3,000 year old Irish woman found

Body found in bog - or at least the legs. Body may be 3000 years old and is probably a human sacrifice.

Mummies

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a mummy in possession of money must be in want of more mummies.

And we now have more mummies. Complete with funerary equipment.

The ubiquitous Zahi Hawass has struck again.

I know. That first line makes no sense, unless you have read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

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R. A. Lafferty and the Semitic Germans of 300 BC

The Science Fiction School of History

One of my favorite history books is The Fall of Rome by R. A. Lafferty, who was better known for his science fiction writing. I am not sure about his science fiction, but when such a creative imagination was turned loose on the declining years of the Roman Empire and the career of Alaric the Goth, the results were spectacular. The odd thing is, Lafftery really knew the ancient sources and created an image of a living, breathing world with complex characters whose lives made no concessions to our 19th century notions of how it really was. Any historian of the period worth their salt could probably pick holes in his story, but I learned a lot about history, and a lot more about the disciplined, informed historical imagination from this book. [for some big chunks of it, check here]

One of the odder notions that he put into the book was the idea that the Balti, the leading clan of the Visigoths, were not originally from Germania but were aliens to northern Europe. He makes the cryptic statement that the noble house had come from a strange land hundreds of years earlier and they remembered Rome. If I recall rightly after 40 years the italics were in the original. Nowhere in the text does he explain this but on the map on the inside of the book cover there is a note showing Carthaginians coming to the coast of Germania, right about at the foot of the Danish peninsula.

An interesting but wild idea, backed up by nothing I have always thought.

Then I read a book by the linguist John McWhorter called Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue. In the last chapter he points out that proto-Germanic, the ancestor of Norse, English, German, Dutch and Gothic, is like no other version of Proto-Indo-European found in Europe. It has some very odd features (e.g. all proto-Indo-European p's become f's as pater ---> father). McWhorter, whose specialty is the formation of creoles, believes that these oddities are typical of a language, such as Proto-Indo European, that had been picked up by a number of people speaking an entirely different type of language. He then suggests that the specific oddities of proto-Germanic would be explained by contact with a Semitic language. At first you scoff, then you read his examples and you begin to wonder.

But what Semitic languages would be out on the North Sea coast near the Danish-German border in around 300 BC? Well, Phoenician. Which as Punic was the language of Carthage.

So now I am curious: just where did Lafferty come up with this particular idea, a half century ago.

his day job was working as an electrical engineer, Mr Sobrino.

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Clemens' Notebook

This is a post more or less to myself, so I have a convenient place to stash some info I may need in the future for my Migrations in World History Class.

This is a review of Peter Heather's new book, Empires and Barbarians. Everything I have read by Heather has been excellent and this one promises to live up to that standard.

Heather has a fine track record in rescuing historical babies from being thrown out with the revisionist bathwater. His The Fall of the Roman Empire put a new case for the old view that barbarian invasions were an important factor in the collapse of the Roman empire. Empires and Barbarians partly overlaps with that, reinstating mass migration as an important phenomenon in the first millennium and one key factor in the formation of modern Europe.

This is not merely an attempt to turn back the ­historiographical clock. Heather has no patience with the old “billiard ball” model of migration — in which, as Ammianus saw it, Huns bumped into Goths and so pushed them towards the Roman empire. Instead he has tried to look at the first millennium afresh, using modern theories of migration and its motives. We are not dealing with anything like the vast Rwandan exodus, but many of the claimed movements would fit the patterns observed in recent history: people tend to move from poorer to richer regions; groups with a tradition of migration tend to be more mobile than those without; people tend to migrate to areas about which they have information. All those conditions apply to Ammianus’s Goths moving towards the Danube.

I suppose I will have to buy this one. Perhaps more difficult even than spending $$, I will have to find time to read it.

A Living History Site

One that should not be missed. It is about an obscure bit of economic history from the last century. Untold effort and research went into creating this site so please take a look at it. You almost feel as if you had been there.


Amazing.

Rotting fish innards ...

Garum. That wonderful concoction of rotting fish guts that ancient Romans of all social ranks loved. Sounds awful, but basically it was Vietnamese fish sauce, Nucmam, which is actually quite tastey.

There is a TV show in Britain that attempts to recreate ancient and medieval foods. Here is the Times Online's review of it, and here is what the review has to say about nucmam, er, garum.

He did rather well with the Roman staple of garum -- their favourite sauce made out of rotten fish which,

as Heston pointed out, they seem to have smeared over most things. It is this that usually defeats undergraduate Roman dinner parties (anchovy paste doesn't quite get it). But even if Heston didnt have the patience to rot his fish for the three months that the Romans did, he did manage to heat up and blend together a load of mackerel intestines, so that they ended looking rather like a Thai sauce and was (so Heston insisted) really 'delicious'.

And then there is the roast pig with the faux guts falling out of it to disgust the guests - funny people those Romani.

in at least one brach of the Clemens clan nucmam is a staple.

History Lesson for the Bank Fiasco

I love it when journalists turn to history, in this case ancient history, for commentary on today's happenings. Here's one from the reign of Tiberius, stepson of Augustus and second emperor of the Roman Empire. It's from Tom Ricks as channeled by Matthew Yglesias:

Tom Ricks: “The latest round of massive corporate layoffs reminds of the financial crisis the Roman Empire suffered in 33 A.D.”

The Emperor Tiberius seems like a man who wouldn’t shy away from nationalizing a bank or two:

Tiberius also raised funds by accusing Sextus Marius, the richest man in Spain, of incest — almost certainly a trumped-up charge — and then having him thrown headlong from the Tarpeian Rock (see below), a cliff at the edge of Rome’s Capitoline Hill. “Tiberius kept his gold mines for himself,” Tacitus notes. It makes me think that Wall Street is getting off easy.

Given the mood of the country, I can see it. Hey, it's all the rage to compare America to the Roman Empire, especially among neo-cons.

don't ask about the Caligula plan for economic stimulus.

Star Wars - The Oral Tradition!

"Star Wars" as told by someone named Amanda who has not actually seen the movie.

Whatever.

I can't wait until she tackles the Russian version of "War and Peace."

thanks to The Daily Dish.


Update: Carmen loves this. She thinks Amanda is so sweet.

Update II: I wonder if the Iliad started out this way.

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Walls of Jerusalem found

Now for something having nothing to do with American politics. Archaeologists have found a portion of the walls of ancient Jerusalem dating back 2100 years to the era of the Second Temple. Here's the story and here's my favorite part of it:

The walls were first located through tunnels by 19th Century researchers, whose beer bottles were also found.

World's Earliest Church?

Jordanian archaeologists have reported an intriguing discovery:

"We have uncovered what we believe to be the first church in the world, dating from 33 AD to 70 AD," the head of Jordan's Rihab Centre for Archaeological Studies, Abdul Qader al-Husan, said.
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"We have evidence to believe this church sheltered the early Christians -- the 70 disciples of Jesus Christ," Husan said.

These Christians, who are described in a mosaic as "the 70 beloved by God and Divine," are said to have fled persecution in Jerusalem and founded churches in northern Jordan, Husan added.

Not the least interesting fact here is that it was made in a Muslim country by that country's own archaeologists who are fully aware of the import of their discovery and are clearly proud of it.

Why you should study HISTORY ...

... So you don't look like a complete, blustering, blithering idiot.

Surely the Right can come up with a better public face than this. Of course, Munich was so long ago, and why should we let something so petty as knowledge interfere with a political slogan, delivered at full shout.

Extra bonus for watching this video: Chris Matthews looks good, for once.

BTW, this post is brought to you by Appstate, the football powerhouse that beat Michigan, while torching its requirement to take any history at all.

Herodotus was right!!!!

I've been waiting for this news since I was twelve years old (just ask my little sister)!

Late breaking news from The Week:

Italians in Tuscany originally came from Turkey, genetic evidence shows. Ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the Etruscans, who dominated much of the Mediterranean before the Roman era, came from Lydia, now called Turkey. Modern scholars, though, have long scoffed at that claim, saying the ancestors of today's Tuscans evolved locally. But two new Italian studies support the Turkish connection. Both Tuscan men's DNA sequences and Tuscan women's mitochondria resemble their counterparts in parts of modern Turkey far more closely than in other parts of Italy. In Herodotus' fifth century B. C. account, a famine in the 13th century B. C. forced the Lydian king to send half his people west to seek a new life.

Isn't modern science wonderful.

Next week, the Melungians.

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The Conference and the Paper .... or how I survived.

Well, the paper was done, complete with powerpoint pictures and maps. So I went off bright and early Saturday morning and spent the whole day at the "World History and Economics" conference high on a mountain top (really). Got there at 9 am for Dr Kenneth Pomeranz' talk on "Rethinking Regions in Global Economic History: European and East Asian Paths to the Industrial Present." Despite the pedantic title it was a fascinating talk - mostly about China. Stayed there until 1:45 when it was time for my paper, "The Impact of Chariot Warfare on Eurasian History." with commentary from my friend, the mad Cossack of the Caucasus, Dr Toly.

Went great, except my paper was longer than I could present and I had to throw out stuff right and left. An African historian (the wife of a colleague) was unhappy with my use of the term 'civilized zone' but other than that I heard very little feed back. Except that the mad Cossack loved it - not a surprise since it was about the Indo-Iranians whom he thinks he is descended from. Maire the Red, however, said she heard some of the undergrads there saying they really like the guy who was talking about chariots (it's one of those topics like witches, Celts, and Vikings that always gets their attention).

Maire herself gave a paper on "The Economics of Slavery in the Viking Age." Pomeranz himself, the BIG NAME of the conference, commented on it. And our colleague Doc Holliday talked on "Caesarea Maritima: Implications for Religous Interaction in Third Century Palestine." These took place at the same time I had to read my paper in another room so I had to miss them.

Then I rushed back to my office, took a nap, and was back in fine form for dinner. It was free after all, and we had been promised lots of free wine. Then rushed down the mountain top to main street to meet our military historian to see "Letters From Iwo Jima." Then over to his house for a few beers (merely to whet our tongues so we could discuss "Iwo Jima" and the entire course of the Civil War, as well as R. E. Lee's character). By now it was midnight and I was wide awake. So I drove all the way home.

It was an intense but fun day. And I got the paper done in plenty of time!

Procrastination time is coming to an end...

... so why am I spending time blogging? (Anactoria, are you out there?)

Because I have a paper to write. By 1 pm on Saturday when I have to stand up in front of a group of history professors from around the country and read it.

But I am making progress. Just today I checked the conference program on the computer to see exactly what I am writing on: "Chariot Warfare and its Effects on Europe." That's a mistake btw, it should read "Chariot Warfare and its Effects on Eurasia" - no sense limiting the topic. And I've checked out the book I am going to shamelessly plagiarize ... no, make that brilliantly reformulate ... for my paper.

And while I don't know much about chariot warfare in the late Bronze Age, I know a great deal more about it than the guys who will be there this Saturday. Unless Robert Drews shows up - then I'm dead.

The Terminator meets Jesus

Andrew Sullivan has "The Greatest Action Story Ever Told" from Mad TV. I just showed it too the staunchest Evangelical* in my department and he thought it was great - so, since it passed that acid test of orthodoxy, click on it and enjoy.



*Of course, he is one of the guys who went to '300' with me, and he liked that, so take our recommendation with a grain of salt.

The "Evil Empire" and the US Postal Service

Since I posted a few days ago on the US Postal Service (to which no one commented, btw), I have seen "300" which paints the Persian Empire as the personification of evil, degeneracy, and bad face art. Consequently I think it imporant for you to know that the motto,

"Neither rain nor hail nor sleet nor snow nor heat of day nor dark of night shall keep this carrier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds."

... is based on a passage from Herodotus describing the super efficient pony express service of the self-same evil Empire. Herodotus was impressed. In fact, the Greeks always had a love hate relationship with the Persians.

Don't know what the significance of this is, but I thought it was kind of interesting.

"300" and the Spartans

Claw of the Conciliator has already started a discussion on the Spartans as portrayed in "300," the movie coming out this weekend. I hope to post something on the Spartans later, perhaps after I see the movie. I am going this Saturday with Maire, Clovis, and the gang (sometimes called "that family" at our favorite pizzeria). But for the time being, here is Victor Davis Hanson's take on it at the National Reviews "Corner" blog. I have a lot of respect for Hanson as an historian of ancient Greece, so his view should carry some weight. We'll have to wait and see if his prediction that critics will not like it because it takes a clear cut moral stance is accurate.

But, as I say, I will write more on it after I see the movie.