Browsing through Flickr sometimes feels like a treasure hunt. I’ll never be disappointed – great photographs get uploaded to it daily – but once in a while you find that really Astonishing Photograph, especially since more and organisations started making their archives available to the public through the Commons and…
- Part 96
Computer Helps Decode Harappan Grammar
Some scholars consider the ancient Harappan pictograms of the Indus Valley in South Asia to be random. Not so, says Rajesh Rao of the University of Washington. He calculated the conditional entropy – a measure of randomness – of the script and found that it is most likely a language….
Conserving the Terracotta Warriors with Glue
The first full Terracotta Warrior retained all of his vivid colours in 2004, just a year after boffins from the University of Munich discovered a way to stop the hues fading to grey- and it involves little more than a lick of superglue! The experts developed their breakthrough technique after…
Daily Flickr Finds: Roy Filou’s Acropolis
Easily the most recognisable heritage site in Greece, the Acropolis spans 3 hectares on a site which sits 150 metres above sea level. Much of this fascinating site remains today, albeit a little bit spread out! Roy Filou’s fantastic capture of this stunning site at dusk creates a shadowy and…
Incas ‘Had Binary Language’
The lost Inca civilization of the Andes developed a seven-bit binary code using knotted string called Khipu, a leading American anthropologist argues. If true, the relics would have invented binary language around 500 years before the invention of the computer. The coloured textiles could have provided thousands of language permutations;…
The Real Story of Nazi Egyptology
Thomas Schneider is exploring a subject that has never been studied before. The University of British Columbia professor is examining the history of German Egyptology during the Nazi era. The period that lasted from when Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 – until he committed suicide in his bunker in 1945.The research is…
Archaism in Roman Art Explored in Los Angeles Pompeii Exhibit
Each time I visit Pompeii I discover something new that I had not seen before. Likewise, with exhibits about Pompeii and the ancient Roman communities surrounding Mount Vesuvius, I learn something about Roman culture that I had not encountered before. Last week when I attended the exhibit, “Pompeii and the…
Digging in the Rain: Dartmoor’s Bronze Age Past Unearthed with Rare Roundhouse Excavation
An excavation of one of the thousands of roundhouses dotted across the landscape of Dartmoor has offered a these-days-rare new insight into prehistoric life on the windswept, rainy plain in the southwest of England. Today its an inhospitable, if undoubtedly striking place. But back in the Bronze Age, when the…
Tour the Great Pyramid of Giza with Zahi Hawass
Anyone looking for a holiday that gets much closer to the cultural core of a historic destination than the average tourist experience would do well to check out the Global Explorer Series a partnership between Fairmont Hotels & Resorts and the National Geographic Society. Theyre inviting intrepid travellers to do…
The Replica Valley of the Kings – King Tut Gets Another Tomb
Recently the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities has shared it’s worries about the future of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings with the world. Now they share more details on the planned solutions: ventilation systems, special lighting and… well, we expected a replica of KV62, but we’re getting…