The History Blog

Although you might think so from the name. The Trypilians were a Stone Age people who lived in what is now Ukraine from 5400–2700 B.C. Apparently they created the largest settlements in the world (that we know of), only to burn them down and fade away.

The Royal Ontario Museum is putting on an exhibit of Trypilian artifacts on loan from the Ukrainian government.

Highly sophisticated, the Trypilians were both farmers and hunters. Their ability to adapt to different terrain led to their prosperity, and soon they had the largest population growth of any other Neolithic people. They built the largest settlements in Europe at that time, some with an estimated population of 10-15,000 people. Every 60 to 80 years, they burned some settlements to the ground and moved to settle another location.

In 1896, Ukrainian archaeologist Vikenty Khvoika discovered one of these settlements near the village of Trypillia. The artifacts he uncovered were instrumental in reconstructing the daily lives of this prehistoric civilization.

Many of those artifacts are among the 300 on display in the exhibit. Star Trek-sounding civilizations I’ve never heard of are definitely worth a trip to ROM, imo.

Happy New Year, all!

Thank you for reading, and for staying with me through my shameful breaks. All in all, I have to say I’m pretty psyched I managed to write fairly reliably over the last year, especially considering my supershameful false start way back in ’06.

My resolution this year is to move from fairly reliable to straight-up reliable. I’m also thinking of doing a little more actual reportage, like contacting sources if at all possible.

I’ve gotten a couple of stories wrong by just passing along information from the article, and only found out that there were inaccuracies when one of the principles happened across this blog and commented, most notably in the awesome rostrum story.

I don’t want to overreach, though. My attempts to contact sources thus far have failed more than they’ve succeeded. If I manage to post daily with maybe a planned week off here and there, I’ll be a happy camper.

How about y’all? Would you like to see anything particular from this blog in the new year? More/fewer stories on a particular subject area, structural changes, style changes, anything at all?

Researchers have found just short of 2 pounds of kind bud in a tomb in China’s Xinjiang province. The cannabis has been carbon dated and is 2,700 years old.

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

The extremely dry conditions and alkaline soil acted as preservatives, allowing a team of scientists to carefully analyze the stash, which still looked green though it had lost its distinctive odour.

This is the earliest weed found in good enough condition and enough quantities to test thoroughly, and it’s also the earliest researchers can confirm was used for its psychotropic properties rather than for more practical hempen usages.

Out of the 500 Gushi tombs, only two have marijuana in them, so either it was exclusively the domain of shamans or administered under their supervision.

There were no smoking implements in the tomb, so researchers could not determine whether the marjuana was ingested or smoked in some other way.

My theory: ancient Chinese apple bong.

I came across an article today that pissed me off so much I actually bothered to register and comment: Genuine antiquities are surprisingly affordable.

Plasma TVs from the back of some guy’s van are surprisingly affordable too. Know why? BECAUSE THEY’RE FRIKKIN STOLEN.

I mean, just look at this quote.

I know it sounds unbelievable that it is possible to pay as little as $200 for a small Egyptian station (954-853 B.C.) or a Neolithic painted pottery jar c. 2000 B.C. or a free blown amber marbled glass flask c. 1st century A.D. for $1,000/$2,000.

Surprisingly the answer is because they aren’t very rare. According to Bill Gage, in the expert department of James Julia Auctions, they turn up regularly at auction. “They are still digging it up and it was untouched for 2,000 years.”

They are still digging it up. There. Right there. Who the hell does Anne Gilbert The Antique Detective think is doing that digging? Can ya maybe detect that every major antiquities-exporting country has LAWS against “digging it up” and selling it for a bargoon to Indiana Jones manqué IT professionals in the greater Chicago area?

Now watch this drive:

If you are still interested check before buying for historical significance, authentic age and good condition. Study museum collections and ask questions.

Historical significance, age and condition. Not a single word in the entire article about history of ownership. No need for buyers to care in the least if they’re supporting grave robbers, drug cartels and terrorists.

So here’s what I said in my comment:

I’m dismayed by your complete lack of acknowledgment that recently surfaced antiques (“They are still digging it up and it was untouched for 2,000 years.”) are most likely looted, stolen by highly destructive grave robbers and trafficked by criminal networks including a vast panoply of terrorists, drug dealers and all manner of criminals.

The market in Apullian red figure vases in particular is notoriously comprised of goods ripped from the ground of central Italy since 1970 in contravention of Italian law and the 1970 UNESCO convention.

To not even mention provenance or ownership history as something potential buyers should care about is deeply irresponsible. That sort of look-the-other-way attitude is why Shelby White, the Getty Museum, the Met and a myriad other collectors and institutions have been forced to return the stolen goods they so gleefully purchased with the reckless encouragement of people like you.

I had links in there but evidentally they don’t allow HTML in comments.

What do you think? Was I too nice?

Archaeologists digging west of Stonehenge have found a child buried with a chalk hedgehog figurine. The child was buried about 3000 years ago.

Archaeologists who discovered the grave, where the child was laying on his or her side, believe the toy – perhaps placed there by a doting father – is the earliest known depiction of a hedgehog in British history. [...]

Dr Joshua Pollard, of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, said: ‘Representational art from this period is very rare and so far as I’m aware, if the identification is correct, it’s the only known prehistoric depiction of a hedgehog from Britain.’

Hmm… Not quite seeing the hedgehog there. It does remind me of a Zuni animal fetish, though.

In February I posted about a beautiful 13th c. illuminated scroll of coat of arms, the earliest surviving English heraldic manuscript, which Sotheby’s had auctioned overseas.

The culture minister had put a temporary export block on it hoping to give a local institution time to scrape up the funds for purchase, and it worked. The British Library is now the proud owner of the Dering Roll.

The British Library received a £100,000 National Heritage Memorial Fund grant, £40,000 from The Art Fund and £10,000 each from the Friends of the National Libraries and Friends of the British Library to help buy the item.

Yay for the good guys winning! The Dering Roll is already on display in the British Library. I’d love to see it. The pictures clearly don’t do it justice.

I don’t know why this Russian brain research facility was abandoned, but they were in some kind of rush. Look at the wealth of creepiness they left behind.

There’s no information I could find on the web about the exact name and location of this facility. This site claims it was a secret Red Army lab closed under Gorbachev.

That awesome picture of him sans birthmark underneath a jar of brains supports the claim that the research ended along with the Soviet system.

How great is it that they just left the place as is, specimens floating bloatedly in yellow fluid and perched on boxes of what look like chocolate covered hazelnuts?

Click here for more cool pictures of Russian urban decay from the same photographer.

It might be a part of a 6th c. monastery, and it’s not just an olive press but rather the remains of a huge olive pressing operation destroyed — but also in a way preserved — by fire.

Three screw-type press beds and a stone weight that was originally connected to the end of a beam were revealed at the site. Alongside the press beds collecting vats, settling pits and other pools that were used to separate the oil from the watery lees (the non-oily liquid that is also expressed from the olives) were exposed.

Two stone containers that were used to store the oil were exposed next to the oil production installations. The containers had a combined capacity of approximately 20,000 liters, and have mosaic floors and are treated with plaster. The top of the wall that separates the two containers was paved with a mosaic, part of which is adorned with a geometric decoration and part bears an inscription that has not yet been deciphered.

This very formidable and rare olive press and the inscription on the mosaic floor suggest that the complex was not built at the initiative of a local individual.

That would lend credence to the monastery theory. Check out the bird’s eye view architecture of this place:

The circle in the middle is the crushing mill. Beasts of burden would be tied to it, the stone would turn and grind up the olives into mush.

This time it’s the X-Files donating a bunch of geegaws to the The National Museum of American History in anticipation of the upcoming movie sequel to the original tundra crapfest.

During a special ceremony today, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History received a collection of objects from “The X-Files,” the television series and movie franchise. Twentieth Century Fox together with Chris Carter, series and film writer, director and producer, and Frank Spotnitz, series and film director and producer, presented an annotated script from the series’ pilot episode, FBI badges, posters and other objects to the museum’s entertainment collections.

I’m afraid the collection of objects doesn’t look terribly impressive:

A scale model of the original Enterprise it ain’t.

Do you know how I come up with entry-worthy stories for this here wee bloggeh? Every day I check 4 or 5 news sites that I’ve found to have a good range of archaeology/history themed news, but my the bulk of my finds come from a vast panoply of Google News Alerts that I have set up.

Every day, several times a day, Google News sends me a list of articles that have appeared using a certain keyword. I have about 10 or so keywords so I get piles of alerts often packed with irrelevancy but there are always some nuggets worth the panning.

Well, thanks to one Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr., some of my richest ore, the “archaeology” “archaeologist” family of keywords, has turned pyrite. Every single story is about that damn movie! It’s Indiana Jones is a horrible archaeologist here and Indiana Jones makes archaeology look sexy there, like, 10 times a day.

It’s not just the journalists, either. Archaeological society and university department/club press releases read like the pink, heart-shaped diaries of a bobby soxer.

I can’t takes it no more!11 I might have to boycott the movie to protest the hell the Lucas/Spielberg publicity machine has put me through. Or at least delay watching it until the furore dies down.

Oh okay, I’ll probably see it this weekend, let’s be honest, but I’ll be totally frikkin grumpy about it!