February 2010 – Page 2 – The History Blog

Human seafaring 100,000 years earlier than thought

February 23, 2010

Ancient, Treasures

A dramatic find of stone tools dating to at least 130,000 years ago on the island of Crete has revolutionized assumptions about how long humans have been navigating the seas.

Crete has been surrounded by sea for five million years or so, and no human species evolved independently on the island, so the tools found there have to have been wielded by people who got there by crossing the water.

Many researchers have hypothesized that the early humans of this time period were not capable of devising boats or navigating across open water. But the new discoveries hint that these human ancestors were capable of much more sophisticated behavior than their relatively simple stone tools would suggest.

“I was flabbergasted,” said Boston University archaeologist and stone-tool expert Curtis Runnels. “The idea of finding tools from this very early time period on Crete was about as believable as finding an iPod in King Tut’s tomb.”

Archaeologists went to Crete expecting to find stone tools from 11,000 years or so ago, but instead found stone axes hewn from local quartz that looked much like tools carved by our ancestors — possibly Homo heidelbergensis — in Africa and Europe 175,000 years ago.

They combed the island and found over 30 more of the hand axes, plus some other stone tools from the same time frame at 9 different locations on the coast. As time had moved what were once beaches up from the shore into what are now terraces, the tools moved with them.

Geologists date the earliest of these hand axe-having terraces to 130,000 years ago. The youngest is at least 45,000 years old.

The number, ages and locations of the tools suggest that these weren’t the remnants of the occasional lost-at-sea-clinging-to-a-log castaway. For people to get to Crete repeatedly over a hundred thousand years or so, they had to make a point of it.

Maps of the coastal shelves suggest that even when the Mediterranean reached its lowest known point, plummeting some 440 feet (144 meters) below current sea level, people leaving from Turkey or Greece would have had to make three separate water crossings ranging from 12 to 24 miles (19 to 39 kilometers) each to reach Crete. If, on the other hand, the seafarers departed from Africa, they would have voyaged over 125 miles (200 kilometers) of open water.

“The fact that we have several hundred stone tools in nine different locations suggests that a large enough number of people came in order to sustain the populations and leave a visible archaeological trace,” Runnels said. “That means they didn’t just raft over once.”

This assumes the artifacts are in fact hand axes and that they have been dated correctly, of course. Other archaeologists urge caution in accepting the new data until we have some confirmation, like for instance a Cretan site where the axes might have been produced and duplicated radiocarbon dating results.

Superman sells for record-breaking $1,000,000

February 22, 2010

Modern(ish), Treasures

Last year an Action Comics #1, the first Superman comic, published June 1938, sold at an online auction for a cool $317,200. That was the most expensive copy ever sold up until that point.

Today another sale of Action Comics #1 has blown away all previous records not just for Superman, but for any comic ever sold. A private collector who wishes to remain anonymous bought it from another anonymous private collector for one million dollars.

The reason it went for so much is that it’s in Very Fine condition, an 8.0 on a ten point scale. The Action Comics #1 that sold last year was graded a 6.0. Out of the hundred #1s known, there are only 2 graded 8.0 and this is one of them, so it’s the rarest of the rare.

He said that the seller was a “well-known individual” in New York with a pedigree collection, and that the buyer was a known customer who had previously bought an Action Comics No 1.

“The opportunity to buy an un-restored, high-grade Action One comes along once every two decades. It’s certainly a milestone,” said [comic expert and inventor of the grading scale] Mr [Stephen] Fishler.

He added: “It is still a little stunning to see a comic book and $1m in the same sentence.”

So the buyer has at least a million and a half bucks in 2 editions of a single comic book. The mind boggles.

Mr. Fishler had actually sold this same copy to the current seller 15 years ago for $150,000. The astonishing appreciation is due to the sheer rarity of the issue, its condition and how infrequently the piece comes on the market.

As ComicConnect.com co-owner and COO, Vincent Zurzolo points out, “High-grade copies are rarely, rarely offered for sale. When they do come on the market, you can expect to see a big leap in value.”

Medieval abbot lived it up in a bachelor pad

February 21, 2010

Medieval, Treasures

While monks were living in monastic poverty in the deeply in debt Cistercian monastery of Duiske Abbey, their abbots lived the high life in a sweet little town house in 20 miles away in Kilkenny.

An Archaeological dig on the grounds of Rothe House, an early 17th c. merchant’s home, has turned up evidence of an earlier home inhabited by a succession of Duiske Abbey abbots. It was an elegant abode for the era, complete with a garderobe, a 14th c. toilet.

A garderobe was a small room built on to the outside wall of the upper floor of a medieval house. The toilet mechanism consisted of a hole in the ground surrounded by a wooden seat. Waste travelled down through a chute into a stone-built cess-pit in the garden.

Kitchen waste would also have been disposed of via the chute.

Among the finds made by the team were bones from swans and various choice cuts of beef; fragments of pottery wine jugs imported from Bordeaux; and “an intact stool” in which a fruit stone – possibly apricot – is embedded.

They also found a belt buckle in amidst the rarified flesh and foul. Perhaps it fell in hole while the abbot was at trying to pass that apricot pit.

While the abbot enjoyed the best the time had to offer, the monastery spent the centuries since its founding in 1204 scrounging for cash. Already by the end of the 13th c. speculation on the wool crop had left the monastery’s affairs deeply in debt to the Riccardi bankers of Lucca, money lenders to Edward I, aka the Longshanks of Braveheart fame. Lucky for the monastery, then, that the French crown confiscated the Riccardi bank’s assets when Edward went to war against France right at that time.

The days of swans and Bordeaux came to abrupt end when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and distributed their property to his supporters. Duiske Abbey was suppressed in 1536 and last abbot, Charles O’Cavanagh, was forced to resign. After that the monastery passed to the Earl of Ormond and the abbey church became the local parish church, which is remains to this day although most of the medieval structure is long gone.

Bosworth site, spot where Richard died confirmed

February 20, 2010

Medieval, Treasures

Archaeologists confirmed yesterday that they have not only found the place where the forces of Lancaster and York made their last stand at the Battle of Bosworth, but also the exact spot where Richard III lost his horse and was killed thus becoming the last English monarch to die in battle.

Battlefields Trust archaeologist Glenn Foard first announced the find last October, but to keep the site safe from looters he refrained from identifying the precise location. Yesterday Foard and the Leicestershire County Council announced that the Battle of Bosworth took place on what is today farmer Alf Oliver’s winter wheat field on both sides of Fen Lane, the old Roman road that linked the towns of Leicester and Atherstone.

One of the crucial finds, the largest of the cannonballs nicknamed “the holy grapefruit” by the archaeologists, was found just behind one of Oliver’s barns. Another key discovery was a silver boar no bigger than a thumbnail, battered but still snarling in rage after 500 years. It was found on the edge of a field still called Fen Hole, which in medieval times was a marsh that played a crucial role in the battle, protecting the flank of Henry Tudor’s much smaller army. The marsh was drained centuries ago, but Oliver said it still gets boggy in very wet summers.

After a charge in which Richard came within almost a sword’s reach of Henry, he lost his horse in the marsh, a moment immortalised in the despairing cry Shakespeare bestowed upon him: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

“The fact that this little boar is Richard’s personal emblem, and made in silver gilt, means that it can only have been given to one of the closest members of his retinue. The man who wore this would have fought and died at Richard’s side,” Foard said.

Richard had other boars made for his supporters, but they were made from base metals like lead. There is only other such silver boar known, and it’s in the British Museum.

The tiny 1.5-inch boar was found by Carl Dawson, a retired university lecturer and one of the many volunteers who have helped scan hundreds of miles in the area with metal detectors. Other finds made on the site include piles of cannonballs and musketballs, a ring of twisted gold and a fragment of gilded sword hilt.

And what of the visitor’s center the Leicestershire County Council built almost 2 miles away on Albion Hill complete with giant stone monument marking the putative spot of Richard’s death? The Albion Hill was in all likelihood still part of Bosworth history, probably as Richard’s camp on the eve of battle and as a thruway for his fleeing troops after the battle was lost.

Here’s a BBC video of the snow-covered battlefield site and the silver boar, and a nifty article focusing on farmer Alf Oliver’s perspective.

Ancient Rome & America

February 19, 2010

Ancient, Modern(ish), Museums

That’s the title of an exhibit opening today at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Created in partnership with Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage & Activities and Contemporanea Progetti of Florence, this exhibit traces the connections between the myths, ideals, culture, government, military of the nascent US republic and the Roman Republic.

Three hundred Ancient Roman and post-Revolutionary artifacts illustrate how much the founding of America owes to Rome, culturally and politically. There are items in the exhibit that I’ve never seen — like a bronze eagle from a standard of the Roman legions — and I grew up in Rome.

The new republic (from res publica, literally “public thing” or “public affair”) was a dangerous undertaking, Winterer says, and all parties knew it. “They examined Rome and its history as if it were a cadaver at an autopsy,” she says. “And they examined it closely. They asked: ‘What worked? What should we do? What mistakes should we avoid?’ ”

Grey says that “the founders deliberately appropriated images, themes and language from Rome to build up their self-image.” People had their portraits painted in Roman dress. They aspired to the dignity and grandeur of the world’s most famous republic.

This is why you find so many delicious anachronisms in D.C. like a statue of George Washington half nekkid in a toga.

That cultural bond with ancient Rome continued for the first century of the United States’ life. Roman style informed US architecture, school curriculums, statuary, even the government itself with its elected representatives and a strong but revolving executive.

These links to Rome are so ubiquitous they’ve almost become white noise. The aim of this exhibit is to renew consciousness of the Roman roots of our Republic.

The exhibit is divided into three parts (like all of Gaul!). The first section is “Building a Republic” and looks at the beginnings of both the Roman and the American republics. Roman artifacts are displayed along with early (and even some contemporary) US artifacts, like Roman gladiator helmet juxtoposed with a helmet worn by Philadelphia Eagles receiver Harold Carmichael.

Harold Charmichael, receiver, Philadelphia Eagles

The second section, “A Classical Revival,” presents Roman arts and culture through Pompeiian artifacts and how they influenced American arts and culture. The third section is called “Expansion and Empire” and displays artifacts from the post-Republican empire that Rome became, comparing its growth to that of the United States from the original 13 colonies to the Manifest Destiny expansion across the continent.

The Constitution Center’s website has a nice overview of the exhibit. They call it a walkthrough but it’s not as comprehensive as the name suggests. Still, it gives a tantalizing glimpse into the artifacts on display.

Here’s a quick YouTube about the 18th and 19th century American affinity for ancient Rome by Stanford associate professor of history Caroline Winterer who helped craft the exhibit.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/fov-7k_SFkE&w=430]