To sum up world history in a quick and easy time-line seems in some ways to trivialize it all, or to make the massive seem somehow simple and digestible. In any case, it is kind-of cool to be able to peruse the happenings throughout history that have managed to gain importance in the modern world view.
The whole ancient-city-in-a-jungle-discovered-and-still-largely-buried thing gives me a big chub. It is like Indiana Jones meets himself.
There are thousands of ancient structures at Tikal and only a fraction of these have been excavated after decades of archaeological work. The most prominent surviving buildings include six very large Mesoamerican step pyramids, labeled Temples I - VI, each of which support a temple structure on their summits. Some of these pyramids are over 60 meters high (200 feet). They were numbered sequentially during the early survey of the site.The majority of pyramids currently visible at Tikal were built during Tikal’s resurgence following the Tikal Hiatus (i.e., from the late 7th to the early 9th century). It should be noted, however, that the majority of these structures contain sub-structures that were initially built prior to the hiatus.
The idea of finding a lost city from space, even though it has long ago been consumed by the elements is a compelling one. Think of all of the sites that sit undiscovered, and the wealth of historical data that the must contain. Using imaging technology from satellites will probably lead to some important discoveries in the coming years.
Cosmos Magazine:
When NASA's only archaeologist, Tom Sever, looked at an infrared satellite image of a Mayan city in Guatemala, he was intrigued to see the vegetation around the buildings showed up as much brighter than the vegetation in other areas. Following a hunch, Sever, based at the Marshall Space Flight Centre in Hunstville, Alabama, looked for other patches of bright vegetation on the U.S. space agency's maps.Sure enough, he found additional bright spots at sites not previously considered for archaeological digs.
Sever hypothesised that the limestone that the Maya used for building had leeched into the soil, altering vegetation at these sites. Since chlorophyll in plants glows brightly in the infrared range, NASA's satellites were able to pick up the subtle difference in vegetation. With this new method in their toolkit, archaeologists went on to discover several previously unknown Mayan cities.
From here:
The Nazca Lines are gigantic geoglyphs located in the Nazca Desert, a high arid plateau that stretches 53 miles between the towns of Nazca and Palpa on the Pampas de Jumana in Peru. They were created by the Nazca culture between 200 BC and 600 AD. There are hundreds of individual figures, ranging in complexity from simple lines to stylized hummingbirds, spiders, monkeys, and lizards. The Nazca lines cannot be recognized as coherent figures except from the air. Since it is presumed the Nazca people could never have seen their work from this vantage point, there has been much speculation on the builders' abilities and motivations.
I've been plugging away on my current audio book titled, "History of the World." It is 54 or so hours of history covering pre-history through modern day. It has been pretty good, although I wish I had the book so that I could follow along a bit more successfully.
While cruising around the web researching some of the topics that the book has covered thus far I ran into this site which is awesome. AncientWeb.org is crisp, clean and filled with wonderful visuals. Check it out.
The Ancient web is an online resource for Students, Teachers, and anyone interested in the cultures of the ancient world.
1. Wealth without work
2. Pleasure without conscience
3. Knowledge without character
4. Commerce without morality
5. Science without humanity
6. Worship without sacrifice
7. Politics without principle
—Mahatma Gandhi
Well, this figures. Nothing is sacred. Not even a big circle of rocks out in the countryside.
here:
From 1901 to 1964, the majority of the stone circle was restored in a series of makeovers which have left it, in the words of one archaeologist, as 'a product of the 20th century heritage industry'. But the information is markedly absent from the guidebooks and info-phones used by tourists at the site. Coming in the wake of the news that the nearby Avebury stone circle was almost totally rebuilt in the 1920s, the revelation about Stonehenge has caused embarrassment among archaelogists. English Heritage, the guardian of the monument, is to rewrite the official guide, which dismisses the Henge's recent history in a few words. Dave Batchelor, English Heritage's senior archaeologist said he would personally rewrite the official guide. 'The detail was dropped in the Sixties', he admitted. 'But times have changed and we now believe this is an important piece of the Stonehenge story and must be told'.
I've always been fascinated by seemingly miraculous accomplishments of ancient cultures. In its day the Library of Alexandria was a repository of knowledge that is only perhaps now seeing its inflation adjusted match.
From our modern day functional equivalent:
The Royal Library of Alexandria in Alexandria, Egypt, was once the largest library in the world.It is generally thought to have been founded at the beginning of the 3rd century BC, during the reign of Ptolemy II of Egypt.
....
According to the earliest source of information, the pseudepigraphic Letter of Aristeas, the Library was initially organized by Demetrius of Phaleron. Demetrius was a student of Aristotle.
Initially the Library was closely linked to a "museum," or research center, that seems to have focused primarily on editing texts. Libraries were important for textual research in the ancient world, since the same text often existed in several different versions of varying quality and veracity. The editors at the Library of Alexandria are especially well known for their work on Homeric texts.
....
A story concerns how its collection grew so large: by decree of Ptolemy III of Egypt, all visitors to the city were required to surrender all books and scrolls in their possession; these writings were then swiftly copied by official scribes. Sometimes the copies were so precise that the originals were put into the Library, and the copies were delivered to the unsuspecting previous owners. This process also helped to create a reservoir of books in the relatively new city. The Ptolemies also purchased additional materials from throughout the Mediterranean area, including from Rhodes and Athens.
The Library's collection was already famous in the ancient world, and became even more storied in later years. It is impossible, however, to determine how large the collection was in any era. The collection was made of papyrus scrolls. Later, parchment codices (predominant as a writing material after 300) may have been substituted for papyrus. A single piece of writing might occupy several scrolls, and this division into self-contained "books" was a major aspect of editorial work. King Ptolemy II Philadelphus (309–246 BC) is said to have set 500,000 scrolls as an objective.
Looking back through history, even war doesn't seem to have rocked the very fabric of civilization the way that the pandemic has. With our supply chain methodology now employed for nearly everything that we use in day to day life, could we survive a pandemic in even one major section of the world?
* Peloponnesian War, 430 BC. Typhoid fever killed a quarter of the Athenian troops and a quarter of the population over four years. This disease fatally weakened the dominance of Athens, but the sheer virulence of the disease prevented its wider spread; i.e. it killed off its hosts at a rate faster than they could spread it. The exact cause of the plague was unknown for many years; in January 2006, researchers from the University of Athens analyzed teeth recovered from a mass grave underneath the city, and confirmed the presence of bacteria responsible for typhoid. [1]* Antonine Plague, 165–180. Possibly smallpox brought back from the Near East; killed a quarter of those infected and up to five million in all. At the height of a second outbreak (251–266) 5,000 people a day were said to be dying in Rome.
* Plague of Justinian, from 541 to 750, was the first recorded outbreak of the bubonic plague. It started in Egypt and reached Constantinople the following spring, killing (according to the Byzantine chronicler Procopius) 10,000 a day at its height and perhaps 40 percent of the city's inhabitants. It went on to eliminate a quarter to a half of the human population that it struck thoughout the known world. [1] Some historians have suggested a total European population loss of 50%-60% between 541 and 700.
* The Black Death, started 1300s. Eight hundred years after the last outbreak, the bubonic plague returned to Europe. Starting in Asia, the disease reached Mediterranean and western Europe in 1348 (possibly from Italian merchants fleeing fighting in the Crimea), and killed twenty million Europeans in six years, a quarter of the total population and up to a half in the worst-affected urban areas.
* Cholera
o first pandemic 1816–1826. Previously restricted to the Indian subcontinent, the pandemic began in Bengal, then spread across India by 1820. It extended as far as China and the Caspian Sea before receding.
o The second pandemic (1829–1851) reached Europe, London in 1832, Ontario Canada and New York in the same year, and the Pacific coast of North America by 1834.
o The third pandemic (1852–1860) mainly affected Russia, with over a million deaths.
o The fourth pandemic (1863–1875) spread mostly in Europe and Africa.
o In 1866 there was an outbreak in North America.
o In 1892 cholera contaminated the water supply of Hamburg, Germany, and caused 8,606 deaths.[2]
o The seventh pandemic (1899–1923) had little effect in Europe because of advances in public health, but Russia was badly affected again.
o The eighth pandemic began in Indonesia in 1961, called El Tor after the strain, and reached Bangladesh in 1963, India in 1964, and the USSR in 1966.* Influenza
o The "first" pandemic of 1510 travelled from Africa and spread across Europe.[3][4]
o The "Asiatic Flu", 1889–1890. Was first reported in May of 1889 in Bukhara, Russia. By October, it had reached Tomsk and the Caucasus. It rapidly spread west and hit North America in December 1889, South America in February–April 1890, India in February-March 1890, and Australia in March–April 1890. It was purportedly caused by the H2N8 type of flu virus and had a very high attack and mortality rate.
o The "Spanish flu", 1918–1919. First identified early March 1918 in US troops training at Camp Funston, Kansas, by October 1918 it had spread to become a world-wide pandemic on all continents. Unusually deadly and virulent, it ended nearly as quickly as it began, vanishing completely within 18 months. In six months, 25 million were dead; some estimates put the total of those killed worldwide at over twice that number. An estimated 17 million died in India, 500,000 in the United States and 200,000 in the UK. The virus was recently reconstructed by scientists at the CDC studying remains preserved by the Alaskan permafrost. They identified it as a type of H1N1 virus.
o The "Asian Flu", 1957–58. An H2N2 caused about 70,000 deaths in the United States. First identified in China in late February 1957, the Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957.
o The "Hong Kong Flu", 1968–69. An H3N2 caused about 34,000 deaths in the United States. This virus was first detected in Hong Kong in early 1968 and spread to the United States later that year. Influenza A (H3N2) viruses still circulate today.* Typhus, sometimes called "camp fever" because of its pattern of flaring up in times of strife. (It is also known as "gaol fever" and "ship fever", for its habits of spreading wildly in cramped quarters, such as jails and ships.) Emerging during the Crusades, it had its first impact in Europe in 1489 in Spain. During fighting between the Christian Spaniards and the Muslims in Granada, the Spanish lost 3,000 to war casualties and 20,000 to typhus. In 1528 the French lost 18,000 troops in Italy and lost supremacy in Italy to the Spanish. In 1542, 30,000 people died of typhus while fighting the Ottomans in the Balkans. The disease also played a major role in the destruction of Napoleon's Grande Armée in Russia in 1812. Typhus also killed numerous prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
* Effects of Colonization. Encounters between European explorers and populations in the rest of the world often introduced local epidemics of extraordinary virulence. Disease killed the entire native (Guanches) population of the Canary Islands in the 16th century. Half the native population of Hispaniola in 1518 was killed by smallpox. Smallpox also ravaged Mexico in the 1520s, killing 150,000 in Tenochtitlán alone, including the emperor, and Peru in the 1530s, aiding the European conquerors. Measles killed a further two million Mexican natives in the 1600s. Some believe that the death of 90 to 95 percent of the Native American population of the New World was caused by Old World diseases. As late as 1848–49, as many as 40,000 out of 150,000 Hawaiians are estimated to have died of measles, whooping cough and influenza.
Well this is cool. I can't wait to see what they find when they sift through the rest of the place. There have recently been a bunch of great archaeological discoveries in the Middle East. I hope a bunch of discoveries are made that fill in gaps in history.
An Israeli archaeologist unveiled what he claimed was the tomb of King Herod – the legendary builder of ancient Jerusalem – in the occupied West Bank yesterday.Ehud Netzer, a Professor of Archaeology at Hebrew University, spent 35 years searching for evidence of a burial site at Herodium, the dusty hilltop eight miles (13km) south of Jerusalem where Herod built his fortress palace.
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