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 […]
by Andrea M. Gáldy, with Stefanie Fricke, Sabrina Kessler, Felicitas Meifert-Menhard War and Peace Bayerische Landesausstellung 2015 „Napoleon und Bayern“ Ingolstadt Neues Schloss, Bayerisches Armeemuseum, Paradeplatz 4, 85049 Ingolstadt [Bavaria,Germany] 30 April to 31. October 2015, every day 9.00 am to 6.00 pm Organisers: Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte (www.hdbg.de/napoleon/), Bayerisches […]
By Andrea M. Gáldy – Southern Germany offers more than skiing holidays and the Oktoberfest, nice though they are. Traces of ancient Celtic and Roman settlements in the former Province of Raetia can still be admired, while during the mediaeval and early modern period the imperial free cities, bishoprics and […]
By Douglas McElwain Antikythera Mechanism The Antikythera Mechanism was discovered in a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera (just south of the Peloponnesus) between 1900-02. Over a century of study by researchers has determined that it is the remains of a two thousand year old astronomical computer. It is […]