The History Blog

Researchers at the University of Provence have found that people living in areas that were once part of the Roman Empire are less likely to have a gene variant that protects from HIV.

In countries inside the borders of the empire for longer periods, such as Spain, Italy and Greece, the frequency of the CCR5-delta32 gene, which offers some protection against HIV, is between 0% and 6%.

Countries at the fringe of the empire, such as Germany, and modern England, the rate is between 8% and 11.8%, while in countries never conquered by Rome, the rate is greater than this.

However, the researchers do not believe that the genetic difference is due to Roman soldiers or officials breeding within the local population – history suggests this was not particularly widespread, and that invading and occupying armies could have been drawn not just from Italy but from other parts of the empire.

Instead, they say that the Romans may have introduced an unknown disease to which people with the CCR5-Delta32 variant were particularly susceptible.

It might just be a correlation. Other researchers think the difference in frequency of this gene variant may be related to the spread of other diseases like the Bubonic Plague.

If people without the gene were more susceptible to die from the plague or whatever other nasties, say, then the gene would be more frequent among the survivors in the hardest hit areas.

I read in another article that the pattern doesn’t match the plague map as well as it does the Empire, though.

Alternative theories include the idea that the protective variant originated in Scandinavia, and was spread north and east by the Vikings. But the pattern of Viking migration does not match the current distribution of the variant. Another theory is that a major disease, such as plague or smallpox, created a selection pressure on the gene variant which increased its frequency. But its distribution does not match that of disease outbreaks, either.

The epigonion is the harp-like instrument you’ve seen on a million Grecian vases. (Not the little lyre; the huge 40-stringed beast.)

They stopped being made centuries ago, but we do have some fragments of medieval epigonions and some descriptions in the historical record.

Using those clues and computer modeling technology, researchers at the Ancient Instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application (ASTRA) have recreated the dulcet tones of the epigonion.

The physical modelling sound synthesis technique aims in fact to use a set of equations and algorithms that describe the physical materials used in the ancient instruments to generate physical source of sound. In other words, the basic idea is to recreate a model of the musical instrument and produce the sound by simulating its behaviour as a mechanical system.

For example, to model the sound of a drum, there would be a formula for how striking the drumhead injects energy into a two dimensional membrane. Thereafter the properties of the membrane (mass density, stiffness, etc.), its coupling with the resonance of the cylindrical body of the drum, and the conditions at its boundaries (a rigid termination to the drum’s body) would describe its movement over time and thus its generation of sound.

It actually sounds pretty damn good. I thought it would be more midi/computery sounding, but if I didn’t know it was virtually produced I wouldn’t have guessed.

For more music played on digitally-recreated historical instruments including Bach fugues complete with string profiles, see ASTRA’s download page.

Her name is Johanka and she’s 7000 years old. Archaeologists digging in the southern Czech Republic uncovered her in the same area they found another similar statuette lest summer.

The woman’s statue found in the area last summer was given the name “Hedvika of Masovice,” while “her sister” is called Johanka, “according to the female names in the calendar on the days when the artifacts were found, head of the archaeological research Zdenek Cizmar said.

“Though the statues come from the same period, each of them is different and exceptional,” Cizmar said.

They’re most like fertility symbols, although Johanka’s boobies seem to me a bit small for that job.

Srsly, Gumby’s mom, am I right?

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.

The vaunted Shelby White and Leon Levy collection has gotten a little smaller again. Earlier this year Shelby White returned nine looted artifacts to Italy.

Now it’s Greece’s turn to get a little of its own back.

The upper part of a marble funerary stele and a bronze krater, or large cup, dated to the 5th and 4th century BCE, were returned by collector Shelby White in August under a deal in which Greece pledged not to legally pursue the matter, it said.

“The culture ministry recognises that the antiquities were acquired by Ms White in good faith, and for this reason…no demands will be raised against (her),” a ministry statement said.

But Greece reserves its legal rights over other potential claims regarding items in White’s collection, it added.

Good call, because odds are there are a lot more goodies where these two came from. The Italians did the same thing, btw: allow Shelby White to claim “good faith” so she won’t get prosecuted like Marion True, former curator of the Getty Museum and regular receiver of stolen goods.

It’s a fig leaf. White and Levy knew full well they were buying shady shit from shady people. They just looked the other way like the Getty and the Met did.

For more information translated from the full Greek press release, see David Gill’s entry here.

… and put up a parking lot under the beautiful and historic Roman Hill known as il Pincio.

The new mayor of Rome opposes the plan on account of it sucks so hard I can barely describe the depths of its suckery, but the building has already begun and penalty fees to stop it now could soar into the $70 million range.

Pincio remains one of the most beautiful corners of Rome, home to the Villa Medici, where Galileo was imprisoned during his trials, and boasting great views across to St Peter’s and beyond. But if plans backed by Mayor Alemanno’s predecessor, Walter Veltroni, go ahead, Pincio will became a huge building site as diggers tear the guts out of the hill and replace them with a seven-floor underground car park with spaces for more than 700 vehicles.

The idea is that, after the dust settles, Pincio will look much as it does today. But that view was contested by Giorgio Muratore, a professor of architecture and one of a group of wise men appointed by the mayor of Rome to advise on the project. In an open letter he said, “This project is a monstrosity. That’s all there is to it. There are no possible compromises.”

One of the most grievous losses, he said, would be that of the panoramic piazza on the hill’s flat top, “a large part of which would be redefined merely as the roof” of the car park, with “large ventilator wells, extensive grilles, access stairs and emergency exits”. Tourists, instead of “enjoying one of the most enchanting panoramas on the planet,” would “walk among air vents fixed on the roof of a gigantic car park”.

I’m so mad right now I could spit. I spent hours in that park. It’s one of the most beautiful spots in Rome with one of the most beautiful views.

This idea blows goats. The notion that 700 measly parking spaces will alleviate the problem of parking in the Piazza del Popolo area is risible. It won’t do shit.

Oh! Oh! And there’s already a huge parking lot less than 500 feet from the Pincio, and it’s so underused they’ve recently sold part of it to turn it into a gym.

Hopefully the national government will step in. For sure they will find amazing Roman ruins while digging, and that should stop the work.

One of my favorite authors of all time, Roald Dahl, was a spy attached to the British embassy in D.C. for a while during World War II.

I can’t quite gather what his official assignment was, but he apparently cut a swath through the grand dames of Washington society, and his superiors liked it like that.

Drawing on previously unpublished letters and other documents, American journalist Jennet Conant has written about Dahl’s numerous sexual conquests.

They include Millicent Rogers, the heiress to a Standard Oil fortune, and Clare Boothe Luce, a right-wing congresswoman and the wife of the publisher of Time magazine.

Boothe Luce proved so frisky, Dahl later claimed to have begged his superiors to take him off the assignment, only to be told to get back into the bedroom. [...]

Antoinette Marsh Haskell, the daughter of Marsh, explained that with Dahl’s status came a string of women.

She said: “Girls just fell at Roald’s feet.

“I think he slept with everybody on the east and west coasts that [was worth] more than $50,000 a year.”

Another biographer actually described him as “one of the biggest cocksmen in America”. Roald Dahl. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. James and the Giant Peach.

Oh shit. Now every title of his oeuvre sounds kinky to me.

It was a huge fire that ravaged the Fylingdales Moor in North Yorkshire for six days, burning 2.5 square miles and pealing away thousands of years of vegetation to the bedrock.

Underneath the blanket of peat, it turns out, was a wealth of rock art and bronze age boundary stones.

“We have always known that this part of the world is very rich in prehistoric remains,” said Graham Lee, senior archaeological conservation officer for the national park. “But the sheer number of new finds exposed by the fire is the most exciting development in archaeology in my experience.” The rock art list for the site, part of a vast moor also used by the RAF’s Fylingdales satellite tracking and early warning station, has grown to almost three times its previous size, with more than 100 sets of mysterious lines, cups and circles discovered since the fire.

“One of the very rare features exposed by the removal of the entire plant and soil covering is a set of defined borders to the areas cultivated in the bronze age,” said Lee.

They’ve also found flint tools, 18th c. drainage tunnels, and most recently, shell craters from WWII artillery practice.

Nice that there’s an upside to environmental disaster, especially since there’s no way archaeologists could ever even approach excavating such a massive area, even if they were allowed to despoil the natural beauty of the area.