence against people we don’t even know. However, the opposite is also true, and history has many examples of people who have disobeyed authority and risked their lives for total strangers. […]
Hugh Thompson’s Fight Against the My Lai Massacre Read More »
We are inseparable from our environment, and we change with our surroundings whether we are aware of it or not. You are looking at a photo of some of the skulls of the approximately 800,000 Tutsis killed by their Hutu neighbors in the 1994 genocide. It is easy to pretend that the inner workings of
The Propaganda of the Rwandan Genocide Read More »
Killing in the name of God has been an unfortunate part of the legacy of Abrahamic religions, and we might wonder how people across the millennia have rationalized this. No need for much Biblical exegesis here, because I am hopeful that readers would all fall into the “no sh*t, Sherlock” camp at the mere suggestion
The Fourth Western European Crusade Read More »
“Are you not entertained?” chides the gladiator Maximus to the crowds watching him in the 2000 film by Ridley Scott. The question teases all of us humans, because of our penchant for being attracted to drama — sports, scandal, and story.In Byzantine history this penchant for the dishy reached an acme with the author Procopius,
Author Procopius and the Chariot Sports Team Blues Read More »
I try to keep the “Byzantine” (overly complex relationships of very wealthy people) out of my Byzantine history class, but in the early 11th century there’s no getting around the way events parallel _The Game of Thrones_. Take the reign of Basil II, a.k.a. “the Bulgar Slayer,” for instance. It wasn’t just the way the
Byzantine’s Basil II – “The Bulgar Slayer” Read More »
Medieval Tournaments really didn’t look like the way they often appear in pop culture, certainly not as they started out. Rather than being in an enclosed space and having two knights joust towards each other, they were more like practice battles.They could have contingents of 200 mounted soldiers in fields that span acres of land.
Real Medieval Tournaments Read More »
The sculpture you see here shows two decidedly feminine figures, standing shoulder-to-shoulder as they face the sea, their hair whipping in the breeze. It is an utterly modern imagining of two real-life woman pirates from the early 1700’s, and says even more about 2020, when this artwork was unveiled, than it does about the actual
Female Pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read Read More »
And from whence does this Ancient Roman-style barrel vaulted ceiling appear, you might be asking? Not from Italy, but rather from the imagination of the talented and bizarre brain of the American aristocrat Henry Champman Mercer, who had it built in 1914 to house his vast collection of tools and artifacts from before the Industrial
Henry Mercer Museum and Artifacts Read More »
The first foreign-born Japanese samurai was the warrior Yasuke, represented here in a 2019 sculpture by South African artist Nicola Roos. We don’t have any images from the years around 1579, when he arrived in Japan alongside a Portuguese Jesuit missionary. However, Japanese sources from Yasuke’s contemporaries speak of the power that Yasuke held from
The First Foreign-Born Japanese Samurai Read More »
Graduation ceremonies are in abundance in many parts of the world right now, and I love to point out just how Medieval these ceremonies are. Y’all in the robes — you’re Cosplaying, because those outfits are from back in the Middle Ages. And relative to another tradition from these times is the university ceremonial mace,
Medieval University Maces Read More »
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
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
Refashioning Iron in Ancient Britain Read More »
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, almost the entire continent of Africa was taken over by various European states and business entrepreneurs. Among this area was the eastern state of Tanganyika, modern Tanzania. The two men featured here in chains are reflective of many who rose up against the German colonialist government in
Maji Maji Uprising of Tanganyika Read More »
This is a post about two Irish songs that deal with memory. 1994 was the release date of The Cranberries’ “Zombie” and Sinead O’Connor’s “Famine,” and both emerged out of The Troubles, a period of about thirty years (late 1960s to 1998), when tension in Northern Ireland between forces that favored independence and those who
Irish Songs of Memory and Activism Read More »
This Romano-British mosaic of combating gladiators speaks to the tradition of these bloody contests. It turns out, they were sanguineous in multiple ways — not only with the frequent slayings of the losers, but also in the way gladiator blood was revered for medicinal purposes.First appearing in the records about 260 BCE, gladiator fights originally
Gladiator Blood and Epilepsy Read More »
Here you see the ruins of a base-end “fire station” that was created shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor when the U.S. entered the Second World War. Scouting stations like this one, which is on the Muir Woods lookout point (see second picture) were built along the northern California coastline to watch out for
World War II “Gopher Holes” Read More »
This fascinating weapon is a parrying dagger from Italy dating to 1600. Today it is in Britain’s Wallace Collection, a museum with an extensive armor and sword collection, but back in the day it would have been used by a duelist who fought with a rapier in the other hand.This dagger is unusual for several
Parrying Dagger from Italy Read More »
In the second century of the Common Era, China’s Han Dynasty oversaw an unusually long period of peace and prosperity. Nonetheless, military conflicts punctuated the era, and often the elite aristocratic families were involved. The Wu Family Shrines document such events, and featured prominently in one of the stone chambers there, amidst many other bas-relief
The Battle on the Bridge Read More »
History geek that I am, I unsurprisingly find athletic activities with antique lineages highly compelling. But getting a handle on what many early sports were like is difficult because evidence is lacking, and this is certainly the case with capoeira. The painting you see here is “Capoeira or the Dance of War,” by Johann
Capoeira or the Dance of War Read More »
In Medieval Europe, horses were highly valued animals, and great amounts of resources went into their care and training. Horses, like the one shown in this miniature painting (c. 1200-1210), would have mainly belonged to the aristocracy, who prized them not only for their labor, but their use in battle. Sources show that nobles
