By Patrick Hunt – How many books do we read that fulfill three major vital requisites: open up realms of unexplored territory, correct long-held misapprehensions, and unearth and carefully document sources of some of what we take for granted? When Hilary Mantel [1] states Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Thomas Cromwell (Viking, 2018) […]
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 P. F. Sommerfeldt – The names Palekh and Kholuy, like Fedoskino and Mstera, may be only obscure villages in the Vladimir-Suzdal Ivanovo region of Russia to many people, but their rich legacy of lacquerware is anything but obscure. I first fell in love with Russian lacquerware when we lived […]
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 Alessandra Scola- Villa Monastero is one of the several monumental villas mostly built or enlarged between the 17th and 19th centuries on one of the long coasts of Lake Como (also known in antiquity as Lago Lario) the deepest Italian lake. The villa is located in Varenna, an enchanting […]
Fig. 1 Pont du Gard side view (photo P. Hunt, 2015) By David S. Spain, Ph.D. – One of the favorite examples of Roman aqueduct technology is the famous Pont du Gard in southern France. The arcaded Pont du Gard is part of the 50 km long aqueduct from springs […]
Fig. 1 Filippo Lippi, Portrait of a Young Man, ca 1480-5, National Gallery, Washington DC, Andrew Mellon Collection (image courtesy National Gallery of Art) By Andrea M. Gáldy – If it would not look so catty, temptation would be […]
Mesopotamian seal impression of ISHTAR (planet VENUS) – from Sumerian Inanna – standing on feline, Bronze Age, British Museum (image public domain) By Patrick Hunt – We often frequently use words that are many thousands of years old whether we know it or not. Indo-European language etymology is typically not […]
Giovanni Segantini, La Natura detail, 1897-8, Segantini Museum, St. Moritz (image public domain) By P. F. Sommerfeldt – Giovanni Segantini (1858-99) was not only a pastoral artist who loved mountains, especially the Alps around the Engadine above St. Moritz, but one who captured their majestic beauty in a landscape shared […]
Proto-Elamite Reclining Gilded Silver Mountain Goat, 3100-2900 BCE, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 7 cm length (image public domain) By Patrick Hunt – How early in ancient art does realism appear? While many ancient cultures transitioning from the Copper Age to Bronze Age in the Ancient Near East and elsewhere […]