By Patrizia Passerini – Sicily is a fascinating and mysterious land, with a history and culture of very ancient origins. Its beauty is sometimes wild, amazing and complex due to the overlapping and mixing of cultures that have alternated over the centuries. Rich in history and art, bright colours and […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – Whether one likes dogs or not, the current exhibition Treue Freunde: Menschen und Hunde (“True Friends: Humans and Dogs”) at the Bayerische Nationalmuseum in Munich is a must-see. It charts the cultural history of the relationship between humans and dogs back to the earliest times when tame […]
by Patrizia Passerini – A green heart in the centre of the peninsula, like a treasure chest protected by valleys and hills that follow one another across long distances. Umbria is an Italian region that welcomes visitors with its beauty, rich landscapes and an ancient and amzing history. Once you […]
By Patrick Hunt – Historians know disease often stalks armies in history. [1] The specter of invisible pathogens haunting ancient warfare may have at times seemed instead like a punitive deity taking sides. Sometimes it’s merely a much simpler question of contagion and the inability to protect against it. While […]
By Patrick Hunt – Otzi the Iceman from the Alpine Tyrol, found at the Similaun-Tisjoch summit of the Otztal Alps in 1991, is now the most famous “mummy” of all time, eclipsing the mummy of Ramses II from New Kingdom Egypt (circa 1300 BCE) not only in what science can […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – When Captain James Cook left for the first of his three expeditions to the Pacific in 1768, he stood in a long line of naval explorers looking for new routes and continents. His ship was appropriately named Endeavour and the task ahead was daunting. Cook […]
By Adrian Arima – How long have humans brewed beer? Patrick McGovern, the world’s foremost historian of ancient brews, hints in Ancient Brews (2017) that this activity has been around possibly at least for 11,000 years based on vessels from Gobekli Tepe in Anatolia (Turkey). How sophisticated was brewing in […]
By Nikki Goddard – For most people, splurging on a bottle of wine would mean spending fifty, maybe one hundred dollars. However, when it comes to the finest and rarest wines in the world, collectors are willing to pay exponentially higher prices for the opportunity to taste vinous bliss. […]
Chinese Qing Dynasty Jade ca 1730-95, “Philosopher’s Repose” Jade Mountain (image public domain) By Patrick Hunt – Jade is well known globally as a stone with innate translucent beauty, lustrous and vibrant in many shades of mostly green, although lavender and orange hues also variously show. What we name jade […]
By Alice Devine Wilson – Wander into the enormous Roman sculpture galleries of the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, Italy and a strapping man carrying the weight of the world on his muscled shoulders may arrest your attention. In his crouched position on bended knee, his arms raised overhead to […]