After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.
21 subscribers
Jan 11 • 13 tweets • 8 min read
A new paper interpreting the East Anglian Anglo-Saxon site of Sutton Hoo and similar graves has hypothesised that the magnificent burials belonged to warriors who fought for the Byzantine Empire and returned home as heroes.
Let's take a look 🧵
The article, from the English Historical Review, proposed:
"it is likely that the men buried in the princely burials at Prittlewell and Sutton Hoo served as cavalry soldiers in the Foederati recruited by Tiberius in 575 in the wars with the Sasanians on the eastern front"
Dec 31, 2024 • 13 tweets • 7 min read
The 'Maharashtra Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice, other Inhuman and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act, 2013' is a piece of Indian legislation aimed at tackling the problem of religious human sacrifice and other similar activities 👇🧵
The specific clauses of the act cover a range of magical and religious acts that could lead to harm, death or manipulation - eg coercive sex or theft of money. The list is so specific you have to imagine each of these things has been reported before.
Nov 27, 2024 • 18 tweets • 8 min read
Neoliberalism is a very popular word in academia, but what is it supposed to mean and how is it actually used? Why is it deployed to explain everything from occultic organ harvesting circles to musical entrepreneurship? 🧵
Let us start with some definitions. Although heavily debated the definition of neoliberalism is supposed to be - the extension of the market to all parts of public life, a strong (but minimal?) state to facilitate this, and firm belief in individual agency.
Nov 16, 2024 • 19 tweets • 8 min read
In AD 256 a unit of Roman miners led a counterattack against their Sasanian besiegers at the city of Dura-Europos.
What happened next has been recorded in minute detail by archaeologists, and remains amongst the earliest and most horrifying uses of chemical weapons in war 🧵
The fortified city of Dura-Europos on the Syrian Euphrates had been founded by the Seleucids. After falling to the Parthians and then the Romans in AD 165, it became an important outpost and border fort, somewhere between a town and a military garrison.
Nov 14, 2024 • 19 tweets • 9 min read
In Oct 2012 a strange object was found whilst a canal was being drained in western Massachusetts. A cauldron - filled with railroad spikes, a knife, coins, herbs, a padlock and a human skull.
Welcome to the world of Palo Mayombe in America 🧵
Afro-syncretic religions in the Americas are plentiful, and include some well known examples like Santeria, Haitian Voodoo and Rastafari. These religions are a mix of native African and American beliefs, Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
Nov 12, 2024 • 14 tweets • 7 min read
In 2015 British officials travelled to Nigeria to help track down a witchdoctor who had used a juju magical oath to prevent trafficked girls in Britain from testifying against a smuggling gang.
Why did this happen? 🧵
The trafficking of young women and girls from Nigeria into Europe for the sex trade and cheap labour increased dramatically after the death of Gaddafi and Libya's descent into anarchy.
Nov 11, 2024 • 15 tweets • 7 min read
How do you legislate against a belief in witchcraft? If you genuinely believe your neighbour is trying to kill you with black magic, do you have the right to use violence against them?
Let's take a look at how the 'reasonable belief' test has been applied in Africa 🧵
First off, how many people are killed as suspected witches every year in Africa? That's hard to say, but some estimates from South Africa alone suggest many thousands.
Nov 10, 2024 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
Having examined the invasion and consolidation of the Argentine ant in California, in particular their control over the major port cities, we can now turn to their colonisation of the rest of the world through the exploitation of human-run shipping lanes.
For background details on World War Ant and the Argentine ant supercolony phenomenon start here:
The Argentine ant global set of supercolonies is one of the largest cooperative societies on earth, it is also one of the most aggressive. World war ant has been raging for over a century, from Japan to South Africa.
But where did it all begin? 🧵
Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) are about 2.5mm in size, native to Argentina, and considered an opportunistic, flexible and aggressive species. Within their native range their genetic diversity is wide and different colonies regularly fight each other.
Nov 8, 2024 • 12 tweets • 5 min read
"Each month millions of Argentine
ants die along battlefronts that extend for miles around San Diego, where clashes occur with three other colonies in wars that may have been going on since the species arrived in the state a
century ago"
Some notes on ant warfare 🧵
Many are aware that a world war between Argentine ant supercolonies is currently underway, across multiple continents, and against multiple ant 'nations'.
Nov 4, 2024 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
The story of Pakistan's nuclear research and defence programmes perfectly illustrates the battle for science against 'djinnthink' or religious superstition. A struggle between Nobel prize winning physicists and men who believed in acquiring electricity from the spirit world. 🧵
Although post-war Pakistan was not initially interested in researching nuclear technology, by the 1960s the country was in a relatively good position to start building up scientific infrastructure, including a space agency and nuclear tech institute both in 1961.
Nov 3, 2024 • 11 tweets • 6 min read
One straightforward theory as to why prehistoric Venus figurines are overweight, is because they depicted real obese Palaeolithic women. But is it possible to get so fat during an Ice Age, and why would you? Are there modern ethnographic examples of such overfeeding? 🧵
Let's assume that Upper Palaeolithic foragers were capable of bringing down a mammoth or rhino once in a while (they were). This level of fatty meat caloric excess for a band of say, 25 people, would be more than comfortable. Especially if one or two women were chosen to get fat.
Nov 2, 2024 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
Many people know that pre-industrial pollution from Greek and Roman metalworking can be identified in ice cores.
Many don't know that lead pollution from Native American metalworking also appears in sediment cores, from pre-Columbian copper and lead metallurgy. 🧵
Copper working in North America may have started between 10-7,000 years ago. During the Archaic period hunter-gatherers were making copper tools and ornaments in a region stretching from central Canada to the eastern Great Lakes
Oct 28, 2024 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
5,700 years ago a hunter-gatherer in Denmark chewed on a piece of birch tar.
In 2019 scientists were able to extract her DNA, as well as fragments of DNA from her mouth.
The result is a fascinating snapshot into prehistoric life, health and death. 🧵
To start with, what is birch tar?
If you heat the bark of the birch tree without too much oxygen being present you get a sticky black tarry substance. This was used throughout the Stone Age as a type of glue for arrowheads and hunting weapons.
Oct 22, 2024 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
Chinese archaeology often fits in relatively neatly with the historical written record. Settlements like Taosi and Erlitou have been matched to later descriptions.
The discovery of the Neolithic city of Shimao was a great shock then, a long-lost fortress, without description🧵
On the edge of the Ordos Desert stands a huge archaeological site: a 400 hectare enclosure of double-layered stone walls surrounding a central structure. When it was first discovered it was interpreted as a section of the Great Wall, but it dates back to around 2,300 BC.
Oct 17, 2024 • 13 tweets • 5 min read
My favourite slightly esoteric data point for the aquatic ape hypothesis is that human fetuses are unique amongst land mammals for having a vernix layer, made of the same fatty acids as those from juvenile sea lions 🧵
The vernix caseosa (cheesy varnish!) is a waxy white substance which coats the skin of late stage fetuses and newborn babies. The exact function of the vernix layer is still under investigation.
Oct 16, 2024 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Cycladic art is iconic. Made between 3200-1100 BC in the Aegean, the figurines are sought after by museums and collectors for their striking, modernist appearance.
There's a good reason for that. We have no idea how many of them in circulation are fakes. 🧵
The figurines are typically made from marble and often represent a stylised figurine of a woman. They are now scattered far and wide in private hands and galleries around the world.
Oct 15, 2024 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Any discussion of Mesoamerican archaeology has to be mindful that this one guy - Brigído Lara - managed to forge around 40,000 ceramic objects, manufactured so perfectly they fooled museum curators and researchers for decades.
He may be responsible for forging virtually all the Totonac pottery on record, opening up not just the possibility that some artwork might be fake, but that everything ever written about this culture is nonsense.
Oct 8, 2024 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
Malawi is hardly the only country in Africa struggling with the problem of illegal moonshine production. A picture thread mostly from Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda.
On May 4th 2021, the Ugandan Parliament passed the The Prevention and Prohibition of Human Sacrifice Bill - a piece of legislation aimed at stamping out the pervasive problem of child sacrifice in the country.
A quick thread on how it's been going in Uganda since then:
'Hunting dogs lead police to den of human sacrifices'
The data is difficult to gather but maybe two children a week are abducted and ritually murdered in the country.
Aug 23, 2024 • 9 tweets • 5 min read
The story of the Arctic Dorset people, Palaeo-Eskimos who lived in Canada between ~ 700 BC to ~ 1200 AD, is quite well known now. They disappeared in the face of the advancing Thule Inuit. But - what if some of them survived in some isolated form until recent times?
Dorset culture technology was more limited compared to the Thule. They didn't hunt whales, use dogs or use bows-and-arrows. Instead they were masters of hunting seals. The broader diet of the Inuit certainly helped them move into and conquer a climatically unstable Arctic.