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 private Flickr streams. Today was one of those ‘Wow!’ days, as I discovered the Flickr stream of the Egypt Exploration Society – as the EEShas been working in Egypt since 1882 – filled with marvelous photographs from ‘ancient times’. My 5 favourites from the ‘the early days of Egyptology’: Ahnas…
-
-
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. Next, Rao will analyze the texts structure using simple statistical software. The ancient twin cities of the Indus Valley – Harappa and Mohenjo-daro – are part of one of the oldest civilizations known to man. They were huge metropolises holding over 30,000 people each. A series of symbols dating to…
-
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 discovering why the warriors‘ hues, which can range from blacks and browns to greens and purples, faded almost immediately after they are taken from the soil. “If you excavate them, they dry out instantly and in five minutes, the paint peels off,” the university’s Heinz Langhals told New Scientist. The…
-
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 relaxed feel which portrays a warm feel. The Older Parthenon was originally pillaged and burnt to the ground in 480BC after a Persian atatck on Athens. In the aftermath, the whole site was rebuilt during the Golden Age of Athens, overseen by Emperor Pericles and two prominent architects – Ictinus…
-
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; around the same as the Sumerian cuneiform of 1,500 to 1,000 BC, according to Harvard University professor Gary Urton. The pre-Columbian expert’s findings could shatter the long-held belief that the enigmatic Incas, who were destroyed when the Spanish conquistadors garrotted last ruler Atahualpa in 1533, are the only Bronze Age…
-
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 a work in progress and Professor Schneider continues to receive new archival documents and information. He plans to turn his work into a book length manuscript. While popular fiction, such as the Indiana Jones trilogy, depicts action packed films about this topic, the real story is far more complex. Professor Schneider…
-
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 Roman Villa: Art and Culture Around The Bay of Naples” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, I was fascinated by information about and examples of archaeized Roman art of the 1st century BCE – 1st century CE. many indigenous looters had abandoned scrabbling in the dirt for authentic…
-
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 climate was much milder, it was a hive of activity, cleared by fire of forestry and turned into pasture and farm lands. Its inhabitants left behind the largest concentration of Bronze Age remains found anywhere in Britain. As many as 5,000 stone houses, and many more wooden examples which have…
-
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 better than peer at their attractions of choice from behind a cordon while leafing though a guidebook, but better still engage with them in top destinations from Kenya to Cairo, Monaco and St Andrews up-close and in context together with a leading expert. The latest package offered is the Wonder…
-
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 an entire new Valley of the Kings on the cliff side of the real one. Daily thousands of tourists visit the tombs of King Tut, Seti I, Ramses, Horemeb (recently re-opened) and Queen Nefertari. All well, were it not that the quantity of humidity and fungus generated through breath and…