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☆ Was the Stone Age Actually the Wood Age?
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-04 | by ( Franz Lidz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The basic chronology — Stone Age to Bronze Age to Iron Age — now underpins the archaeology of most of the Old World (and cartoons like “The Flintstones” and “The Croods”). Thomsen could well have substituted Wood Age for Stone Age, according to Thomas Terberger, an archaeologist and head of research at the Department of Cultural Heritage of Lower Saxony, in Germany. “We can probably assume that wooden tools have been around just as long as stone ones, that is, two and a half or three million years,“ he said. Of the thousands of archaeological sites that can be traced to the era, wood has been recovered from fewer than 10. The projectiles unearthed at the Schöningen site, known as Spear Horizon, are considered the oldest preserved hunting weapons.

Persons: Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, Thomsen, Thomas Terberger, “, Terberger, heidelbergensis Organizations: Department of Cultural Heritage, National Academy of Sciences Locations: Danish, Europe, Lower Saxony, Germany, Schöningen

☆ They Shoot Owls in California, Don’t They?
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-29 | by ( Franz Lidz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Barred owls have also emerged as a threat to the California spotted owl, a closely related subspecies in the Sierra Nevada and the mountains of coastal and Southern California. In the wilds of British Columbia, the northern spotted owl has vanished; only one, a female, remains. If the trend continues, the northern spotted owl could become the first owl subspecies in the United States to go extinct. In a last-ditch effort to rescue the northern spotted owl from oblivion and protect the California spotted owl population, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed culling a staggering number of barred owls across a swath of 11 to 14 million acres in Washington, Oregon and Northern California, where barred owls — which the agency regards as invasive — are encroaching.

Persons: Karla Bloem, ” Organizations: U.S . Fish, Wildlife Service, Owl Center Locations: Pacific Northwest, California, Sierra Nevada, Southern California, British Columbia, United States, U.S, Washington , Oregon, Northern California, Minnesota

☆ Who Kissed First? Archaeology Has an Answer.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-13 | by ( Franz Lidz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

They met a week earlier at a pub near the University of Copenhagen, where both were undergraduates. “I had asked my cousin if he knew any nice single guys with long hair and long beards,” Dr. Rasmussen said. “I do,” said Dr. Rasmussen, who had taken some of the same classes. The researcher, at the University of Cambridge, suggested that the custom — a lip-kissing precursor that involved rubbing and pressing noses together — developed into hardcore smooching. — about when the Indian how-to sex manual, the Kama Sutra, was published — kissing had spread to the Mediterranean with the return of Alexander the Great’s troops from Northern India.

Persons: humanity’s, Sophie Lund Rasmussen, Troels, “, Dr, Rasmussen, ’, Arboll, ”, buss, —, Alexander the Organizations: University of Copenhagen, University of Oxford’s, Conservation Research Unit, Aalborg University, University of Cambridge Locations: Assyriology, Denmark, Asia, Northern India

☆ Undying Dread: A 400-Year-Old Corpse, Locked to Its Grave
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-05 | by ( Franz Lidz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In one account, from 1674, a dead man rose from his tomb to assault his relatives; when his grave was opened, the corpse was unnaturally preserved and bore traces of fresh blood. In 1746, a Benedictine monk named Antoine Augustin Calmet published a popular treatise that sought, among other things, to distinguish real revenants from frauds. Four centuries later, archaeologists in Europe have discovered the first physical evidence of a suspected child revenant. “The padlock would have been locked to the big toe,” Dariusz Poliński, the lead archaeologist on the study, said through a translator. Sometime after burial, the grave was desecrated and all the bones removed except those of the lower legs.

Persons: —, Antoine Augustin Calmet, revenant, Nicolaus, Dariusz Poliński Organizations: Nicolaus Copernicus University Locations: Poland, Europe, Pień, Polish, Bydgoszcz, Toruń

☆ A Museum of ‘Electrifying Frankness’ Weighs Dialing It Down
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-13 | by ( Franz Lidz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Mütter Museum, a 19th-century repository of medical oddments and arcana at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, attracts as many as 160,000 visitors a year. “Who could look at a two-headed calf without wanting to know how that happened? Biology is a marvel and better understood if you recognize that its complexities must inevitably lead to some ‘errors.’”The celebrity magician Teller, a Philadelphia native, called the Mütter a place of electrifying frankness. But, like museums everywhere, the Mütter is reassessing what it has and why it has it. Recently, the institution enlisted a public-relations consultant with expertise in crisis management to contain criticism from within and without.

Persons: Jack Russell, Grover, ” Cheng, Eng, ”, Dean Richardson, Veterinary Medicine’s, Teller Organizations: College of Physicians of, Soap, “, University of Pennsylvania School, Veterinary, Veterinary Medicine’s New Bolton Center Locations: College of Physicians of Philadelphia, China, Philadelphia

☆ Cannibalism, or ‘Clickbait’?
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-01 | by ( Franz Lidz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Everybody’s quick to see a cannibal. The Romans thought the ancient Britons feasted on human flesh, and the British thought the same about the Irish. Not a few prehistoric finds have been attributed, evocatively if not accurately, to the work of ancient cannibals. The news release described the finding as the “oldest decisive evidence” of such behavior. Or, put another way, How much premodern evidence is needed to prove a modern theory?

Persons: Mark Twain, “, —, Briana Organizations: National, of Locations: Kenya

☆ Scalpel, Forceps, Bone Drill: Modern Medicine in Ancient Rome
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Franz Lidz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Poets especially ridiculed surgeons for being greedy, for taking sexual advantage of patients and, above all, for incompetence. In his “Natural History,” Pliny the Elder, the admiral and scholar who died in 79 A.D. while trying to rescue desperate villagers fleeing the debris of Mt. “Physicians gain experience at our peril and conduct their experiments by means of our deaths,” he wrote. Scalpels, needles, tweezers, probes, hooks, chisels and drills are as much part of today’s standard medical tool kit as they were during Rome’s imperial era. Alongside were the remains of a man presumed to have been a Roman citizen.

Persons: Pliny the Elder, ” Organizations: Physicians Locations: Rome, Hungary, Jászberény, Budapest, Roman

☆ Put a Bird on It? Ancient Egypt Was Way Ahead of Us.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Franz Lidz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

A century ago, archaeologists excavated a 3,300-year-old Egyptian palace in Amarna, which was fleetingly the capital of Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten. Situated far from the crowded areas of Amarna, the North Palace offered a quiet retreat for the royal family. On the west wall of one extravagantly decorated chamber, today known as the Green Room, the excavators discovered a series of painted plaster panels showcased birds in a lush papyrus marsh. The artwork was so detailed and skillfully rendered that it was possible to pinpoint some of the bird species, including the pied kingfisher (Ceryle rudis) and the rock pigeon (Columba livia). Among the riddles they tried to solve was why two unidentified birds had triangular tail markings when no Egyptian bird known today has them.

Persons: Akhenaten, Columba livia, Chris Stimpson, Barry Kemp, Stimpson, Kemp, Nina de Garis Davies Organizations: Oxford University Museum of, University of Cambridge, Metropolitan Museum of Art Locations: Egypt

☆ In Ancient Egypt, Severed Hands Were Spoils of War
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Franz Lidz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Aristotle called the hand the “tool of tools”; Kant, “the visible part of the brain.” The earliest works of art were handprints on the walls of caves. Throughout history hand gestures have symbolized the range of human experience: power, tenderness, creativity, conflict, even (bravo, Michelangelo) the touch of the divine. The hands, along with numerous disarticulated fingers, were most likely buried during Egypt’s 15th dynasty, from 1640 B.C. Eventually, a few rose to power as the Hyksos, basing their power in Avaris. A recent study published in the journal Nature proposes that the Hyksos had a custom known as the Gold of Valor, which involved taking the hands of enemy combatants as war trophies.

☆ Ancient Romans Dropped Their Bling Down the Drain, Too
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Franz Lidz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Down the drain is where British archaeologists recently discovered 36 artfully engraved semiprecious stones, in an ancient bathhouse at the site of a Roman fort near Hadrian’s Wall in Carlisle, England. The colorful intaglios — gems with incised carvings — likely fell out of signet rings worn by wealthy third-century bathers, and ended up trapped in the stone drains. The delicate intaglios, fashioned from amethyst, jasper and carnelian, range in diameter from 5 millimeters to 16 millimeters — bigger than a pencil eraser, smaller than a dime. Some bear images of Apollo, Mars, Bonus Eventus and other Roman deities symbolizing war or good fortune. How and why these stones were lost is a subject of some debate among classicists.

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