A nearly complete 1st century BCE carnyx (celtic war trumpet)

 

In 2004, archaeologists discovered a hoard of ritually destroyed weapons — a dozen swords, scabbards, spearheads, a shield, bronze helmets, an iron helmet shaped like a swan — a cauldron, animal remains and seven carnyces. Before then, the remains of only five examples of the Celtic man-sized wind musical instrument that was widely used as ceremonial and highly intimidating war trumpets in the two centuries before and after Christ were known to survive.One of the seven found at Tintignac, on the other hand, was almost entirely complete. The Tintignac Carnyx was broken into 40 pieces. When puzzled back together, it was found to be just an inch short of six feet long with a single missing section of the tube. The bell was a boar’s head with protruding tusks and large pointed ears. Once restored, the Tintignac Carnyx proved to be the first virtually complete carnyx ever found.

The Greek historian Polybius (206-126BC) was so impressed by the clamour of the Gallic army and the sound of the carnyx, he observed that, "there were countless trumpeters and horn blowers and since the whole army was shouting its war cries at the same time there was such a confused sound that the noise seemed to come not only from the trumpeters and the soldiers but also from the countryside which was joining in the echo".

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The Cosquer underwater paleolithic cave

 

Palaeolithic decorated cave, located in France, that contains numerous cave drawings dating back as far as 27,000 years BP. The cave has more than 200 parietal figures and is also the only decorated cave whose entrance opens under the sea.The Cosquer Cave is located in the Calanque de Morgiou in Marseille, France, near Cap Morgiou. The entrance to the cave is located 37 m (121 ft) underwater, due to the Holocene sea level rise. The cave contains various prehistoric rock art engravings. It was discovered in 1985 by and named after diver Henri Cosquer, but its existence was not made public until 1991, when three divers became lost in the cave and died.

The cave can now be accessed by divers through a 175 m (574 ft) long tunnel; the entrance is located 37 m (121 ft) below sea level, which has risen since the cave was inhabited. During the glacial periods of the Pleistocene, the shore of the Mediterranean was several kilometers to the south and the sea level up to 100 m (330 ft) below the entrance of the cave.Cosquer Cave is home to 500 paintings and engravings which were made during two distinct periods of occupation, the first 27,000 years ago and the last 19,000 years ago. Half of them depict animals drawn in bold lines, such as bison, antelopes, ibex, seals, auks and numerous horses.

The walls also feature 200 geometric designs. Except for an engraving showing a half-man, half-seal creature, the only human depictions are red or black hand stencils, some just outlines, others coloured in. Thumbs always seem to be shown intact, whereas other fingers are often missing or truncated. A computer analysis suggests these drawings are mostly of female hands. There are over 150 animals painted or engraved, making Cosquer one of the most densely painted caves ever found. And the 11 different species depicted are more than at Lascaux and nearly as many as at Chauvet.

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A 19th century Japanese Firemen’s coat decorated with a spider hovering over an abandoned Go board.

 

an early-nineteenth-century firefighter’s coat, called hikeshibanten, since it features a spooky spider. Made in the Edo period in Japan, these firefighter’s coats were reversible, and this design is actually on the interior of the jacket, only visible when the jacket has been turned inside out. A large spider—with an endearing face—looms over the shoulder of the jacket, where it hovers menacingly over an abandoned go board (Pacific Northwesterners may have unnerving flashbacks to the giant house spiders that descend on Seattle in the autumn). The range of tonalities centers on indigo, white, black, and greyish-brown, with red accents on the fan; this color palette visually unites the work, creating parallels between the spider’s eyes and the go pieces.

The method of dyeing used, tsutsugaki, is a type of resist dyeing. The design was drawn on the cotton using rice paste, and these initial lines are visible now as the lightest areas of the design. The spider and the go board were dyed their respective colors, and covered with more rice paste to block any other dye from entering the area. Then the fabric was dipped into indigo multiple times, dried, soaked in hot water again, and the rice paste was scraped off to reveal the layering of colors; this whole process could take 20 days.

The scene is from the story of the warrior-hero Minamoto no Yorimitsu (948–1021) who, once when sick, was visited by an evil priest in the guise of a giant spider. Yorimitsu saw through the disguise and attacked the spider priest, and his four attendants (who were playing a game of Go while guarding him) leapt up to track the intruder back to his den

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Fall of the Rebel Angels, carved out of a single piece of marble in 1740 by Italian sculptor Agostino Fasolato, it depicts 60 fallen angels.

 

The astonishing piece, comprising more than sixty sculpted figures, evocatively embodies the eternal struggle between good, represented by the archangel Michael with his flaming sword, and the forces of evil spearheaded by Lucifer, who leads the rebel angels.

In 1765 Giovan Battista Rossetti, in his Description of the paintings, sculptures and architecture of Padua, lists it as one of the main attractions of Padua, describing it as “to say the least wonderful, not tempted or even from ancient Greece“. The remarkable technical mastery shown by the sculpture continued to amaze people throughout the 19th century, even beyond local borders. The theologian Antonio Rosmini describes it several times in his epistolary.

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The shaman of Bad Dürrenberg

 

The shaman of Bad Dürrenberg are the remains of a 25-35 year old woman, who was burried 8600 to 9000 year ago in Germany. Around her, were the remains of an extraordinary head-dress, made from the bones and teeth of different animals such as deer, wild boar, crane and turtle

aIn the shade of the forest there is space for encounters of a special kind. The 25 to 30-year-old woman was buried bedded in raddle around 9,000 years ago. The lavish inventory of grave goods attests to a special social role of the deceased. The enormous diversity of animal species represented in the grave, of which not all would have been just food supplies for the afterlife, is remarkable. Ethnographic comparisons suggest that some objects are to be interpreted as requisites of shamanistic practices. The transition from mobile foraging to the sedentary way of life with agriculture and cattle breeding around 5600 BC marked the end of the Mesolithic. The age of the hunters – as the longest phase of human lifestyle – came to an end.

The grave of the Bad Dürrenberg shaman is the oldest burial in central Germany. An infant was buried with her. The analysis of the woman’s skeleton revealed that her uppermost cervical vertebra was malformed and that blood vessels in the lower skull area could have been spatially restricted. This malformation may have made her a special person. Anthropologists suspect that through extreme positions of her head she could have even deliberately induced herself to faint. The overabundant inventory of grave goods alone testifies to a special social role of the deceased. Certain grave goods also played an important role in interpreting this burial as a shaman’s grave.

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The Sweet Track

 

The Sweet Track is a 5830-year-old Neolithic timber walkway, located in the Somerset Levels in England and discovered in 1970. It was originally part of a network of tracks built to provide a dry path across the marshy ground.

Built in 3807 BC (determined using dendrochronology) and is the second-oldest timber trackway discovered in the British Isles, dating to the Neolithic. It is now known that the Sweet Track was predominantly built along the course of an earlier structure, the Post Track.

Extensive tree ring studies have shown that ash, oak and lime trees were systematically cut, pre-fabricated and transported to the site, where they were built into a narrow footpath supported on crossed poles, driven into heavy poles underwater and pegged together. Finally the oak walking platform was laid on top of the V-shaped notch. All this indicates a high degree of organisation and forward planning.

Some repairs were carried out, but it is clear that the Sweet Track was only in use for around ten years, probably due to the rising water level engulfing it.

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10 000 years old women footprints.

 

More than 10,000 years ago, a woman or young man made 2 trips separated by at least several hours, carrying a toddler in one direction. Their trackway, now New Mexico’s White Sands National Park, stretch for 1.5km and consists of more than 400 human prints.

Rain may have pelted the traveler’s face as their bare feet slid on the mud. They paused to briefly set the toddler on the ground before pressing on; a wooly mammoth and giant sloth ambled across their freshly laid tracks. Several hours later, the traveler followed the same route south, this time empty-handed.

The trackway consists of more than 400 human prints, including several tiny child prints, as described in a new study published in Quaternary Science Reviews. By analyzing the shape, structure, and spread of the tracks the research team unveiled an intimate portrait of one ancient person’s walk across the landscape, right down to their toes slipping on the slick surface.

White Sands National Park contains a treasure trove of fossilized human and animal footprints.

Tens of thousands of years ago, during the ice age, a giant body of water, Lake Otero, rested within the Tularosa basin. The climate was less arid, and the vegetation was abundant. One could have seen grasslands stretching for miles that would have looked more like the prairies of the Midwest rather than New Mexico’s deserts.

This paradise of lush green life naturally captured the attention of the larger animals of the ice age. Plant eaters such as ancient camels, Columbian mammoths and Harlan’s ground sloth came to Lake Otero to feast on the grasses and trees of the Tularosa Basin. This attracted fearsome predators known as the dire wolf and American Lion. These animals’ footprints remained long after their departure of the wetlands of Lake Otero and eventually became fossilized.

In 2018, researchers discovered what they believe to be footprints of a female. They tell a story that may seem familiar today; her footprints show her walking for almost a mile, with a toddler’s footprints occasionally showing up beside hers. Evidence suggests that she carried the child, shifting them from side to side and occasionally setting the child down as they walked. The footprints broadened and slipped in the mud as a result of the additional weight she was carrying.

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Sound from copy of 1st century BCE carnyx found in 2004 at Tintignac, France. Fashioned as a snarling boar, the carnyx was a war horn used by the Iron Age Celts between c. 200 BCE and c. 200 CE

 

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Roman dog names

 

What did the ancient Romans name their four-legged best friends? Lucius Iunius Moderatus Columella gives us a few recommended names in the section of his work on agriculture dealing with the rearing and training of dogs. Other likely sources used by the ancient Romans for dog names may have come from literature, in much the same way that people today draw on literature for naming their dogs.

Here is a list of some of the names in both Greek and Latin as mentioned by some writers. Each name is followed by gender and meaning.

• Agre. f. “Hunter”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …keen-scented…
• Argiodus. m. “White-tooth”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …from a Cretan father and a Spartan mother…
• Celer. m. “Speedy”. A recommended dog name in Columella’s On Agriculture.
• Ferox. m. “Savage”. A recommended dog name in Columella’s On Agriculture.
• Harpyia. f. “Seizer”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …with her two pups…
• Hylactor. m. “Barker”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …shrill-tongued…
• Hylaeus. m. “Sylvan”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …savage…but lately ripped up by a boar…
• Hyrcanus. m. “From Hyrcania” (a region in ancient northern Persia, possibly meaning “land of the wolves”). Mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History to illustrate the faithfulness of dogs. …upon the funeral pile of King Lysimachus being lighted, threw itself into the flames…
• Ichnobates. m. “Trail-follower”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …keen-scented…baying loud on the trail…a Cretan dog.
• Labros. m. “Fury”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …from a Cretan father and a Spartan mother…
• Lacon or Lakon. m. “Spartan”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …renowned for strength… Also, a recommended dog name in Columella’s On Agriculture.
• Laelaps. m. “Hurricane”. A famous – and relentless – hunting hound in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, originally a gift of the gods.
• Lycisce. f. “Wolf”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …swift…Melampus. m. “Black-foot”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …a Spartan.
• Melanchaetes. m. “Black-hair”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
• Nebrophonos. m. “Fawn-killer”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …staunch…
• Oresitrophos. m. “Mountaineer”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
• Pamphagos or Pamphagus. m. “Voracious”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …Arcadian…
• Patricus. m. “Noble”. From an ancient epitaph to a dog, cited in Abbott’s work. …an Italian dog, at Salernum…“My eyes were wet with tears, our dear little dog…In thy qualities, sagacious thou wert like a human being.”
• Poemenis. f. “Shepherd”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …the trusty shepherd…
• Pyrrhus. m. “Fire; Flame-colored”. A dog mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History to illustrate the faithfulness of dogs. …the dog of the tyrant Gelon…
• Theridamas. m. “Beast-killer”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
• Theron. m. “Hunter”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. …fierce…
• Tigris. m. or f. “Tiger; Tigress”. One of Actaeon’s hounds in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Also, a recommended dog name in Columella’s On Agriculture.

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The mystery of Ksar Draa

 

Far away, in the center of Algerian desert lonely structure stands through hundred of years. The story of this place might be lost forever. It looks like a fortified village, but we are not sure who built it and for what purpose. Not even locals know what in fact is this quiet huge building.

From very small resources we can only find that Jews from Timimoun region occupied the settlement in shart period of time. 

Not much was left from the settlement. Circular wall with 2m height, several rooms made of clay on three levels. What surprising there are no windows cells overlooking outside, no staircases. There were gueses that it might be famous caravanserais, remote building providing shelter during long trips in deserts. But Ksar Draa does not seem to be this kind of building, it is too much defensive. But on the other hand, it is also too small to become a castle of fort, we cannot find any artifacts that can prove it. In so dry climate there should be any artifacts left that can shed a light on it, but Ksar Draa is empty. 

So what is this? Someone's abandonned home? Ancient hideout? We cannot tell, and what's worst - we might not ever know.

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