Art History Mystery

2,000-year-old stone anchor offers clues to Indo-Arab trade

2012-05-22T00:39:00.000-07:00

Scientists of the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) have found an Indo-Arabic stone anchor off the Kutch coast in Gujarat that offers significant clues to the Indo-Arabic and Indo-Persian trade of the first and second century B.C. It was found at a depth of more than 50 metres. The find has been published in the May issue of scientific journal "Current Science". "Ancient stone anchors serve to understand maritime contacts of India with other parts of the world... Arabs and Persians sailed the Indian Ocean and used the type of anchors under study since the 9th century. Indo-Arabian type stone anchors have been reported from the western Indian Ocean countries, namely east Africa, India, Persian Gulf countries and Sri lanka, suggesting close maritime contacts and trade relations among these countries. "The ports in the Gulf of Kachchh have contributed significantly to maritime trade since ancient times, and such trade was extensive between Gujarat and the Arab world even during the medieval period," the study reported. The antique broke into two pieces while being retrieved. "While the anchor was being retrieved, it fell from the dredger and broke into two pieces along a fracture plane that developed 70 cm below the upper circular hole," the study reported. Sila Tripathi, a marine archaeologist at the NIO who studied the anchor said more studies needed to be done to determine the exact source of the rock material. Tripathi said it was most likely of Indian origin. "More studies need to be done to know where it came from, which includes studying the nature of rock along the entire Western Indian coastline to find a match," he said. "Further comparative studies of epiclastic rocks from these areas are required to verify whether the stone anchor reported in this study could have been made from one of these rocks. An earlier study showed that stone anchors recovery from Indian waters are made of rocks found along the Indian coast. "As there are no associated finds along with the stone anchor in the present study, it is difficult to determine the exact age. However, on the basis of comparative analysis, similar type of Indo-Arabian-type of stone anchors have been dated between 9th and 17th century AD in the Indian waters," Tripathi said in his paper. The anchor stone is composed of quartz and feldspar grains floating in a ferruginous matrix. "No anchors have been reported so far from the northern coast of the Gulf of Kachchh. Further, the stone anchors reported from Gujarat or elsewhere in India are primarily from ports and harbour sites, sheltered bays and shipwreck sites. The anchor reported in this study has been found in none of the above described contexts. Very little is known about the finding of stone anchors in waters deeper than 20 m along the Indian Coast. "Recovery of a stone anchor from deeper water is a unique find where the seabed is thickly sedimented especially like the Gulf of Kachchh. This is the first stone anchor that has been found in the northern part of the Gulf of Kachchh at a depth greater than 50 m," the study reported. Maritime archaeological exploration in India has brought out a variety of stone anchors from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Kerala and Lakshadweep on the west coast, and Tamil Nadu and Odisha along the east coast. In recent years, 16 stone anchors consisting of Indo-Arabian, ring stone and single-hole types were discovered from Goa and Gujarat waters.

'Red Deer Cave people' may be new species of human

2012-03-27T04:37:00.001-07:00

(Source: The Gurdian)
The fossilised remains of stone age people recovered from two caves in south west China may belong to a new species of human that survived until around the dawn of agriculture.

The partial skulls and other bone fragments, which are from at least four individuals and are between 14,300 and 11,500 years old, have an extraordinary mix of primitive and modern anatomical features that stunned the researchers who found them.

Named the Red Deer Cave people, after their apparent penchant for home-cooked venison, they are the most recent human remains found anywhere in the world that do not closely resemble modern humans.

The individuals differ from modern humans in their jutting jaws, large molar teeth, prominent brows, thick skulls, flat faces and broad noses. Their brains were of average size by ice age standards.

"They could be a new evolutionary line or a previously unknown modern human population that arrived early from Africa and failed to contribute genetically to living east Asians," said Darren Curnoe, who led the research team at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

"While finely balanced, I think the evidence is slightly weighted towards the Red Deer Cave people representing a new evolutionary line. First, their skulls are anatomically unique. They look very different to all modern humans, whether alive today or in Africa 150,000 years ago," Curnoe told the Guardian.

"Second, the very fact they persisted until almost 11,000 years ago, when we know that very modern looking people lived at the same time immediately to the east and south, suggests they must have been isolated from them. We might infer from this isolation that they either didn't interbreed or did so in a limited way."

One partial skeleton, with much of the skull and teeth, and some rib and limb bones, was recovered from Longlin cave in Guangxi province. More than 30 bones, including at least three partial skulls, two lower jaws and some teeth, ribs and limb fragments, were unearthed at nearby Maludong, or Red Deer Cave, near the city of Mengzi in Yunnan province.

At Maludong, fossil hunters also found remnants of various mammals, all of them species still around today, except for giant red deer, the remains of which were found in abundance. "They clearly had a taste for venison, with evidence they cooked these large deer in the cave," Curnoe said.

The findings are reported in the journal PLoS ONE.

The stone age bones are particularly important because scientists have few human fossils from Asia that are well described and reliably dated, making the story of the peopling of Asia hopelessly vague. The latest findings point to a far more complex picture of human evolution than was previously thought.

"The discovery of the Red Deer Cave people shows just how complicated and interesting human evolutionary history was in Asia right at the end of the ice age. We had multiple populations living in the area, probably representing different evolutionary lines: the Red Deer Cave people on the East Asian continent, Homo floresiensis, or the 'Hobbit', on the island of Flores in Indonesia, and modern humans widely dispersed from northeast Asia to Australia. This paints an amazing picture of diversity, one we had no clue about until this last decade," Curnoe said.

Much of Asia was also occupied by Neanderthals and another group of archaic humans called the Denisovans. Scientists learned of the Denisovans after recovering a fossilised little finger from the Denisova cave in the Altai mountains of southern Siberia in 2010.

The fossils from Longlin cave were found in 1979 by a geologist prospecting in the area. At the time, researchers removed only the lower jaw and a few fragments of rib and limb bones from the cave wall. The rest of the skeleton was left encased in a block of rock, which sat in the basement of the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Kunming, Yunnan, for 30 years. The fossils were rediscovered in 2009 by Ji Xueping, a researcher at the institute, who teamed up with Curnoe to examine the remains.

"It was clear from what we could see that the remains were very primitive and likely to be scientifically important. We had a skilled technician remove the bones from the rock, and they were glued back together. Only then was it clear what we had found: a partial skeleton with a very unusual anatomy," Curnoe said.

The fossils at Maludong were found in 1989 but went unstudied until 2008.

Lumps of charcoal uncovered alongside the Longlin fossils were carbon dated to 11,500 years, a time when modern humans in southern China began to make pottery for food storage and to gather wild rice in some of the first steps towards full-scale farming.

Marta Mirazón Lahr, an evolutionary biologist at Cambridge University, is convinced the remains are from modern humans. The unusual features, she said, suggest the Red Deer Cave people are either "late descendants of an early population of modern humans in Asia" or a very small population that developed the traits through a process known as genetic drift.

Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum, London, was similarly sceptical.

"The human remains from the Longlin Cave and Maludong are very important, particularly because we do not have much well-described and well-dated material from the late Pleistocene of China.

"The fossils are unlike recent populations of modern humans in several respects, and the mosaic of more archaic features could indicate the dispersal of a poorly known and more primitive form of modern human that left Africa before the main exodus at about 60,000 years. This dispersal could have reached as far as China, surviving there for many millennia, before disappearing in the last 12,000 years."

But he added: "There might be another possible explanation for the more archaic features. Could these alternatively be attributed to gene flow from a more archaic population that survived alongside modern humans? In the case of the Longlin Cave and Maludong fossils, the most likely candidate would be the enigmatic Denisovans who apparently interbred with the ancestors of modern Australasians somewhere in south east Asia. Could these Chinese fossils be further evidence of such hybridisation?"

Britain secret file says massive UFO spotted

2010-08-06T00:49:00.000-07:00

A spaceship that was "20 times the size of a football field" was spotted hovering over Britain's Manchester airport nearly 15 years back, says a secret defence ministry file that was released today.

The huge spacecraft was seen by a UFO expert in 1995 and its sketch was sent to the defence ministry, The Sun reported today, citing the secret files.

The UFO was described as oblong with a curved front and a series of small nozzles at the rear.

That's not the only UFO sighting.

A "cigar-shaped" object was seen over Lancashire in 1977 and a "strange, glowing object" was spotted near RAF Woodbridge, Suffolk, in 1980.

In 1998, a circular "space station" was seen in Gwent, South Wales.

"A proportion of sightings could not be explained," Nick Pope, who worked on the files, was quoted as saying.

2009-10-07T00:15:00.000-07:00

A high-tech hunt for a lost Leonardo

Expert Uses Lasers, Neutrons To Uncover Da Vinci’s Largest Masterpiece, Hidden Inside A Wall

John Tierney

Florence, Italy: If you believe, as Maurizio Seracini does, that Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest painting is hidden inside a wall in Florence’s city hall, then there are two essential techniques for finding it.

First, concentrate on scientific gadgetry. After spotting what seemed to be a clue to Leonardo’s painting left by another 16th-century artist, Seracini led experts in mapping every millimeter of the wall with lasers, radar, ultraviolet light and infrared cameras. Once they identified the place, they developed devices to detect the painting by firing neutrons into the wall.

Seracini was standing in the Palazzo Vecchio’s grand ceremonial chamber, the Hall of 500, which was the center of Renaissance politics when Leonardo and Michelangelo were commissioned to adorn it with murals of Florentine military victories. In 2009, it remained the political hub, as evidenced by the sudden appearance of Florence’s new mayor Matteo Renzi.

The scientific lecture ceased as Seracini moved quickly to intercept the mayoral entourage. He was eager to use the second essential strategy for retrieving a Leonardo painting in Florence: find the right patron.

Seracini, an engineering professor at the University of California, San Diego, had spent years in bureaucratic limbo waiting to try his neutron-beam technique, but he saw this new mayor as his best hope yet.

The quest had begun more than three decades earlier. In 1975, after studying engineering in the US, Seracini returned to his native Florence and surveyed the Hall of 500. He was looking for “The Battle of Anghiari”, the largest painting Leonardo ever undertook (three times the width of “The Last Supper”). Although it was never completed, he left a central scene of clashing soldiers and horses that was hailed as an unprecedented study of anatomy and motion.

Then it vanished. During the remodeling of the hall in 1563, the architect and painter Giorgio Vasari covered the walls with frescoes of military victories by the Medicis.

But in 1975, when Seracini studied one of Vasari’s battle scenes, he noticed a tiny flag with “Cerca Trova”: essentially, seek and ye shall find. Was this Vasari’s signal that something was hidden underneath?

The technology of the 1970s did not provide much of an answer. In 2000 he returned to the hall with new technology.

The new analysis showed that the spot painted by Leonardo was right at the “Cerca Trova” clue. The even better news, obtained from radar scanning, was that Vasari had not plastered his work directly on top of Leonardo’s. He had erected new brick walls to hold his murals.

But how could anyone today know what lay behind the fresco and the bricks? Seracini was suggested to send beams of neutrons through the fresco.

One device can detect the neutrons that bounce back after colliding with hydrogen atoms, which abound in the organic materials (like linseed oil and resin) used by Leonardo. The other device can detect the gamma rays produced by collisions of neutrons with the atoms of different chemical elements. The goal is to locate the sulfur in Leonardo’s ground layer.

Developing this technology was difficult, but not as big a challenge as getting permission to use it. Once he gets permission, Seracini hopes to complete the analysis within a year. If he is right, then perhaps Vasari did Leonardo a favor by covering up the painting — and taking care to leave that cryptic little flag above the trove. NYT NEWS SERVICE

Once Lush Sahara Dried Up Over Millennia, Study Says

2008-05-09T00:59:00.000-07:00

The grassy prehistoric Sahara turned into Earth's largest hot desert more slowly than previously thought, a new report says—and some say global warming may turn the desert green once again.

The new research is based on deposits from a unique desert lake in remote northern Chad.

Lake Yoa, sustained by prehistoric groundwater, has survived for millennia despite constant drought and searing heat.

The body of water contains an unbroken climate record going back at least 6,000 years, said study lead author Stefan Kröpelin of the Institute of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Cologne in Germany.

Ancient pollen, insects, algae, and other fossil clues preserved in the lake's sediments point to a gradual transformation to a desert environment.

Sahara Myth

The study contradicts past research that suggested the region dried up within a few hundred years. That research was based on windblown Saharan dust found in Atlantic Ocean sediments.

"This was a hypothesis used by most of the modelers and many of the scientific community who were not working themselves in the Sahara," Kröpelin said.

"To a large degree we can now show that such an abrupt drying out of the Sahara was a myth," he said.

The new study, which appears tomorrow in the journal Science, instead found evidence for a slow decline in tropical plants, followed by the gradual loss of savanna-type grasslands, and then the eventual spread of desert species.

Pollen samples revealed, for example, that the decrease in tropical trees accelerated after 4,800 years ago, while desert plants took root between 3,900 and 3,100 years ago.

Sand particles in the lake show that fierce desert winds didn't start picking up until about 3,700 years ago, the study found.

The only rapid change noted was in the lake itself, which switched from a freshwater to a salt lake between 4,200 and 3,900 years ago.

The transformation happened exactly in the time period when monsoon rains began moving away to the south, Kröpelin said.

This meant there was no longer surface water flowing in to counter salinity caused by evaporating water.

The study supports previous archaeological findings that human populations in the Sahara moved south over several millennia, following the monsoon rains, Kröpelin said.

First Reliable Record

About 20 feet (6 meters) of water evaporate from the lake every year, which is equivalent to the annual water consumption of about a million people, Kropelin noted.

"No team had ever succeeded in getting geological and paleoclimate information for the past 4,000 years since practically all the lakes had dried up, so there were no more geological archives available," he said.

The Lake Yoa data represent the first "reliable and high-resolution record" in the Sahara for verifying climate models, he added.

Such checks are important, he argues, "because if climate computer models don't work for the past, they probably won't work for the future."

Understanding climatic effects in the Sahara are especially important, since the region covers an area larger than the United States, Kröpelin said.

"Climate evolution in the Sahara reflects to a very large extent climate evolution on the African continent and beyond," he added.

Jonathan Holmes, of the Environmental Change Centre at University College London, was not involved in the study.

He wrote an accompanying commentary on Kröpelin's research in the same issue of Science.

The latest findings fill "an important gap in our understanding of the past 6,000 years of North African climate," he wrote in the article.

The study provides a more accurate picture of climate change in the region since the last ice age, because the "record comes from one of the few Saharan lakes in which sediments have accumulated without a break."

Similar lakes "probably do not exist," according to Holmes.

"However, improving existing geological records and using these to refine climate models would go a long way toward furthering our understanding," he wrote.

Modern Climate Change

Future research at Lake Yoa should provide clues to a potential regreening of the Sahara, triggered by the current trend of global warming, according to Kröpelin.

"I'm expecting reliable information on this possible trend," he said.

The last green phase, which started some 12,000 years ago, may be due to increased water evaporation from oceans. This led to monsoon rains that penetrated the interiors of tropical continents, he said.

"Now, today, man is probably causing the same thing," he said.

Kröpelin, who has studied the region for almost 30 years, said that since 1988 "there [has been] a strong indication [of] a return of increasing rains" in the eastern Sahara.

Already in some areas "you can see slight changes in the vegetation," he said.

Study confirms ancient Chile settlement is 14,000 years old

2008-05-09T00:48:00.001-07:00

Scientists have confirmed that the famed Monte Verde archaeological site in southern Chile is about 14,000 years old, making it the earliest known human settlement in the Americas, the journal Science reported Thursday.

The age of Monte Verde has been the subject of controversy over the years, since estimates appeared to conflict with other archaeological evidence related to the settlement of North America.

The new findings support not only the age of the Monte Verde site, but also the coastal migration theory currently ascribed to by most scholars, which hypothesizes that people first entered the New World through the Bering land bridge more than 16,000 years ago.

The study, based on the first data compiled about the Monte Verde site in about a decade, identified nine species of seaweed and marine algae used as food by the settlement's inhabitants.

Carbon dating put the age of the seaweed samples at between 13,980 and 14,220 years old, confirming that the site was occupied some 1,000 years earlier than any other known human settlements in the Americas. The study appears in the May 9 issue of Science.

Discovered in 1976, Monte Verde is located in a peat bog about 500 miles (800 kilometers) south of Santiago, Chile.

Researchers say it could have supported between 20 to 30 people in a dozen huts along a small creek.

A wide variety of food has been found at the site, including extinct species of llama and an elephant-like animal called a gomphothere, shellfish, vegetables and nuts.

85,000-year-old finery recovered in Moroccan cave

2008-05-09T00:39:00.000-07:00

Archaeologists have uncovered shells used for finery by prehistoric communities 85,000 years ago in a cave in eastern Morocco, the country's heritage institute said Tuesday.

A research team, led by archaeology and heritage institute (INSAP) member Abdel-Jalil Bouzouggar and Oxford University's Nick Barton, found the 20 perforated shells in a cave near Taforalt between March and April this year.

According to a statement from the Moroccan Ministry for Culture, the shells are the type prehistoric people would have worn. In 2007, Bouzouggar and Barton discovered 14 perforated shells in the same cave.

"This discovery shows that the making and use of objects of finery is very anchored in the traditions of Morocco's prehistoric people," said Bouzouggar, in whose opinion the country is the original center of artistic and symbolic creation.

Objects of finery discovered in Morocco are "now considered to be even more ancient than those discovered in Algeria, South Africa and in Palestine," said the Culture Ministry. Known as the "cave of pigeons," the 30-meter-deep, 10-meter high cave is situated 50 kilometers from Morocco's Mediterranean coast.

Neanderthals were separate species, new study finds

2008-05-09T00:32:00.000-07:00

A new, simplified family tree of humanity has dealt a blow to those who contend that the enigmatic hominids known as Neanderthals intermingled with our forebears.

Neanderthals were a separate species to Homo sapiens, as anatomically modern humans are known, rather than offshoots of the same species, the new organigram published Sunday by the journal Nature declares.

The method, invented by evolutionary analysts in Argentina, marks a break with the conventional technique by which anthropologists chart the twists and turns of the human odyssey.

That technique typically divides the genus Homo into various classifications according to the shape of key facial features -- "flat-faced," "protruding-faced" and so on.

Reconciling these diverse classifications from a tiny number of specimens spanning millions of years has led to lots of claims and counter-claims, as well as much confusion in the general public, about how we came to be here.

Various species of Homo have been put up for the crown of being our direct ancestor, only to find themselves dismissed by critics as failed branches of the Homo tree.

The authors of the new study, led by Rolando Gonzalez-Jose at the Patagonian National Centre at Puerto Madryn, Argentina, say the problem with the conventional method is that, under evolution, facial traits do not appear out of the blue but result from continuous change.

So the arrival of a specimen that has some relatively minor change of feature as compared to others should not be automatically held up as representing a new species, they argue.

The team goes back over the same well-known set of specimens, but uses a different approach to analyse it, focussing in particular on a set of fundamental yet long-term changes in skull shape.

They took digital 3D images of the casts of 17 hominid specimens as well as from a gorilla, chimpanzee and H. sapiens.

The images were then crunched through a computer model to compare four fundamental variables -- the skull's roundness and base, the protrusion of the jaw, and facial retraction, which is the position of the face relative to the cranial base.

When other phylotogenic techniques are used, the outcome is a family tree whose main lines closely mirror existing ones but offers a clearer view as to how the evolutionary path unfolded.

The paper suggests that, after evolving from the hominid Australopithecus afarensis, the first member of Homo, H. habilis, arose between 1.5 and 2.1 million years ago.

We are direct linear descendants of H. habilis. H. sapiens started to show up around 200,000 years ago.

None of the species currently assigned to Homo are discarded, though.

On the other hand, the Neanderthals are declared "chronological variants inside a single biological heritage," in other words, evolutionary cousins but still a separate species from us.

The squat, low-browed Neanderthals lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East for around 170,000 but traces of them disappear some 28,000 years ago, their last known refuge being Gibraltar.

Why they died out is a matter of furious debate, because they co-existed alongside anatomically modern man.

Some opinions aver that the Neanderthals were slowly wiped out by the smarter H. sapiens in the competition for resources.

Other contend that we and the Neanderthals were more than just kissing cousins. Interbreeding took place, which explains why the Neanderthal line died out, but implies that we could have Neanderthal inheritage in our genome today, goes this theory.

The Mysterious Ram Setu

2007-10-12T04:31:00.000-07:00

The space images taken by NASA reveal a mysterious ancient bridge in the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka. This recently discovered bridge currently named as Adam's Bridge, made of chain of shoals, is 30 km long. This information is a crucial because it supports the mysterious legend called Ramayana, which was supposed to have taken place in "Tredha Yuga" (according to Hindu mythology more than 1,700,000 years ago). The legends as well as Archeological studies reveal that the first signs of human inhabitants in Sri Lanka date back to the a primitive age, about 1,750,000 years ago and the bridge's age is also almost equivalent.

585 New Marine Species in the dark water of the Antarctica

2007-05-22T00:40:00.000-07:00

Carnivorous Sponges, 585 new species of crustaceans and hundreds of new worms are discovered by scientists in the dark water of the Antarctica. This discovery have given scientists a new light about the evolution of marine species and how they can adapt to changes in climate and environment. Among the new creatures, the scientists have found a gourd-shaped carnivorus sponge called Chondrocladia, free swimming-worms and 674 species of isopod of which 585 species had never been seen before. The unique species tend to be the kind that do not spread easily , which sggests the deep, cold southern oceans may have been the source of many types of marine life.

Treasure of the 'Pirates of the Atlantic' : The Richest Sunken Treasure Ever Discovered :Worth USD 500 Million!

2007-05-22T00:39:00.000-07:00

Odyssey Marine, a marine exploration company, has struck gold- the biggest shipwreck treasure in history worth estimated USD 500 million. The find contains over 500,000 pieces from the Colonial Era, and each piece is estimated to bring $1000 from collectors. "I don't know of anything equal or comparable to it.", said Nick Bruyer, a coin expert who has seen coins found in the wreckage. He noted a range of varieties and dates of coins that are probably uncirculated.

The real life sunken treasure is discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, in a high traffic area where many colonial era vessels were believed to have been sunken. The site is near the English Channel, located about 40 miles off England's coastline. Because the shipwreck was found in a shipping lane where many colonial-era vessels went down, there is still some uncertainty about its nationality, size and age, although evidence points to a specific known shipwreck.

Calling the project "Black Swan," Odyssey isn't releasing details about the coins for security reasons. Nor they are talking about the types, denominations and country of origin of the coins. Till now (20.05.2007), they only indicated an announcement would be forthcoming. Court records indicate the coins might come from a 400-year-old ship found off England and the site of the ship is out of any country's territorial jurisdiction.

2700 Year-Old Piece of Fabric Found inside Funeral Urn of Unknown Ancient Greek

2007-05-11T05:01:00.000-07:00

It is only speculation whether or not the Trojan war really occurred as depicted by Homer in his epics, Iliad and Odyssey. We only know that a war did take place around a city that quite likely was Troy, that Troy was destroyed utterly. This war, however, is still regarded as the defining cultural moment in Greek history. In Iliad, the poet describes Slain Heroes being cremated in elaborate funerals, which fell out of fashion in later times. But with the latest discovery of rare 2700 year old piece of fabric along with dried pomegranates and charred human bones inside a funeral copper urn confirms that this tradition was popular even later. Archaeologists have discovered the artifacts from a burial they believe imitated the elaborate cremation of soldiers described in Homer's Iliad.

The Mystery Resolved; the Tomb of King Herod Found

2007-05-09T04:34:00.000-07:00

It has long been believed that King Herod, the legendary builder of ancient Jerusalem and the Holy Land, was buried somewhere in Herodium, a flattened hilltop in Judean Desert. Herod built two palaces on it, and decades of excavations had revealed a lot them but the tomb. Now, the tomb is found in between the two palaces by Ehud Netzer, a Hebrew University professor.

Herod became the ruler of the Holy Land under the Roman Empire in 40 BC. He built a wall around the old city Jerusalem which still stands, and he also ordered big construction projects in Caesaria, Jericho, the hilltop fortress of Massada which was occupied by Jewish rebels after the Jewish revolt in the first century. The rebels defended themselves from a Roman army for months. When it appeared that the Romans would finally conquer the fortress, hundreds of rebels committed suicide rather than be taken as prisoners by the conquering Romans. Although this fort is not mentioned in the Bible, it does give insight into the Roman military methods as well as the life of King Herod and his construction.

Herodium was one of the last strong points held by Jewish rebels fighting against the Romans, and the fort was destroyed by the Roman army in AD 71, a year after they destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

The 1st century historian Josephus Flavius described the tomb of King Herod who died in approximately 40 BC, and mentioned also about the funeral procession of the legendary king.

Oldest Proverbs In Paintings

2007-03-27T05:12:00.000-07:00

Painting on popular proverbs was one of the most interesting trends in the history of painting. These paintings remind us of some of our oldest proverbs. The famous painting ‘Netherlandish Proverbs’ (1599) by Pieter Bruegel, one of the greatest Netherlandish artists, is probably the best in this line. It includes some most popular proverbs of the Netherlands. Examples include “The sow removes the spigot”(to make a pig of oneself), “He butts his head against the wall”(to bang one’s head against a brick wall), “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch”, “He opens the door with his bottom”(he doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going”), “He who spills his gruel can’t pick it all up”(it’s no use crying over split milk), “He kills two flies with one blow”(to kill two birds with one stone), “They pull for the long piece”(to draw straws/pull the wishbone), “He throws money into the water”(to throw money down the drain), “He cannot reach from one loaf to the other”(He cannot make ends), “He doesn’t care whose house is burning as long as he can warm himself from the coals”(I’m all right Jack), “To poke a stick into the wheel”(to put a spoke in the wheel”, “He speaks out of two mouths”(to be two- faced), “One holds the distaff while the other spins”(it takes two to gossip) and many more. The painting ‘Netherlandish Proverbs’ depicts over 120 proverbs and sayings. The abstract activities of the villagers in the painting reflect the topsy-turvy nature of the world. The proverbs fall into two groups- those which show the absurdity of human behaviour, and those which demonstrate sinfulness (such as the woman wrapping a blue clock around her husband, symbolizing her adultery). Pieter Bruegel modeled this painting on a contemporary painting ‘The Blue Clock” by Frans Hogenberg. But Bruegel changed the abstract village setting into a realistic one. Moreover he increased the number of proverbs in his new painting from 40 to more than 100.

The Fighting Temeraire By Turner

2007-03-27T05:11:00.000-07:00

One summer evening in 1838, Joseph Turner, the famous British painter, was a passenger on a steamer chugging along the Thames from Margate to London. Standing along the rail, the painter watched the warship Temeraire. The 98 gun veteran warship was not an ordinary one. It had taken part in the Battle of Trafalgar, the battle in which two most powerful fleets in the world, Britannia and Bonaparte, had engaged to establish their supremacy in the sea. The British naval force had won the greatest battle in British naval history but at the cost of thousands of lives of British soldiers, and England's brightest son Vice Admiral Lord Nelson. The painter was impressed; patriotic sentiment aroused at the sight of the Temeraire. This was the warship which avenged the death of Nelson! Turner rapidly made a number of little sketches on card. In 1839, he exhibited the ‘Fighting Temeraire’ at the Royal Academy.From the day of its first exhibition, the ‘Fighting Temeraire’ has been Turner’s most popular painting. It exhibits Turner’s mingling of pictorial splendor with patriotic sentiment. The picture shows the Temeraire being towed up the Thames to a breaker’s yard. The ship in full sail in the background symbolizes the Temeraire’s own days of glory while the black buoy looming in the foreground suggests the finality of the Battle of Trafalgar, the melancholy journey. The silver white of the ship endows a ghostly majesty to it while the black tug symbolizes evil. The blazing sunset in the picture indicates an era coming to its end and bloodshed as well. In 1939, the Morning Chronicle described this painting as ‘the Sun of the Temeraire is setting in Glory’. The famous English novelist William Thackeray compared the effect of this picture with a performance of ‘God Save the Queen” to evoke enthusiasm of both public and critics.

Second To Mona Lisa’s Smile- The Cavalier’s Laughter

2007-03-27T05:09:00.000-07:00

Apart from the ‘Mona Lisa’ by Leonardo da Vinci, ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ is probably the most famous portrait in the world. This painting earned its fame at a much later period. It was painted in 1624 by Frans Hals, one of the greatest portraitists in the seventeenth century. Its familiar but the inaccurate title (the cavalier is smiling rather than laughing), now inseparable from the work, did not appear till 1888. The title was certainly a Victorian era invention. When the painting was acquired in 1865 by Richard Wallace’s father, it was called ‘Portrait of a Young Man’. However the young man in the painting is still unknown. There is no record available now. Nowhere Hals recorded his name. At the top right corner of the portrait it is inscribed "Æ'TA SVÆ 26/A°1624", which imply that the ‘young man’ was 26 in the year 1624 when Hals made his portrait. This portrait is spontaneous, and it reflects the brilliance of Hals as a portraitist. Like his other portraits, this ‘Laughing Cavalier’ shows his power in depicting smiles and laughter so convincingly. The sitters in his painting usually seem to enjoy life. This ‘Laughing Cavalier’ is certainly the best example. In the eighteenth century print, this painting fetched a modest price at auction. But in 1865 it was auctioned at 51000 francs, a mind boggling sum that heralded the great boom in the popularity of the painting. ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ is now in the Wallace Collection, London.

Duel Between Abraham Lincoln And the Gunfighter!

2007-03-27T05:07:00.000-07:00

Fortunately, the duel was won without shedding a drop of blood! Here the challenged was the legendary President Abraham Lincoln and the challenger was a renowned gunfighter. In a duel the challenged party had the privilege to choose the place and manner of the duel. Lincoln accepted the challenge, and his condition was- duel with broadswords in six feet of water. The challenger withdrew the challenge as Lincoln was 6 feet 4 inch. The wise President was the victor ,and later the foe became his friend.Another ‘real’ duel was between a General and, again, a Prime Minister. It was the duel between Floquet, the Prime Minister of the Republic of France, and the ex war Minister General Boulanger. In 1888 general Boulanger insulted the Prime Minister who responded with a challenge that led to a duel. Boulanger had choice of weapons and chose swords. Everyone thought that the General would be the winner. He was a soldier 10 years younger than his opponent and he had fought for his country in Italy, Indochina, Algeria, and the Franco-Prussian war. But to the surprise of all the ‘Brave General’ was fatally wounded in the throat. Floquet, the Prime Minister, was the victor. The British press were scathing about the duel, as dueling had been banned in England about half a century beforehand.In history, there are dozens of example of famous duels. Another among them is the duel between the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and Georges d’Anthes. The later was accused of cheating in this duel in which the poet was mortally wounded. Another famous duel was between Robert Lyon and John Wilson. This time it was a pistol duel in which the challenger Lyon was killed. There were also some unusual duels. In 1808 France, two duelists fought in balloons; in 1843 two duelists used billiard balls as their weapons; and some used even to use sledgehammers, howitzers, forkfuls of pig dung and other ridiculous weapons.

The Naked Maja

2007-03-26T21:43:00.000-07:00

Francisco de Goya, best known for his “The Naked Maja” and the “The Clothed Maja”, was the one of the greatest painters of all time. He was born in 1746 in Fuendetodos, a small village in western Spain. His beginnings as an artist were very slow. But soon the genius showed his capabilities as an artist. The first major breakthrough came when he was elected a member of the most reputed Madrid Academy. After Charles IV was crowned in 1789, goya became one of his court painters. It was a period of political unrest in Spain, chiefly due to the French invasion of Spain.Goya recorded the horror of the Napoleonic invasion in some of his famous paintings.The most famous painting of Goya are “The Naked Maja” and the “The Clothed Maja”. Like the “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci, these two paintings are the source of one of the most popular legends in the history of art. Most of the critics believes that these two paintings are of the widowed Duchess of Alba, a rich and powerful woman with whom Goya was on particularly close terms. This woman, who was 16 years younger than Goya, was famous for her capricious nature. Her late husband had been Goya’s patron. After his death, she retired with the artist to her estate in Andalusia. Here it has been supposed that, the Duchess of Alba posed for the erotic painting “The Naked Maja” (1800). The other painting “The Clothed Maja”, painted three years before (1797) the first one, also hints at the fact that Goya had a very close relationship with this woman.But Goya was not a relentless womanizer or a manic depressive as some of his critics view. Although he is best known for his “The Naked Maja” and the “The Clothed Maja”, and also for the pictures depicting the horror of the Napoleonic invasion, they do not fully reflect his character. Some other prominent works of Goya include Portrait of Mariana Waldstein, The Incantatio,Dona Teresa Sureda,The Colossus,Group on a Balcony.

Lilliputs Were Our Ancestors!

2007-03-26T21:29:00.000-07:00

Are we hoodwinked to believe that a new tiny Homo species roam the earth at the same time as that of our ancestors? With giant Dragons and pigmy elephants? Whatever more will be revealed in future about the “Little Lady of Flores” depends on future research and discovery. But now it is sure that we cannot throw away the kind of stories telling the mysterious existence of ‘Yeti’ or other human like species. The ‘Lady of Flores’ is the best example which proves such an Indonesian legend about Ebu Gogo, a three feet tall human like creature. Even in the 16th century, when the island of Flores was colonized by the Dutch, they repeatedly heard stories of ‘Little People’ having been seen in the jungle from the local tribes, but none of these rumors appear to have been proven.But now it is proved with the discovery of a new and unexpected species of human who lived in this planet 18000 years ago, which is regarded a very little time when we study human evolution. They were little more than 3 feet high, used fire, and hunted down fierce dragons, pigmy elephants and giant rats. Reads like a fairy tale! But the researchers of human evolution are now busy with these fairy tale elements after Dr Mike Morood and his colleagues has unearthed, in September 2004, the evidence of a distant and previously unknown relatives of ours. The story leads us to a remote island of Indonesia- Flores which lies towards the eastern end of the chain of islands that make up Indonesia. Some Australian and Indonesian researchers led by Dr Mike Morood discovered the bones of some miniature human in the cave of ‘Liang Bua’, situated in the heart of western end of the island. This new species is named Homo Floresiensis, after the island on which it was found. It is also dubbed by dig workers as ‘hobbit’, after the tiny creatures from the ‘Lord of the Rings’. The most remarkable among them is the near complete skull of a woman with her incomplete skeleton- the ‘Little Lady of Flores’ [also called LB1, named after the cave where it was found]. It is just 1meter [3.3feet] tall, weighed about 25 kilograms, and was of an adult aged around 30 at the time of her death. She had a grapefruit sized skull that is one third of a modern man. Found with her in the cave were bones of at least seven hobbit sized individuals and also faunal remains including fish, frog, snake, tortoise, birds and bats, giant rats, a giant carnivorous lizard, similar to but larger than Komodo dragons, and 17 tiny elephants called Stegodons that disappeared almost 40,000 years ago. What is interesting with this ‘Little Lady of Flores’ is the fact that she not only proves the existence of a new kind of human species totally unknown to us but also rewrites the history of human evolution indicating that these Homo Floresiensis lived in this planet with modern Homo sapiens just 18000 years ago, and that they are younger than the Homo neanderthalensis who disappeared 30000 years ago. Currently it is widely accepted that only two ‘hominin genuses’, Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis, co-existed before the later one vanished. But the carbon dating method and other dating methods like TL and ISRL reveal that the bones found in the cave of Liang Bua are only 18000 years old and thus prove that Homo sapiens shared the planet with other humans much more recently than previously believed. There are some other things that set anthropologists atwitter; when did these tiny people come to the remote island? Dr.Morood has failed to find any evidence that can prove that the Homo sapiens existed in the island before 11,000 years. But he has found some 80000 years old artifacts in Liang Bua that are very similar to those of Javanese Homo erectus. So it may be possible that the first hominid immigrants to Flores were about 80,000 years ago, and they came as Homo erectus, not as Homo Floresiensis. But that over the millennia, isolated on the island, their size decreased as a response to limited food supply or otherenvironmental causes.Thus we can find a cause behind the small size of the Homo Floresiensis. But problem arises when we look at their small brain of 380 cm³ which is very small compared to that of Homo sapiens (1000-1700 cm³), Homo neanderthalensis (1100-1140 cm³) and Homo erectus (750-1250 cm³).Those people with a body of a three year old modern child must be intelligent enough to hunt down giant dragons and pigmy elephants that weighed at least 1,000 kilograms. Even more surprising, these critters used fire. The blades, perforators, points and other cutting and chopping utensils, and the faunal remains of Komodo dragons and pigmy elephants found in Liang Bua prove both of the facts. How so much of intelligence is possible with such a small brain? The answer may lie in the fact that these Flores man carried a small brain that once used to be a big brain. A modern man who has suffered massive brain damage or undergone serious brain surgery often manages a normal life with only two thirds of the brain tissue working; then why not these Flores men?