DNA analysis performed on shipwreck medicines. Published on April 28th, 2011 | by Sevaan Franks DNA extracted from pills found on a 2,000-year-old Italian shipwreck may offer up new medical insights. “Medicinal plants have been identified before, but not a compound medicine, so this is really something new,” says Alain Touwaide, director of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, which has the world’s largest digital database of medical manuscripts. Prof Touwaide is working with scientists at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, who carried out the DNA analysis.
They discovered traces of carrot, parsley, alfalfa, celery, wild onion, radish, yarrow and hibiscus contained in the ancient pills. The pills, which researchers believe were diluted with vinegar or water to make them easier to ingest, were preserved inside tin boxes and were the size of coins. “I was always wondering if the texts were only theoretical notions without practical application,” he says. “Now we know they were applied.” [Full story] The oldest readable writing in Europe.
Myth. Prehistoric dice game boards found in Mexico. Published on December 15th, 2010 | by Sevaan Franks 5,000-year-old semi-circles made of holes found in in Mexico may belong to a prehistoric dice game. Mysterious holes arranged in c shapes—punched into clay floors at the Tlacuachero archaeological site inMexico’s Chiapas state —may have been dice-game scoreboards, according to archaeologist Barbara Voorhies. If so, Voorhies added, the semicircles are the oldest known evidence of games in Mesoamerica, a region that stretches from Mexico to Costa Rica.
Previously, the oldest known evidence of games in Mesoamerica was a 3,600-year-old ball court located not far from Chiapas. Voorhies first found one of the arcs in 1988, when she discovered a buried floor within a Chantuto shell mound, a large ancient pile of discarded seafood shells and other debris. The Chantuto people were foragers who lived along the coast of what is now southern Mexico between about 3,500 to 7,500 years ago. [Full story] Tags: Chiapas, Dice, Games, Mexico, Prehistoric. Washington's Farewell Address 1796. Washington's Farewell Address 1796 Friends and Citizens: The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprise you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.
The acceptance of, and continuance hitherto in, the office to which your suffrages have twice called me have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty and to a deference for what appeared to be your desire. The impressions with which I first undertook the arduous trust were explained on the proper occasion. Here, perhaps, I ought to stop. Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Religion and the Federal Government: PART 1 (Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, Library of Congress Exhibition)
HOME - EXHIBITION OVERVIEW - OBJECT LISTSECTIONS: I. America as Refuge - II. 18th Century America III. American Revolution - IV. Congress of the Confederation - V. State GovernmentsVI. In response to widespread sentiment that to survive the United States needed a stronger federal government, a convention met in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 and on September 17 adopted the Constitution of the United States. The first two Presidents of the United States were patrons of religion--George Washington was an Episcopal vestryman, and John Adams described himself as "a church going animal. " Go to: Shame-Culture and Guilt-Culture. "Trial by media" is very much a feature of political life at the moment, and it works largely because it seems that the public has different standards of proof for misdemeanours among those in public life from those it maintains for private citizens.
In public life it is enough to be "tainted" with suspicion for one's future to be blighted. In practice, the same is probably true of people accused of offences in their own small social world, and yet we maintain formally that justice operates on much more rigorous principles. In other words, the rules about responsibility and blame are not the same across cultures or even across different sectors of the same culture. Clichés about there being "no smoke without fire" and "mud sticks" on the one hand, and being "innocent until proven guilty" on the other, for example, represent fundamentally different assumptions. A useful distinction for articulating these different assumptions and rules is that between "shame" culture and "guilt" culture. Dinosaurs 9 million years older than thought. Published on October 6th, 2010 | by Sevaan Franks New fossils found in Poland show that Dinosaurs were around nine million years earlier than previously thought.
The prints are small – measuring a few centimetres in length – which suggests the earliest dinosaur-like animals were about the size of domestic cats. They would have weighed at most a kilogram or two, they walked on four legs and they were very rare animals. Their footprints comprised only two or three per cent of the total footprints on this site. The footprints date to just two million years after the end-Permian mass extinction – the worst mass extinction in the history of the planet.
According to Stephen Brusatte, from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who led the research: “In geological terms this is just the blink of an eye.” [Full story] Tags: Dinosaurs, Footprints, Fossils, Poland. 3rd century Mithras temple found in France. Published on September 29th, 2010 | by Sevaan Franks The remains of a temple dedicated to the Indo-Iranian god Mithras has been found at Angers, France. The small, rectangular chapel, in which worshippers gathered for banquets and sacrifices dedicated to the god, is dated to the third century AD.
At the sanctuary, a typical bas-relief of the god Mithras wearing his Phrygian cap shows him slaughtering a bull – the so-called tauroctony. The depiction of the god was intentionally damaged in ancient times, possibly by early Christians trying to suppress the pagan cult. Among the artefacts discovered are oil lamps, fragments of a chandelier containing Nubian terracotta figures, a bronze 4th century crucifix fibula and about 200 coins. Large quantities of cockerel bones (a favoured dish at the cultic banquets) were found inside and around the ancient temple. [Full story] Tags: Angers, France, Mithras, Temples. How ghosts, superstitions, and vampires have been used for psychological warfare. History of Religion. Magical properties. Bitwise consciousness. Carl Zimmer writes about theories of consciousness in today's Science NY Times, and describes the work of my Wisconsin colleague, Giulio Tononi. But Dr. Tononis theory is, potentially, very different.
He and his colleagues are translating the poetry of our conscious experiences into the precise language of mathematics. To do so, they are adapting information theory, a branch of science originally applied to computers and telecommunications. If Dr. Tononi is right, he and his colleagues may be able to build a consciousness meter that doctors can use to measure consciousness as easily as they measure blood pressure and body temperature. That's fortuitous because I'm lecturing about information theory tomorrow in my "Biology of Mind" course.
I'm always impressed reading back through Darwin, who a hundred years before information theory began to consider what we might describe as transmission properties of animal communication. The other financial crisis. Why do mummies look like they are screaming? Published on July 31st, 2009 | by Sevaan Franks Pain and agony are written onto the faces of mummies found world-wide, their mouths agape as if frozen mid-scream. Now one researcher has unlocked the reason why. “This temporo-mandibular joint is fairly loose…. Unlike the tight ball-and-socket linking the leg and the hip, the jaw and cranium are held together only by ligaments and muscles. If unimpeded–by the position of the body, wrappings, or very fast desiccation–the jaw will drop down as the muscles relax and decompose after rigor mortis.” So, how do morticians today keep their clients from screaming? Unlike their Victorian predecessors who employed a chinstrap, they use needle and thread. Tags: Burial, Dead, Death, Jaws, Mummies, Mummified.
Found: Oldest Roman baths in Asia Minor. Published on September 21st, 2010 | by Sevaan Franks A team of archaeologists have discovered the oldest Roman baths in Asia Minor in Sagalassos, Turkey. Until now, the Capito Baths in Miletus, built during the reign of Emperor Claudius (41-54 AD), were considered the oldest known Roman bathing complex in Asia Minor. This summer, however, in addition to the previously unearthed Imperial Baths(ca. 120-165 AD — with a surface area of more than 5,000 square metres), a second bathing complex was discovered in Sagalassos, below the remains of the Imperial Baths.
It is much older and smaller than the Imperial Baths and is dated to 10-30 AD, though it was probably built somewhat earlier, during the reign of Augustus or Tiberius. The complex measures 32.5 by 40 metres and is far better preserved than was originally thought. The walls must have been at least 12 metres high, of which 8.5 metres remain erect today. [Full story] Tags: Baths, Romans, Sagalassos, Turkey. UMUC Homepage. The Online Library of Books and Journals.
Birthcontrol. HISTORY. A Victorian sex scandal: 1874 contract reveals how cheating husband bought teenage lover's silence after she fell pregnant. By Chris Brooke Updated: 09:03 GMT, 11 December 2008 Family scandal: George Haywood is the wealthy industrialist father of William Haywood, who tried to conceal a love child with Martha Higginbottom It was a scandalous affair which would have ruined the reputations of two well-to-do families. The married son of a wealthy industrialist fathered a child with the 18-year-old daughter of a factory manager while his wife was also pregnant. These days, such behaviour would hardly cause the raising of an eyebrow. But in Victorian times it was something to be kept secret at all costs. Threatened with being named and shamed, the cheating husband bought his lover's silence with a formal legal agreement.
The document, signed by the two parties on October 20, 1874, meant no one ever discovered the truth about little Herbert Higginbottom... until now. More than 130 years later, the document has been put on display at the central library in Rotherham. Enlarge So what happened next? Pumpkin Pie Recipe. THEOI GREEK MYTHOLOGY, Exploring Mythology & the Greek Gods in Classical Literature & Art. THE HOMERIC HYMNS 4. [1] Muse, sing of Hermes, the son of Zeus and Maia, lord of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks, the luck-bringing messenger of the immortals whom Maia bare, the rich-tressed nymph, when she was joined in love with Zeus, -- a shy goddess, for she avoided the company of the blessed gods, and lived within a deep, shady cave.
There the son of Cronos used to lie with the rich-tressed nymph, unseen by deathless gods and mortal men, at dead of night while sweet sleep should hold white-armed Hera fast. And when the purpose of great Zeus was fixed in heaven, she was delivered and a notable thing was come to pass. For then she bare a son, of many shifts, blandly cunning, a robber, a cattle driver, a bringer of dreams, a watcher by night, a thief at the gates, one who was soon to show forth wonderful deeds among the deathless gods. . [28] When he saw it, the luck-bringing son of Zeus laughed and said: "An omen of great luck for me so soon! I do not slight it. . [212] So said the old man.