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sean

@DilettanteryPod

16 Jul

Did you know that the invention and spread of writing in Ancient Mesopotamia and the surrounding areas coincided with, and perhaps caused, dramatic changes in the visual art of the region? 🧵

By the time writing appeared, 3500–3300 B.C., visual art had existed in the area for millennia. In 2 Anatolian caves, engravings and carvings have been found dating to 15 000 BCE. Idk when the face is from, but it's also in one of those caves and too cool not to include.

We know of much more art from the Neolithic period.

Dated to 9000 BCE and afterwards, we have paintings, carvings, and statues spanning from 'Ain Ghazal in modern day Jordan

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sean

@DilettanteryPod

15 Jul

Kwakiutl canoe, sometime between 1907 and 1930

1914

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sean

@DilettanteryPod

14 Jul

The execution of Hugh Despenser the Younger, as depicted in the Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse (1470s)

Execution of Christian prisoners by Bayezid I after the Battle of Nicopol in 1396

The beheading of Olivier de Clisson

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sean

@DilettanteryPod

7 Jul

Wooden tablets found on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the 19th century, thought to display writing or proto-writing. Never deciphered, since the native Rapa Nui said they couldn't read them when asked by the 19th century Europeans.

The first European to notice them was Eugène Eyraud in 1864, a friar stationed on Rapa Nui to proselytize. He reported seeing hundreds of tablets, but 4 years later, a French priest tried to recover as many as possible, and could only find a few.

Their disappearance might be explained by reports of the native Rapa Nui's apparent disinterest in their survival. This is perhaps connected to European-introduced diseases to the island and the brutal Peruvian slave trade. These might have killed all the literate Rapa Nui.

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sean

@DilettanteryPod

27 Jun

Time for another art/perception thread that's gonna go...all over the place.

In societies filled with photography, movies, tv, phone cameras, and many other technologies, we don't often think of how weird it is to see a three-dimensional image on a two-dimensional surface.🧵

In 1895, the British formed what they called the East Africa Protectorate, taking it over from the Imperial British East Africa Company because they went bankrupt. In 1920, it became the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya.

There was lots of brutality. Whites were given 999 year leases on land, effectively creating a white monopoly on land use. Native Kenyans were forced to work the land. Floggings were common. We'll never know everything because of Operation Legacy.

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sean

@DilettanteryPod

24 Jun

The words "psyche," "spirit," "animal/animate," all come from ancient greek roots that also meant wind/air/breath - in many cultures, the air and the wind are understood to be something alive
(excerpt from Owen Barfield)

The ancient Hebrew word "ruach" means both spirit and wind - it's interesting to read the first line of the Hebrew bible with that in mind: “When God began to create heaven and earth - the earth being unformed and void,

with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind [ruach] from God sweeping over the water...”

Later, God blows into adam's nostrils to give him life

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