When the excavation reached what had been the bottom of the sea, the archeologists announced that they could finally cede part of the site to the engineers, after one last survey of the seabed—just a formality, really, to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. That’s when they found the remains of a Neolithic dwelling, dating from 8 ka BP. It was previously unknown that anyone had lived on the site of the old city before 3.3 ka BP. The excavators, attempting to avoid traces of Istanbul’s human history, had ended up finding an extra 5000 years of it.
Tag: history
Actual Heroes
Heroes who saved over 1b lives each
Hiroshima
The original New Yorker article from 1946 which won the Pulitzer prize.
Entire issue devoted to the telling of the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Follows the fate of 6 survivors and describes their experiences.
The Manhattan of the Desert
Shibam is known as the first city on earth with a vertical masterplan. A protected UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1982, the city is home to densely packed buildings ranging from 4 to 8 stories, beginning in 300 AD but now mostly built after 1532.
Jamestown
Yesterday, the Jamestown Rediscovery and the Smithsonian Institution announced that they had identified the remains of Capt. Gabriel Archer, Rev. Robert Hunt, Sir Ferdinando Wainman and Capt. William West, 4 of the earliest leaders of the Jamestowne settlement. Among Archer’s remnants was a small silver box that researchers have identified as a Roman Catholic reliquary.
Oversized Bronze Age axes
Radiocarbon dating found the axes were made between 3.8 and 3.5 ka BP, a period bridging the end of the Stone Age and the beginning of the Bronze Age. This places them among the earliest bronze artifacts ever discovered in Denmark. Bronze axes from this era are so rare only 5 of them have been found before in Denmark, Sweden and northern Germany. That means the Boest find has in one fell swoop doubled the number of these Bronze Age axes in the archaeological record of northern Europe. When you consider that
Bent Rasmussen and his brother, enlisted by Bent during excavations to cover more ground with their metal detectors, found another 4 smaller axes and a spear tip, it’s clear that this field in Boest was an important place during the early Bronze Age.
The Amiga turns 30
Nice series.
the Amiga 1000 was the first true PC for creatives. The Amiga 1000 was “a radical multimedia machine from a group of thinkers, tinkerers, and visionaries which delivered affordable graphics, animation, music, and multitasking interaction the personal computer world hadn’t even dreamt of.” It pioneered desktop video and introduced PCs to countless new users, rocketing Amiga and Commodore to the top for a brief moment in the sun. History of the Amiga attempts to explain what the device was, what it meant to its designers and users, and why, despite its relative obscurity and early demise, it continues to matter so much to the computer industry and its enthusiasts.
23 ka Plant cultivation
Until now, researchers believed farming was “invented” some 12 ka ago in the Cradle of Civilization — Iraq, the Levant, parts of Turkey and Iran. A new discovery offers evidence that trial plant cultivation began far earlier — 23 ka ago.
medieval DRM
Considering these 2 practical theft-prevention techniques – chaining your books to something unmovable or putting them into a safe – the third seems kind of odd: to write a curse against book thieves inside the book. Your typical curse (or anathema) simply stated that the thief would be cursed, like this one in a book from an unidentified Church of St Caecilia: “Whoever takes this book or steals it or in some evil way removes it from the Church of St Caecilia, may he be damned and cursed forever, unless he returns it or atones for his act” (source). Some of these book curses really rub it in: “If anyone should steal it, let him know that on the Day of Judgement the most sainted martyr himself will be the accuser against him before the face of our Lord Jesus Christ”
14 ka Dentistry
dentistry predates alcohol by 5 ka, so this first intervention must have been painful.
Researchers have found the earliest known evidence of dentistry in the molar of a Palaeolithic man who lived 14 ka ago.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 