Posts in Category: Art History
Dutch art theft: a picknmix of paintings reduced to criminal collateral | Art and design | The Guardian
Lucian Freud‘s Woman with Eyes Closed is a beguiling picture of a sleeper whose warm multicoloured flesh floats and billows on the canvas. It is a work that is hard to forget, which is just as well now that it has gone into the shadows of the criminal underworld along with six other paintings by modern masters. Will they see the light again?
WikiPaintings.org
Looking for a great source for “fair use” or copyright free images? check out WikiPainting, a Visual Art Encyclopedia
In Prehistoric Britain Cannibalism Was Practical and Ritualistic | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network
BORDEAUX—Mealtime in Gough’s cave in Somerset, England, 14,700 years ago, was not for the faint of heart. Humans were on the menu, for consumption by their own kind. Anthropologists have long studied evidence for cannibalism in the human fossil record, but establishing that it occurred and ascertaining why people ate each other have proved difficult tasks. A new analysis provides fresh insights into the human defleshing that occurred at this site and what motivated it—and hints that cannibalism may have been more common in prehistory than previously thought.
Neolithic beeswax dental filling may be oldest found
Neolithic beeswax dental filling may be oldest found
Researchers at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy have discovered what may be the oldest example of therapeutic palliative dentistry in the 6500-year-old canine of a young man. It’s a beeswax filling that covers sensitive dentin exposed by wear and a vertical crack, and it’s so subtle that it took scientists more than a hundred years to notice it. The wear is profound enough that it was probably not incurred in regular chewing of food but from tougher activities the Neolithic put their teeth to, like making tools or softening leather.
via The History Blog » Blog Archive » Neolithic beeswax dental filling may be oldest found.
Mystery surrounds British “Frankenstein” mummies
Researchers are delving into the mystery surrounding two 3,000-year-old skeletons which appear to be made up of at least six different people who died hundreds of years apart.
The researchers now believe that large extended families, living under one roof, may have shared their homes with the mummified remains of their dead ancestors, before deliberately putting the bodies together to look like single corpses – possibly in an attempt to demonstrate the uniting of different families.
Professor Mike Parker Pearson, an archaeologist at University College London who led the research, said: “It looks like these individuals had been cut up and put back together to look like one person.”
via Mystery surrounds British “Frankenstein” mummies | A Blog About History – History News.
Stone Age people may have battled against a zombie apocalypse | MNN – Mother Nature Network
But heres the creepy thing: many of the 10,000-year-old skulls appear to have been separated from their spines long after their bodies had already begun to decompose. Why would this skull-smashing ritual be performed so long after individuals had died? Did they only pose a threat to the living long after their original burial and death?
via Stone Age people may have battled against a zombie apocalypse | MNN – Mother Nature Network.
Neanderthals used feathers as ‘personal ornaments’
Our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals were harvesting feathers from birds in order to use them as personal ornaments, a study suggests.
The authors say the result provides yet more evidence that Neanderthal thinking ability was similar to our own.
The analysis even suggests they had a preference for dark feathers, which they selected from birds of prey and corvids – such as ravens and rooks.
via BBC News – Neanderthals used feathers as ‘personal ornaments’.
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