By: Abbey Lovell,
on 7/22/2016
The past can be very important for those living in the present. My research experiences as an archaeologist have made this very apparent to me. Echoes from the distant past can reverberate and affect the lives of contemporary communities, and interpretations of the past can have important ramifications.
The post Matters of the past mattering today appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Kim Behrens,
on 3/24/2016
In 2003 Paul Bahn led the team that discovered the first Ice Age cave art at Creswell Crags in Britain. In recent years, many more discoveries have been made including the expanding phenomenon of 'open-air Ice Age art'. In the slideshow below, you can see some of the earliest examples of art on the planet, and take a tour of prehistoric art throughout the world.
The post Art of the Ice Age [slideshow] appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Hannah Paget,
on 2/25/2016
The quiet corridors of great public museums have witnessed revolutionary breakthroughs in the understanding of the past, such as when scholars at the British Museum cracked the Rosetta Stone and no longer had to rely on classical writers to find out about ancient Egyptian civilisation. But museums’ quest for knowledge is today under strain, amid angry debates over who owns culture.
The post Who owns culture? appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Eleanor Jackson,
on 11/10/2015
It is a well-known fact of British prehistory that burial monuments, sometimes on a monumental scale, are well-documented in the Neolithic and Bronze Age, but largely absent in the Iron Age, outside certain distinctive regional groups at particular periods.
The post Seeking the elusive dead appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Kim Behrens,
on 10/24/2015
Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean covers over 10,000 years, charting the development of European, Near Eastern, and Chinese civilizations and the growing links between them by way of the Indian Ocean, the silk Roads, and the great steppe corridor (which crucially allowed horse riders to travel from Mongolia to the Great Hungarian Plain within a year).
The post History of Eurasia [interactive map] appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Eleanor Jackson,
on 6/1/2015
Surprisingly few people have heard of Amelia Edwards. Archaeologists know her as the founder of the Egyptian Exploration Fund, set up in 1882, and the Department of Egyptology at University College London, created in 1892 through a bequest on her death. The first Edwards Professor, Flinders Petrie, was appointed on Amelia’s recommendation and her name is still attached to the Chair of Egyptian Archaeology.
The post Who was Amelia Edwards? appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Mohamed Sesay,
on 4/11/2015
We were working in Baga Oigor II when I heard my husband yelling from above, “Esther, get up here, fast!” Thinking he had seen some wild animal on a high ridge, I scrambled up the slope. There, at the back of a protected terrace marked by old stone mounds was a huge boulder covered with hundreds of images. Within that maze of elements I could distinguish a hunting scene and several square patterns suggesting the outlines of dwellings.
The post Animal Mother, Mother of Animals, Guardian of the Road to the Land of the Dead appeared first on OUPblog.
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By: Zoe,
on 10/5/2014
Sam & Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Jon Klassen is full of near misses but ends up being one big hit. Forget the treasure that may or may not be buried under your feet, pick this book up and you’ll have a real gem in your hands.
It starts like this:
Apropos of seemingly nothing, Sam and Dave decide to dig a hole.
They’re only going to stop when they find “something spectacular”.
They don’t have much luck, but… in a brilliantly crafted piece of drama they come oh so painfully, excruciatingly close.
Many picture book creators have talked about how they see their books as mini pieces of theatre, and this book delivers a very special theatrical experience; like in a pantomime when you might call out “He’s behind you!”, only for the innocent character on stage to turn and see nothing, the reader/listener has special knowledge that poor Sam and Dave do not. With beautifully textured, muted illustrations revealing something quite different to what is known from the text, children treated to this story get a special thrill from “being in the know”, from seeing the truly spectacular buried treasure that the poor protagonists keep missing.
This empowering experience is doubled up through association with Sam and Dave’s little dog. Despite being small and just a side kick (like many children sometimes feel), the dog seems to have all the brains. He is the one who keeps sensing just how close the diamonds are. He is the one who makes the breakthrough, resulting in Sam and Dave appearing to have dug all the way through to …
…well, to what? To where? Although this book was authored by Barnett, the ending feels like classic Klassen: It’s full of ambiguity and multiple possible readings. Have Sam and Dave dug all the way through from one side of the earth to the other? Have they managed through some Möbius-strip-like convolution to dig all the way through to end up back where they started? Or have they discovered something genuinely spectacular – some new dimension where slightly different rules are at play?
Finely honed, pared-back text and seemingly quiet illustrations which actually pack a very funny punch combine to make this a winner. Do look out for Sam & Dave Dig a Hole!
Inspired by Sam and Dave’s digging we decided to do a little bit of digging ourselves. Using these guidelines from Suffolk County Council, we dug what is known by archaeologists as a “test pit” in the middle of the lawn in our back garden.
We marked out a square and I took off the top layer of turf before the girls started digging down, retrieving any “treasure” they found on the way.
They used a large garden sieve to go through the soil they removed, and a toothbrush to wash what they found.
As you can see we found quite a lot of “treasure” including something metal but unidentifiable (top left of the photo below), a section of Victorian clay pipe stem, several pieces of pottery and a surprising number of large bones! (oh, and a hippo…..)
At some point when my back was turned the game developed into something a little different – M made a “time capsule” in an old icecream tub and insisted that it got buried when the time came to fill in our hole.
So I guess this means we’ll be digging another hole at some point in the future. Given how much fun we had with this one, I won’t be complaining.
We weren’t listening to music whilst we dug our hole, but were we to choose some music to match Sam & Dave Dig a Hole we might include these in our playlist:
Other activities you could enjoy along side reading this hilarious book include:
What’s your favourite hole? A hole you made? A hole you visited? A hole which allows you to sneak through into some secret space?
Disclosure: I was sent a free review copy of this book from the publisher but was under no obligation to review it and received no payment for doing so.
By: Abbey Lovell,
on 9/11/2014
On 12 August 2014 at precisely 2:58 a.m., a 5.1 earthquake struck, centered at the hilltop lightning huaca San Catequilla de Pichincha. Since this initial earthquake, there have been 57 aftershocks, all centered at or close to this hill. Cerro Catequilla is situated where the Río Monjas empties into the Río Guayllabamba, approximately 15 kilometers north of Quito in the Pomasqui Valley directly east of the town of San Antonio. This is the only known Inca huaca located directly under the equator at 0°0’02″ S by 78°25’43″ W at 2,683 meters above sea level, making this the paradigmatic place of the astral positioning. The southern terminus of the summit is situated directly on the Mitad del Mundo at the equator, 0º0’00” S, beside a series of natural springs. The mountains surrounding Cerro Cetquilla range from 3,000 to 4,000 meters above sea level and the Cerro Pululagua volcano is located due west.
Volcanoes have symbolic associations to lightning and the importance of this valley is evidenced by the two branches of the Inca road, or Camino Real, one to the east and the other to the west side of the hill. Numerous Inca sites are in the surrounding landscape, including Pucara de Rumicucho, an Inca fortress and administrative center. The lightning huaca is made up of two superimposed earthen platforms; a buried rectangular platform measuring about 100 meters N/S and about 80 meters E/W, below a large circular earthen platform measuring 60 meters in diameter. The locations of these superimposed platforms on the southwestern slopes of Cerro Catequilla are the only places on the 200-meter long hilltop where the equator is directly overhead. This is one of three Inca huacas with Catequilla toponyms between the equator and 3° N. Catequilla de Pichincha was the most highly venerated because of its location under the equator.
In 1609, the chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega stated that the pillars and columns on many platforms around Quito and to the north in Cayambe and Ibarra were “broken to pieces” by the Conquistador Sebastián de Benalcázar, who tore them all down because the Andeans worshiped them idolatrously. There is very little information in the Spanish chronicles or from the Audiencia de Quito on how temporal cycles were recorded in and around Quito during the Contact Period. Most scholars have found astronomical calculation regarding the solar calendar was achieved through shadow casting. The most highly venerated gnome was Catequilla de Pichincha, primarily because when the sun was overhead during certain parts of the annual cycle there was increasingly diminished shadow around the pillar or gnome at this lightning huaca.
The Inca constructed over a hundred ceremonial platforms and shrines (villcas), some on mountain passes (apachitas), others on the summits of the highest mountains in their empire, between 1438 and the Spanish Conquest in 1532. Lightning was the major theophany of weather in Inca religion, known as Ilapa, now Illapa, the Hispanic spelling. Huacas with “Catequil” or “Catequilla” toponyms were associated with the spread of Catequil, a religious cult to lightning throughout their empire. Lightning veneration extended from Quito to Cuzco during the early Colonial Period. The principal huaca associated with lightning, was another hilltop huaca in northern highland Peru, Catequil de Huamacucho, a huaca said to make other huacas “speak,” and therefore believed to have the ability to predict earthquakes. Spirits associated with lightning are malevolent, have ancient origins in Andean cosmology and religion, and are symbolically depicted in various cultural traditions.
Many lightning huacas around the equator and regions to the north have circular stone enclosures or platforms which local Andean informants have said to me are places where lightning struck and are therefore sanctified. Such features have also been identified archaeologically in and around the nearby Inca fortress at Pucara de Rumicucho. Circular stone enclosures or platform features generally measure between three to four meters in diameter and are dispersed throughout this region. However, these were not destroyed by the Spanish conquistadores because they were not venerated in an “idolatrous” manner. Some are located in indigenous towns in the surrounding valley and those in the nearby towns are clearly visible from the summit of Cerro Catequilla. My preliminary research at this site indicates that such features also had astronomical function in association with sight lines to the surrounding horizon, solar cycles, and constellations in the night sky. In the Andes, thunder and lightning have symbolic associations with rain, hail, earthquakes, and the metallurgical arts, particularly gold and silver, agricultural fertility, and fire and damaging hail storms.
Featured image: Andean landscape, north of Quito. This photo is looking north across Cerro Catequilla and was taken from the lightning huaca at 0°.00 latitude. This valley has historically been of critical importance to cultivation, transport, and the movement people and food crops into northern Ecuador and Colombia. Photo by John E. Staller.
The post Earthquake at the lightning huaca of San Catequilla de Pichincha appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Nicola,
on 10/24/2011
By John Reader A blaze of media attention recently greeted the claim that a newly discovered hominid species, , marked the transition between an older ape-like ancestor, such as Australopithecus afarensis, and a more recent representative of the human line, Homo erectus. As well as extensive TV, radio and front-page coverage, the fossils found by Lee Berger and his team at a site near Pretoria in South Africa featured prominently in National Geographic, with an illustration of the three species striding manfully across the page. In the middle, Au. sediba was marked with twelve points of similarity: six linking it to Au. afarensis on the left and six to H. erectus on the right. Though Berger did not explicitly describe Au. sediba as a link between the two species, the inference was clear and not discouraged. The Missing Link was in the news again.
By: Michelle,
on 12/6/2010
Racial profiling and manipulation have been around for a very long time. It has become an issue in contemporary politics, and over 2500 years ago the Greek historian Herodotos wrote that ethnicity was regularly turned to political ends. Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Egypt and a woman of great ability, is often a victim of racial profiling, as today people can be more interested in her racial background than her many accomplishments. Such concerns have recently come to the forefront with the announcement that in at least one of the several Cleopatra movies currently planned, a white (instead of black) actress would play the role of the queen. It is hard to imagine that race would be more important than acting ability, but clearly others disagree.
It has been suggested – although generally not by credible scholarly sources – that Cleopatra was racially black African. To be blunt, there is absolutely no evidence for this, yet it is one of those issues that seems to take on a life of its own despite all indication to the contrary. What follows lays out the evidence for Cleopatra’s racial ancestry, but one must not forget that this is of little importance in assessing the legacy of the queen in world history.
Let us consider exactly the evidence for Cleopatra’s racial background. It’s a little complicated, so do follow closely! She was born in early 69 BC as the descendant of a line of Egyptian kings in a dynasty that went back 250 years. Her ancestor Ptolemy I, a companion of Alexander the Great, founded the dynasty in the late fourth century BC. Ptolemy was Macedonian Greek in origin (he grew up at the royal court of Alexander’s father in Macedonia, the northern part of the Greek peninsula), and established himself as king of Egypt in the convulsive years after Alexander’s death. The descent passed through six successor Ptolemies until it reached Cleopatra’s father. So Cleopatra was no more than eight generations away from being pure Macedonian Greek.
But what about the mothers? Women are always difficult to find, even in royal dynasties, and it is here that questions of her racial background have been raised. For the first six generations the wives of the ruling Ptolemies also came from the same Macedonian background as their husbands. So until the time of Cleopatra’s great-grandfather, the ethnic makeup of the dynasty was still pure Macedonian Greek. In fact two of her ancestors married their sisters, thus reinforcing the Macedonian ethnicity.
It is with Cleopatra’s grandfather that uncertainties develop. Although he had two wives of traditional Macedonian background, he seems to have had at least one concubine of uncertain origin, who may have been Cleopatra’s grandmother. But this is by no means clear, and some sources indicate she was her husband’s sister, and thus pure Macedonian.
Assuming, however, that Cleopatra’s grandmother was not from the traditional Macedonian Greek stem, the question arises as to just what she was. Sources suggest that if she was not Macedonian, she was probably Egyptian. So by the time of Cleopatra’s grandparents, there may have been an Egyptian element in the racial stem.
Cleopatra’s father also had several wives. One was his sister, but again there is evidence that some of his five children had another mother. Yet the geographer Strabo (one of the few contemporary sources for the life of Cleopatra) wrote that all the wives of her father were women of significant status, which rules out any slaves or concubines, and makes it possible that Cleopatra’s mother was of the traditional Macedonian Greek stock. But this may not have been the case, so
By: HannaO,
on 10/28/2010
Many people have been wrongly executed for practicing witchcraft — from ancient times to the present day. But were all of the accused innocent? Malcolm Gaskill addresses this question in the following excerpt from Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction.
In 2004, workmen digging in Greenwich, near London, uncovered a sealed stone bottle that rattled and splashed when they shook it. It was sent to a laboratory where X-rays revealed metal objects wedged in the neck, suggesting that it had been buried upside down, and a scan showed it to be half filled with liquid. Chemical analysis confirmed this was human urine containing nicotine and brimstone. When the cork was removed, scientists discovered iron nails, brass pins, hair, fingernail parings, a pierced leather heart, and what they believed might be navel fluff.
What had gone through the mind of whoever buried that bottle? Without a doubt it was a magical device, dating from the first half of the 17th century; less well preserved examples have been found throughout England. But whether it was intended as protection against witchcraft of the means to reverse a spell, we’ll never know. The heart-charm suggests other possibilities: perhaps love magic, or even that the user had wished harm on someone. Sticking pins in pictures and models is part of witches’ stock-in-trade. In 1962, parishioners at Castle Rising in Norfolk discovered human effigies and a thorn-studded sheep’s heart nailed to their church door. Presumably this was not just a blasphemous insult but a specific physical attack. If so, it belonged to an ancient tradition of popular maleficium — real in intent if not in effect, but hard to recover historically because of its covert nature.
We tend to see witchcraft as a delusion, a non-existent crime, because we reject its mechanics. This is why many believe executed witches to have been innocent. Yet we still punish those who attempt crimes but fail, and a legal distinction exists between mens rea and actus reus: the thought and the deed. Surely some early modern people must have tried to kill with magic; it would be incredible if they hadn’t. Seen in context, was attempted murder by witchcraft not a crime, just as a woman devoted to Satan was an apostate even if she had never actually met him? There was a lot of magic in our ancestors’ lives, and positive forces could be turned into negatives. Plus there is an exception to the rule that maleficium is hard for historians to recover: widespread counter-magic against malefic witches. The definition of witchcraft depended not on its inherent nature but on how it was applied. In 1684, one Englishman noted the irony that folk ‘often become witches by endeavouring to defend themselves against witchcraft’.
In the ancient world, too, aggressive magic was more than just something the virtuous suspected of the wicked: it was a recognized source of personal power, albeit unlawful if used against a blameless opponent. From Mesopotamia, not only do illicit antisocial spells survive, but descriptions of official ceremonies in which images of assailing witches were burned. Excavations at Greek and Roman sites turn up curses scratched on scraps of lead known as defixiones. Some contain cloth or hair; occasionally they were buried in graves to inflict a deadening effect on victims. An example from Messina targeted ‘the evil-doer’ Valeria Arsinoe; ‘sic
By: Kirsty,
on 6/23/2010
In What Makes Civilization?, archaeologist David Wengrow provides a vivid new account of the ‘birth of civilization’ in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq). These two regions, where many foundations of modern life were laid, are usually treated in isolation. This book aims to bring them together within a unified history of how people first created cities, kingdoms, and monumental temples to the gods. In the original blog post below, David Wengrow writes about that isolated view of the Near and Middle East.
To talk of civilizations is not just to describe the past. It is also to reflect on what is different about the societies we live in, how they relate to one another, and the extent to which their futures are bound up with traditions inherited from previous ages. The ancient Near East—including Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq) and Egypt—occupies a uniquely paradoxical place in our understanding of civilization. We freely acknowledge that many foundations of modern civilization were laid there, along the banks of the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Nile. Yet those same societies have come to symbolise the remote and the exotic: the world of walking mummies, possessive demons, unfathomable gods, and tyrannical kings. What is the source of this paradox? For answers we usually look to the legacy of the Old Testament, and the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. But as part of a generation that was no longer obliged to read the ‘Classics’ at school, I find something unsatisfying about the idea that we have simply inherited the cultural prejudices of the ancients, as though by osmosis.
Most people today, I would have thought, are more likely to encounter the ancient Near East through the lens of Hollywood than through the biblical and Greco-Roman literature that informed the views of earlier generations. Still, when the Iraq Museum in Baghdad was looted in 2003, eight decades after its foundation by the British diplomat and archaeologist Gertrude Bell, our newspapers proclaimed ‘the death of history’. The headlines, for once, were in my opinion proportionate to the truth. Ancient Mesopotamia and surrounding parts of the Middle East were the setting for some of the most momentous turning points in human history: the origins of farming, the invention of the first writing system, of mechanised transport, the birth of cities and centralised government, but also—and no less importantly—familiar ways of cooking food, consuming alcohol, branding commodities, and keeping our homes and bodies clean. That is what archaeologists and ancient historians mean when they talk (a little coyly, these days) about ‘the birth of civilization’, 5000 years ago, on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates.
As somebody who researches and teaches the archaeology of the Middle East for a living, I have often been struck by how little Mesopotamia is discussed outside a small circle of academics, by contrast with its ever-popular neighbour on Nile. Even less widely known are the other great urban centres of the Bronze Age: in the Indus Valley, the oases of Central Asia, on the Iranian Plateau, and along the shores of the Persian Gulf. Contrary to what most people think, the discovery of ‘lost civilizations’ did not end with the Victorian era. It has been going on, quietly and steadily, amid the turmoil of the 20th century, through fieldwork in remote and sometimes dangerous areas, and through the equally important work of analysis and translation that takes place in universities and museums. Why are the results of this steady increase in our knowledge about the ancient world not better known?
Academics and curators must themselves carry a c
By: Rebecca,
on 6/4/2010
J. C. McKeown is a Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His new book, A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the World’s Greatest Empire, is a collection carefully gleaned from the wide body of evidence left to us by the Romans themselves. Each fact or opinion highlights a curious feature of life in ancient Rome. Below we have excerpted some tidbits from the chapter on Roman toilets.
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The Romans were justly proud of their extensive system of aqueducts. Frontinus boasts, Could you compare with all these many massive and serviceable acqueducts the useless pyramids or the famous but idle works of the Greeks? (On the Water-Supply of Rome 1.16). Much of the water from the aqueducts was used to keep the public toilets clean, maintaining a constant flow through these facilities directly to the sewers and on to the Tiber.
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According to the notitia regionum, an early-4th-century A.D. catalog of the city’s buildings and landmarks, Rome then had 144 public latrinae.
♦
The standard of engineering in Roman latrinae was not achieved again in Europe until the 19th century.
♦
Just as aqueducts provided an abundant water supply, so a certain degree of sanitation was ensured by the system of sewers, especially the Cloaca Maxima (Main Drain). Begun in the city’s earliest times, it was much admired in antiquity, and is still, to a very limited degree, operational today.
♦
Until recently, not much research was done on ancient toilets. Archaeologists were often reluctant to identify them for what they are. Likewise, in antiquity, Vitruvius and Frontinus were very reticent about waste disposal in the influential treatises on architecture and aqueducts, respectively.
♦
Almost all the private houses excavated in Herculaneum and Pompeii had toilet facilities, often in the kitchen or under the stairs; there is little evidence for doors to these cubbyholes.
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At the animal-fighting recently, one of the Germans who was getting ready for the show withdrew to relieve himself – that was the only privacy he had, away from his guard. There he choked himself to death by ramming down his throat the stick with a sponge attached that is provided for personal hygiene (Seneca…). Remnants of sponges have been discovered in a Roman sewer at York in northern England.
♦
Apollinaris medicus Titi Imp. hic cacavit bene (“Apollinarius, physician to the emperor Titus, had a find shit here”) (Corpus of Latin Inscriptions… a graffito in the Casa della Gemma in Herculaneum).
♦
I do not think that silver chamber pots are included with heirlooms, since they are not part of the silver collection (Justinian’s Digest…). This legal ruling presumably exists because chamber pots were often made of silver. Even gold ones are mentioned occasionally; most notoriously, Mark Anthony was criticized for using one (Pliny Natural History…).
♦
The Emperor August Caesar, son of a god, Pontifex Maximus, designated
By: shelf-employed,
on 4/26/2010
Any Man who Strikes or Abuses another of Company shall suffer such Punishement as ye Company shall deeme ffit & Just. Every Man's Quarrel to be settled a shoar with Sword & Pistol & be Adjudged Fair Fighy by ye Quarter-Master.(from Captain Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, 1724)
By: shelf-employed,
on 4/12/2010
By: Michelle,
on 12/2/2009
Jan Zalasiewicz is a field geologist, paleontologist and stratigrapher, as well as lecturer of geology and Earth history at the University of Leicester in Leicester, England. He researches fossil ecosystems
and environments across over half a billion years of geological time, and has published over a hundred papers in scientific journals. His latest book The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in Rock? published this fall in paperback. In his Countdown to Copenhagen post, he talks about Anthropocene, the new human dominated epoch we live in, and whether our future legacy will look more like an apocalyptic science fiction novel or a modest geological footprint.
For the rest of the Countdown to Copenhagen posts, click here.
It seems like science-fiction. The Earth will, in a few short centuries – perhaps even decades – go back to the kind of world in which the dinosaurs lived. Ice caps will collapse, oceans will acidify, coral reefs will perish, coastlines will drown. Millions of species will go extinct. And we humans – who set all these events in train – will be in big, big trouble. As science-fiction, indeed, it may be no easier to accept such an idea. Imagine if Terry Pratchett trashed the Discworld, drowned Ankh-Morpork – for ever? His readers wouldn’t stand for it.
Yet this scenario on our one and only Earth seems, on the evidence to hand, more likely than not. Such changes are not certain (perhaps, out there, there is the ecological equivalent of the cavalry over the hill, riding down to rescue us all). But these global changes are not just possible – they are probable. And their scale is not diminished by comparison with the great upheavals of the Earth’s multi-billion-year geological history. Rather, they are made to seem more stark by that comparison.
The enormous canvas of the Earth’s past shows drama, to be sure – the crazy climate switchbacks of the last million years, for instance. But it also shows long episodes of calm and stability. The most recent of these has been the last ten thousand years – our current epoch, the Holocene – since the most recent of the Earth’s glaciations receded. With both temperature and sea level holding remarkably steady, it’s no coincidence that human civilization has flowered over this time. But now, our civilisation has, over two centuries, poured hundreds of billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, taking CO2 levels higher than for millions of years. We are near – or perhaps already past – a tipping point, into a new climate regime.
But it is not just climate change, as immense and far-reaching a change as that is. As cities and farmland replace what was once forest and savannah, the Earth’s animals and plants are under siege as rarely before. Extinction rates are now likely somewhere between a hundred and a thousand times higher than is usual. Since we’ve discovered only a tenth or so of the species on Earth so far, it’s certain that many species will become
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By: H. Pinski,
on 6/16/2009
Of all the compelling images in the History Channel’s special Ancient Aliens, the ones that haunt me most are of Puma Punku, a temple complex located in Tiwanaku, Bolivia, 13,000 feet up on a barren plateau in the Andes. Puma Punku means, “The Door of the Cougar.” It rose 56 feet, swallowed an area of 164 feet squared, and was constructed of monoliths weighing anywhere from 200 to 450 tons. Constructed 17,000 years ago by an ancient culture with no access to lumber and before the invention of the wheel
Even more remarkable, the granite used to build Puma Punku is impossibly hard, and yet somehow straight channels measuring only 1 cm deep were carved—perfectly proportioned from start to finish—amongst equi-distant holes drilled into the hardest granite found on earth 
using ancient tools. The monoliths themselves were cut with such precision that when stacked, they fit together like a puzzle—a remarkable feet of engineering even by today’s standards.
Archaeologists remain mystified as to how Puma Punku was built. Paleocontact theorists, however, have a few ideas of their own..
By: H. Pinski,
on 6/8/2009
Imagine trying to pit roast that? Turns out prehistoric humans knew how to "super size" their meals. At a site called Pavlov VI in the Czech Republic, archaeologists have uncovered a kitchen dating to 29,000 B.C. where Woolly Mammoths were roasted "luau-style underground."
From the Discovery News article written by Jennifer Viegas:
It's unclear if seafood was added to create a surf-and-turf meal, but multiple decorated shells were unearthed. Many showed signs of cut marks, along with red and black coloration. The scientists additionally found numerous stone tools, such as spatulas, blades and saws, which they suggest were good for carving mammoths.
Click here for the prehistoric bbq slide show and here for the full story at Discovery News.
Photo: Woolly mammoth replica in a museum exhibit in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Jonathan Blair/Corbis
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By: Lizzy Burns,
on 2/4/2008
For Nonfiction Monday, here's a look at the National Geographic Investigates Series. I reviewed one book in this series, Ancient Egypt: Archaeology Unlocks the Secrets of Egypt's Past by Jill Rubalcaba; Janice Kamrin, Consultant, and now here is a look at two other titles in the series. Copies supplied by Raab Associates.
Ancient Inca: Archaeology Unlocks the Secrets of Inca's Past by Beth Gruber; Johan Reinhard, Consultant
Ancient Greece: Archaeology Unlocks the Secret's of Greece's Past by Marni McGee, Michael Shanks, Consultant
It's About: This series explains archaeology, the process, the finds, how there is always something new to be discovered or a new interpretation to be made. I like the photos; I like the time lines; I love the resources. And I like how there is something unique about each book.
The Good:
For the Inca book: Mummies! Love mummies. And I also liked learning more about Gupis -- the knots in colored string to record calendar and keep track of livestock "without anyone who can read the stories tied into the colorful strings, understanding the ancient Inca is a lot like solving a mystery."
I was also intrigued by how people with an interest in this -- people like me -- may be contributing to the destruction of archaeological sites, grave robbing, and the simple physical impact of the people visiting the sites. This has led to such virtual tours as the 2005-2006 Machu Picchu Display at the Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History.
For the Greece book: I loved the description of an archaeology site being like a crime scene. (I like crime shows and books, in addition to history books; I guess this shows the two have more in common than I thought.)
It's amazing to think of the discoveries still being made, as well as interpretations to be refined and changed. This also included the issue of ownership of ancient artifacts such as the Elgin Marbles.
The book also featured my favorite artifact that makes history real: the cup of Euripides. WOW.
A general note about nonfiction:
One of the reasons I like nonfiction, and so look forward to the sharing of books via Nonfiction Mondays, is there is so much great nonfiction out there. Schools can only teach so much in a given day; so having nonfiction books available to learn more or learn more in depth is great.
By: Rebecca,
on 11/29/2007
For the first time since his death in 1322 BCE King Tut’s face was seen in early November when he was unwrapped in Egypt. King Tutankhamun has fascinated the masses since his intact tomb was first discovered on this day in 1922. Below, in an excerpt from the Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt by Rosalie David, we learn why tombs were so very important in ancient Egypt.
Importance of the Tomb
Because tombs and temples were built of stone, evidence relating to burials and sate religious customs has survived better than evidence relating to domestic buildings, which were constructed primarily of mud brink. This tends to present an inaccurate and partly misleading view of Egyptian society, perhaps placing undue emphasis with its preoccupation with death and preparation for the afterlife. Nevertheless, funerary beliefs and customs were obviously extremely important and influenced many of the concepts and developments of the civilization. (more…)
By: Leila Roy,
on 1/12/2007
I don't know how or why I didn't read Empress of the World back when it came out -- I only just noticed it again when I saw that Sara Ryan has written a sequel*.
Nicola Lancaster is, by choice, spending her summer at the Siegel Institute Summer Program for Gifted Youth:
hypothesis: taking an actual class in archeology will serve to confirm nicola lancaster in her lifelong dream of becoming an archaeologist.
At home, Nicola Lancaster knows lots of people from her classes and extracurriculars, but before her summer at Geek Camp, she'd never had any real friends. At the opening ceremony, she meets the flamboyant computer programmer Katrina, the tell-it-like-it-is-unless-it's-about-himself Isaac, and Beautiful Hair Girl, AKA Battle.
Before long, Nic realizes that her feelings for Battle go far beyond simple friendship. Then she discovers Battle feels the same way...
The characters are extremely likable -- so much so that I forgave the girls their love of Weetzie Bat. But, speaking of, I do think that this book is a good example of why to avoid detailed descriptions of clothing in anything other than genre fiction:
Katrina has a white dress with pictures of buildings and people silk-screened onto it in black--it's like she's wearing a silent movie--neon green tights, and purple combat boots. She has her hair up, clipped into several clothespins that she has spray-painted silver.
Heck, give her a crimping iron and some squiggly earrings and you'd have a Claudia Kishi original. And I could have done without all of the jodhpurs. But none of that was particularly important. Just a little distracting.
Nicola's deadpan delivery and her eye for ironic and incongruous detail make her a great narrator:
Anne and I get in line for O'Riley's Food Service while Doug gets his lunch out of one of the coolers. As we approach the front of the line, I see that it's apparently run by the Mexican branch of the O'Rileys.
The focus is very much on Nicola's response to her relationship with Battle, rather than on other peoples' responses. There were a few incidents with homophobes, but due to Nic's unique voice, the moments mostly serve to highlight the stupidity of the bigots, rather than to make Nicola feel bad about herself. I found the Cream Puffs Incident especially satisfying.
It's a warm and honest story about awakening and discovery. A definite must-read for fans of YA GLBT lit, and I'd give it to fans of Better Than Running at Night, too.
*Which I will be reading ASAP. It's about Battle in college.
I love picture books with minor characters that have a major influence on the story.
I’ve read some great reviews of Sam and Dave Dig a Hole – another one for the Christmas wishlist!
Catherine – this is my second favourite book illustrated by Klassen
(my very favourite is House Held Up by Trees written by Ted Kooser)