As US President Barack Obamasorts out theforeign policy mess made by his now infamous predecessor he would be well advised to brush up on his ancient history. More than 1,800 years ago, a Roman emperor, Hadrian, faced a problem that was eerily similar. He inherited a great foreign policy mess from his own predecessor Trajan. For as long as Rome had occupied territory in the Middle East (1st century BC) there had been tensions along the eastern border. The main problem they had was with an empire called the Parthians who occupied modern day Iraq and Iran. The tensions had…
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Now, this must be the dream of every starting archaeologist: no longer hot – or worse, rainy – dig seasons, no more spending ages meticulously noting down every find’s smallest detail and never again being send to locations where they won’t even serve you a decent chilled pint. This is your chance to escape them all, as History Channel is looking for the next Top Archaeologist (or an anthropologist will do too). Regardless if you crawl out of a dig somewhere in Egypt, toss aside those recently finished final papers or want a break away from your students, this is…
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In what seems like a strange coincidence, two astonishing discoveries providing evidence of the life of Saint Paul have been made within days of each other at two religious sites in Rome. First of all a fourth century fresco of the Christian saint was uncovered on 19 June at the Catacombs of Santa Thekla in Rome. Paul formerly Saul was a Hellenic Jew who converted to Christianity after his religious experience on the road to Damascus but was then executed during the reign of the emperor Nero between 60-67 AD. The Christian catacombs of Santa Thekla, closed to the public,…
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An 8,000-year-old human dwelling has been uncovered during construction of an airport runway on the Isle of Man, thought to be the island’s oldest. The startling breakthrough at Douglas Ronaldsway Airport was made just a year after experts unearthed a Bronze Age village nearby, which is believed to have been ravaged by fire in a prehistoric tragedy. A 5,000-year-old human skull has also been found in the area, as well as several artefacts including jewellery and over 12,000 woked pieces of flint. So far an area the size of over 20 football (soccer) pitches has been excavated, with many more…
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Part of the Nubian Monuments, Abu Simbel is an ancient site home to two rock temples in the south of Egypt. A beautiful tribute build by Pharoah Ramesses II to his queen Nefertari, they had the alterior motive of commemorating the Battle of Kadesh, as well as the added bonus of intimidating the neighbours!Nothing like a massive temple or two to show the region who’s boss! The beauty of this monumental structure is depicted perfectly in gh0stdot’s photograph. Choosing to portray the two ancient statues at an angle which captures them from below, and results in a picture including the…
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Thermopylae is the site where a group of a few thousand Greeks held off a Persian army for three days (including a desperate last stand made on Kolonos Hill, led by the Spartans,on the third day of battle). Historians still debate whether the battle was necessary, but in any event the Greeks were eventually successful in repelling the Persian invasion after a naval victory at the Battle of Salamis. This past weekend a team of Greek scientists, at a conference in Australia, announced preliminary results ofan attempt to reconstruct the landscape of the ancient battlefield. The lead investigator, Professor Konstantinos…
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Us in the ‘modern world’ tend to think we’ve got the market cornered for most things, and partying is no different. Clubs, drugs, drink and casual sex may be frowned upon even by our elders at times, but it seems those in the ancient world had rather less stringent morals when it came to partying hard. And new research suggests the neon-lit acid haze of the eighties was far from the first movement to find a love for rave culture. It seems that rolling stones had barely been invented before the ancient world was partying like Keith Richards on closing…
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After 4 years of research – at a quite ‘sensitive’ and not-so-safe area, Imust admit – UNESCOfinally released it’s Final Report on Damage Assesment in Babylon by the International Coordination Committee for the Saveguarding of the Cultural Heritage of Iraq. Be the report not that world-shocking, we all know by now that both Saddam Hussein as well as the Coalition Forces are to blame, the report does clearly devide which damage was inflicted upon the Babylon archaeological area before the start of the Iraq war, and which was brought upon ‘Camp Alpha’ post-2003. Damage to the archaeological site that occurred…
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From ‘Mummy CSI‘, we jump to ‘CSIAncient Greece’. At least, according to the NewScientist. There Ewen Callaway reports on how Stephen Tracy – Greek scholar and epigrapher – makes good use of human intelligence and machine’s computing power to attribute 24 ancient Greek inscriptions to their individual masons. Together with Michail Panagopoulos and Constantin Papaodysseus – both computer scientists at the National Technical University of Athens – they succeeded at attributing the chisel marks to six different cutters, between the years 334BCand 134BC. How? Panagopoulos’ team determined what different cutters meant each letter to look like by overlaying digital scans…
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Go to Rome’s Piazza Navona on a Saturday night in July and you’ll find yourself having to pick your way through the crowds of locals and tourists, some standing in large semi-circles watching a unicyclist juggle with fire or a guitarist play his Led Zeppelin back catalogue, others perusing the displays of gaudy paintings on wooden easels and trying to avoid buying a rose from street sellers. It’s one of the main hubs of Roman night life: the area’s bars and granita vendors are usually thronged and groups of barefoot college students jostle with each other around Bernini‘s famous Fountain…