Archive for the ‘culture’ Category
Image via Wikipedia
In 1785, as an unknown African slave built the furnace for a plantation‘s greenhouse, he packed in this prehistoric pestle among the bricks. The object is a West African spirit practice symbol, University of Maryland archeologist Mark Leone said in a prepared statement. University of Maryland archeologists are excavating the grounds of the Wye House outside of Annapolis, Maryland. The house is known for its beauty—and for being a plantation where abolitionist Frederick Douglass was enslaved as a boy in the 1820s. The house and garden, where the greenhouse stands, appear in Douglass’ autobiography: “Colonel Lloyd kept a large and finely cultivated garden, which afforded almost constant employment for four men,” he wrote. “To describe the wealth of Colonel Lloyd would be almost equal to describing the riches of Job.”
via Slaves’ possessions unearthed from an 18th-century plantation greenhouse: Scientific American Gallery.
31.248372
-85.375625
It’s the result of nine years of painstaking work — essentially a giant 3,000-year-old, 27,000-piece 3D jigsaw puzzle. With plenty of patience and luck, German scholars and archaeologists have managed to re-assemble over 30 monumental basalt sculptures that were once thought lost to World War II bombs. Originally from the ancient site of Tell Halaf, the sculptures now feature in a new exhibition at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, The Rescued Gods of the Palace of Tell Halaf, serving as a powerful reminder of the glory of the Aramaean civilization — and the persistence of a small group of art lovers.
via From the Ashes: Reviving Ancient Works in Berlin – TIME.
Would You Like to See How Big Cities Looked Like Hundred Years Ago?.
Image via Wikipedia
Ivan IV, know as Ivan the Terrible, is most known for his brutal ruling, centralised administration of Russia and expantion of the boundaries of the Russian Empire. He was born in Moscow on August 25, 1530, the oldest son of Vasilij III.
Ivan was only three years old when his Father, Vasilij III died. Ivan’s Mother, Yelena Glinskaya was leading Boyar (Noble) Family established a regency, but it soon degenerated into intrigue, denuncation and wild violence as rival boyars disputed the dominance of Glinsky Family. Yelena died in 1538 and misrule continued. Ivan had a poor health, he was largely ignored and his education was neglected.
Ivan the Terrible assumed the throne in 1547 at the age of seventeen and immediately proclaimed himself “Tsar” (Czar) , instead of Grand Duke. In the same year Ivan married Anastasia Romanov. When Anastasia died in 1560, he remarried. Among his wives are Marie Tscerkaski (1561) and Maria Sobakina (1571).
Ivan justly deserved his reputation as a tyrant and his reign was peppered with battles with foreign invaders. Kazan was finally wrestled from the grasp of the Tartars in 1552 and St. Basil’s Cathedral was built on Red Square to celebrate the occasion. Ivan seized Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea two years later, and having repelled the Tartars completely, he looked west to the Duchy of Livonia, which he invaded despite protests from Poland and Sweden.
In 1560 the Tsar was devastated by the death of his beloved wife Anastasia and turned on his once favored courtiers and nobles, blaming them for her death. Although Ivan abdicated in 1564 in protest, he was urged back to power and began a rule of terror never before seen in Russian history. He divided the country into two clean-cut spheres, the one (the oprichnina) encompassing his personal domain, and the other (the zemshchina) representing the rest. Ivan broke the power of the Muscovite boyars, exiling thousands of them to Siberia, and created a new militia. These hand-picked oprichniki, as he named them, were devoted to his orders and were encouraged to rape, loot, burn, kill and torture in the Tsar’s name. They spread terror throughout Russia, culminating in the atrocious massacre of Novgorod in 1569, when as many as 60,000 citizens were tortured to death for supposedly plotting to side with Poland.
In 1571 the Tartars raided Moscow, burning much of the city and taking thousands of citizens away as slaves. Ivan fled to Yaroslavl, where he spent much of his remaining decade in power plotting to usurp the Polish throne. In 1581 a combined Polish and Swedish invasion prompted the Tsar to concede Livonia to the Poles.
In 1582, in an attack of unexplained rage, Ivan had killed his eldest son, Tsarevich Ivan, by striking him with an iron rod. He died on March 18, 1584. Although the transition from Ivan to his son and successor, Feodor I, was relatively easy and quiet, Moscow was, according to most observers, on the verge of anarchy as a result of Ivan The Terrible’s policies.
31.248372
-85.375625
In 1906, American photographer Edward S. Curtis was offered $75,000 to document North American Indians. The benefactor, J.P Morgan, was to receive 25 sets of the completed series of 20 volumes with 1,500 photographs entitled The North American Indian. Curtis set out to photograph the North American Indian way of life at a time when Native Americans were being forced from their land and stripped of their rights. Curtis’ photographs depicted a romantic version of the culture which ran contrary to the popular view of Native Americans as savages.
Born in 1868 in Wisconsin, Curtis moved with his father to the Washington territory in 1887 where he began working at a photography studio in the frontier city of Seattle. Curtis began work on his series in 1895 by photographing Princess Angeline, the daughter of Chief Sealth and published the first volume of The North American Indian in 1907. The last volume wasn’t published until 1930. In more than three decades of work documenting Native Americans, Curtis traveled from the Great Plains to the mountainous west, and from the Mexican border to western Canada to the Arctic Ocean in Alaska.
Below are selected images of the Native American way of life chosen from The Library of Congress’s Edward S. Curtis Collection. Some were published in The North American Indian but most were not published. All the captions are original to Edward Curtis.
Title: Sioux chiefs. Date Created/Published: c1905. Summary: Photograph shows three Native Americans on horseback. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Title: Ready for the throw–Nunivak. Date Created/Published: c1929 February 28. Summary: Eskimo man seated in a kayak prepares to throw spear. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Title: The mealing trough–Hopi. Date Created/Published: c1906. Summary: Four young Hopi Indian women grinding grain. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Title: The scout in winter–Apsaroke. Date Created/Published: c1908 July 6. Summary: Apsaroke man on horseback on snow-covered ground, probably in Pryor Mountains, Montana. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Title: At the old well of Acoma Date Created/Published: c1904 November 12. Summary: Acoma girl, seated on rock, watches as another girl fills a pottery vessel with water from a pool. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Title: Mizheh and babe. Date Created/Published: c1906 December 19. Summary: Apache woman, at base of tree, holding infant in cradleboard in her lap. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Title: On the Little Big Horn. Date Created/Published: c1908 July 6. Summary: Horses wading in water next to a Crow tipi encampment. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Title: When winter comes. Date Created/Published: c1908 July 6. Summary: Dakota woman, carrying firewood in snow, approaches tipi. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Title: A burial platform–Apsaroke. Date Created/Published: c1908 July 6. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Title: The Oath–Apsaroke. Date Created/Published: c1908 November 19. Summary: Three Apsaroke men gazing skyward, two holding rifles, one with object skewered on arrow pointed skyward, bison skull at their feet. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
Title: Drilling ivory–King Island. Date Created/Published: c1929 February 28. Summary: Eskimo man, wearing hooded parka, manually drilling an ivory tusk. Photograph by Edward S. Curtis, Curtis (Edward S.) Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.
31.248372
-85.375625
Image via Wikipedia
When Christopher Columbus paraded his newly discovered American Indians through the streets of Spanish towns at the end of the 15th century, he was not in fact introducing the first native Americans to Europe, according to new research.
Scientists who have studied the genetic past of an Icelandic family now claim the first Americans reached Europe a full five centuries before Columbus bumped into an island in the Bahamas during his first voyage of discovery in 1492.
via First Americans ‘reached Europe five centuries before Columbus discoveries’ | Science | The Guardian.
via First Americans ‘reached Europe five centuries before Columbus discoveries’ | Science | The Guardian.
31.248372
-85.375625
Image via Wikipedia
E pluribus unum: “out of many – one”. The one-time motto of the US reminds us that, much like most of the larger nation states today, ancient Greece was a mosaic of very different components: about 1,000 of them at any one time between c600BC and AD330. That is, there were a thousand or so separate, often radically self-differentiated political entities, most of which went by the title of polis, or citizen-state. Our term “Greece” is derived from the Romans’ Latin name, Graecia, whereas the ancient Greeks spoke of Hellas – meaning sometimes the Aegean Greek heartland, at other times the entire, hypertrophied Hellenic world – and referred to themselves as “Hellenes”.
via The Ancient World | Greece | Culture | guardian.co.uk.
via The Ancient World | Greece | Culture | guardian.co.uk.
31.248372
-85.375625
Image via Wikipedia
By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent 7:23PM GMT 15 Nov 2010
His extraordinarily accurate planetary observations laid the foundations for modern astronomy but mystery has always surrounded Tycho Brahe‘s sudden death.
Now a team of scientists has launched its own investigation into the mysterious demise of the famous 16th century Danish astronomer.
Brahe, who was born in 1546, was on Monday removed from his resting place at the Church of Our Lady Before Tyn near Prague‘s Old Town Square. He has lain there since 1601 apart from an earlier exhumation in 1901 that retrieved samples of his moustache and hair.
via Danish astronomer’s remains exhumed to solve mystery of his death – Telegraph.
via Danish astronomer’s remains exhumed to solve mystery of his death – Telegraph.
31.248372
-85.375625
Image via Wikipedia
- A Civil War Timeline (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
31.248372
-85.375625
Image via Wikipedia 1864
Happy 235th Birthday, U.S. Marine Corps – TIME NewsFeed.
via Happy 235th Birthday, U.S. Marine Corps – TIME NewsFeed.
via Happy 235th Birthday, U.S. Marine Corps – TIME NewsFeed.
Before America established its footing as an independent nation, the unit defined as “The Few, The Proud” had already launched its quest to defend freedom.
Wednesday marks the 235th Birthday of the United States Marine Corps. The Marines’ history division reveals that the Nov. 10 date was formally commemorated in 1921 — 151 years after the Second Continental Congress raised two battalions of Continental Marines in 1775. That makes the Marine Corps nearly eight months older than America itself.
Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/11/10/happy-235th-birthday-u-s-marine-corps/#ixzz14y7IPCwU
31.248372
-85.375625
OPEN VOICES 