"The Archivists Who Rediscovered 700 Years of Irish History"
I am continually saddened when I hear about groups of people losing sizable portions of their history. When, in 2018, Brazil suffered a massive fire in one of their museums etc. Or when I think about the lost history of ancient civilizations such as the Mayans and others. So, this story showing how they have been able to recover and find information thought to be lost is wonderful.
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"African kings on medieval and Renaissance maps"
One of the questions that we consider in our current Gold exhibition is ‘where did the gold come from?’ In medieval Europe, natural deposits of gold were limited so most gold had to be either recycled by melting down older objects or imported by long-distance trade. From the 8th to 16th centuries, the kingdoms of West Africa were major suppliers and traders of gold, which was carried by camel caravans across the Sahara Desert to North Africa. From there, the gold travelled with merchants into the Middle East and Europe. Some of it ended up illuminating manuscripts thousands of miles away.
Medieval Europeans had little reliable information about West Africa, but they did know that it was an abundant source of gold. One account that made it all the way to medieval Europe was of the phenomenally wealthy Mansa Musa (r. 1312 to 1337), emperor of Mali, whose empire covered an area larger than Western Europe. In 1324 Mansa Musa made a pilgrimage to Mecca, bringing so much gold with him that it devalued the price of gold in Egypt, where he stopped on the way, for years afterwards. He is sometimes said to have been the richest person in history. In Europe, tales of this gold-drenched ruler made such an impression that he was portrayed on luxurious illustrated maps from the 14th to 16th centuries.
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Cory Doctorow discusses money, debt, what they are, and why governments are not the same budgetarily as individuals or businesses
Even though I had read Debt: The First 5,000 Years on which the start of the entry is based, the post goes into other areas I understood but did not have as clear a way of explaining. He then turns to Crypto and why seeing it as a form of money is bad.
This article is quite good, definitely worth a read!
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"The Sanaa Palimpsest: A truly fascinating Quranic manuscript"
First, a reminder (for some) on what a 'palimpsest' is:
a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.
So it's when you write something, then the paper gets reused and simething new is written over it.
The most unusual feature of the Sanaa manuscript is that both texts – the original and the newer, superimposed text – are fragments of the same text, the Quran, and were separated by several decades apart.
According to tradition, the canonical Quran is an irreproachable record of the words revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by God in the mid-seventh century CE. In which case, the obvious question is why the original underlying text was erased only to be replaced a few decades later.
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Is it true that Vikings let women handle their finances because they thought it was witchcraft?
Another great post in the /r/AskHistorians subreddit, this one comes from 2018. I went looking for this answer after seeing a Tumblr screenshot on another social network which dubiously claimed the core of the linked thread's title.
The author starts out explaining why it is believed that women handled the money in viking cultures, before giving the following answer:
Witchcraft or seiðr wasn't solely associated with women, although some sorts of things that we would consider 'magic' were considered feminine. (Admittedly, 'magic' isn't quite the right word since 'magic' often suggests superstition or illusion.) I've seen no reason to assume that math was considered magic or a particularly feminine form of magic. Instead, scales and weights for measuring silver are often found in apparently male graves. So the reason you can't find proof that women and witchcraft and math and finances all went together as a regular thing ... is probably because there's no proof to find.
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She Spent a Decade Writing Fake Russian History. Wikipedia Just Noticed
Essentially the worst case scenario that makes Professors proclaim Wikipedia an unfit source for school.
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Science Fiction Is a Luddite Literature
Cory Doctorow (futurist and author) dives in on the large misconception when people think of Luddites. Below was a highlighted passage on Medium and it's just, exactly the issue we deal with today. Capitalism drives greed and rewards the haves and not the have-nots.
Instead, the owners of the factories — whose fortunes had been built on the labor of textile workers — chose to employ fewer workers, working the same long hours as before, at a lower rate than before, and pocketed the substantial savings.
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The Magic of Alleyways
Ever since ancient Uruk, the world’s first major city, founded around 4000 BC in what is now Iraq, alleys have served as a borderland between private and public life. Uruk’s covered lanes, no more than eight feet wide, offered respite from the sun when residents walked to the temple, as well as a space to escape from tiny windowless homes. A place to meet and make mischief, tucked away from the plazas where power and privilege reigned, these were sites where urban ideals collided with human desire.
That would never change. Even as the back alley shifted form and function, inspiring local variants in every urban culture—the “castra” alleyways in Roman fortress towns, the hutongs of Beijing, the terraced lanes of Istanbul with howling packs of dogs—it stayed the city’s unofficial social laboratory. The lower and middle classes of early modern Seoul defied a rigid caste system in narrow Pimagol: “Avoid-Horse-Streets” where nobles couldn’t ride. The alley coffeehouses of 17th century London fueled a newly democratic culture of ideas—a space, as poet and satirist Samuel Butler observed, where “gentleman, mechanic, lord and scoundrel mix, and are all of a piece.”
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A look at very early computer games for business simulation
A fascinating look at some of the very early (1950s) mainframe computer games used for execs and college students to study business models.
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The Shinto Temple in Ise
A fascinating insight into a Shinto tradition I wasn't aware of. Every 20 years for the past 1,400 years, they have rebuilt this Shinto temple.
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Smithsonian to give back its entire collection of Benin bronzes
As museums everywhere wrestle with what to do about artworks of questionable provenance in their possession, the Smithsonian is leading by example by agreeing to return its collection of Benin Kingdom Court Style artworks to their homeland in Nigeria.
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A two hour interview with a Holocaust Survivor
Found via this tweet that ended up in my timeline, this is an important and fascinating two hour interview with Joseph Mandelbaum, who survived multiple concentration camps.
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An old photo of a very large BBS
This is a big flashback for me. I was only on the tale end of BBSs as a kid. I only remember ever using one BBS, and that was one dad used for work. A local PC part wholesaler ran a BBS to allow customers to log in and place orders, etc. Otherwise mine was the world of MUDs and IRC.
The machines they show look very much like machines I grew up using and working on for my dad.
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I ask any American, what happened in 1492. They will tell me, 'well Columbus sailed in 1492' and that is correct, he did, but that is not the only thing that happened in 1492. In 1492, England and France signed a peace treaty. In 1492 the Borgias took over the Papacy. In 1492 Lorenzo de Medici, the richest man in the world, died. Okay. A lot of things happened. If there had been newspapers in 1492, which there weren't, but if it had, those would have been the headlines. Not this Italian weaver's son taking a bunch of ships and sailing off to nowhere.
Okay, but, Columbus is what we remember. Not the Borgias taking over the papacy. Okay? Well, 500 years from now, people are not going to remember which faction came out on top in Iraq. Or Syria. Or whatever. And who was in and who was out. And, you know... but, they will remember what we do to make their civilization possible.Okay? So this is the most important thing we could do.
The entire clip from Dr. Zubrin's talk is worthwhile, but I especially love the above segment. I haven't fact checked him or anything he said, I don't know if those things did happen in 1492. I have no reason to not believe him, but it's the Internet so giving a bit of warning. But his answer on why going to Mars is so important is just excellent.
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U.K. And Ireland Celebrate 50 Years Since 'Decimal Day'
Before Feb. 15, 1971, Britain's currency was 12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound — or 240 pence to a pound.
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Elizebeth Friedman was the First Female Cryptanalyst
There is a serious need for us to give this woman a movie, given that she was forced to live in the shadow of those who took credit for her work until 2008. I can't wait to check out the PBS documentary, and the book it is based on.
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Story of Smokey the Bear
"Only you can prevent forest fires" - Smokey is based on a real bear cub who was rescued from a wildfire.
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Tibetan Book of Proportions for how to draw or display Budda
The Tibetan Book of Proportions is an eighteenth century manual that gives precise iconometric guidelines for depicting the Buddha and Bodhisattva figures
The Tibetan Book of Proportions is an eighteenth century manual that gives precise iconometric guidelines for depicting the Buddha and Bodhisattva figures. A standardized grid with numerical notations is used for both marking the measurements of the figures and for arranging the posture of the figures within a composition. Written in Newari script with Tibetan numerals, the book is likely to have been produced in Nepal for use in Tibet. It is presently held by the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.
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Georgian Language and History with Thomas Wier and Dr Timothy Blauvelt
An absolutely wonderful look at the Georgian culture. Other than knowing that Tblisi is the capital of Georgia, I know nothing else about the country and culture, and so this article was fascinating to read.
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Only 29 silent Indian films remain of over 1,300
I'm ashamed to admit how extreme my America-centrist view is in regards to film, I had never really considered the silent film era of other cultures and countries. A very interesting read about a very sad loss of creative art creations.
At 85, Virchand Dharamsey should be leading the retired life, but he is hard at work, digging deep for the hidden and unknown.
For the past few years, the Mumbai-based researcher has been writing a book tentatively titled Archaeology of Early Indian Cinema with Iyesha Geeth Abbas, a colleague from Kerala. Covering the period between 1895 and 1945, the project is as noble as it is challenging, given the shortage of reliable information on the earliest years of Indian cinema.
Just over 1,300 silent movies were made in India in the first three decades of the last century. By 1931, India had produced its first sound film, Alam Ara, and by 1934, the "talkies" had taken over the screens. But only 29 of the silent films made in India survive.
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