Two thousand year old roman aqueduct discovered

A pair of British amateur archaeologists believe they have found the hidden source of a Roman aqueduct 1,900 years after it was inaugurated by the Emperor Trajan

The underground spring lies behind a concealed door beneath an abandoned 13th century church on the shores of Lake Bracciano, 35 miles north of Rome.

Exploration of the site has shown that water percolating through volcanic bedrock was collected in underground grottoes and chambers and fed into a subterranean aqueduct, the Aqua Traiana, which took it all the way to the imperial capital. Centuries later, it provided water for the very first Vatican, after Rome began to convert to Christianity under the Emperor Constantine.

The underground complex, which is entangled with the roots of huge fig trees, was discovered by father and son documentary makers Edward and Michael O'Neill, who stumbled on it while researching the history of Rome's ancient aqueducts. They recruited a leading authority on Roman hydro-engineering, Prof Lorenzo Quilici from Bologna University, who confirmed that the structure was Roman, rather than medieval as had long been believed.

Using long iron ladders to descend into the bowels of the sophisticated system, they found that the bricks comprising the aqueduct's walls are laid in a diamond shape known as "opus reticulatum" – a distinctive Roman style of engineering.

"A lot of the stone work bears the original Roman tool marks," Edward O'Neill said.

The underground labyrinth of galleries has remained almost unknown to archaeologists because for hundreds of years it was full of water. It was only when modern bore pumps started directing the supply to the nearby town of Bracciano that the water level dropped dramatically and the subterranean complex became accessible.

The vaulted ceiling was decorated with a rare type of paint known as Egyptian Blue, which led the O'Neills to speculate that the grotto was a Roman nymphaeum – a sacred place believed to be inhabited by water gods. "The paint was very expensive to make, but it was painted all over the walls, which suggests an imperial link," said Mr O'Neill.

It may even have been inaugurated by Trajan himself in AD 109. Historical records show that the emperor may have been in the area on June 24 of that year. By coincidence, the O'Neills first explored the aqueduct on June 24 2009 – exactly 1,900 years later. A coin minted during Trajan's reign commemorates the opening of the aqueduct, the documentary makers believe. It depicts a river god holding an urn and a reed – traditionally symbols of a spring – and reclining in what looks like a cave, over what may be the representation of a tunnel. The documentary makers hope to raise funds to pay for the site to be excavated by professional archaeologists.

From Daily Telegraph.co.uk (01/25/2010)

A short review of the Al - Andalus History and the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa

Evidence of Stone Age amputation forces rethink over history of surgery

The surgeon was dressed in a goat or sheep skin and used a sharpened stone to amputate the arm of his patient.

The operating theatre was not exactly Harley Street — more probably a wooden shelter — but the intervention was a success, and it has shed light on the medical talents of our Stone Age ancestors.

Scientists unearthed evidence of the surgery during work on an Early Neolithic tomb discovered at Buthiers-Boulancourt, about 40 miles (65km) south of Paris. They found that a remarkable degree of medical knowledge had been used to remove the left forearm of an elderly man about 6,900 years ago — suggesting that the true Flintstones were more developed than previously thought.

The patient seems to have been anaesthetised, the conditions were aseptic, the cut was clean and the wound was treated, according to the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap).

The revelation could force a reassessment of the history of surgery, especially because researchers have recently reported signs of two other Neolithic amputations in Germany and the Czech Republic. It was known that Stone Age doctors performed trephinations, cutting through the skull, but not amputations. “The first European farmers were therefore capable of quite sophisticated surgical acts,” Inrap said. The discovery was made by Cécile Buquet-Marcon and Anaick Samzun, both archaeologists, and Philippe Charlier, a forensic scientist.

It followed research on the tomb of an elderly man who lived in the Linearbandkeramik period, when European hunter-gatherers settled down to agriculture, stock-breeding and pottery. The patient was important: his grave was 2m (6.5ft) long — bigger than most — and contained a schist axe, a flint pick and the remains of a young animal, which are evidence of high status.

The most intriguing aspect, however, was the absence of forearm and hand bones. A battery of biological, radiological and other tests showed that the humerus bone had been cut above the trochlea indent at the end “in an intentional and successful amputation”. Mrs Buquet-Marcon said that the patient, who is likely to have been a warrior, might have damaged his arm in a fall, animal attack or battle.

“I don’t think you could say that those who carried out the operation were doctors in the modern sense that they did only that, but they obviously had medical knowledge,” she said.

A flintstone almost certainly served as a scalpel. Mrs Buquet-Marcon said that pain-killing plants were likely to have been used, perhaps the hallucinogenic Datura. “We don’t know for sure, but they would have had to find some way of keeping him still during the operation,” she said.

Other plants, possibly sage, were probably used to clean the wound. “The macroscopic examination has not revealed any infection in contact with this amputation, suggesting that it was conducted in relatively aseptic conditions,” said the scientists in an article for the journal Antiquity.

The patient survived the operation and, although he suffered from osteoarthritis, he lived for months, perhaps years, afterwards, tests revealed. Despite the loss of his forearm, the contents of his grave showed that he remained part of the community. “His disability did not exclude him from the group,” the researchers said.

The discovery demonstrates that advanced medical knowledge and complex social rules were present in Europe in about 4900BC, and that major surgery was likely to have been more common than we realised, Mrs Buquet-Marcon said.

The Times (01/25/2010)

Gladiator, the movie: a Playmobil tribute

Butter from Scott´s polar expedition found now

Unlike the scary 3000-year-old adipocere bog butter, the latest aged butter actually looks like butter. It’s 97 years old, and it’s been living at no more than 10 degrees Celsius sinceCaptain Robert Scott left it at base camp during his ill-fated final expedition to the South Pole.

The Antarctic Heritage Trust has been restoring Scott’s Cape Evans hut. Despite the steady low temperature, the past couple of years have seen a lot more snow than usual, and it’s damaging the structure. While working on the pony stable (yes, Scott brought a bunch of Siberian ponies with him; it didn’t end well for them either), they found a wrinkled bag amidst a stack of empty boxes. Inside the bag they found two blocks of butter, much to their amazement.

“I think the butter was absolutely a treasure find,” Lizzie Meek of the Antarctic Heritage Trust told TV NZ. “It looked like an old wrinkly bag and you look inside and saw the wonderful Silver Fern logo,” she said.

She desribed the butter’s smell as “very pungent.”

“What’s amazing is how strong that smells,” she said. “I’m not sure I’d want it on my toast.”

Yeah no. Even in the freezer 100 years is a long time for any dairy product. On the other hand, maybe they just liked a bit of funk back then, like a cultured butter.

The silver fern is a familiar symbol to New Zealanders, most famous today as the logo of their legendary Rugby team, the All Blacks. Captain Scott’s team set off from New Zealand, so all their supplies were purchased there or donated by locals.

The maker’s label on the butter reads CCCDC, which probably stands for Canterbury Central Co-operative Dairy Company, a Christchurch company established in the 1890’s.

The AHT team plans to restore the butter, believe it or not. They’ll carefully remove the pieces of grit embedded in it and then just put it right back in the stable where they found it. Assuming its condition does not deteriorate, it should be fine in the frigid temperatures for another century at least.

Captain Scott’s second expedition set out to be the first to reach the South Pole, but adverse weather and some questionable choices on Scott’s part ensured they got there second, five weeks after Norwegian explorer and sled dog expert Roald Amundsen.

Dejected by their loss, Scott and his team trudged through Antarctic blizzards for 3 months, until the final three of them died on March 29 , 1912, just 11 miles from the food and fuel depot. Scott himself appears to have been the last man to die. His touching final diary entry, found by a search party 8 months later, and the tragic finale of the expedition, made him a hero in the Commonwealth.

e took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last [...] Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.

(From History Blog)

Elements of gothic architecture

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Create your Middle Age character!!

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LAST OF THE NEARDENTHALS

In March of 1994 some spelunkers exploring an extensive cave system in northern Spain poked their lights into a small side gallery and noticed two human mandibles jutting out of the sandy soil. The cave, called El Sidrón, lay in the midst of a remote upland forest of chestnut and oak trees in the province of Asturias, just south of the Bay of Biscay. Suspecting that the jawbones might date back as far as the Spanish Civil War, when Republican partisans used El Sidrón to hide from Franco's soldiers, the cavers immediately notified the local Guardia Civil.

But when police investigators inspected the gallery, they discovered the remains of a much larger—and, it would turn out, much older—tragedy.

Within days, law enforcement officials had shoveled out some 140 bones, and a local judge ordered the remains sent to the national forensic pathology institute in Madrid. By the time scientists finished their analysis (it took the better part of six years), Spain had its earliest cold case. The bones from El Sidrón were not Republican soldiers, but the fossilized remains of a group of Neanderthals who lived, and perhaps died violently, approximately 43,000 years ago. The locale places them at one of the most important geographical intersections of prehistory, and the date puts them squarely at the center of one of the most enduring mysteries in all of human evolution.

(From National Geographic web page)

"Daring young men" a book about The Berlin Blockade in its 50th anniversary

It´s 50 years now from the soviet troops Berlin Blockade, a thrilling story of how a great city could be supplied only by air. Even before World War II ended, the Western Allies knew that the peace was going to be tough, with the Soviet Union trying to control as much of Europe as it could—all the way to the Rhine, if possible. The Americans let their conscript army go home; the Russians did not. By June 1948, the U.S. had only 90,000 troops in Germany, facing a million men of the Red Army in the much smaller Soviet zone of occupation. The clashing visions of postwar Europe led to a crisis over what now seems a trivial dispute: whether the French, British and Americans could introduce a common currency in their West German occupation zones and—this was key—bring the new banknotes to Berlin. The defeated country's capital city was now divided between the Russians and the Western Allies though situated 100 miles inside the Soviet zone.

To prevent the banknotes from arriving—and potentially facilitating the rise of an independent, Western-oriented economy—the Russians halted traffic on the highways and railroads leading into the city. That move put the U.S. on the horns of a dilemma: risk war by ramming a convoy through to Berlin or make a humiliating retreat from the island city, leaving West Berliners to become part of the Soviet bloc. The actual solution was to supply Berlin supplied by air. It was possible? "Absolutely impossible," said the American military governor, Gen. Lucius Clay. The British were optimistic, though; they would not only feed their own garrison but have a go at supplying the Berliners as well. But President Truman gave the Order: he penned a dispatch to Gen. Clay: "We have ordered our planes all over the world to fly to Europe. You have our full support. God bless Berlin."

It was a risky mission, for Lt. McAfee and the thousands of other pilots and crew members—mostly British and American—who managed to supply Berlin for the rest of the year and well into 1949: Flying into the city's two airports was less a matter of landing than of diving, and on a glide path that, at one point, could put a plane's wheels within 17 feet of an apartment building. In the winter, fog settled over Berlin, requiring pilots and air controllers to cope with "zero-zero" conditions—no forward visibility and no sight of the ground until the wheels touched down. Altogether, the airlift would kill at least 80 servicemen and civilians—more British lives than American, along with the lives of several German workers. A third airport was hurriedly built from the city's rubble, largely by German housewives. Indeed, a majority of West Berliners were women—thanks to the ravages of war—and many had been raped between the time the city fell and the Americans arrived, a period of 62 days. (Mr. Reeves says that there were one million rapes in that time; he gives no source for the number.) The women worked to construct the airport from the rubble of wartime bombing. They dressed sometimes in bathing suits, sometimes in heels and Sunday best— whatever clothes they happened to own.

(from New York Times)

Yuri Gagarin death mystery solved after 40 years

The mystery surrounding Yuri Gagarin's death in an aircraft crash more than forty years ago may finally have been solved by a report which quashes decades of conspiracy theories. Independent Russian investigators say they have uncovered crucial new evidence which finally reveals how the world's first man in space died aged just 34. The study claims Gagarin's death during a routine training flight in 1968 was caused by his panicked reaction after realising an air vent in his cockpit was open.

He threw his MiG-15 fighter jet into such a steep dive that he blacked out and crashed into a forest below killing himself and his co-pilot. Igor Kuznetsov, a retired Soviet air force colonel, believes his findings will end years of conspiracy theories ranging from claims Gagarin was drunk to allegations the accident was staged by jealous Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. He has spent the past nine years with a group of aviation specialists, piecing together the circumstances using modern accident investigation techniques.

SOURCE: Daily Telegraph (UK) (1-8-10)

medieval architecture

ANATOMY EXPERT SHOWS HOW ART MASTERPIECES REVEAL ILLNESS

Mona Lisa's famous smile may have been the result of fatty acids gathered around her eye socket suggesting her high cholesterol levels, according to an Italian medical expert.

Vito Franco, Professor of Pathological Anatomy at the University of Palermo, who has been studying art masterpieces for evidence of disease and illness, alleged some of the world's greatest works of art revealed signs of illness.

"I look at art with a different eye from an art expert, much as a mathematician listens to music in a different way from a music critic," he said. Professor Franco, who presented his findings at a European congress on human pathology in Florence, said he had found evidence of a range of afflictions in not only aristocrats but also Madonnas, angels and mythical heroes.Dr Franco says his medical examinations reveal more than artistic viewings.

"Illness exists within the body, it does not have a metaphysical or supernatural dimension," Dr Franco told La Stampa newspaper. "The people depicted in art reveal their physicality, tell us of their vulnerable humanity, regardless of the artist's awareness of it," he added. He also suggests the delicate elongated fingers in Botticelli's Portrait of a Youth reveal the boy was perhaps suffering from Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that affects connective tissues.

The Madonna del Parto by Piero della Francesca appears to have a goitre, or swelling of the thyroid gland, on her neck typical of people who drank water from a well in certain areas" in medieval times, it was claimed.

Professor Franco also claims that Michelangelo's own ailment, that he diagnoses as kidney stones, seem to come to surface in Raphael's School of Athens where he appears with strangely swollen and knobbly knees.

(From Medieval news)

DID NEARDENTHALS WEAR MAKE UP?

Neardenthal make up containers discovered in spanish site

(From BBC News)

Scientists claim to have the first persuasive evidence that Neanderthals wore "body paint" 50,000 years ago. The team report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) that shells containing pigment residues were Neanderthal make-up containers. Scientists unearthed the shells at two archaeological sites in the Murcia province of southern Spain. The team says its find buries "the view of Neanderthals as half-wits" and shows they were capable of symbolic thinking.Professor Joao Zilhao, the archaeologist from Bristol University in the UK, who led the study, said that he and his team had examined shells that were used as containers to mix and store pigments. Black sticks of the pigment manganese, which may have been used as body paint by Neanderthals, have previously been discovered in Africa. "[But] this is the first secure evidence for their use of cosmetics," he told BBC News. "The use of these complex recipes is new. It's more than body painting."The scientists found lumps of a yellow pigment, that they say was possibly used as a foundation. They also found red powder mixed up with flecks of a reflective brilliant black mineral.

Some of the sculpted, brightly coloured shells may also have been worn by Neanderthals as jewellery. Until now it had been thought by many researchers that only modern humans wore make-up for decoration and ritual purposes.

There was a time in the Upper Palaeolithic period when Neanderthals and humans may have co-existed. But Professor Zilhao explained that the findings were dated at 10,000 years before this "contact". "To me, it's the smoking gun that kills the argument once and for all," he told BBC News. "The association of these findings with Neanderthals is rock-solid and people have to draw the associations and bury this view of Neanderthals as half-wits."

Professor Chris Stringer, a palaeontologist from the Natural History Museum in London, UK, said: "I agree that these findings help to disprove the view that Neanderthals were dim-witted