“The Sin” – a captivating and controversial painting created by Heinrich Lossow in 1880. This intriguing artwork alludes to the notorious Banquet of Chestnut, an event that still stirs debate and speculation today. Although some dismiss it as mere rumor, the banquet’s story – filled with shocking details and licentious behavior – has captured the imagination of many over the centuries.

On October 30th, 1501, former Cardinal Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, supposedly hosted a decadent dinner party. The evening’s entertainment, as chronicled by Johann Burchard, featured naked courtesans crawling around amid candelabras, collecting chestnuts using only their mouths. As if that weren’t scandalous enough, prizes were given to those guests who engaged in intimate acts with the courtesans most frequently. Talk about pushing the boundaries!

Interestingly, Lossow’s painting focuses on the sexual aspect of the banquet rather than the chestnut-gathering courtesans. The exact reason for this artistic choice remains a mystery. It’s important to note that the Banquet of Chestnut’s existence is primarily supported by Burchard’s Latin diary, Liber Notarum, and its validity has been a subject of much debate.

According to Burchard, the banquet was held at Cesare’s apartments in the Palazzo Apostolico, with fifty courtesans present to entertain the guests. In his diary, he vividly describes the scene, providing the only known written account of this infamous event:

“On the evening of the last day of October 1501, Cesare Borgia arranged a feast at his chambers in the Vatican with ‘fifty honest prostitutes,’ called courtesans, who danced in the afternoon with servants and other people present, first in their clothes and then naked. After dinner, candelabra with burning candles were removed from the tables and laid on the floor, and around were scattered chestnuts, which the courtesans picked up, while Papa, Cesare, and his sister Lucretia watched. Giving prizes to those who could perform the act often with courtesans. The winners were awarded with tunics of silk, shoes, and other things.”

Despite Burchard’s detailed account, modern scholars have cast doubt on the story of the Chestnut Banquet, questioning its plausibility and pointing out that it appears only in his memoirs.

Lossow’s painting, depicting this salacious tale, caused quite the uproar when it was unveiled. The artist faced harsh criticism from both art critics and the general public, and even the Church condemned him for his brazen portrayal of such sinful activities.

In the end, the truth about the Banquet of Chestnut may never be fully revealed. But one thing is certain: Lossow’s “The Sin” continues to captivate and intrigue us, inviting us to ponder the scandalous events it so vividly portrays.

Despite the heated controversy surrounding “The Sin,” Lossow’s painting has left an indelible mark on the art world and popular culture. Its bold depiction of the alleged Banquet of Chestnut has inspired countless discussions and analyses, making it a fascinating subject for art enthusiasts, historians, and curious minds alike.

The painting has also served as a reminder of the complex and contradictory nature of the Borgia family, whose influence and power during the Italian Renaissance are well-documented. As members of the clergy, the Borgias were expected to uphold high moral standards, but tales of their excesses and debauchery have continued to fuel interest and speculation about their lives.

While “The Sin” might have been criticized for its brazen portrayal of the Chestnut Banquet, it’s important to remember that art has the power to provoke conversation and challenge prevailing attitudes. In this sense, Lossow’s work can be seen as a daring exploration of human nature, desire, and the fine line between fact and fiction.

#archaeohistories Over time, the painting has acquired a certain mystique, drawing attention not only for its subject matter but also for the artistic skill and talent of Heinrich Lossow. The detailed brushstrokes, the captivating use of color and light, and the intricate composition of the scene all contribute to the painting’s enduring appeal.

As we continue to marvel at “The Sin,” we are reminded of the power of art to transport us to different times and places, to shed light on the complexities of human behavior, and to ignite our imaginations. Whether the Banquet of Chestnut is a historical fact or an exaggerated tale, Lossow’s painting has undoubtedly secured its place in the annals of art history.

So, the next time you encounter “The Sin” or any other artwork that evokes strong emotions, take a moment to appreciate the artist’s ability to tell a story, spark conversation, and, in some cases, even challenge societal norms. And remember, a painting like “The Sin” is not just a snapshot of a particular event; it’s also a window into the complexities of human nature and the never-ending quest for truth.

As for the current whereabouts of “The Sin,” it’s a bit of a mystery! The painting has had a rather elusive history, and its exact location today isn’t publicly known or widely documented. It’s possible that the artwork is part of a private collection, safely tucked away from the public eye. Occasionally, art pieces like this resurface at auctions, exhibitions, or in the collections of museums, so there’s always a chance that “The Sin” might make a grand reappearance someday.

In the meantime, you can find images and reproductions of the painting online, allowing you to study and appreciate Lossow’s captivating work from the comfort of your home. And who knows? Perhaps one day, the enigmatic “The Sin” will once again be displayed for all to see, sparking fresh conversations and debates around the notorious Banquet of Chestnut and the extraordinary artistry of Heinrich Lossow.

The painting alludes to the scandalous Banquet of Chestnut, an event allegedly hosted by former Cardinal Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. The Borgia family played a prominent role in the politics and religion of the Italian Renaissance, making them a fascinating subject for artists and historians alike.

The primary source of information about the Banquet of Chestnut is the diary of Johann Burchard, a protonotary apostolic and master of ceremonies at the Vatican. Burchard’s account is the only known written evidence of the event, which has led to much debate over the banquet’s historical accuracy.

When “The Sin” was unveiled, it caused quite a stir among art critics, the public, and the Church. The painting’s explicit content and depiction of immoral acts, particularly in connection with the clergy, led to widespread condemnation of Lossow and his work. Lossow chose to depict the sexual aspect of the banquet rather than the chestnut-gathering courtesans. The reasons for this decision remain a mystery, but it has undoubtedly contributed to the painting’s notoriety and allure.

The current location of “The Sin” is unknown. It’s possible that the painting is part of a private collection, hidden from public view. Its secretive nature only adds to the painting’s mystique and intrigue. These tidbits offer a glimpse into the fascinating world of “The Sin” and the story it portrays. Lossow’s painting continues to captivate audiences with its blend of artistry, scandal, and historical mystery, ensuring its place in the annals of art history.

Most people in the West today associate genies with lamps and wishes and certain quirky magical powers. This is largely thanks to a few pieces of popular media, including I Dream of Jeannie and Disney’s version of Aladdin with that unforgettable blue genie who steals the show.....

Genies are actually supernatural creatures with an incredible past that stretches back 5,000 years. They’re malevolent tricksters, benevolent spirits, and everything in-between. Many people today even believe genies are real, though they don’t expect them to grant any wishes. At least, not willingly, and not without some ironic consequences.

Genies, or jinn/djinn as the Arabic word is usually Romanized, come from a long line of mythological creatures dating back to the third century BC. They’re often called demons or spirits, but that doesn’t quite line up with our modern Western concepts of those words.

Jinn are intelligent, free-willed creatures who live close to nature and are endowed with all sorts of magical powers. Some of them are good, helping people and obeying the law, but some are evil; they trick humans and cause all kinds of mischief. Still more jinn sit somewhere between pure good and evil, making them quite complex as far as mythological characters go. Jinn are even said to have banded together into tribes, formed their own religions, and written laws to govern their cities.

Jinn were supposedly created by god out of the “fire of a scorching wind” or “smokeless flame,” giving them certain wispy and changeable characteristics. This is in contrast to humans who were sculpted from mud and clay, making us firm, solid, and not so changeable or mysterious. Compare a mysterious warm wind blowing out of the far desert with a clay pot and you’ll get an idea of the flavor difference, there.

The race of jinn is filled with different categories or classes of spirits. These include the rebellious shaitan (a proposed inspiration for Satan), ifrit (a particularly strong and cunning type of jinn), and the extremely powerful and dangerous marid. In ancient stories, marid jinn are usually the ones we find imprisoned in bottles. Sort of makes the jinn’s transition into cuddly, friendly genies a little more dramatic, doesn’t it?

Details of what powers jinn have varies greatly between sources. They’ve been said to transform into wolves, birds, and reptiles; they can dive to bottom of the sea where one located pearls as large as eggs; they can even vanish, teleport, and both weave magic carpets as well as command them to fly. One tale insists genies created a magic carpet 27 miles in length.

One constant in the legends is that genies are tricksters who delight in playing pranks of both harmless and harmful kind. They can also change their appearance at will, owing to their creation out of fire or wind. They do seem to follow some patterns in their choice of physical manifestations, however, favoring perfect copies or twisted likenesses of humans, various types of animals, and even human/animal hybrids.

And then there’s a 12th century story of Queen of Sheba, who was said to have a human father and jinn mother. This story insisted jinn always have thick fur on their legs and the hooves of a donkey, no matter which form they take. This was actually used in identification of genies even while they’re in disguise, as it was in unmasking the queen of Sheba as half jinn. If you saw someone who always hid their legs or had a suspicious amount of hair there, you could be pretty sure they were of the jinn.

But jinn can also take on more bizarre and unsettling forms, like description below from same sources of Sheba legends:

“Jinn came in every shape and size, some with hooves, with long tails and flapping ears; some with bodiless heads and headless bodies.”

📷 : Iranian painting of Queen Sheba at King Solomon’s court surrounded by jinn. The painting is in Iranian coffeehouse painting style, located at Tehran’s Moghadam Museum.

#archaeohistories Just imagine a procession of disembodied heads and headless, hairy-legged, hoofed creatures shambling by. Doesn’t exactly make you want to go out and ask them to grant any wishes.

According to legends, the race of jinn eventually angered god, which led to their destruction. Only a small group of the most faithful were left intact. The remaining jinn scattered across the world, only appearing to humans when they wanted to cause mischief or harm. Their cities crumbled, their culture vanished, but the jinn themselves are still said to be around, they’re just not as common or numerous as they once were.

Tracing the history of jinn is a gigantic task that offers very little in the way of definitive answers. It’s difficult to locate reliable or consistent sources, partly because we’re digging through thousands of years of stories written or passed orally by different people in different cultures across centuries of time.

This does leave us with an interesting breadcrumb trail to follow, though: language. If we take a brief look at the word “jinn” and its cognates, we find some pretty tantalizing clues about genies, especially their constant relation to lamps and wishes in the West. Keep in mind that tracing linguistic history isn’t an exact science and many experts disagree on the details below. Still, in the world of genies, we’ll take what information we can get our hands on.

In 1st Century AD, Roman empire reached the borders of what is modern day Syria. Here, the people of the city of Palmyra had their own interpretation of jinn legends that was a little different from the history we described before.

A Palmyran gny (sometimes jny or ginnaya) was a spirit of sorts that watched over people, homes, and families like a guardian angel. No curses or wishes or mischief, just benevolent beings looking out for mankind. It’s this interpretation of jinn that was reinforced in ancient Roman culture and would eventually make its way to the modern day West.

The Latin word genii refers to benevolent attending spirits such as this, not their older, more sinister cousins. The singular form of genii is genius (pronounced like gay-nee-oos), which is actually related to the modern English word genius. Back in the day, people who were intelligent, creative and talented attributed those qualities to their genius, their guardian spirit. If you were a genius, you could thank your genius for that.

Fast forward 1,600 years or so and this definition has only gotten stronger. The root form gen- found in words like genie means to produce, create or inspire; or a warm or cheerful manner. Modern English still carries those fragments in words like generate and genial. This gave the English speaking world of the early 1700s even more reason to assume genies were a certain way, instead of their ancient Middle Eastern selves.

Today, whenever you see the word genie, jinn, djinn, or any number of variant spellings, you’re usually seeing different forms of the same word. This is because transliterating Arabic script into the Roman alphabet isn’t a precise endeavor. Inevitably different words will be rendered in different ways, which has led to handfuls of different spellings over the centuries.

In the beginning of 18th Century a collection of stories made its way to Europe that Westerners today are still pretty familiar with: Arabian Nights, also called One Thousand and One Nights.

Antoine Galland was a French orientalist and archaeologist who was the first to translate the Arabian Nights stories for a European audience. The initial volume appeared in French in 1704, and eleven more volumes would follow over the next dozen years. The English language version would release a decade or so later, then known as The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment.

Mesopotamia - “the land between two rivers” gave birth to many of the world’s first great cities. The splendid city of Babylon, located between the waters of the Euphrates and Tigris some 97km south of Baghdad 🇮🇶, was one of them. Unlike the many towns that fell and disappeared, Babylon was resilient, rising from its own ashes time and again, even as new conquerors invaded and took over. The pleasure its occupiers enjoyed came at a price, however, since the highly desired Babylon would always be seen as a prize for the taking.

Babylon has resonated in Judeo-Christian culture for centuries. The books of the Old Testament recount the exile of the Jews to Babylon following the sack of Jerusalem, by whose waters they “sat down and wept.” By the time of the New Testament, the city had become a potent symbol: the corrupt earthly twin city to the pure, heavenly New Jerusalem.

Outside the biblical tradition, Babylon intrigued Greek and Roman writers, who added to the rich store of legends that have come down to the present day. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about Babylon in 5th Century BC. A number of inconsistencies in his account have led many scholars to believe that he never traveled there and that his text may be closer to hearsay than historical fact. Popular tales of Babylon’s fantastic structures, like the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens, may also be products of legends and confusion. Yet to historians and archaeologists, Babylon is a real bricks-and-mortar place at the center of the vibrant Mesopotamian culture that it dominated for so many centuries.

The site of Babylon was first identified in 1800s in what is now Iraq. Later excavations, undertaken by German archaeologist Robert Koldewey in late 19th and early 20th Centuries, established that the city had been built and rebuilt several times, most notably on a lavish scale by its king, Nebuchadrezzar II (r. 605–561 BC). Koldewey’s finds revealed an ancient locus of culture and political power. These excavations unearthed what was to become one of the most magnificent Babylonian landmarks built by Nebuchadrezzar II: the dazzling blue Ishtar Gate, now reconstructed and on display at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.

Babylon first rose to prominence in the late Bronze Age, around the beginning of 2nd millennium BC, when it was occupied by people known as the Amorites. A series of strong Amorite kings—including King Hammurabi, famous for compiling the world’s first legal code, enabled Babylon to eclipse the Sumerian capital, Ur, as the region’s most powerful city. Although Babylon declined after Hammurabi’s death, its importance as the capital of southern Mesopotamia, now known as Babylonia, would linger for millennia.

For the rest of 2nd Millennium BC, constant struggles popped up over control of Babylon. It was successively occupied by Hittites and Kassites; later, Chaldean tribesmen fought for dominance with another tribe, the Aramaeans from Syria (a tribe that had also sparred with Israel). By 1000 BC, Assyrians, who had established a powerful empire in northern Mesopotamia, gained the upper hand. But despite periods of stable rule, Babylon would always fall to someone else. Given this pattern of constant conquest—Cyrus the Great in 6th Century BC, and Alexander the Great two hundred years later—it is perhaps more helpful to see the city not as one Babylon, but as several Babylons, the product of traditions built over thousands of years.

Babylonians themselves were keenly aware of the great antiquity of their civilization. One of Nebuchadrezzar’s successors, Nabonidus, is now known to modern historians as “the archaeologist king.” A learned man, he restored region’s ancient architectural and cultural traditions, especially those from Akkadian Empire, which had dominated Mesopotamia in 3rd Millennium BC, a period that, from perspective of his own era, would have already seemed in the distant past.

🎥© AI MediaTek
© National Geographic

#archaeohistories Babylon enjoyed its heyday during 7th-6th Centuries BC, when it was believed to be largest city in the world. A new dynasty founded by a tribe known as the Chaldeans had wrested control from Assyrians in early 600s BC. The second ruler of Chaldean line became notorious for both cruelty and opulence: Nebuchadrezzar II, the king who sacked Jerusalem and sent the captive Jews to the capital of his new and increasingly powerful regional empire.

A successful military man, Nebuchadrezzar used the wealth he garnered from other lands to rebuild and glorify Babylon. He completed and strengthened the city’s defenses, including digging a moat and building new city walls. Beautification projects were on the agenda as well. The grand Processional Way was paved with limestone, temples were renovated and rebuilt, and the glorious Ishtar Gate was erected. Constructed of glazed cobalt blue bricks and embellished with bulls and dragons, the city gate features an inscription, attributed to Nebuchadrezzar, that says: “I placed wild bulls and ferocious dragons in the gateways and thus adorned them with luxurious splendor so that people might gaze on them in wonder.”

Babylonian citizens saw their city as a paradise—the center of the world and symbol of cosmic harmony that had come into existence when its supreme divinity, the god Marduk, defeated the forces of chaos. The spread of the cult of Marduk across Mesopotamia was proof of Babylon’s prestige. No ancient city was so desired and feared, so admired and denigrated. But in the Hebrew tradition, Nebuchadrezzar was a tyrant, and Babylon a torment. The king had conquered Jerusalem in early 6th century BC and exiled Hebrews to Babylon. The Bible says that he also stole sacred objects from the Jewish temple and took them back to Babylon to place in the temple of Marduk.

To punish his disrespect, the Bible recounts in the Book of Daniel how Nebuchadrezzar’s line will fall. In the story, Belshazzar, successor to the throne, holds a feast served on the sacred vessels looted from Jerusalem. During the festivities, a ghostly hand appears, and strange writing appears on the wall, forming the mysterious words: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. The exile Daniel is brought in by the terrified king to interpret the writing on the wall. Daniel reads it as: “God has numbered the days of your kingdom ... [it] is given to the Medes and Persians.”

Daniel’s prediction did come to pass: In 539 BC, Babylon fell to the Persian king Cyrus the Great, and the Jews returned home from exile. The city would be conquered two centuries later by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. Although Alexander had planned to make Babylon the capital of his empire, he died before that came to pass. The great city would eventually be abandoned by his successors, and the splendors of Babylon would pass into the realm of legend.

Slave Market in ancient Rome (1884 CE), by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904) :

It depicts an Ancient Roman slave auction in progress. At the center of a high dais is a completely nude woman having been recently undressed by the slave dealer situated to her right, who is displaying her to the crowd as they bid on her. The woman shields her eyes with her right hand due to the humiliating predicament of being publicly exposed in front of such a large crowd. Another nude young woman sits fearfully at the first woman's feet, covering her breasts with her legs in a protective pose, however, this leaves her genitals exposed to the crowd. Behind her is an older clothed woman holding an infant, she is surrounded by two naked children who she is probably the mother of. Her face has a look of dread as she knows she is to be auctioned soon, most likely being separated from her children forever. Behind the auction booth, two men are keeping an account of the sales, with a row of enslaved men looking on from behind them. It is one of his six slave-market scenes set in either ancient Rome or 19th Century Istanbul that Gérôme painted during his career....

Slavery was considered normal in virtually all cultures in ancient times, and the Romans were no exception. The portion of the population that was enslaved varied across the Empire, with an estimated 15% Empire-wide. Overall, perhaps one household in seven owned slaves, but rates of ownership were much higher in Italy and Sicily. In those regions, perhaps as high as 30% were slaves during the early Empire.

Slavery was the engine that powered parts of the Roman economy and supported the elite Roman lifestyle. It was fueled by massive influxes of men, women, and children captured during Rome’s military campaigns. As the Republic and then the Empire expanded to its greatest extent under Trajan, more than a million persons from regions as distant as Judaea and Britannia lost their freedom. Each conquest pumped a fresh supply of cheap labor toward the estates, businesses, and homes of rich and average citizens alike.

With an economy so dependent on slave labor, it is no surprise that the Roman state chose to regulate the trade in slaves. The slave markets were under the administrative authority of aediles in Rome and quaestors in other locations. Sales were documented by the exchange of a witnessed bill of sale.

For the poor soul who had just been enslaved, the slave market was a rude introduction to the debasing life that awaited them. “Full disclosure” was the rule for slaves and cattle in what was usually a caveat emptor commercial world. Slaves on the auction block were displayed naked so potential buyers could thoroughly inspect before bidding. A placard was hung around the neck of each slave that revealed (from a buyer’s perspective) the positive and negative characteristics of the person for sale. The seller (mango) was required to provide correct information about the geographic origin of the slave, any known health problems, tendency to run, attempted suicides, and any other known ”defect.” The placard also had to reveal whether the slave was undischarged from noxa, i.e., had committed an offense for which the owner was responsible either to pay restitution or to hand over the slave.

Roman law provided for “return for refund” if an unreported defect was found within six months after purchase. If a slave had an undisclosed health problem, even if the seller had no way to know about it, the slave could be returned for a full refund of the purchase price.

#archaeohistories The number of slaves a person owned was a conspicuous measure of wealth. While the private home of an average person living in Rome might use five to twelve slaves, the urban residence of the elite might have up to five hundred performing tasks that only needed a small fraction of that total. A large agricultural estate might employ two or three thousand.

The low status of a slave was evident in the legal Latin term for one: res (a thing, an object, property). In Digest (a compilation of centuries of Roman law written in AD 533), a slave is a res mortales (mortal thing) whose injury is treated as simple damage to property.

The standard terms for farm slaves further illustrate the subhuman status of slaves. A farm implement, like a plow, was an instrumentum. The ox pulling the plow was an instrumentum semivocalis. The slave driving the ox was an instrumentum vocalis, a talking tool. Their lodging was an ergastulum (private prison), and on some estates, farm slaves might sleep and even work in chains.

But as brutal as life could be for a Roman slave, there was hope for not just freedom but a bright future. The children of a slave freed by a Roman citizen became Roman citizens with full rights themselves. Publius Helvius Pertinax, the son of a freed slave, even became emperor. In this, Roman slavery was fundamentally different from the practice in much of the world.

Slaves could be privately or publically owned. Their living conditions and opportunities were highly variable, depending on the temperament of their owner and the nature of their assigned work.

Private Slaves :

Private slaves were broadly divided into two categories: urban slaves (familia urbana) and country slaves (familia rustica). The former often had well-defined and rather limited duties, with plenty of time for going to the baths, running their own small businesses on the side, and waiting for orders in the company of other slaves. They frequently became familiar and even friends with their masters; the gift of freedom (manumission) was not uncommon during the owner’s lifetime or in his will.

The farm slaves usually served under a slave or ex-slave overseer (vilicus), who worked them from dawn until dusk, seven days a week, until they wore out and were disposed of accordingly. Unless an owner decided to free a fraction of his farm slaves in his will, servitude was usually until death.

As a general custom, a master would give his slaves a sum of money (peculium-slave’s purse) to spend as they chose. Although the peculium technically belonged to the master and he could take it back at any time, slaves were often allowed to accumulate the money and apply it toward purchasing their freedom. Urban slaves often had some free time for activities that could earn extra money. Technically, this also belonged to the master, but it was commonly treated as belonging to the slave.

Particularly talented slaves might serve as business agents for their owners. As living “things” (res mortales), slaves could not make legally binding commitments on their own. The peculium was the basis for the legal rules where a slave was an agent pledging his master’s credit in trade and contracts with third parties. The chief steward (dispensator, procurator) for many of the elite was a trusted slave or a former slave who had been freed for his excellent service.

An amazing stone slab carving showing a woman giving birth (11, 600 years old) From Gobekli Tepe 🇹🇷 the Archaeological site of the Worlds oldest known religious structure. Predating Stonehenge by over 6000 years. Discovered by Klaus Schmidt it features Megalithic Stone Slabs arranged and Carved with Abstract Animal and Plant Designs, done by a Prehistoric/Neolithic hunter gatherer people.

The eminent pre-historian Andrew Collins has just released a book of extreme importance for posture research—Göbekli Tepe: Genesis of the Gods. The experiments with more than 80 ritual body postures used by humans to access shamanic states for at least 36,000 years should be investigated by anyone who wants to thin the veil obscuring the Göbekli Tepe shamanic cultists.

Klaus Schmidt, who has so far excavated four out of the twenty or so anticipated carved and incised circles of T-shaped stones, says they were used for rituals; they were sanctuaries. Geophysical surveys have detected many more circles, yet only about five percent have been excavated. Nearly all researchers believe these circles were sacred space. Schmidt, an archeologist with German Archeological Institute and University of Heidelberg, began his excavation in 1995. The public began hearing about this amazing site around 2000. Local inhabitants of the bleak plateau at the southern limits of the Anti-Taurus Mountains 8 miles northeast of Şanlıurfa, Turkey, refer to the “tell” or hill covering the site as Göbekli Tepe, which means “Hill of the Navel” in Turkish, or some say “Potbelly.” This name going way back in time is local ancestral memory that suggests pregnancy. The oldest carbon dates at the site are Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPNA) going back to 9500-8500 BC, which really got my attention.

Catastrophobia describes a series of cataclysms 13,000 to 11,500 years ago during the Younger Dryas, a mini ice age that ended abruptly 11,500 years ago. Scientific analysis of this period, in particular by science historian, D.S. Allan, and Oxford-based geologist and anthropologist, J. B. Delair, describes a cosmic disaster 11,500 years ago that disarranged the solar system and severely impacted Earth. (1) This trauma changed human consciousness, and hunter-gatherers learned to farm. Those who survived during a few thousand years more of dramatic climate change and rising seas were a multi-traumatized species afflicted with what I call catastrophobia—extreme fear of starvation and chaos. This word is catching on now that paleoanthropologists have completed an accurate picture of global migrations and settling during the last 100,000 years. (2) Ironically, at first the word didn’t get much attention because the book was released when the World Trade Towers crumbled to the ground in September 2001. Regardless, evidence for the cataclysms followed by a human cultural regression has been building since the 1950s, when Immanuel Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision sold millions of copies ripping open repressed memory. (3) Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings by the cartographer Charles Hapgood inspired the eminent new-paradigm writer Graham Hancock to explore these mysterious mariners. Hancock describes a seafaring global culture that lived before 12,000 years ago on the continental shelves now inundated by rising seas. (4) This new paradigm captivated the public mind, so my publisher asked me to update Catastrophobia. This clarifying picture of the past is magnificent support for our discoveries of the postures used by shamanic cultures for 50,000 years.

© Şanlıurfa Archeology Museum

#archaeohistories The 2011 edition of Catastrophobia titled Awakening the Planetary Mind: Beyond the Trauma of the Past to a New Era of Creativity has a whole new audience. Bored by old-paradigm Darwinian archeology that claims the human species has always advanced, young researchers hear me when I say we are a very damaged species because we were almost destroyed. Seeking what really happened to us so recently, they paint and pierce their bodies like hunter-gatherers at the end of the last ice age! Meanwhile, the recovery of our real story makes us realize people did survive radical climate changes, information that young people know they may need. Well, Göbekli Tepe goes right back to these great changes, so it is a gateway that can help us imagine who we were before we regressed. I think cosmic contact was severed 11,500 years ago. The recovery of the advanced astronomical knowledge of our ancestors is piercing the pain of human separation from the universe. Andrew Collins said to me in a recent email that he “probably didn’t fully understand the term catastrophobia until I started to piece together the motives behind the construction of Göbekli Tepe some 12,000 years ago. Then suddenly it all made sense! God, those people must have lived in fear, and without psychologists in those days, it was a matter that could only be rectified by shamans, which is exactly what I think happened.”

I’ve been thinking about the evocative circles filled with great humanoid beings for ten years. Göbekli Tepe appears to be a temple built by the survivors of the great cataclysm, a truly monumental achievement considering their probable state of mind and the amount of work to construct it. Archeologists estimate up to 500 individuals were needed to extract each pillar from nearby quarries and erect them, and there are thought to be around 200 large pillars in total at the site. Also I wondered whether the pillar of the humanoid figure with long oddly bent arms and long fingers reaching into their groins was a posture. When I was mentoring Marianne Carroll in 2011, she wondered the same thing, and we’ve been exploring it since.

Back to 1999, I was struck by exactly the same hand position on the Nevali Çori pillar, a nearby ancient cultic site. My illustrator drew this pillar for Catastrophobia from a photo taken at Nevalı Çori by Andrew Collins. I chose it to awaken ancient memory in my readers, since this beautiful place was about to be inundated by a dam. Considering the hand positions—oddly bent elbow and long fingers clutched under the belly that appears to be pregnant—anybody who knows our postures would immediately think “Birthing Posture!” Goodman says, “the pivotal, the most significant, rituals of the hunter gatherers and later of the horticulturalists, who created these figurines, centered around the celebration of birth.” She also said way back in 1990, “Some of these figures [Birthing Posture] are quite large and may well have marked the sacred places where such important rites were celebrated.”

The same hand and arm positions exist on the torsos of the Easter Island heads (Moai) statues that are relatively the same height (15 feet) as the Göbekli Tepe humanoids. In 2010, when archeologists dug down below the heads, they were resting on bodies with same odd hand position. When I saw the first photos of these unburied torsos, I was astonished to see they closely match the size, arm, and hand positions of the Nevalı Çori and Göbekli Tepe pillars..

In the cradle of civilization, where the Euphrates and Tigris whisper tales of forgotten empires, lies a pantheon bathed in celestial light and earthly clay. Here, Anunnaki, gods of the ancient Sumerians, dance between myths and mysteries, their story as enigmatic as the cuneiform etchings that whisper their names.

Unlike the Olympians of Greece or the mighty Norse gods, the Anunnaki are not solely beings of thunder and lightning. They are a multi-faceted tapestry woven from threads of creation, fate, and humanity's own genesis. Their name, "Anunnaki," itself reveals a divine genesis - "offspring of An," the sky god, and Ki, the Earth Mother. They are celestial royalty, yet intimately tied to the earthly realm, a duality that permeates their myths. This indicates they were believed to interact with humans when they came down to Earth. Based on ancient carvings depicting deities of ancient Mesopotamia, some had wings, wore horned caps, and had bird faces, while others held something resembling a modern-day ladies’ purse.

Imagine a primordial world, shrouded in darkness and chaos. The Anunnaki, led by the wind god Enlil, descend from the heavens. With pickaxes forged from stardust, they cleave the earth from the sky, birthing light and order. But creation demands sacrifice. From Ki's fertile clay, they fashion humans, not as servants, but as co-creators, tasked with tending the world and offering praise through elaborate rituals.

Anunnaki were a group of gods worshipped by the people of ancient Mesopotamia, including ancient Sumer. Because the word "Anunnaki" originates in ancient Sumerian language, it is written in several different ways in English today. These include Ananaki, Annunaki, and Anunnaku. Exact etymological origin of word remains subject to debate by scholars, but it is likely derived from the god An, the chief of the Sumerian gods and the ruler of the heavens in Sumerian mythology.

There were many societies in ancient Mesopotamia. Sumer was earliest, rising in about 6000 BC. Sumer consisted of many separate city-states across the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. By 2300 BC, city of Akkad dominated Sumer. But Akkad eventually faded, and by 1755 BC, Babylon ruled over Mesopotamia. Babylon fell under rule by Assyrian Empire of northern Mesopotamia in 800s BC, but in late 600s, Babylon again supplanted Assyria. Persia conquered the whole of Mesopotamia in 500s BC. While these different societies competed for power and waged war against each other, civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia believed in a common and overlapping set of deities.

People of ancient Mesopotamia, like people of ancient Greece, believed that there existed many gods. Strongest of those gods ruled over different aspects of the world. An, for example, ruled over the heavens. There, however, existed many hundred more minor deities who watched over streams, hills and forests. Rather than worshipping collective pantheon (Anunnaki), ancient Mesopotamian people preferred one deity and occasionally his partner. In this way, certain gods became patrons of certain cities. The main function of the gods, therefore, was to determine the fate of human societies.

Enki, god of wisdom and trickery, plays a pivotal role. He bestows upon humans knowledge and crafts, sparking civilization. Yet, humanity's hubris grows. Cities rise, towering towards heavens, rivaling the Anunnaki themselves. Anu, sky father, weary of earthly noise, unleashes a devastating flood. Utnapishtim, a wise man warned by Enki, survives in an ark, repopulating Earth and reminding humanity of its place.

Inanna, goddess of love and war, descends into the dark realm of Ereshkigal, her sister, seeking immortality. Each layer of the underworld strips her of power and dignity, a stark reminder of the inevitability of death even for gods. Only through cunning and intervention of Enki and Gilgamesh, the valiant king, does she return, forever marked by mortality she sought to escape.

#archaeohistories Sumerians lived in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and Iran) between Tigris and Euphrates rivers from 4500-1750 BC. Despite being an ancient civilization, their reign was marked by a number of impressive technological advancements. For example, Sumerians invented plow, which played a huge role in helping their empire grow. They also developed cuneiform, one of earliest known systems of writing in human history. In addition, they came up with a method of keeping time, which modern people still use to this day.

According to Sumerians, they didn’t do it alone; they owed their historic breakthroughs to a group of gods called the Anunnaki. In their telling, Anunnaki mostly descended from An, a supreme deity who could control both fate of human kings and his fellow gods. According to Sumerian beliefs, Heaven and Earth were inseparable until Enlil came along. Enlil split Heaven and Earth in two and carried the Earth away whilst his father, An, carried away the sky. Though much remains unknown about Sumerians and their way of life, they left evidence of their beliefs in ancient texts, including Epic of Gilgamesh, one of oldest written stories in human history.

Babylonian cuneiform texts describe Sumerians as ancients. Despite their ancient origins, Sumerians had developed a sophisticated method of keeping time, dividing the day into hours, similar to way we count time today. They also invented cuneiform, one of earliest known systems of writing in human history. In addition, they invented plow. This played a great role in helping their empire grow.

Epic of Gilgamesh; so-called Mesopotamian Odyssey begins with five short poems in Sumerian language about Gilgamesh, king of Uruk. It is known from tablets that were written during first half of 2nd Millennium BC. The poems have been entitled “Gilgamesh and Huwawa,” “Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven,” “Gilgamesh and Agga of Kish,” “Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld,” and “The Death of Gilgamesh.”

And if one thing is clear, it’s that Anunnaki gods were highly revered. To worship these deities, ancient Sumerians would create statues of them, dress them in clothing, give them food, and transport them to ceremonies. Millennia later, some scholars would speculate on what made these Anunnaki so special and why they were held in such high regard. But it wasn’t until 20th Century that “ancient alien” theory really took off.

Much of what we know about the Sumerian civilization comes from clues that they left behind in thousands of clay tablets. To this day, these tablets are still being researched. But one author claimed that some of texts hold an incredible revelation, Anunnaki were actually aliens.

“The Sin” – a captivating and controversial painting created by Heinrich Lossow in 1880. This intriguing artwork alludes to the notorious Banquet of Chestnut, an event that still stirs debate and speculation today. Although some dismiss it as mere rumor, the banquet’s story – filled with shocking details and licentious behavior – has captured the imagination of many over the centuries.

On October 30th, 1501, former Cardinal Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI, supposedly hosted a decadent dinner party. The evening’s entertainment, as chronicled by Johann Burchard, featured naked courtesans crawling around amid candelabras, collecting chestnuts using only their mouths. As if that weren’t scandalous enough, prizes were given to those guests who engaged in intimate acts with the courtesans most frequently. Talk about pushing the boundaries!

Interestingly, Lossow’s painting focuses on the sexual aspect of the banquet rather than the chestnut-gathering courtesans. The exact reason for this artistic choice remains a mystery. It’s important to note that the Banquet of Chestnut’s existence is primarily supported by Burchard’s Latin diary, Liber Notarum, and its validity has been a subject of much debate.

According to Burchard, the banquet was held at Cesare’s apartments in the Palazzo Apostolico, with fifty courtesans present to entertain the guests. In his diary, he vividly describes the scene, providing the only known written account of this infamous event:

“On the evening of the last day of October 1501, Cesare Borgia arranged a feast at his chambers in the Vatican with ‘fifty honest prostitutes,’ called courtesans, who danced in the afternoon with servants and other people present, first in their clothes and then naked. After dinner, candelabra with burning candles were removed from the tables and laid on the floor, and around were scattered chestnuts, which the courtesans picked up, while Papa, Cesare, and his sister Lucretia watched. Giving prizes to those who could perform the act often with courtesans. The winners were awarded with tunics of silk, shoes, and other things.”

Despite Burchard’s detailed account, modern scholars have cast doubt on the story of the Chestnut Banquet, questioning its plausibility and pointing out that it appears only in his memoirs.

Lossow’s painting, depicting this salacious tale, caused quite the uproar when it was unveiled. The artist faced harsh criticism from both art critics and the general public, and even the Church condemned him for his brazen portrayal of such sinful activities.

In the end, the truth about the Banquet of Chestnut may never be fully revealed. But one thing is certain: Lossow’s “The Sin” continues to captivate and intrigue us, inviting us to ponder the scandalous events it so vividly portrays.

Despite the heated controversy surrounding “The Sin,” Lossow’s painting has left an indelible mark on the art world and popular culture. Its bold depiction of the alleged Banquet of Chestnut has inspired countless discussions and analyses, making it a fascinating subject for art enthusiasts, historians, and curious minds alike.

The painting has also served as a reminder of the complex and contradictory nature of the Borgia family, whose influence and power during the Italian Renaissance are well-documented. As members of the clergy, the Borgias were expected to uphold high moral standards, but tales of their excesses and debauchery have continued to fuel interest and speculation about their lives.

While “The Sin” might have been criticized for its brazen portrayal of the Chestnut Banquet, it’s important to remember that art has the power to provoke conversation and challenge prevailing attitudes. In this sense, Lossow’s work can be seen as a daring exploration of human nature, desire, and the fine line between fact and fiction.

#archaeohistories Over time, the painting has acquired a certain mystique, drawing attention not only for its subject matter but also for the artistic skill and talent of Heinrich Lossow. The detailed brushstrokes, the captivating use of color and light, and the intricate composition of the scene all contribute to the painting’s enduring appeal.

As we continue to marvel at “The Sin,” we are reminded of the power of art to transport us to different times and places, to shed light on the complexities of human behavior, and to ignite our imaginations. Whether the Banquet of Chestnut is a historical fact or an exaggerated tale, Lossow’s painting has undoubtedly secured its place in the annals of art history.

So, the next time you encounter “The Sin” or any other artwork that evokes strong emotions, take a moment to appreciate the artist’s ability to tell a story, spark conversation, and, in some cases, even challenge societal norms. And remember, a painting like “The Sin” is not just a snapshot of a particular event; it’s also a window into the complexities of human nature and the never-ending quest for truth.

As for the current whereabouts of “The Sin,” it’s a bit of a mystery! The painting has had a rather elusive history, and its exact location today isn’t publicly known or widely documented. It’s possible that the artwork is part of a private collection, safely tucked away from the public eye. Occasionally, art pieces like this resurface at auctions, exhibitions, or in the collections of museums, so there’s always a chance that “The Sin” might make a grand reappearance someday.

In the meantime, you can find images and reproductions of the painting online, allowing you to study and appreciate Lossow’s captivating work from the comfort of your home. And who knows? Perhaps one day, the enigmatic “The Sin” will once again be displayed for all to see, sparking fresh conversations and debates around the notorious Banquet of Chestnut and the extraordinary artistry of Heinrich Lossow.

The painting alludes to the scandalous Banquet of Chestnut, an event allegedly hosted by former Cardinal Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. The Borgia family played a prominent role in the politics and religion of the Italian Renaissance, making them a fascinating subject for artists and historians alike.

The primary source of information about the Banquet of Chestnut is the diary of Johann Burchard, a protonotary apostolic and master of ceremonies at the Vatican. Burchard’s account is the only known written evidence of the event, which has led to much debate over the banquet’s historical accuracy.

When “The Sin” was unveiled, it caused quite a stir among art critics, the public, and the Church. The painting’s explicit content and depiction of immoral acts, particularly in connection with the clergy, led to widespread condemnation of Lossow and his work. Lossow chose to depict the sexual aspect of the banquet rather than the chestnut-gathering courtesans. The reasons for this decision remain a mystery, but it has undoubtedly contributed to the painting’s notoriety and allure.

The current location of “The Sin” is unknown. It’s possible that the painting is part of a private collection, hidden from public view. Its secretive nature only adds to the painting’s mystique and intrigue. These tidbits offer a glimpse into the fascinating world of “The Sin” and the story it portrays. Lossow’s painting continues to captivate audiences with its blend of artistry, scandal, and historical mystery, ensuring its place in the annals of art history.

For centuries, the Inuit were a nomadic people who spent their time hunting and fishing, but today they have become sedentary. There are more than 125,000 Inuit belonging to about 40 different ethnic groups living in an enormous area that includes parts of Alaska (United States), Canada, Greenland (Denmark) and Russia. Even though groups of them may be separated by huge distances, Inuit have remained remarkably homogeneous.

About 5,000 years ago, several groups of people settled on each side of the Bering Strait, which during that era was free of ice. The region attracted hunters of various origins because it offered a rich variety of fauna both on land and in the sea. It is in this region that the first traces of the Eskimos’ ancestors have been found.
A thousand years later, the ice caps of the American continent melted and hunter communities along the Bering Strait migrated southwards in America and along Arctic coast as far as Greenland. Pre-historians studying vestiges and fossils from this era use the term Eskimo to describe “hunter peoples that adapted to the coastal resources of the Arctic”. This era is divided into two major prehistoric periods and cultures: Paleo-Eskimo and Neo-Eskimo. It was the latter branch that spread out across the whole Arctic; they are the ancestors of today’s Inuit.

The word Eskimo, meaning “eater of raw meat” in the language of the Algonquin Indians, was first applied to them by French settlers in 17th Century. Today, they are described by their more local names (Yupik, Inupiat, etc.) or by the more generic term Inuit (a plural noun of which the singular is Inuk), which means “the people”, as defined by the first meeting of the ICC in Alaska in 1977.

The Inuit have learned to make do with what their difficult environment offers them: polar animals, ice, stones, etc. Their staple diet is the fat and meat of seals, rich in iron and vitamin A, which helps them withstand the cold. But above all they have adapted culturally: their clothes, snow-shoes, dog sleds, kayaks, hunting strategies etc. are all purpose-designed for the Arctic. Hunting and fishing remain the basis of the Inuit civilisation. In return, they treat Nature with great respect. Today, the confrontation with the modern world sometimes proves difficult (alcoholism, suicide…), but in general they have learned to use modern tools (Inuit-language papers and magazines, Internet, snow-scooter, aircraft) to cement their future. In Canada, the Inuit have managed their own autonomous territory, Nunavut, since 1999.

Until about 30 years ago, the Inuit depended entirely in hunting, not just for their food but also for materials to make tools, build shelters and make clothes. Their lifestyle meant they were able to draw a subsistence livelihood from their fragile natural environment without unbalancing it. In winter, the Inuit hunted marine mammals (seals, walruses and cetaceans) and in summer they moved inland from the coast hunting caribou, fishing in the rivers and lakes, snaring birds and taking their eggs, and gathering berries and herbs. The men hunted, made tools and built kayaks while the women prepared animal pelts, sewed clothes, dried meat, looked after the children, fished and gather lichen, seaweed, etc. The Inuit also left plenty of time for amusement (playing jacks and cup-and-ball, telling stories, dancing…).

📷 : An Inuit man warms his wife’s feet in Peterahwik, Greenland 🇬🇱. The photo was published in Northward Over the Great Ice, Robert Peary’s account of his 1880s and 90s expeditions. (📷© Robert E. Peary)

#archaeohistories Hunting marine mammals such as seals called for real teamwork so that the Inuit could spot them, follow them, kill them and cut them up. In winter, dogs would sniff out the mammals’ breathing holes in the ice pack and then the hunters would lie in wait, and as soon as a seal came up for air it was harpooned. In spring, mammals could be killed while they sunned themselves on the rocks or ice, and in summer they were hunted at sea using kayaks.
Seals were a favourite prey because their meat was so nourishing, but the Inuit also used the mammal’s waterproof skin as well as its bones. Similarly, whenever the Inuit managed to kill a whale, they used practically every part of it: the blubber was used for food and for oil to heat and light their homes, the whalebone or baleen was used to make bows for hunting, and the bones themselves were used to make sleds.

The Inuit used every part of the caribou they killed, the meat for food of course, but also the hide, which was used to make clothes, blankets, tents and kayak skins. The tough skin from the animal’s forehead was used for shoe soles and the softer skin from its belly for making leggings. A parka needed four caribou hides and a pair of pants required two more. The antlers were used to make tools, the tendons made sewing thread, and the fat was rendered to make lamp oil.

The Inuit usually lived in groups made up of several families, so during an Inuk’s lifetime, he or she might meet only a few hundred people, mostly belonging to the same mutual-support network. The bigger the network, the better the chances of individual survival. The Inuit family cell was made up of a couple, their unmarried children and sometimes the widowed mother or sister of one of the spouses. The oldest male still able to work acted as the family’s spokesman.

The second level of family organisation was a group of several families that joined together as a hunting group. Decisions at this level were made in common. The size of the hunting group depended on how much prey there was in the region, and if food became scarce the group would split into smaller units.
The Inuit used several methods to strengthen group cohesion: marriages that were arranged during childhood (and even of they didn’t actually take place, the parents of the engaged children regarded themselves as having a kinship bond); spouse exchanges; and adoption of others’ children. A child taking the name of another member of the group was thus a member of two different families.

Traditionally, Inuit parents brought up their children with kindness and patience. It was regarded as unacceptable to strike or even to reprimand a child. Experiment and imitation were regarded as the best apprenticeship, and most knowledge was transmitted orally. The most prized traits of character were generosity – which was usually rewarded – and kindness. In a society underpinned by cooperation between members, these were indispensable qualities. Any show of anger was regarded as shameful, as an impulsive gesture could threaten the very survival of the community. Social pressure was the basis of education. Any display of ill humour was ridiculed, and one of the most severe punishments for a child was to be given less affection. And in a society so dependent on cohesion, the greatest pressure on an individual was the threat of banishment from the group.

📷 : King Island Eskimo woman and child, King Island, Alaska, between 1915-1925.

Teutonic Knights were one of the great chivalric orders that emerged from the Crusades, alongside the Hospitallers and Templars, but while those other knights made their names in the Holy Land, the Teutonic Knights fought their greatest battles in Europe...

Almost as famous as the Knight Templars and Hospitallers, the Teutonic Knights and their popular imagery of extravagant horned helmets on steel-clad horsemen have stoked the fascination of many a history aficionado. And though the latter was possibly only used for ceremonial purposes, there is without a shred of doubt a unique historical scope when it comes to legacy of this medieval military order. Much of it perhaps has to do with the fact that the Teutonic Order made its military mark in the mysterious lands of north-eastern Europe, as opposed to the renowned Holy Land. It should also be noted that at the same time these ‘knights’ were more successful in establishing a full-fledged, economically viable monastic state (Ordensstaat) than their peer Crusader orders like the Templars and Hospitallers.

While the Third Crusade was supposed to be the glorious military feat to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin, the campaign though partly successful ended in a disaster for the Imperial forces of the Holy Roman Empire. This was because of the untimely death of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa before his massive army (comprising 3,000 knights and other troops) could approach the contested areas. So only a remnant of his followers took part in the Crusade and subsequently established a field hospital after the siege of Acre. This hospital was later granted recognition from the Papacy, which established the organization as a military order, christened as Fratres Domus Hospitalis Sanctae Mariae Teutonicorum (Brethren of the German Hospital of St Mary), which later became the Teutonic Knights.

Like other crusading orders, the Teutonic Knights (though not as powerful as the Templars and the Hospitallers in the Levant), held small parcels of land and strongholds all throughout the Holy Land, with their primary headquarters pertaining to the suburb of Montfort in the region of northern Palestine. However, in 1244 AD, many of the military orders suffered a fateful defeat at the hands of the Ayyubids, with the Teutonic Knights losing 397 of their 400 actual knights in the encounter.

In spite of this massive reversal, the Teutonic Knights continued to exert influence in the nearby Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia – possibly to counter the Templars from the neighboring Principality of Antioch, thus suggesting how political rivalry was present even between Crusader religious orders. However the fall of Acre in 1291 AD finally symbolized the end of their crusading endeavors in the Holy Land, and the Teutonic Order then focused its attention towards the pagan regions of Europe itself.

Interestingly enough, after just a few years of its founding, the Teutonic Order also had the opportunity to establish itself in the district of Burzenland (Terra Borza) in Transylvania, at the behest of the Hungarian king Andrew II. Burzenland was a wild mountainous region inhabited by diverse people including Vlachs, Slavs, Pechenegs, and even the raiding Kipchaks.

Suffice it to say, the Hungarian overlords were interested in maintaining a semblance of authority over the multifarious subjects of this frontier district. And thus the Teutonic Knights were invited to control the mountain passes (as bulwarks against the nomadic Kipchak raids).

#archaeohistories However while the Teutonic Order was given relative autonomy in the functioning of its troops in the region, Hungarian king prohibited knights from erecting stone-based fortifications – probably because he didn’t want the order to be a militarily independent faction with strong political influence in the area. But the Teutonic Knights broke their agreement and started constructing stone-based castles, and at the same successfully repelled various Kipchak raids.

Thus the situation became complex for the Hungarian monarch, who actually proceeded to gift even more ‘non-Hungarian’ lands to the order as a reward for their effectiveness, in spite of their perceived ‘insolence’. But unique political scope was extinguished in 1225 AD after many Hungarian barons and Vlach subjects (who were Orthodox Christians) were rebellious due to the rising power of the Catholic Teutonic Knights. As a result, the knights were unceremoniously expelled from Hungary, which finally propelled them to establish an independent power base of their own.

Ironically the loss of opportunity in Hungary actually led to the Teutonic resolve to institute their own stronghold – an opportunity given to them by Konrad I of Masovia (who hailed from Poland’s Piast dynasty). The Duke was fighting his own expansionist wars in the adjacent pagan territory of the Prussians (not to be confused with their latter-day counterparts). Although his military efforts were coming to naught with enemy raids that even threatened his own residence at the Plock castle.

Frustrated by Prussian presence, the Duke finally invited the embittered Teutonic Knights in 1226 AD to fight his foes. However, the military order only agreed to Konrad’s request on the condition that the Duke offered them a small territory based around the frontier town of Kulm. Thus, Teutonic Knights finally established their own independent stronghold in the very heart of Europe, and the Baltic chapter unraveled through numerous political acts, military actions, horrendous crimes, and shifting alliances. In the direct aftermath, the Teutonic Order was successful in extinguishing the Prussian state after almost 50 years of brutal warfare, and consequently, the order actually ruled Prussia under charters issued by the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor as a sovereign monastic state.

As for the bigger picture, the Baltic frontier opened up a power struggle between various European and Eurasian factions, including Lithuanians, Russians, Livonians (comprising Estonia and Latvia), Swedes, Catholic Poland, and even the Golden Horde Mongols and Tartars.

Unsurprisingly, when it came to the organization of the Teutonic Order, there were many similarities to other Crusader orders like Templars and Hospitallers. To that end, the upper-most administrative strata comprised the Hochmeister (literally ‘high master’) who were the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Knights, accompanied by representatives of the Ballei (administrative provinces) and five other senior officers whose titles ranged from Treasurer, Supreme Marshall to even Supreme Draper.

Interestingly enough, the election of Hochmeister took a democratic route that was quite unparalleled in medieval times. It started with the nomination of a brother-knight as the elected leader, and he proceeded on to elect his companion, and these two knights, in turn, elected the third member, and so on until 13 knights were chosen for the electoral college (theoretically representing the majority of the Teutonic Order members). These thirteen members were finally responsible for electing the Grand Master.

Alexander the Great’s achievements rested on those of his father. Who was Philip II of Macedon and how did he enable his son’s “greatness”?

In his day, Philip II was arguably the most significant player in the politics of Eastern Mediterranean. He was a wise innovator, a masterful tactician, and a shrewd diplomat, who carried Macedon from periphery to apex of Mediterranean power politics. However, his life is usually overshadowed by that of his son, Alexander the Great. Often, he appears in the historical record only as a prelude or side character in his son’s path to glory, but Philip was a fascinating individual who deserves his own share of attention.

Like many great rulers, Philip was never meant to be King. Born around 382 BC, he was only third eldest son of King Amyntas III of Macedon, and his elder brother Alexander II was destined to succeed his father. However, after Alexander’s assassination by a powerful courtier, the young Philip was sent away as a diplomatic hostage, first to the Kingdom of Illyria on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, but then to Thebes. In Thebes, he learned at the feet of the legendary Theban General Epaminondas and lessons Philip learned there would reshape Greece, Macedon, and the world forever. Philip returned to Macedon when he reached adulthood. His second-eldest brother Perdiccas III trusted Philip and appointed him as regent for his own son Amyntas while the King was out on campaign. However, in 359 BCE, King Perdiccas was killed in battle against the Illyrian ruler Bardylis. Philip became the regent for his infant nephew but quietly sidelined Amyntas to establish his own power. He was kind enough not to kill Amyntas and permitted him a life of relative comfort, but he never allowed his nephew anything that might challenge his own power.

Philip’s time under Epaminondas honed his military skill and he embarked on a series of tactical and military reforms as king that paved the way for Macedon’s future glory. The most important was the introduction of sarissa. The sarissa was a long spear roughly twice the length of the traditional dory used in Greek and Macedonian warfare. Warfare in this period was based around phalanx formations — men armed with spears and shields in a tight formation, providing an unbreakable wall of protective shields and offensive spears. The Greeks had perfected this type of warfare and famously employed it in battles such as Thermopylae and Marathon.

Philip’s sarissa was a simple change, but a profound one. By doubling the length of the spear, he doubled the distance between his own men and the enemy’s weapons. Furthermore, because the spears were so long, additional rows of phalangites could point their spears in front of the formation, creating multiple layers of spears for attackers to get through. This made Macedonian phalanx almost impenetrable.

Philip also improved the use of cavalry by forming the hetairoi, or Companion Cavalry. This elite heavy cavalry force was comprised of the Macedonian elites and were typically personally led into battle by the king. Usually, the sarissa-equipped phalanx units would hold an enemy in place while the swift hetairoi outflanked the enemy. This combination would be devastatingly effective against the Persians. Lastly, Philip innovated with the use of siege equipment. He made one of history’s first use of catapults against the town of Byzantion in 340 BC and made liberal use of siege towers, battering rams, and early ballistae named oxybeles. Although he had mixed success with them, his varied and sophisticated array of siegecraft equipment would be indispensable to Alexander’s later conquests.

📷 : The royal shield of King Philip II in Museum of the Royal Tombs of Aigai.

© Nathan Hewitt

#archaeohistories Upon seizing power, Philip’s immediate political concerns were the Illyrians. Having killed his predecessor in battle, the Illyrians posed a unique threat as they had been emboldened by their success and might inspire others to revolt against Macedonian power. Philip marched to meet the Illyrians in the Erigon Valley in 358 BC, where he decisively defeated them and slew their king on the field.

On top of his military acumen, Philip understood the value of marriage as a political tool. He secured the obedience of Illyria through marriage to the Princess Audata and consolidated his control of Elimeia by similarly marrying Phila of Elimeia. By far his most consequential union came from Princess Olympias of Epirus in 357 BC. By all accounts, Olympias was a formidable and wilful woman, and together they quickly conceived a son, whom they would name Alexander.

Philip continued his expansion by acquiring the gold-rich territory around the city of Amphipolis in 357 BC and that same year he conquered the city of Pydna. These actions directly defied the demands of Athens and brought Philip fully into shifting alliances of the Greek world. The dispute over Amphipolis and Pydna led to ten years of intermittent conflict between Philip and Athens. Philip continued to prove himself an able battlefield commander. He wrested multiple cities out of Athenian control with remarkable success, although the city of Methone did cost him his right eye. He then carried his campaigns into Thrace and Thessaly, further expanding Macedonian power at the expense of the Greek city-states.

From 356 BC, Philip was dragged into the Third Sacred War as an ally of Thebes against the Phocians. Despite initial successes, Philip was actually defeated in battle by the Phocians but dusted himself off and redoubled his efforts. He delivered a decisive revenge upon them at the Battle of Crocus Field in late 353 or early 352 BC where he killed or captured almost 10,000 Phocians. The victory rewarded Philip with effective control of Thessaly and a powerful stake in Greek affairs that he would only expand.

Amid his military and diplomatic achievements, Philip still found time to be present in his son’s life. Philip features in several famous anecdotes from Alexander’s early life, although not all of them may be true. For example, it was Philip who tried and failed to tame the horse Bucephalus before Alexander managed to subdue the beast and make him his loyal companion. Philip supposedly wept with joy and told his son to find a bigger kingdom because “Macedon is too small for you.” An unintentionally prophetic prediction for a future conqueror, or a later invention to bolster the heroic destiny in Alexander’s myth? The latter is more likely.

For his part, Philip appears to have trusted Alexander. In one Plutarchian tale, Alexander was trusted to receive Persian ambassadors while Philip was away from court. In another, he entrusted 16 year old Alexander with the regency while he was on campaign, during which the young Alexander successfully subdued a rebellion in Macedonian territory.

Many of these anecdotes are dubious, but we do know that Philip made some impressive provisions for his son. Most famously, Philip arranged for Aristotle to personally tutor Alexander. Teacher and student enjoyed a close relationship for many years and one can think of few people in history who might be as impressive a teacher for a young man to have. Clearly, Philip wanted Alexander to have the best education possible.

📷 : Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), taming Bucephalus, by Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1826/7, Philip is seated on the right. (The National Trust Collections)

Many Greek and Roman authors including Theopompus of Chios and Plato referred to the Etruscans as immoral. During later Roman times, the word Etruscan was almost synonomous with prostitute, and Livy's histories moralise about the rape of Lucretia, where Roman women are seen as virtuous model wives in comparison to their liberated Etruscan counterparts. On this site we shall examine the evidence given by these sources and also from Necropolis art such as the "Tomb of the Bulls" in Tarquinia.

Athenaeus, a Greek grammarian of the 3rd Century CE came too late to give a personal eye-witness account of Etruscan life-style, and had to rely instead on the accounts of Timaeus and Theopompus who both lived in the 4th Century BC.

According to Timaeus:

"Among the Etruscans who had become extravagantly luxurious, it is customary for the slave girls to wait on the men naked...."

"Among the Etruscans who had become extravagantly luxurious, it is customary for the slave girls to wait on the men naked...."

A Greek historian's account of the behaviour of Etruscan women.
Theopompus of Chios, 4th Century BC (Histories Book 43)

Sharing wives is an established Etruscan custom. Etruscan women take particular care of their bodies and exercise often, sometimes along with the men, and sometimes by themselves. It is not a disgrace for them to be seen naked. They do not share their couches with their husbands but with the other men who happen to be present, and they propose toasts to anyone they choose. They are expert drinkers and very attractive.

The Etruscans raise all the children that are born, without knowing who their fathers are. The children live the way their parents live, often attending drinking parties and having sexual relations with all the women. It is no disgrace for them to do anything in the open, or to be seen having it done to them, for they consider it a native custom. So far from thinking it disgraceful, they say when someone ask to see the master of the house, and he is making love, that he is doing so-and-so, calling the indecent action by its name.

When they are having sexual relations either with courtesans or within their family, they do as follows: after they have stopped drinking and are about to go to bed, while the lamps are still lit, servants bring in courtesans, or boys, or sometimes even their wives. And when they have enjoyed these they bring in boys, and make love to them. They sometimes make love and have intercourse while people are watching them, but most of the time they put screens woven of sticks around the beds, and throw cloths on top of them.

They are keen on making love to women, but they particularly enjoy boys and youths. The youths in Etruria are very good-looking, because they live in luxury and keep their bodies smooth. In fact all the barbarians in the West use pitch to pull out and shave off the hair on their bodies.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus wrote in 1st Century BC:

The Tyrrhenians were a people of dainty and expensive tastes, both at home and in the field, carrying about with them, besides the necessities, costly and artistic articles of all kinds designed for pleasure and luxury.

#archaeohistories The frescos from the Tomb of the Bulls (Tombe dei Tori) in Tarquinia are characterised by fertility symbols, although the meaning of some of the symbolism is not entirely clear. The panel on the left depicts a heterosexual scene involving two couples, whereas the scene on the right depicts a homosexual scene. This has been variously interpreted. It is noted that the bull on the right has an aggressive pose, whereas the bull on the left is completed passive, which has been interpreted by some authors as a disapproval of homosexuality. Note also that the bulls have human faces, possibly indicating some mythological context.

One watercolor painting from the The Tomb of The Bigas, Tarquinia, which was painted soon after the discovery of the Tomb of the Bigas in Tarquinia (These frescoes have since almost completely deteriorated) The picture shows an audience of a chariot race, and show a homosexual couple making love quite openly in full view of all. This shows that perhaps Etruscan society had a high acceptance level of homosexuality. The city of Pompeii was founded by the Etruscans as part of their expansion in Campania. Although captured by the Samnites in the 4th Century, and later by the Romans,it retained many of the customs introduced by the Etruscans, in common with Capua, the Urbs princeps of the Campania league. We have a very good understanding of sexuality among the Pompeians during the 1st Century CE, although to correlate this with Etruscan habitation of Pompeii requires a trained imagination. In Pompeii, all variations of sexuality were openly and blatantly pursued. Here, homosexuality, group orgies and even pedophilia were widely accepted as normal behaviour.

Tomb of the floggings (tomba della fustigazione) has frescoes which depict erotic scenes, and like those in the Tomb of the Bulls, these may carry an underlying apotropaic theme. On the right hand wall, there are two erotic scenes separated by a prothesis (funerary door). The wall paintings are badly damaged, The scene to the right shows a woman, clad only in a tutulus, bending and holding the hips of a bearded man who faces her with a smile. From behind, the woman is approached by a youth who has one hand on her buttocks and raises a whip with the other hand. On the left side of the prothesis, another woman embraces a young man, while being penetrated from behind by a bearded man.

The other walls of the tomb are covered with scenes of musicians, drinking, dancers etc, which suggest the influence of the cult of Dionysus.

Many Items of pottery from Tarquinia tombs, particularly of the 6th and 5th Century also show such erotic scenes, and tend to back up Theopompus's view of Etruscan society, however these may be no more than copies of Greek art of the same period. Perhaps the erotic images are part of some wider significance such as a religious festival (cf the Roman festival of Lupercalia, probably the forerunner of Valentine's Day).

The fact that the imagery is used so blatently in tombs tends to reinforce the belief that Etruscan society was much more permissive than other contemporary societies. Some authors have drawn parallels with present day US society, from the perspective of the fact that both are very open societies, and with a high immigrant population. My own opinion is that we should exercise extreme caution when comparing modern societies with their ancient counterparts.

📷 : Erotic scene (5th Century BC; fresco; Tarquinia, Tomb of the Flogging)

King Minos and Minotaur remain shrouded in mystery and mythology, yet evidence of a Bronze Age ‘Bull Cult’ at Minoan palaces abounds...

It was Greek mythology, as represented in works of Homer and Apollodorus, that first prompted antiquarians to search for fabled island civilization of King Minos, backcloth against which struggle of the hero Theseus with the Minotaur was supposedly enacted. Interest in locating ‘Homeric’ sites of pre-Classical Greek world was stimulated in 1870, when pioneering archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, claimed to have identified the city of Troy.

His later excavations at Mycenae, in Argolid region of mainland Greece, soon revealed further spectacular evidence of an ‘age of heroes’, including the so-called ‘gold mask of Agamemnon’. By 1876, Schliemann was convinced that the epic poems of Homer were, in fact, reliable historical documents; and when he turned his attention towards Crete, more sensational revelations were expected, this time of lost civilization of King Minos. Schliemann, however, was unable to obtain permission to excavate; and it was not until 1899 that the site of Knossos was explored, under the direction of Sir Arthur Evans.

Like his predecessor, Evans was aware of mythology of Crete and the ancient travel accounts of Pausanias; but he was primarily drawn to the island by his ambition to establish the origins of the Greek language. His excavations produced curious Linear B tablets, which defied decipherment until 1952, when the outstanding researches of Michael Ventris and John Chadwick proved that ancient Cretan script was forerunner of Archaic Greek.

The tablets had defeated Evans; but he was left with the triumph of having unearthed the vast royal complex at Knossos, parts of which he ‘restored’ in controversial fashion. Evans was certain that he had discovered the royal seat of King Minos; he labelled the entire Bronze Age civilization of the island ‘Minoan’, after the mythical king. The account of excavations at Knossos, published between 1922 and 1935, bore the grandiose title The Palace of Minos.

As in the case of Schliemann’s discovery of what he had believed to be the Homeric city of Troy, much of the romance that surrounded the findings at Knossos has now been dispelled. King Minos and the Minotaur remain shrouded in mystery and mythology; yet Evans’ consummate achievement was the exposition of the remnants of a culture in which the image of the bull held portentous significance.

Cretan painters, sculptors and metal-workers have bequeathed to posterity a wealth of scenes and artefacts which show that the bull and the associated ‘bull-sports’ played a prominent part in the lives of the Bronze Age inhabitants of the island. The precise meaning of the bull-image has provoked a good deal of speculation throughout this century, as the continuing process of excavation has increased our knowledge of Minoan culture.

Many ancient peoples respected the bull as a symbol of strength and fertility; its size, power and potency have impressed man for many thousands of years. Bronze Age Crete, however, constitutes something of a special case; it has produced not only static representations of the bull itself, but also the highly mobile figures of the bull-leapers, young people of both sexes, apparently performing astounding acrobatical feats using a charging bull in much same way as modern-day gymnasts might use a piece of fixed apparatus.

The palace at Knossos yielded the famous ‘bull-leap’ fresco painting; seals and signets found at several sites bear the bull’s horns motif; image of the bull appeared on funerary furniture, and in the form of rhytons (pouring vessels). ‘Bull-leapers’ were depicted in a variety of activities, and were fashioned from a wide range of materials, including bronze, ivory and terracotta.

📷 : Zakros Bull's Head (1500-1450 BC), belonged to Minoan Civilization (3100-1100 BC), Crete, Greece. (Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete)

#archaeohistories At first it was thought that the ‘bull-cult’ had been confined to the royal precincts at Knossos; but examination of the palaces at Phaistos and Malia, the ‘summer palace’ at Hagia Triada and other important sites at Zakro, Armenoi and Pseira, has provided evidence that the phenomenon was fairly widespread throughout the island.

As has been noted, the bull had fascinated man both before and after the Aegean Bronze Age. Palaeolithic cave paintings from Lascaux in France, which depict the strength and ferocity of the bison, have been dated to c.13,500 BC by radiocarbon analysis. The civilizations that flourished in Anatolia and Mesopotamia between 6000 BC and 2000 BC have furnished us with many striking examples of the bull-image, from the vivid murals at Catal Huyuk to the intricate and delicately-made golden head of a bull from the city of Ur.

The theme of the bull persisted in Near Eastern artwork for centuries, culminating in the monumental winged bulls of the Neo-Assyrian age. There has been considerable speculation as to the possible magico-religious significance of such objects. The Ancient Egyptians observed the religious cult of Apis, the Bull of Memphis, and also revered Mnevis, a minor deity who took the form of a huge, heavily built black bull. Long after the waning of the Aegean Bronze Age, the Etruscan peoples of Italy decorated their funerary furniture with bull-scenes, in much the same way as the Cretans had done.

Greek vase-painters of the sixth century BC tended to depict some of the more outlandish mythological scenes; yet the theme of Theseus and the Minotaur was not neglected, as the black-figure ‘Francois vase’ and the red-figure work of the ‘Panaitos painter’ show. The bull continued to have significance well into the age of Rome; Cato gives an account of the rustic ceremony of the lustratio, the cleansing and purification of the land, in which a sacrificial bull is led around the field concerned, before its blood is scattered over the ground.

The wealth of bull-images found in Crete encouraged archaeologists to re-appraise some of the similar items found elsewhere. In particular, attention focused on two gold cups, called ‘Mycenaean’, discovered at Vapheio, near Sparta, some 20 years before the excavations at Knossos. These richly-wrought vessels, in the so-called ‘tea-cup’ style, depicted scenes very similar to some of those found in Crete, especially a rhyton from Hagia Triada. The first Vapheio Cup relief shows what is apparently a bull tethered by its hind leg, with a second bull recumbent nearby; but the ‘second bull’ is, in fact, a cow, probably used as a decoy to attract the bull, who was then smartly roped by concealed captors.

The head of the bull is raised, its expression one of anger. The second cup depicts hunters, in the typically Cretan slim-waisted style, attempting to ensnare a bull by suspending a net between two trees. The bull is seen, on the next relief, to be apparently firmly enmeshed; but the final scene reveals that the bull has broken free and trampled one of his would-be captors, while a second, thought to be a girl, seemingly wraps herself around the bull’s horns. The theme, the figures and the style of workmanship are all typically Cretan, despite their location at Vapheio; the cups were probably imported from Crete, or produced on the Greek mainland by Cretan goldsmiths.

The not-so-gentle art of bull-catching is similarly portrayed on one of the reliefs of the Hagia Triada rhyton from southern Crete; a young man is shown near a bull, but not engaged in any form of athletic activity. He is about to attempt to capture the bull. And a painting on a crystal plaque from Knossos shows a rope being used to capture a bull; the resemblance to the subject matter of the Vapheio Cups is inescapable.

📷 : Bull-Leaping Fresco, Knossos, 1450 BC. Jebulon (CC0).

The Neolithic, also known as the Stone Age, is a period between 10,000-2200 BC that is characterized by a shift from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one revolving around more permanent settlements and a newfound reliance on agriculture. With farming came, for the first time in human history, a consistent surplus of food. This allowed for rapid population growth and farming populations spread quickly throughout regions inhabited by hunter-gatherers. Paleolithic people, who lived in the time period before the Neolithic, were constrained to relatively small, mobile populations in which the energetic cost of reproduction was quite high. It has been estimated that children would be raised only once every four years. Farming and animal domestication allowed for the caloric needs of larger numbers of people to be met, and population size rapidly increased due to high fertility rates and migration patterns. Altogether, this resulted in a large-scale shift towards larger, more concentrated communities, closer interactions with animals, and consistent use of the same landscapes for waste deposition and resource extraction.

These lifestyle changes create favorable conditions for the spread of disease into new niches. In fact, it is presumed that the Neolithic coincided with an increased impact of infectious disease on human populations. Emergence of human-adapted Salmonella strains, for example, is linked to the cultural transformations of the Neolithic, during which the sheer number of people made obligate parasitism a viable survival strategy. Before the transition, small groups of hunter-gatherers in Africa consisted of only about 50 people and resulted in a low population density of about 30 people per square kilometer. The effective human population, therefore, was quite small, and any pathogens that specialized in human infection would have been relegated to a long period of stagnant growth. Ancestors of Mycobacterium tuberculosis would have only seen about 0.003% annual growth during the Pleistocene. With larger populations, however, growth increased dramatically. The effect of animal domestication in the spread of disease should not be underestimated. Evidence of systemic animal husbandry suggests a heavy reliance on animal labor and products throughout the Neolithic period, which presents greater opportunities for spillover events between species. This is one of the leading theories for the evolution of human-specific tuberculosis. While societies could now support rapidly increasing populations, the quality of life was not necessarily significantly improved. Elevated exposure to disease and higher workloads in more complex communities meant that individuals had high health risks. Neolithic individuals also often present symptoms of nutritional and mineral deficiencies, which would increase disease risk.

📷 : Lesions related to infectious disease in individual M20 from Neolithic Northern Vietnam. A) and b) show cavitations (holes) in the right humerus. C) and d) show new bone on the tibiae and fibulae. E), f), and g) show new bone growth and cavitations on the right fibula. H) shows cavitations on the left heel bone.

#archaeohistories The presence of infectious disease in the Neolithic can be examined in several ways. The most common is through the archaeological record. For decades, the presence of mass graves and skeletal markers of disease after excavation were the only available indicators of pathogens from thousands of years ago. As a result, this type of analysis has become very robust. The combination of various skeletal deformities and lesions can distinguish between similar diseases; tuberculosis and syphilis, for example, can both cause bone lesions, but syphilis does so specifically on the face and may affect the long bones like the tibia in unique ways. Unfortunately, these methods limit paleomicrobiology to the effects of the microbes and not organisms themselves. As a result, skeletal paleopathology only identifies microbes that cause diseases that affect bone and have cases severe enough to be visible on skeleton. Diseases caused by Treponema like syphilis and yaws, for example, only start permanently affecting bone when they reach the tertiary stage. This stage only occurs in one of every three untreated cases, suggesting that diseases significantly affecting quality of life and population demographics may be seriously underrepresented.

In recent years, development of molecular methods like polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and gene sequencing has resulted in powerful analysis by palaeomicrobiologists on causative agents of diseases themselves. Furthermore, some microorganisms such as mycobacteria, to which tuberculosis and leprosy are related, can be detected by their very stable cell wall lipids. Ancient DNA (aDNA) from the Neolithic is often sampled from environment or from bone itself. With amplification, different species can be identified, characterized, and placed within a phylogenetic tree describing their evolutionary histories. This has resulted in identification of pathogens previously unseen in the Neolithic; Pantovirus B19, Yersenia pestis, Helocobacter pylori, and hepatitis B, among others, have been found in Neolithic populations from aDNA alone.

Recent study of infectious diseases in the Neolithic has revealed a variety of microbes affecting humans during the time period, especially those that are only detectable from DNA. These range from Pantovirus B19 to brucellosis, meningitis and leprosy. Listed here are several of the pathogens that have been extensively studied and are subjects of newly developing research.

Genetic evidence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, causative agent of tuberculosis, has been found as early as 5000 years ago. It is most often identified as a Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex, a larger group that is recognized by standard DNA probes. The complex includes M. tuberculosis, M. bovis, M. africanum, and M. microti. M. tuberculosis is one of the most common causes of tuberculosis, but M. bovis and M. africanum can result in similar symptoms in humans. Of these, M. bovis mostly affects cattle but can infect humans if infected meat and dairy products are ingested, while M. africanum is responsible for majority of tuberculosis cases in Africa. M. microti specifically affects mice and voles.

📷 : Lateral view of spine affected by tuberculosis, partly healed, affecting thoracic vertebrae 7 and 8 and first lumbar vertebra.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were a collection of buildings admired as feats of beauty and human engineering. A number of ancient authors such as Diodorus Siculus and Antipater of Sidon, compiled lists of these ‘sights to be seen’, but the list we know today has eclipsed all other compilations to become the definitive selection of famous ancient sites in the Eastern Mediterranean. The list includes Great Pyramid of Giza, Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, Temple of Artemis in Ephesus, Statue of Zeus from Olympia, Colossus of Rhodes, Alexandria’s Pharos or Great Lighthouse and Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

• The Great Pyramid of Giza :
Only surviving wonder is, of course, Great Pyramid of Giza. Built in 2500s BC during Egypt’s 4th Dynasty, Pyramids are great structures on Giza Plateau that were built by three generations of monumental pyramid builders. The Great Pyramid was first and largest and was built by Khufu, called Cheops by Herodotus. The second largest pyramid was built by his son Khafre who most Egytpolgists also believe constructed Sphinx, while third and smallest was built by Khafre’s son Menkaure.

Pyramids are the crowning glory of Giza Necropolis and originally gleamed in shining white limestone with golden capstones. They served as tombs for the Pharaohs and were invested with intense religious symbolism, although exact nature of that symbolism still divides scholars, and acted as statement of Pharaoh’s power over the materials and manpower needed to create them. Scholars now understand that their construction was a product of immense resources Egypt could mobilize and talented, well-paid labor force — neither armies of slaves nor aliens had a part to play.

Like almost all royal burials in Egypt, Pyramids were robbed millennia ago. Most likely, they were plucked clean in First Intermediate Period that followed the collapse of Egypt’s Old Kingdom in 2200s BC. Pyramids acted as tempting beacons for plunderers, and their failure to protect their occupants might explain later shift to less conspicuous tombs like those in the Valley of the Kings. Time and scavenging took away limestone casings and golden capstones, leaving the rough stone exteriors that we see today. Despite looting and damage, Pyramids are some of most recognizable structures on Earth and a magnet for tourism from all over the world. They may have failed to protect their Pharaonic occupants, but for over 4,000 years, they still stand as a testament to their immense power. Unfortunately, the rest of the wonders weren’t so lucky.

• Mausoleum of Halicarnassus :
Mausoleum of Halicarnassus was built at the city of Halicarnassus on Western coast of modern-day Turkey in mid-4th Century BC for the Carian king Mausolus and his family. It was started before his death and finished posthumously on the orders of his sister-wife Artemisia II. Artemisia’s grief was said to be immense and endured in art and literature for millennia, but Mausoleum was ultimate monument to that grief.

Mausoleum was a towering 45m structure containing over 400 sculptures from some of the finest sculptors in Greek world. It was topped by a pyramid upon which Mausolus and Artemisia rode in a four-horse chariot. Pliny the Elder, Strabo, Vitruvius and others described its beauty which cemented its place among Seven Wonders.nThese descriptions and fragmentary remains of a handful of the statues are all that remain. As will become a trend with wonders, we do not actually know how it fell to ruin. It was still standing in Roman period, but at some point in following millennium it fell into disrepair. No sources describe how or why this happened. The only thing we can say for certain is that by 1402 Mausoleum was little more than a ruin when crusading knights cannibalized its remains for stones to build the nearby Bodrum Castle. Frustrating but not unusual even for something so famous and respected in its day.

© Nathan Hewitt

#archaeohistories • Temple of Artemis at Ephesus :
Modern Turkey also played host to another of the wonders: the Temple of Artemis at the formerly Greek city of Ephesus. Artemis was the Greek goddess of the hunt and had strong associations with the moon and female youth, which earned her high regard across the Greek world. Ephesus treated her as something of a patron deity, quite similar to the Athenian veneration of Athena, which is why they constructed a massive temple to her or, should we say, constructed several.

Temple of Artemis was actually three temples built and destroyed at separate times. The date of the construction of the first temple is unknown, but we do know that it was destroyed by a flood in 7th Century BC. It was rebuilt larger with slight design changes soon after, only to burn down in 356 BC due to arson by a man named Herostratus. This was around the time of the birth of Alexander the Great in Macedonia and Plutarch relates one story that said the temple burned because the gods were distracted by his arrival into the world.

The third and final form of the temple was built in late 4th Century BC and stood for centuries before facing a gradual decline. This is the version of the temple most associated with its place among the seven wonders and this version, with the impressive number of peripteral columns surrounding it, is what endures in popular imagination.

It was severely damaged by Gothic raids in 3rd Century CE which might have left the temple in ruins before it was finally demolished by Christians in late 4th Century. The site was lost for years until a British expedition rediscovered it, and now a lone column assembled from disparate fragments uncovered at the site is all that stands from one of the greatest wonders of the ancient world.

• Statue of Zeus at Olympia :
A similar grim fate awaited the massive Statue of Zeus at Olympia. The statue was made of wood covered in gold and ivory plates and stood at 14m tall, although it must be noted that Zeus was seated on a similarly massive throne, so the figure itself was considerably larger than the height suggests. It was built some time in 5th Century BC by famous Greek architect Phidias. Phidias was probably the greatest of the ancient Greek sculptors and also created the statue of Athena Parthenos that used to stand on the Acropolis, which might be why Olympia chose to enlist him to erect a statue to their own favoured patron.

The exact fate of the Statue of Zeus is unknown, and it is one of the hardest wonders to trace through the historical record. It was still there in 391 CE when Theodosius I closed all pagan temples in the Roman Empire but there’s no clear record afterwards. It was most likely destroyed when the temple itself burned down in the 400s. There’s a wild story that it was secretly hidden away in Constantinople, where it was reassembled before being burned again, but there’s no evidence for that. It’s as if the Statue of Zeus simply faded away into history and historians are still at a loss over what became of it.

Described as ‘Holy Grail’ of archaeology, tomb of Alexander the Great has tempted and frustrated generations who have tried and failed to find it...

When Alexander the Great died in 323 BC at the young age of 32, he appeared to have given little thought to what might happen to his empire or his body after his death. It was Ptolemies of Egypt who acquired his body and built him a tomb in Alexandria that became a landmark of the city for centuries. However, conqueror’s tomb mysteriously vanished from the historical record and the quest to rediscover it has possessed countless people ever since.

Following Alexander’s death, his powerful friends scrambled over scraps of his empire. Eventually, they would tear it apart through decades of civil conflict and forge their own kingdoms. One of those friends, and the most relevant to our story, was Ptolemy Soter. Ptolemy was a relatively minor figure at court during Alexander’s life — a long-term friend but not a man who wielded much power. In the settlement forged after Alexander’s death, Ptolemy was granted control of Egypt where he planted his own Ptolemaic Dynasty that would stand until Cleopatra’s fatal alliance with Mark Anthony almost 300 years later.

Alexander’s wishes for his own burial are unclear. His successor Perdiccas eventually chose to send him back to Macedon but he never arrived. His funeral train departed Babylon in 321 BC but Ptolemy’s forces appropriated body in Syria and redirected it to Egypt. When Ptolemy stole Alexander’s body, he was ruling from city of Memphis. Alexandria was still being constructed so Alexander was placed inside a temporary tomb near city.

Near Serapeum of Saqqara, 19th Century archaeologists found a temple of Pharaoh Nectanebo II. Nectanebo was last native pharaoh of Egypt who vanished after Persian invasion in 340 BC. Archaeologists such as Andrew Chugg have proposed that this temple of Nectanebo at Saqqara was Alexander’s original Memphite tomb. Temple would only have been a few decades old when Ptolemy was searching for a burial place and it was probably most recent major non-Persian monument in Egypt, and therefore an ideal place to lay Alexander to rest. Throw in an unused royal sarcophagus for Nectanebo II, and Ptolemy had a perfectly prepared royal burial right next door to his seat of power that was perfect for Alexander’s temporary interment.

Discovery of statues dating from Ptolemy I’s reign in vicinity of this temple confirms that some royal attention was paid to this site at this time. Interestingly, an apocryphal ancient story claimed that Nectanebo fled to Macedon and was Alexander’s true father. Modern historians acknowledge this story as nonsense, Alexander was almost certainly already born before Nectanebo fled Egypt, but story might have emerged because of Alexander’s burial in former’s tomb.

After several years in Memphis, Alexander was moved to Alexandria by Ptolemy II. There was a lost second tomb in city but we know nothing about it other than fact it existed. It was Ptolemy IV who finally completed Alexander’s third and most famous tomb called Soma. Soma was a mausoleum built to house both Alexander and the Ptolemaic royal family. Ancient sources tell us that it stood at crossroads between city’s main north-south and east-west road. Tomb served as cult center of deified Alexander through 3 centuries of Ptolemaic rule. Later, as power of Ptolemies declined, they pillaged tomb for gold and treasures that could be melted down or sold to meet their needs.

Julius Caesar visited tomb in 48 BC. Later, Cleopatra stripped tomb of many of its remaining treasures to raise money for her and Mark Anthony’s doomed war effort against Octavian. After his victory, Octavian himself visited the tomb to pay tribute to Alexander. When asked if he wished to see bodies of Ptolemaic kings as well, Octavian replied, “I came to see a king, not corpses.”

📷 : Alexander's tomb in Assassins Creed Origins

© Nathan Hewitt

#archaeohistories The Soma was a landmark of the city and its fame drew visitors from far and wide. That only makes its disappearance more peculiar. The last recorded visit to the tomb was in 215 CE when the Roman emperor Caracalla visited during his time in Egypt. Caracalla ordered some of the burial goods to be removed but supposedly added some of his own gifts to the burial as compensation. After this, the tomb and Alexander’s body are only referenced off-handedly.

The writer Libanius offers out final mentions of Alexander’s mummy still being on display just before 390 CE. The timeline of this final mention aligns with the Theodosian Decrees between 389 and 391, where Emperor Theodosius ordered the closure of pagan temples across the empire. The tomb, being a cult center for the deified king, must have run afoul of these laws. Saint Cyril of Alexander mentions that the cult centers of Alexander were stripped of their treasures on Theodosius’ orders, although the tomb is not directly mentioned. Then, by the early 400s CE, Saint John Chrysostom wrote that the locations of the body and tomb of Alexander had been lost.

The hunt for the tomb poses many challenges. The fact that Alexandria is a bustling inhabited city is one, meaning that it is virtually impossible to excavate most of the area. The continual inhabitation of Alexandria also raises the possibility that the tomb has simply been destroyed and that there is nothing left to be found. Land subsidence and changing sea levels have also flooded many old areas of the city and may have damaged the tomb.

There is also the question of whether Alexander will be found with his famous tomb. It is common for bodies to be moved long after their interment Egypt itself has no shortage of examples in its other royal burials and there is a chance that Alexander was taken out of the Soma and reburied somewhere else. While some archaeologists insist on searching for the Soma itself, the search for Alexander may yet be a different quest. Therefore, the ‘search for Alexander’s tomb’ can mean quite different things to different people.

The obvious starting point is to find the old crossroads of Alexandria somewhere in the modern city. The current layout does not correspond to the old layout, with settlement patterns in Alexandria shifting significantly over time. Excavations under the authority of Mahmoud Bey in 1895 provided some insight into the old layout and placed the crossroads somewhere in the vicinity of the intersection of the modern El-Horeya and Nebi Daniel roads.

This conclusion is strongly supported by local traditions that assert that the tomb was somewhere nearby. While no reliable evidence of the actual tomb exists past the 4th century, several later writers claimed that the tomb of Alexander still existed in the city, although none of them described any tomb consistent with the ancient sources. More likely, local memory preserved the approximate location of Alexander’s tomb and, over time, various places claimed to be atop the site or passed themselves off as the genuine tomb.

The Nebi Daniel Mosque is one such claimant. Sitting barely 100 meters from the Horeya-Nebi Daniel intersection, the mosque has long claimed to be atop Alexander’s tomb. In 1850, Heinrich Schliemann, who would earn fame for his work on the site of Troy, unsuccessfully sought permission to excavate there to settle the matter once and for all. Modern scholars such as Professor Faouzi Fakharani have studied the mosque and rejected its literal claims to being the site of the lost Soma, but its claims probably reflect a genuine historical memory of the tomb’s existence somewhere nearby.

Ancient Amazon Civilization Unveiled by LiDAR: Exploring the Secrets of the Rainforest

The dense, verdant expanse of the Amazon rainforest has long captivated the world’s imagination, often portrayed as an untouched wilderness teeming with biodiversity. Yet, recent technological advances, particularly in the field of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), have peeled back this leafy curtain, revealing a hidden history of ancient civilizations that once thrived beneath its canopy. This groundbreaking discovery not only rewrites chapters of human history but also challenges our understanding of the Amazon as an ecological wonder.

LiDAR technology, a remote sensing method, has emerged as a game-changer in archaeological exploration. Mounted on aircraft, LiDAR instruments emit rapid laser pulses that penetrate the dense forest canopy to map the ground below in extraordinary detail. This technology creates high-resolution, three-dimensional images of terrain, uncovering features obscured for centuries.

In the context of the Amazon, LiDAR’s ability to reveal the contours of ancient structures, roads, and other human-made formations has been invaluable. Where traditional ground-based surveying is hampered by the impenetrable jungle, LiDAR provides a bird’s-eye view of the landscape, allowing researchers to identify and map extensive archaeological sites with unprecedented accuracy and efficiency.

One of the most striking examples of LiDAR’s potential is the recent discovery in Ecuador’s Upano Valley. Here, LiDAR unveiled an extensive network of ancient settlements, interconnected by a web of roads and comprising more than 6,000 structures, including platforms, agricultural terraces, and sophisticated drainage systems. The scale and complexity of these findings suggest an advanced civilization that had mastered large-scale urban planning and agriculture. Dating back to 2,500 years ago, the Upano Valley civilization appears to have flourished in an area long thought too hostile for such large-scale human habitation. The discovery challenges traditional views of the Amazon as sparsely populated by nomadic tribes. Instead, it paints a picture of a region that was once home to bustling cities and extensive agricultural landscapes, rivaling the grandeur of ancient urban centers found in Central America.

The implications of the Upano Valley discovery are profound. For centuries, the narrative of the Amazon has been one of an untouched Eden, a ‘virgin’ forest largely uninfluenced by human activity. However, the evidence unearthed by LiDAR tells a different story—a story of complex societies that lived, farmed, and altered the landscape on a grand scale.

These revelations compel us to reconsider our understanding of the Amazon’s ecological and historical significance. The fact that such extensive human modification went unnoticed for so long underscores the limitations of traditional archaeology in dense forest environments and highlights the transformative impact of LiDAR technology in uncovering the secrets of our past.

Furthermore, these discoveries contribute significantly to the ongoing debate about the impact of indigenous populations on the Amazonian ecosystem. The sophisticated urban and agricultural systems revealed by LiDAR suggest that the pre-Columbian Amazon was more akin to a managed landscape, shaped by its inhabitants over thousands of years, rather than the untouched wilderness it was once believed to be.

#archaeohistories Ancient Urban Landscapes of the Amazon – A Deeper Dive into the Discoveries

This section should explore the specific features of the Upano Valley sites revealed by LiDAR. Discuss the layout of the settlements, the structure and purpose of the earthen platforms, terraces, and roads. Emphasize the sophistication evident in the urban planning, such as the alignment of roads and the integration of agricultural areas with living spaces. Include insights from archaeologists and LiDAR experts on how these features reflect the social and economic aspects of the society.

Draw parallels between the Upano Valley civilization and other well-known ancient societies like the Maya or the Incas. Highlight similarities and differences in urban planning, architectural styles, and societal organization. This comparative analysis will provide readers with a familiar frame of reference and underscore the significance of the Amazonian discoveries.

Shift the focus to the Landívar and Cotoca sites in Bolivia, uncovered in the Llano de Mojos region. Describe the unique features of these sites, such as the moat and rampart fortifications, the terraces, and the pyramidal structures. Discuss how these features align with or differ from the Upano Valley findings and what they suggest about the diversity of cultures in the pre-Columbian Amazon.

Delve into the cultural and cosmological aspects of these ancient Amazonian societies. Explore how the architectural orientation and layout of the cities might reflect religious beliefs, astronomical knowledge, and societal values. Reference any artifacts or iconography discovered that could provide insights into the spiritual and daily life of these people.

Conclude this section by reflecting on how these discoveries reshape our understanding of the Amazon’s history. Discuss the potential scale of human impact on the region and how these findings challenge the perception of the Amazon as an untouched wilderness. Highlight the need for a reevaluation of the historical narrative of the Amazon and its indigenous peoples.

The discoveries in Ecuador’s Upano Valley, brought to light by LiDAR technology, have significantly advanced our understanding of the region’s ancient history. The intricate network of settlements, interconnected by an extensive road system, reveals a level of urban sophistication previously unknown in the Amazon. These settlements, characterized by large mounds and terraces, were likely centers of social, economic, and religious activities.

The urban layout, particularly the alignment of the roads and platforms, suggests a society with a deep understanding of engineering and urban planning. This sophistication is further evidenced by the agricultural terraces and drainage systems, indicative of advanced knowledge in agriculture and water management.

The comparison with other ancient civilizations, such as the Maya, is inevitable. Like the Maya, Upano Valley civilization demonstrates a complex societal structure with a significant emphasis on urban planning and architecture. However, unlike the stone-based structures of the Maya, Upano Valley’s architecture was primarily earthen, a difference that speaks to the unique environmental conditions of the Amazon.

In Bolivia’s Llano de Mojos region, Landívar and Cotoca sites represent another facet of Amazon’s ancient urban landscapes. These sites, also uncovered through LiDAR, feature moat and rampart fortifications, suggesting a society concerned with defense and territorial control. Presence of conical pyramids and large civic-ceremonial buildings indicates a society with a rich cultural and religious life.

Cultural and cosmological significance of these sites is profound. Architectural orientation and design of cities likely reflect cosmological beliefs and societal values of these ancient Amazonian people. Artifacts found at these sites, such as ceremonial objects and everyday utensils, offer a glimpse into lives of their inhabitants.

It’s often said that winners dictate history. Not so for the medieval holy wars called the Crusades.

Muslim forces ultimately expelled the European Christians who invaded the eastern Mediterranean repeatedly in 12th-13th Centuries and thwarted their effort to regain control of sacred Holy Land sites such as Jerusalem. Still, most histories of the Crusades offer a largely one-sided view, drawn originally from European medieval chronicles, then filtered through 18th-19th Century Western scholars.

But how did Muslims at the time view the invasions? (Not always so contentiously, it turns out.) And what did they think of the European interlopers? (One common cliché: “unwashed barbarians.”) For a nuanced view of the medieval Muslim world, HISTORY talked with two prominent scholars: Paul M. Cobb, professor of Islamic History at the University of Pennsylvania, author of Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades, and Suleiman A. Mourad, a professor of religion at Smith College and author of The Mosaic of Islam.

Broadly speaking, how do Islamic perspectives on the Crusades differ from those of the Christian sources from Western Europe?
Suleiman Mourad: If we wrote the history of the Crusades based on Islamic narratives, it would be a completely different story altogether. There were no doubt wars and bloodshed, but that wasn’t the only or dominant story. There was also coexistence, political compromise, trade, scientific exchange, love. We have poetry and chronicles with evidence of mixed marriages.

Do Muslim perspectives match Western ones in terms of chronology and geography?
Paul Cobb: Chronologically, Muslim sources differ from the Christians because they don’t recognize the Crusades. They recognize the events we call the Crusades today simply as another wave of Frankish aggression on the Muslim world. (I use “Franks” or “Frankish” to refer to western Christians.) For them, the Crusades didn’t begin in Clermont with Pope Urban’s 1095 speech [rallying crusaders], as most historians say, but rather decades earlier. By 1060 Christians were not only nibbling at the edges of the Islamic world, but were actually gaining territory in Sicily and Spain. And whereas most Western historians recognize the 1291 fall of Acre as the end of the main Crusades, Muslim historians don’t see the end of the Frankish threat until, I would say, the mid-15th century, when Ottoman armies conquer Constantinople.

SM: To say the Crusades started in Clermont in 1095 and ended at Acre in 1291, we are fooling ourselves. History is not that clean cut. What came before and after reflected a lot of continuity and not abrupt change.

And geographically?
PC: Muslims saw the Frankish threat as Mediterranean-wide. It’s not just Franks invading Jerusalem, holding it 87 years and leaving, but a long-term and consistent assault on the most exposed areas of the Mediterranean edge of Muslim world—Spain, Sicily, North Africa, and what is now Turkey—over hundreds of years.

As the Crusades began, what were the physical boundaries of the Islamic world?
PC: The Islamic world—that is, those lands that recognized Muslim rulers and the authority of Islamic Law—was much bigger than the land of the Latin Christian west. It stretched from Spain and Portugal in the west to India in the east. And from central Asia in the north to Sudan and the horn of Africa in the south.

At that time, the core of the Islamic world was divided between a Shi’ite dynasty in Egypt and a Sunni dynasty in Syria and Iraq. But there was eventually a movement toward unification, right?
PC: Saladin, Islam’s most famous counter-crusading hero, was a very astute politician who knew he had to get his own house in order before he could deal with the Franks. He took over Egypt, then set about reconquering Syria and parts of Iraq. He would go on to ultimately recapture Jerusalem from the crusaders and push them back to a thin strip along the Mediterranean.

© HISTORY

#archaeohistories Tell me about medieval Islamic civilization. Wasn’t there a flowering in the 9th and 10th centuries?
SM: Actually, Islam’s “golden age” goes much longer, from the 9th to the 14th Centuries and it moves around, from Baghdad to Damascus to Cairo. Within that time, there were golden ages of mathematics and astronomy and medicine, with many advances. One example: A physician named Ibm al-Nafis, who lived in the 13th century in Cairo, was the first person to describe the pulmonary circulation of blood four centuries before the Europeans discovered that.

The main accomplishment was when, on a large scale, Muslims began to creatively engage with the science and philosophy of the classical Greco-Roman-Byzantine tradition and began to rethink those ideas. For pretty much the whole apparatus of science, mathematics and logic, Muslim scholars, along with others based in the Muslim world, provided corrections to the Greco-Roman tradition.

How would you compare European and Islamic civilizations during this time?
PC: The Islamic world was much bigger and more urbanized, with more wealth and cultural patronage, and more ethnic and linguistic diversity. Whereas the cities of western Christendom had populations measured in the thousands—Paris and London would have had maybe 20,000 each—Baghdad likely had hundreds of thousands of citizens.

So we’re talking about an invasion of peoples from a marginal, underdeveloped region of the world to one of the most urbanized, culturally sophisticated zones on the planet. That accounts for the sense of trauma from the Muslim side. How could people from the edge of the known world invade this divinely protected, culturally sophisticated and militarily triumphant region? There was a lot of soul searching on the part of the Muslims.

If the crusaders’ mandate was to reclaim the Holy Land and regain control of important Christian sites like Jerusalem, what was the importance of this territory for the Islamic world?
PC: Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest cities after Mecca and Medina, was one of its most pious pilgrimage sites. Islamic tradition built on many Christian traditions and revered many of the same figures known from the Bible and elsewhere—including Jesus. So for them, Jerusalem was at the center of a vast sacred landscape that stretched to Palestine and Syria.

SM: There’s a lot of literature that enjoins Muslims to protect the Holy Land and safeguard it as an Islamic space. But many places—in Jerusalem, in Acre, Saidnaya and elsewhere—were claimed by more than one community. These were sacred sites for everyone, not just one group.

Wait. So they were actually sharing sacred sites that, in theory, they were supposed to be fighting over?
SM: Today we have a rigid understanding of sacred sites being for one group, and the others won’t—and shouldn’t—come near it. Back then, there was a more collective approach to sanctity of space. The Islamic theory said, “we should fight these people and protect the Holy Land.” But in practice, they were willing to share. We know for a fact that when the crusaders came, most Muslims did not raise a finger. And to a large extent, the crusaders didn’t interfere with Muslim religious space.

No sooner did the crusaders infiltrate, they were accepted into the political landscape as any others that came: with alliances, wars, treaties, commerce. We have letters from Saladin to the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin III, that convey friendship and deep alliances. The relationship wasn’t dogmatic, it was pragmatic.

AI imagined ancient Athenians before the Battle of Salamis. In 480 BC, about 2,504 years ago, during the Persian invasion of Greece, most Athenians evacuated to Salamis Island. A small group remained at the Acropolis but was soon defeated. The Persian army occupied and destroyed Athens. However, the Greeks won a decisive naval victory at the Battle of Salamis. This victory helped determine the fate of ancient Greece.

The Battle of Salamis was one of the steppingstones of the democratic principle of government. The truth of this statement can be readily seen when the governments of the two opposing nations are compared. The Persian Empire at the time of the battle consisted of a monarchial or regal government in which the great mass of people paid honors to a sovereign on the throne because he represented the Deity. In this form of government the ruler had a life and death power over his subjects. He made all the laws to fit his whims, and the mass was forced to accept his rulings. The soldiers of Persia fought not because of a patriotic love for their country but rather because they were driven forward by officers with lashes. On the other hand, many of the Greeks lived under a democratic government in which the people decided the important issues. Athens was the model democracy of the ancient world. The Greek soldiers, unlike those of Persia, were men of character, men trained in initiative, and men who fought for the love of freedom and of their homes. The Battle of Salamis was therefore not only a struggle between two nations; it was a fight between the monarchial and democratic forms of government. The Greek victory not only established the supremacy of Greece; it permitted the continuance of the democratic principle. Salamis was the triumph of a people over the arbitrary authority of a despot.

For fifty years (500 B.C.-449 b.c.), the states of Greece and the Persian Empire engaged in a series of wars known in history as the Persian Wars. These wars started in 500 b.c. with the Ionic Revolt, an attempt on the part of the Greeks in Asia Minor to free themselves of their Persian rulers. The Greek states (especially Athens) sent money, ships, and men to aid this revolt; and when the rebellion was quelled, Darius, the Persian king, swore revenge. His first attempt in 492 b.c. to fulfill this oath ended in defeat when the fleet of warships and transports was shattered by a tempest while rounding the dangerous headland of Mount Athos in Chalcidice. In 490 b.c. the second invasion, which went directly across the Aegean Sea to avoid the dread sea coast of northern Greece, was defeated by an inferior force of Greeks at Marathon; and the Persian fleet was forced to retreat.

After the Battle of Marathon there arose two prominent Athenian leaders who were to render a great service to their state. One was Themistocles, a resourceful, energetic, and farsighted statesman, who used any means to gain his ends. The other was Aristides, who, though not as farsighted as Themistocles, was a true patriot and was so honest that he gained the name of “The Just.”

Themistocles urged the Athenians to prepare for a renewal of the Persian invasions by building a powerful navy and a naval base at the Piraeus. At this time the Athenians were developing the silver mines at Laurium, a mountain in southern Attica. With this silver and under Themistocles’s leadership, a fleet was built that proved to be the salvation of Greece. While the other Greek maritime states were building ships, no state made as rapid an advance as Athens. Within two years 200 triremes had been completed and provision was made to build 20 new triremes every following year.

🎥© The Archaeologist

#archaeohistories Aristides, on the other hand, opposed this policy very strongly. He recalled to mind the victory of the army at Marathon. He urged Athens to rely on her demonstrated advantage in the army. He opposed experiments now that Athens had already proved her army superior to that of the Persians. The quarrel between the two rivals became so fierce that an ostracism was held, and Aristides was obliged to go into banishment.

In 480 B.C. the third invasion, which is said by Herodotus to have consisted of an army of 1,700,000 fighting men and 80,000 cavalry and a fleet of 1,207 warships and tenders and transports under the direct command of the Persian King, Xerxes, crossed the Hellespont and marched along the coast of Thrace into Greece. The Persians met with very little resistance until they reached the northern boundary of Locris. Here, at Thermopylae, a narrow mountain pass, they were confronted by an army of approximately 7,000 Greeks under the Spartan King, Leonidas. On the sea the Persian fleet was opposed by a Greek fleet of 271 triremes at Artemisium, on the northern coast of Euboea. After being stopped for seven days, the Persians were led around the pass by a Greek traitor. The Greeks were trapped and slain, and the road into Greece lay open to the Persians. Before the final battle Leonidas allowed any of his allies to retire except the Thebans; and all, with the exception of 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, and, of course, 400 Thebans, took advantage of this opportunity to escape. Thus the army on the last day consisted of 1,400 Greeks. The seven days of battle caused the death of some 4,000 Greeks and about 20,000 Persians. Meanwhile, a series of indecisive battles, which resulted in great damage to the ships of both sides, took place between the Persian and Greek fleets; and the latter upon hearing of the loss of Thermopylae retreated through the Euripus to the shores of Attica.

After the destruction of Leonidas and his army the Persian host poured through the pass into central Greece, crushing all resistance in their way. When the news of their approach reached Athens, the city was thrown into consternation, but Themistocles comforted the citizens by reminding them of the prophecy of the Delphic Oracle. When the news of the preparations for the third Persian Invasion reached Athens, the Athenians sent envoys to Delphi to seek the advice of the oracle. The first answer was: “Wretched men, leave your homes and flee afar; fire and sword shall destroy your city and the temples of the gods.” The envoys pleaded for a better answer and were then told: “Pallas Athene cannot entreat Zeus for you; but he grants that, when all else is destroyed, the wooden wall shall protect you. Divine Salamis will make women childless.” The “wooden wall” was finally interpreted to mean their fleet, and the entire city with the exception of a few who remained within a wooden palisade in the Acropolis was moved to places of safety, some to the islands of Salamis and Aegina, others to Troezen, in Argolis. At length the Persians reached the uninhabited city and destroyed it, and their fleet took up its position in the bay of Phalerum, some 5 miles distant from the bay of Salamis, where the Greek fleet was stationed.

According to 'The Secret History of the Mongols' from Genghis’ birth, to see how the family rises from a “single family household” to the first global superpower in which land and horses are the predominant form of wealth of the empire. This will also include subsequent organization and growth of the empire by: sons Toloui and Ogadai; and grandsons Guyuk, Mongke, and Hulagu and finally the unification of the east and first truly global economy under Kublai, with his institution of paper money, the jaichao. Though it was not perfect, it was a bold and visionary move that left a mark on history.

Much of what is known about the Mongolian Empire started by Genghis Kahn was discovered peripherally. Where the Mongolians went they were like a plague of locust who would lay waste to entire populations. In the final chapters of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire he writes about the comparative importance and understanding of other empires, mentioning the Greeks, Turks, Ottomans and then goes on to say:

They are founded on the previous knowledge of the great eruption of the Moguls (Mongols) and Tartars, whose rapid conquests may be compared with the primitive convulsions of nature, which have agitated and altered the surface of the globe… Our European battles, says a philosopher [Voltaire], are petty skirmishes, if compared to the numbers that have fought and fallen in the fields of Asia.

Temujin, but better known now as Genghis Khan, lived a life that seemed to have been fire as an arrow, full speed from the moment of his birth in 1162. There was bitter political fighting going on in his region, and he was raised in this lifestyle that is nearly modern in speed, but completely ancient in both ritual and violence. The currency of the land was horse and food trading. Before Temujin’s rise to power, he would be captured by his father’s enemies to be kept as a slave, and it is upon his escape that he get’s one of his first big historical break’s” when he would meet one of his strongest allies, who would be considered among Genghis’ best friend, a wealthy Horse trader’s Son, Bogorchu. The would spend their lives together as friends and allies, securing a wealthy backing to begin his conqests.

When Genghis’s dies in 1227 the art of war, politics, and empire building had been upended completely and replaced with the newer Mongolian Model of speed and destruction. If you base your calculation of wealth on the value of land control/ownership, when Genghis Khan died he was the richest person in History (4,000,000 km2 or 1,500,000 sq mi, at the height of the empire) and readjust to the world market standard USD value, it yields a total of 100 trillion dollars.

The east and west were now connected like never before, through the Hungarian steppe with express riders traveling 150 kilometers a day, where the nomadic generals would meet and share information. During this time Beijing, though not defeated, was left abandoned by the Jin empire’s leadership in North China and Russia was primed for invasion as well. Genghis Khan felt that he was ordained by god to cover the earth with his people and he did exactly that by killing the men who would fight against him (and many who didn’t), raping the women, enslaving the children, and then inviting the remaining people into partnerships, an offer they couldn’t refuse… and for all this fear and destruction, the empire would grow evermore, faraway countries would come offering alms that they might be spared. The bonds were strong and the Fiefdom was a resilient one filled with strong and capable warriors as heirs of Genghis.

#archaeohistories After conquering a place, Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire were good about inducting talent and new ideas into his own lexicon of success. A wonderful example of this is a man Chu-Tsai, a Giant by any conventional standards (standing 6’8”) Governor of North China who worked for Genghis Khan as a chancery (tax and laws book keeper) despite having previously worked for one of Genghis’ rivals, the Jin Emperor. He (Chu-Tsai) would spend many years attempting to reign in Kublai’s uncle, Ogadai’s dreadful drinking and spending habits, recommending a more reserved life instead. Going as far as suggesting, that Ogadai should nurture and tax the poor, rather than razing them along with the crops to make room for horse pasture. Implemented in 1230, this method of taxation produced 10,000 silver ingots ad likely spared many lives, a revolutionary idea for the time. Genghis is succeeded by Ogadai “whose kingdom was won on horseback, could not be governed there” said Chu-Tsai.

It wasn’t long after these taxation rights are distributed throughout the various Khanates of the family and into the Islamic territories that the power is in the hands of somebody other than the gentle (for the times) Chu-Tsai, and it’s estimated that around this time more than half of the population decides to flee rather than face those who would tax up to 100% of their harvest. Gentle is unquestionably a relative term, it is suspected that the destruction brought on by the Mongolian empire in the 1200s reduced the population of the Eurasian continent by as much three quarters.

When Kublai, Genghis’s grandson, was in his early twenties, that he gets his first opportunity at governance after his mother, Sorkaktani, implemented this softer style of cultivation and taxation, learned from Chu-Tsai in the city of Zhengding, 200km south of Beijing. The land was used largely for farming, which was seen as unappealing by more traditional Mongol people who preferred livestock and pasture. Kublai’s estate was south of his mothers and contained around 10,000 homes, and though he did initially leave it to local officials during which time things would decline, this would eventually become a place of growth and peace (STILL a relative term) in a time of total chaos. Under Kublai’s governance during Ogadai’s rule, the region prospered.

While a semblance of peace is rising in the east, the western front of the empire belongs to the General Subadai, one of the Genghis’ best generals(if not THE greatest). The Mongols defeat the Hungarian King Bela’s army of 150 thousand soldiers. Though the reasons for the exact use is contested, artillery (an advantage take from Chinese alchemists/chemists, that would become extremely valuable) was used the first time in history during this battle. Historian Richard Gabriel suspects that 1/3rd of King Bela’s 150 thousand troops died fleeing their final camp on the bank of the Sajo river.

From 1241–1248 the Khan empire would temporarily halt any geopolitical reformation or war campaigning. In 1241 Ogadia Genghis son and first successor would succumb to a lifetime of drink, falling ill and then dying in December during a hunt. It was four years until Guyuk, Ogadai’s son would be selected the Great Khan. Guyuk too, would serve a short lived reign after dying (likely) from poor health due to alcoholism.

It was Guyuk’s Cousin, Mongke Khan, who would restart the Global War Machine that was the Mongol empire, beginning with political and financial reform. In the 1250’s a great undertaking began for the Mongols, when a head tax was instituted for every person in the empire, to include the recently conquered land in Europe and the middle east. As the largest empire in history, this level of global governmental institution, even if it was ONLY clear roads for taxation purposes, could not have been possible up to this time. These taxes also included both agricultural taxes and commercial taxes on business (Man,2006).

In the spring of 1291, the largest army that Islam had ever assembled during 200 years of crusader warfare was advancing on the city of Acre. Swelled by a vast number of volunteers and fired by the spirit of jihad it had come to finally drive the Franks back into the sea.

The city that they were approaching was crucial to the crusader project. After Pope Urban II had delivered his rallying call to save Jerusalem in 1095, a crusader army slogged the 2,000 miles round Europe into the Middle East and, against all reasonable expectations, captured the holy city but the venture had been massively attritional. Of the 35,000 who set out only about 12,000 saw Jerusalem. It was clear that the land route was unsustainable. This taught military planners the need to transport armies by ships, the services of the Italian maritime republics to provide them, and the necessity of ports to receive them. Acre, strategically positioned on the coast of Palestine and with a secure harbour, was ideal. Following its capture in 1104 the city became the main port of the Frankish Levant and the principal landing place for pilgrims and armies. Crusader ventures set out through its gates; royal brides arrived at its port; kings were married in its church and died in its mansions. It served multiple functions as a market, port, transit station, logistics centre and hub within the Mediterranean trading system, and it was from here that a crusader marched out to confront Saladin in 1187. They were annihilated at the battle of Hattin.

This catastrophe handed Jerusalem back to Islam and Acre became, once again, a Muslim city. It was recaptured by the forces of the Third Crusade in 1191 after an exhaustive siege that lasted nearly two years and, with Jerusalem lost, it became the principal city of the crusader states. The military orders – the Templars, the Hospitaller knights of St John and the Teutonic knights – moved their headquarters there and built themselves imposing strongholds. The trading republics of Venice, Genoa and Pisa carried on highly profitable trade with the Islamic world from the city. Acre boomed. It was the centre of trade across the whole Mediterranean and the most cosmopolitan city in the world.

It was only regime change in the heart of the Islamic world that began to tilt the balance of power back to Islam. By the 1260s the dynasties of the Middle East were under threat from the Mongols. After the Mongol destruction of Baghdad in 1258, the trade routes moved north, damaging Acre’s economy and the Mongol advance threatened the very existence of Islam. In the process the Mamluks, slave soldiers of the Ayyubid sultans of Egypt, staged a coup and established a new dynasty that brought with it a harder ideology to contest with its enemies.

Mamluks were traditionally mobile horse warriors but under the great Mamluk sultan, Baybars, they also developed high-level skills in besieging cities. Baybars started to wage concerted warfare against both the Mongols and the Franks. Between 1265 and 1271, Baybars systematically dismantled the chain of fortresses that had provided a defensive wall for the crusader states. His crowning achievement was the capture of Krak des Chevaliers, the Hospitallers’ massive fortress in southern Syria in 1269.

The burden of defence fell increasingly on the military orders. The master of the Templars in the last quarter of the 13th century, Guillaume de Beaujeu, was aware that it was only a matter of time before Acre came under sustained assault. After the neighbouring city of Tripoli fell to the Mamluks in 1289, it was the last surviving crusader stronghold. When a massacre of visiting Muslim merchants took place there in 1290 it provided the Mamluk sultan, Qalawun, with a justification to attack.

#archaeohistories During that winter the sultan gathered the resources for war against Acre. Giant trees were cut down in the mountains of the Lebanon and laboriously hauled to Damascus to be fashioned into catapults. Siege miners were summoned from Aleppo. Troop detachments were requisitioned from all the vassal princes in Palestine and Syria. Preaching in the mosques in the name of jihad fired up the ordinary people to volunteer for the cause. The Christians also made increasingly desperate calls to Europe for a new crusade to save the city. The pope issued a general encyclical exhorting people to take the crusade but the response was limited. The appetite for crusading ventures by the kings and great nobles of Europe was dying. In the end only 3,000 men made it. Few of them were professional soldiers.

However, in November 1290, with the siege preparations well advanced, Qalawun unexpectedly died and siege preparations stalled. The people of Acre breathed a sigh of relief. They believed they had been spared, but Qalawun’s son, Khalil, vowed to press on. In March 1291 his army was on the move. It was by all accounts an extraordinary spectacle – an immense concourse of men and animals, tents, baggage and supplies, all converging on Christendom’s last foothold. The aim was to deliver a knock-out blow. Forces had been drawn widely from across the Middle East – from Egypt 500 miles to the south, from Lebanon and Syria as far north as the banks of the Euphrates, from the great cities – Cairo, Damascus, and Aleppo – a gathering of all the regions’ military resources. The elite troops were the Turkish-speaking Mamluks and the army included not only cavalry, infantry, and specialist supply corps, but enthusiastic volunteers, mullahs and dervishes. The campaign had inspired a popular fervour for holy war – and a less pious one for booty.

Visible in this panorama was a vast array of outfits, devices and armour: lordly emirs in white turbans; foot soldiers in conical metal helmets, chain mail, and leather scale tunics; cavalry armed with short bows, their animals covered in colourful cloths and saddles embroidered with heraldic insignia; camel-mounted musicians playing kettledrums, horns and cymbals; fluttering yellow banners and weapons of all kinds: maces, javelins, spears, swords, siege crossbows, carved stone balls, naptha for the manufacture of Greek fire and clay grenades. Oxen strained to haul carts laden with the prefabricated timber components of stone-throwing catapults – known in the Islamic world as manjaniqs (mangonels), to Europeans as trebuchets. The rumbling carts were bringing an unprecedented number of such devices, some of enormous size, to batter the walls of Acre. They represented the most powerful form of artillery weapon before the age of gunpowder.

Acre was well defended. It comprised a dense urban centre backed onto the Mediterranean Sea so that it could only be besieged from one side and was protected by a double line of walls surmounted by towers and fronted by deep ditches, but the disparity between the number of troops on each side was huge. Acre could draw on about 700 to 800 elite mounted knights and about 13,000 infantry. Qalawun had marshalled perhaps 100,000 in the cause of holy war.

The logistical and organisational skills of the Mamluks were extraordinary. They brought to the walls probably the largest number of siege catapults ever assembled – perhaps 90 in total. The majority of these were fast-firing traction devices, relying on teams of men hauling in unison to send stone balls hurling against the walls. Alongside these came a number of giant counterweight devices, with names such as The Furious and The Victorious, which could launch projectiles up to 165 kilograms in weight. In early April, Khalil set up his red tent on a hill overlooking the city and his men set to work bombarding the walls and undermining them.

The Assyrians are a people who have lived in the Middle East since ancient times and today can be found all over the world. They are well known for their vast ancient empire; ancient cities, such as Nimrud and Nineveh; and their fierce invasions, including into the Kingdom of Judah and Egypt.

In ancient times, the Assyrian civilization was often centered at the city of Assur (Ashur), named after the supreme god of Assyria and ruins of the city are located in what is now northern Iraq. The territory the Assyrians controlled was vast, stretching from southern Iraq to the Mediterranean coast at the civilization's height in 7th Century BC. Before the city of Assur gained its independence about 4,000 years ago, it was controlled by a people known as the Sumerians, whose civilization declined because of a mix of political, military and environmental problems.

Modern-day scholars often divide Assyrian history into three periods: the Old Assyrian, the Middle Assyrian and the Neo-Assyrian. However, scholars disagree about the time span each period covers.

• The Old Assyrian period generally refers to the time after Assyria first gained independence, around 2000 BC. In first two centuries after independence Assur was a city focussed on trade, wrote Klaas Veenhof, an emeritus professor of Assyriology at Leiden University in a paper published in the book "A Companion to Assyria" (Wiley Blackwell, 2017). The city was no more than 40 hectares in size and held a population of between 5000-8000 people, something that likely limited its military power, Veenhof noted.

Its early rulers didn't refer to themselves as a "king" in their inscriptions; instead, they called themselves a "vicegerent" (a word that can mean "governor") of god Ashur, Amélie Kuhrt, professor emeritus of ancient Near Eastern history at University College London, wrote in her book "The Ancient Near East, 3000-330 BC" (Routledge, 1995).

Part of an inscription found on an Assyrian temple's stairway reads, "Erishum, the vicegerent of the god Ashur, son of Ilushuma, vicegerent of the god Ashur, built the entire temple area of temple of the god Ashur" (translation by Albert Kirk Grayson). Why Assyria's early rulers used such modest titles (governor as opposed to king) is a mystery that scholars are still trying to understand. The people of the city spoke Assyrian, which is a "distinct language, albeit closely related to Babylonian, which was used in the regions south of Assur," Karen Radner, the Alexander von Humboldt chair for the ancient history of the Near and Middle East at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, wrote in her book "Ancient Assyria: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford University Press, 2015).

In about 1800 BC, a ruler named Shamshi-Adad I took control of Assur. He incorporated the city into a sizable amount of territory that he already controlled in what is now Iraq and Syria. Unlike the previous rulers of Assur, Shamshi-Adad made no pretense of modesty, instead giving himself a title that scholars sometimes translate as "king of the universe," wrote Albert Grayson, professor emeritus of Assyriology at the University of Toronto, in the book "Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: From the beginning to Ashur-resha-ishi I" (Otto Harrassowitz, 1972).

Shamshi-Adad's empire did not last long. After his death, it collapsed and the kingdoms of Ekallatum, Eshnunna and Babylon all controlled Assur at some point during the period of about 1775-1720 BC.," Shigeo Yamada, a history professor at the University of Tsukuba, wrote in a paper published in book "A Companion to Assyria". By around 1500 BC, Assur was under strong influence, if not control, of a kingdom called Mitanni, Yamada wrote.

#archaeohistories • During 14th Century BC, kingdom of Mitanni began to fade, and those in charge of Assur began to assert the city's independence. Modern-day scholars often call this period of newfound Assyrian independence the Middle Assyrian period. At the start of this period, Assur-uballit I (who reigned from around 1363-1328 BC) came to power at Assur and claimed independence from Mitanni, Stefan Jacob, a researcher at Heidelberg University in Germany, wrote in a paper that was also published in "A Companion to Assyria." In a letter to pharaoh of Egypt, Assur-uballit I referred to himself as a "brother" of the pharaoh claiming "equal status with him," Jacob wrote. Assur-uballit I also attempted to use military conquest to expand the territory he controlled. 

His successors further enlarged Assyrian territory. Adad-nirari I (who reigned from around 1305-1274 BC) conquered Mitanni, taking over a kingdom that had ruled Assyria a century earlier. In ancient texts, Adad-nirari I claimed that he "sowed salt over" the Mittani capital of Taidu and imposed labor obligations on the city's survivors. He constructed a palace over Taidu saying that he built it "from top to bottom" and deposited a stele (an inscription carved on stone) to mark his control of the city (translation by Albert Kirk Grayson). Adad-nirari I also called himself "king of the universe," a title that future Assyrian kings would also use.

Ancient records say successors of Adad-nirari I continued to expand Assyria. Assyrians conquered Babylon during reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243-1207 BC) and reached the Mediterranean coast during reign of Tiglath-Pileser I (1114-1076 BC). Tiglath-Pileser marked achievement by bringing back cedar wood for building projects, ancient texts say. The martial prowess and skill of Assyrian kings continued to be emphasized in ancient inscriptions. Tiglath-Pileser I boasted in one inscription that "altogether I conquered 42 lands and their rulers" from across the Middle East, adding that he was a "valiant man" with an "unrivaled bow" who was such a good hunter that "I killed on foot 120 lions with my wildly vigorous assault" (translation by Albert Kirk Grayson).

However, inscriptions from Tiglath-Pileser's time, and that of his successors, point to problems Assyria was experiencing. Cities and civilizations across the Middle East were collapsing as as a group of people from the Aegean that are sometimes called the "sea people," arrived in the region, displacing local populations and collapsing trade networks. Assyrian records indicate that Tiglath-Pileser and his successors frequently fought against the Arameans, a group of people who were displaced or otherwise caught up in the chaos. In two centuries following Tiglath-Pileser's conquests, Assyria's territory contracted, but the kingdom retained control of Assur and nearby areas. Assyria didn't expand again until 10th Century BC.

📷 : Assyrian art on the wall of King Ashurnasirpal II. Ashur-nasir-pal II was king of Assyria from 883-859 BC. Ashurnasirpal II succeeded his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II, 883 BC.