Unruly History in the News #70
Hey everyone,
As many of you saw me announce a few weeks ago, this is the weekend I was supposed to move to Edinburgh. For various reasons, I’ve decided not to, which means I’ll be sticking around in Los Angeles a little while longer. I’ll still be going back to school this fall in a different capacity, but it won’t include a stressful international move, which I’m very relieved about!
(By the way, if you live in Los Angeles, why aren’t you coming to the LA Substackers meet-ups?)
Mark your calendars: Season 4 of Unruly Figrues is starting September 10!
Without further ado, history acting unruly in the news…
J.D. Vance’s many weird, racist, and misogynistic comments are both aligned with and wildly misinterpreting a historical fiction movie he seems to have never really watched but endlessly refers to (Gangs of New York).
Archaeologists may have finally solved the Roanoke Island mystery.
Thanks to facial reconstruction, we can finally see the face of the Huarmey Queen, who was an elite noblewoman in Peru about 1,200 years ago.
A physical reconstruction of the Huarmey Queen. Photo by Oscar Nilsson. This facial reconstruction of Dawn, a teenager who lived around 9,000 years ago, is also really cool. (Unfortunately they made her scowl, and now all the articles about her are really about how surly teenagers are.)
Anyone who knows me in real life has probably heard me rail against the IQ test. Now I can just send them this story: The Dark History and Ongoing Ableist Legacy of the IQ Test.
And if you think our fears of AI are new, this 20th-century debate about computing will set you straight.
Greenland’s ice is melting. What does this tell us about the past—and future—of global climate change?
Solidified volcanic rock—pumice—has a million uses. Here are some of its historical ones.
In literary history…
The history of footnotes is both amusing and frustrating—it makes me want to write my own defense of footnotes.
Here’s to half a century of the Poetry Project.
What do you know about the early 20th-century moment when bookstores were the center of political movements?
The Faustian bargain, a deal with the devil: 400 years after Doctor Faustus premiered, what does the archetypical script of humans making deals with the devil mean in our modern world?
How the governesses of the early Victorian Era wrote to amuse themselves—and transgress social boundaries.
Puppet theatres: When Soviet Russia used a traditional artistic form to spread propaganda.
A 16th-century compass that may have belonged to Nicolas Copernicus himself was just unearthed in Poland.
Speaking of Poland, excavations underneath Wilanów Palace have revealed secret tunnels linked to Freemason rituals and—potentially—a lost catacomb.
How did citrus come to embody French colonialism in Algeria?
Nature Morte Aux Citrons, 1918 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir Don’t eat this: Archaeologists may have found the world’s oldest cheese in a tomb in Egypt. The mix of cow’s milk and sheep’s or goat’s milk is 3,200 years old.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the Tomb of Cerberus had been found. Now scientists have found a 2,000-year-old corpse and some grave goods inside. Interestingly, they did not just pop the sarcophagus open—they used a tiny camera to look inside first.
Meanwhile, an Englishman has just revealed the 90-million-year-old ichthyosaurus fossil that his family found and then buried in their backyard in Somerset to protect their religious beliefs.
I'd love to come again to the next LA substack meetup - when's the next one?