Unruly History in the News #72
Hey everyone,
Totally forgot to hit send on this in the morning, so sorry that it’s a bit late! Either way, I’m excited to bring you this week’s roundup! There is a lot of good stuff in here. Enjoy!
Don’t forget, the new season of Unruly Figures is starting on September 10
This week, in history acting unruly in the news…
Think you know where your favorite food comes from? Don’t be so sure—many foods have a more global history than most realize.
Apparently Ganymede took one for the team—that is, an asteroid 20 times the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs struck Jupiter’s largest moon and knocked it off its axis. Thanks, friend.
In things that puzzled us but don’t anymore:
This 1300-year-old strip of wood found in Japan has been puzzling experts for over 20 years. Turns out it was part of a multiplication table.
Archaeologists in India have been debating whether or not there was shipyard from 2500 BCE hiding at Lothal, in India. The archaeological site is about 20 miles inland from the coast today, but a new study has shown not only how “the region’s hydrography shaped ancient trade and cultural interactions” but gave more weight to dreams of ancient shipyards.
In things that still puzzle us: Why were the Paleolithic Lascaux cave painters obsessed with horses? They account for nearly 60% of identifiable animals at the site, but weren’t domesticated for at least 10,000 years after the paintings were made.
Domesticating horses hugely impacted human society, by the way. New science suggests where that might have first happened.
Remarkably, this 1,100-year-old lidded vessel found in Scotland back in 2014 came to Scotland all the way from the Sasanian Empire (modern Iran). The piece was part of the Galloway Hoard but always stood out as visibly different from teh other Viking artifacts.
Fascinating: How Louis Braille invented a system of reading and writing for the Blind after being disappointed by the educational options available to him as a student at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth.
In unearthings:
In Gerstetten, Germany, archaeologists have unexpectedly found a rare Alemannic grave from 4th century CE right in the city center. In addition the rarity of the grave itself, it also contained a remarkably well-preserved hair comb (below), a few high-quality vessels, and the body of a 60-year-old man who probably had a high status in Alemannic society.
This beautiful small comb has nearly all of its teeth and its handle more or less intact. Photo credit: ArchaeoBW / State Office for Monument Preservation in the Stuttgart Regional Council Speaking of amazingly intact: Miners accidentally unearthed a mummified wooly rhino in Siberia. Not only is the extinct animal’s horn intact, but so is some of the soft tissue, opening a new arena of research into the animal that is barely understood and hardly remembered.
Researchers in Iceland have unearthed a rare Viking-Era artifact: A small figurine that was probably a toy for a child. Now the debate rages around what animal the figurine depicts: dog, bear, pig, or something else.
A 1700-year-old ringstone depicting the goddess Athena was unearthed in Assos, Turkey. The artifact might have been used as a seal, though the exact use is unclear.
In Turkey, a “talismanic grave tablet” has been found in Silifke Castle. Archaeologists currently believe that it was made to protect either the building or some tombs from evil.
In general, droughts are bad. But one in Greece just revealed a sunken village that had disappeared under a man-made reservoir in the 1970s.
The pun in this title is too good not to copy in full: Who were the women who forged Medieval England?
This storyteller has spent 3 years retracing Mao Zedong’s footsteps across China.
A team of archaeologists have just found a submerged stone bridge. Dating it shed more light on the colonization of the western Mediterranean thousands of years ago.
In sunken ship drama…
In Southeast Asia, thousands of sunken warships from WWII are becoming some of the most challenging heritage sites in the world due to unexploded ordnance, ongoing political/diplomatic issues, and the human remains that have been left there alone for decades.
Last month news broke that part of the Titanic’s iconic railing had collapsed. Since the wreck was discovered in 1985 we’ve been watching the iconic ship disintegrate. It’s raising all sorts of questions about how we conserve sites like this.
And off the coast of Scotland, the HMS Hawke was just found after 110 years. The ship was sunk by a German u-boat in October 1914; one of the early losses of World War II. The wreck still awaits formal identification by the Royal Navy, but the finders reports that its in excellent condition (other than having been sunk).
Speaking of damage—the 1700-year-old Arch of Constantine in Rome was hit by lightning. The strike dislodged fragments of marble. (Honestly I’m sort of relieved that we’ve got some natural damage and not tourism-related damage.)
Outdoor lighting is a pretty new phenomenon, on the scale of human existence. For most of history, darkness was total. How is having 24/7 light impacting us?
Relatedly, a rare metal Pictish ring has been found in Scotland. This is an extremely exciting find because the Picts left behind no (known) written records, so we can only learn about them through material artefacts.
Retired engineer John Ralph was volunteering on the dig when he found the ring. Image credit: University of Aberdeen. The rebellion of enslaved people on the island of St. John (part of the US Virgin Islands) had been all but completely forgotten by history. Now the story is finally getting its due despite hundreds of years of efforts to erase it.
After being stolen in a 1979 heist, this double portrait of Flemish artists Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony van Dyck turned up at an auction house in France in 2020. Chatworth House worked with Art Loss Register to get the painting back—and the consigners who found it in their parents’ attic in Toulon swear that the house was occupied briefly by squatters in 1979. The painting will go on view in Edinburgh next month for anyone interested.
Speaking of missing paintings found in attics, a painting attributed to Rembrandt was just found in a house in Maine. Portrait of a Girl was apparently loaned to the Philadelphia Museum of Art back in 1970, but hasn’t been seen sinced. It just fetched $1.41 million at auction; that number is expected to soar astronomically once the painting is authenticated.
Construction workers renovating Smithsonian Castle have uncovered a forgotten cistern beneath the National Mall. It was built to collect rain water, but for unknown reasons was sealed empty. Let the conspiracy theories begin! (If we don’t get a National Treasure sequel thanks to this, then what is Nicholas Cage even doing?)
Speaking of celebs: 100 years of celebrity political endorsements.
This carved figure of a running wild donkey is giving me big Bojack Horseman vibes. He was found in southeast Turkey.
Carved wild donkey running in southeast Turkey. Image credit: Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism. These five gold coins marking the Emperor Justinians’s reign have been found in Bulgaria. Interestingly, they’re centuries older than the Medieval house they were found in, suggesting that whoever built the house might have found them during building and preserved them in their own act of historical conservation. The gold used for them makes them extremely valuable, so it would have made sense to sell them or simply melt them down instead.
I know summer is winding down in some parts of the Northern Hemisphere, but did you know that beachwear actually paved the way for women wearing pants in the US?
This is pretty cool: How a team of scientists and artists brought Gnatalie back to life. I can’t wait to see her at the Natural History Museum.
