Rate this:

How to Get Rid of Fatty Liver Disease

Rate this:

Greek structures were composed using a system known as post and lintel, by which a horizontal beam is placed on top of two separated vertical beams (picture the balancing act at Stonehenge). Early temples were built with non-durable materials such as wood and thatching, however, under the influence of stone-working Egyptians (remember the Pyramids?), the Greeks switched over to stone.

Doric

Stone architecture evolved in three styles, or orders: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.

Doric architecture developed directly from mud brick and wood construction, and was the first, and simplest of the three orders. It is easiest to distinguish between the styles by comparing the columns (although orders did go further than just the columns). Doric columns were created by stacking cylindrical blocks (called drums). 20 flutes (or channels/grooves) run up the entire shaft of the column. The column bulges outward in the center. And the block at the top of the column (known as the ‘capital’) is quite plain, consisting only of geometric shapes.

Ionic

The Ionian order was developed by Greeks who left the mainland and settled in Asia minor. The Ionian order followed the same main geometric principals of Doric architecture, with a few notable differences. Ionic columns were much slimmer than Doric columns, and had many more flutes (40-48; thus the ribs on the columns would be quite narrow in comparison to Doric ribbing). The column capital featured a more ornamental, scroll-shape design.

Corinthian

The Corinthian order was very similar to the Ionian, except that the column capitals were much more ornamental, and featured leafy foliage. This order was actually rather rare among the Greeks, and featured more heavily in the later architecture of the Romans.

It is interesting to note that the Greeks were a much more colourful civilization than we imagine looking back. Whereas we see only whitened stone where Greek structures still stand, evidence in Greek writing alludes to bright colours, which would have made the seemingly stolid, calm, and quietly elegant edifices of today look like the pages of a colouring book.Religion was the center of Greek life. It should not, then, be surprising that religion is the focus of Greek architecture, from temples to theatres (please note that theatre, as discussed in the feature article on Greek theatre, was actually a religious act).

‘Akropolis’ (or Acropolis in modern spelling) was the Greek word for ‘upper city,’ a sort of raised fortification intended to protect the entire city. Akropolis was also the name of one of the most important sites in Athens, and indeed, in all of ancient Greece.

Akropolis

Between 450 and 330 BC, three temples were erected at the Akropolis: the Parthenon (447-438 BC), the Erechtheion(~420 BC), and the Temple of Nike (pronounced Nee-Kay; ~420 BC), as was the Propylaea (437-432 BC), the gateway to the Akropolis.

The Temple of Nike was built in adoration of Nike, the goddess of victory. It is built in the Ionic style, and features a series of friezes, which are flat (ish) carvings (surface carvings on a slab, rather than 3-D sculptures that are complete from all angles), depicting memorable scenes between gods or mortals. The Nike friezes depict, appropriately, scenes from battles and conferences between gods (who often determined the outcome of battles, by giving other-worldly support to one of the warring armies).

Temple of Nike

The Erechtheion was also built in the Ionian style, and was split into two main sections, in adoration of the goddess Athena, goddess of wisdom and patron of Athens, and Poseidon, god of the sea. Outside the temple was a relief wall-painting, probably depicting the birth of Erechtheus, the ancestral figure, and ancient king, of Athens.

The Parthenon

The Parthenon, dedicated to Athena Parthenos, is the most characteristic and important monument of Greek civilization. Unlike the temples described above, this temple is built in Doric style, though it incorporates some Ionic elements. It is built to appear clean and ordered, with each column bowing inward at the center so as to look more slender, and all of the columns tilted slightly toward center as they raise, so as the create an illusion of greater height. The sculptures depict various struggles between order and chaos, and the frieze blends mythic and historical events. The main focus of the Parthenon was a wood and clay sculpture of Athena, which stood 40 feet high.

Amphitheatres
Ancient Greek performances occurred in amphitheatres, which were outdoor theatres carved into hillsides. While originally built with wood, many later theatres were stone-built, allowing the ruins to persist through the present day.

A few of the more notable Greek theatres include the Theatre Epidaurus, the Attic Theatre (‘Attic’ as in ‘Attican’), and the Theatre of Dionysus.

Most Greek amphitheatres seated 15,000 to 20,000 people, although more people often showed up. The audience was arranged in a strict classist manner, and sat in a semi-circular U-shape, in raked seating formed of steps that crawled up the hillside.

The Audience curved around the circular performance area, which was called the Orchestra. At the center of the Orchestra was the Thymele, an altar used in ceremonies to honor the God, Dionysus. 

Behind the Orchestra, on the side not occupied by the Audience, was the Skene, a sort of backdrop/costume house/properties room, from which the mechane, a crane-like machine used for special effects such as raising gods to the heavens, was anchored.

Theatre Dionysus

Who Ruined the Ruins?
Over 2,000 years after their creation, it is often startling to think that Greek Edifices still stand, in any manner of disrepair. The ruins seem to be a poetic reminder of entropy, decay, that everything must eventually fall to dust.

It is easy to assume that the buildings have crumbled of their own accord, that they are slowly sliding toward the earth with the sands of time. 

It is true that earthquakes and fires have taken their bites of the Greek structures. But unfortunately, the destruction of these stone creations has much less to do with time and the natural order than it has to do with men, who did not appreciate these edifices as a special legacy of an extremely special civilization.

As the Romans rose in power and the Greeks declined, the Romans sought to wrestle Greece from the Greeks, often commandeering Greek buildings and rebuilding them in a more Roman fashion, or, during the course of the Roman and Celtic invasions, simply destroying buildings with no idea of the legacy that might be left for the world, thousands of years in the future.

As polytheism was overtaken by Christianity, the Crusades plagued the past, working to wipe out memories of polytheism, by destroying Greek temples, or altering them to adapt them to Christian purposes. Again, it is unlikely that this was done with the malicious intent of covering the past, so much as with a sense of progress, of building the world for the swell of Christianity.

Likewise, Muslim jihads have subjected the Greek temples to the destructions of wars, and the alterations of a new faith.

There are, however, efforts to restore the ruins, such as the massive Akropolis restoration project which was undertaken in the 1970s. 

In the end, it will never be possible to accurately return the Greek structures to their original states, however it may be possible to protect them from further damage; and the ruins are certainly worth appreciating while they last.

 

 

 

 

 

Rate this:

 

Polynesia

The South Pacific is a mystical place and one that many only dream of visiting. Islands such as Tahiti, the Hawaiian Islands and Bali are carved in our minds as idyllic places to visit. And they are just that! But there is much more to the islands than beaches and hula dancers.

Early history
The history of the nomadic people that inhabited the various islands of the Pacific is speculative. It is thought that the people originated in South East Asia some 3000 or 4000 years ago. For some reason these people decided to travel across the ocean and in so doing, settled the beautiful islands they came across.

As many of the cultures and traditions of the islands are extremely similar, as well as the general ‘look’ of the people that inhabit them, it stands to reason that these settlers started off in the same area of the world.

The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of any water mass on the globe and it is dotted with thousands of islands as far apart as Hawaii, New Zealand (Aotearoa) and Eater Island (Rapa Nui). Indeed Polynesia literally means ‘many islands’.

The first settlers of the islands must have been skilled navigators and sailors as the islands cover around 16 million square miles of ocean.

The islands were initially ruled by chieftans and each island ‘race’ of Polynesians had similar traditions that involved human sacrifice.

It is said that some of the people from these islands left and went further afield, settling the Hawaiian Islands and some of these settlers in turn left Hawaii and founded New Zealand. 

European Influence
Spaniard explorers first came across some of the islands in the 1500’s but did not settle as they were on the trade route from Peru to the Philippines and the islands were of no real interest or use to them.

When the first European visitors arrived in the late 18th Century, they found stunning islands full of ‘noble savages’ with some very worrying religious beliefs – wouldn’t you be worried if you thought you might be the next human sacrifice?!

On their return to Europe, explorers such as Samuel Wallis (1767), Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1768) and James Cook (1769) excited their colleagues and friends with talk of these exotic places.

Mutiny on the Bounty
The famous ship The Bounty set sail for the South Pacific and it was it on April 28th 1789 that the mutinous crew of the ship, led by Fletcher Christian set a small open boat adrift and waved goodbye to Captain William Bligh and his faithful crew members.

The mutineers sought refuge on the islands of Tahiti and Tubuai and those that didn’t escape to Pitcairn Island were rounded up by British law enforcers and made to face justice for their actions.

At this time large family groups ran the Polynesian islands and there was no actual leader as such. Since the Europeans had first set foot on the islands, families knew that the weapons they brought with them would be of benefit.

Despite trying to convince the explorers to trade their weapons they had no luck and it was not until the mutineers came to Tahiti that European weapons were properly introduced to the inhabitants.

The Pomare family was one of the largest of the Tahitian families and they secured the weaponry and services of the mutineers and so came to control the islands.

Paradise Lost
It wasn’t long before whalers and traders came to the islands and they developed business and personal relationships with the islanders. The islanders were much more relaxed than Europeans and the early visitors to the islands appreciated this way of life. They were fascinated to see the local women wander around with little on and definitely enjoyed their visits to paradise.

Natural immunity had not been developed against some of the diseases that the Europeans brought with them and as a result many islanders lost their lives to smallpox and other such epidemics.

Tales of ‘loose living’ and man-eating savages reached the ears of Protestant missionaries who settled on the islands in an attempt to educate the natives. The missionaries were a zealous lot and quickly prohibited any other religious practices than their own and tore local religious temples and monuments to the ground. 

The population of the Polynesian islands dropped rapidly as a result of disease and missionary tyranny and life was very different for the islanders who survived with little cultural heritage left.
The French came to the islands in the 1800’s and overthrew the British and today many of the islands are still termed as French Polynesia.

Each island of the South Pacific is beautiful and each one retains its own individualism. Old cultures have been brought back and people can now appreciate the history of traditions and of their ancestors. 

Rate this:

Imagine if the loser of a football match today was sacrificed? This was a common occurrence in the Mayan time for the players of a ball game called Pok-a-Tok.

The Mayan people were very superstitious and believed that the only way to keep the gods happy was to sacrifice a valuable human – a ball player.

So who were these players that could possibly be sacrificed if their team didn’t win? Only nobility could participate in the game, and the numbers of players varied from region to region. The captain of the defeated team was the one chosen to be sacrificed.

The Court
The court was shaped like a capital “I”, it was also a symbol of a city’s wealth and power. Chichen Itza is the largest known Mayan ball court that has been found it is larger than our football fields.

Two sloping parallel walls that allowed the ball to bounce upwards and remain airborne for longer framed the pitch, which was usually a plaster or stone floor. The walls also had three round marker-discs several meters above the ground that sat at right angles. The player had to try to get the ball through these discs – scoring was considered such a feat that it usually ended the game. At the base of the court walls was a bench that was decorated with pictures of human sacrifices.

The Ball
The ball that was used in the game was a very bouncy rubber ball, made from a native plant – the rubber tree. All the balls were hollow making them lighter and able to bounce higher. Some balls had human skulls as the center and the rubber strips were wound around to form a ball. The skulls were said to have symbolized the life and death aspect of the sport.

Now this doesn’t sound so dangerous, but the size of the ball varied from the small size of a baseball to a size larger than a beach ball. The ball could weigh as much as a watermelon (about 8 pounds/ 3.6 kilos). When you have a really bouncy ball that heavy coming towards you – the players had to be careful not to break bones.

The Player
The player’s uniform not only had to protect the player from the ball, but had to allow for quick movement. The players wore Yuguitos (little yoke) to protect knees, wrists and help to hit the ball. A Yoke, made from fabric, was worn around the waist to protect the body and deflect the ball. Also, Manoplas (handstones) were used to hit the balls.

Players had to make sure that they kept the ball in the air by using their hips, body, legs or arms, touching the ball with their hands or feet was not allowed. They knocked the ball off walls or each other.

It was said that if a player scored a goal, he was entitled to take the jewellery of everyone in the audience. While the winners were showered with prizes and riches, don’t forget the price the losers had to pay. Luckily for most sportsmen today the price of losing isn’t so high.

Rate this:

A tractor on a field in the South Downs near Brighton prepares for a late winter sowing’

 

‘An early-morning climb to the Taishiden shrine above Tomonoura, Japan, greeted me with the shimmering Seto Inland Sea and the distant islands’

 

‘The black clouds over Vancouver seem to emphasise the city’s impressive skyline’

 

‘This is New York at dawn this January. The air was incredibly clear’

 

‘Tall building pierce the early morning mist in Dubai’

 

‘A glorious late afternoon in Costa Rica, the skyline was suddenly filled with these roosting birds flying through the fading light’

 

From the hillside we could see the showers sweeping in across the loch – the alternating rain and sunlight are so typical of this time of year’

 

‘I thought it would be good to reflect the flower in the glass’

 

‘A man works his boat along the river on a very foggy January morning in Chitwan National Park, Nepal’

 

‘Early morning mist flowing down a valley on the South Downs near Brighton’

 

 

‘Vine terraces, the road and the Douro River all flow side by side in Portugal’

 

 

Rate this:

A Flawless Point: the Milky Way arches over Yosemite Valley in California’s famous national park. A lens-shaped (lenticular) cloud hovers over the granite dome of Liberty Cap, which rises to more than 2,000 metres, near the centre of the photograph.

 

The Night Photographer: camping out in a remote location and spending hours waiting for the perfect shot is all in a night’s work for the dedicated astronomy photographer. On the Korgfjellet Mountain in Norway, this photographer’s patience was rewarded with the sight of a bright meteor streaking across the sky as it burns up high in the Earth’s atmosphere.

 

Comet Panstarrs: Although a line of burnt orange along the horizon marks where sunset has already occurred, most of the light in this image still comes ultimately from the sun. High in the sky the bright disc of the moon is shining with reflected sunlight, while a tiny smudge above the sea is sunlight reflecting from the dust and gas in the tail of Comet Panstarrs. Even the aurora’s ghostly curtains of glowing gas are ultimately powered by the solar wind of subatomic particles blowing from the sun. Only the stars shine with their own light.

 

Eta Carinae and Her Keyhole: the Carina Nebula is a chaotic region of star formation several thousand light years from Earth. In the central part of the nebula, shown here, dense clouds of gas and dust are lit up by the light of newly born stars. One of these is Eta Carinae at the centre of this image. More than a hundred times as massive as the sun, and millions of times brighter, Eta Carinae is unstable and will one day explode as a supernova.

 

Archway to Heaven: the band of our Milky Way galaxy is the dramatic backdrop for the rock archway of Durdle Door on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast in this carefully composed shot. The rock formations on this stretch of the coast are more than 100m years old, but many of the stars in the Milky Way are up to 10bn years old.

 

Hunter’s Moon over the Alps: As the full moon sinks in the west, the sun rises in the east, lighting up the snow-capped Alpine horizon. Although both moon and mountain are illuminated by sunlight, they owe their different colours to the scattering effects of the Earth’s atmosphere on the sun’s white light.

 

Orion Nebula: Modern digital cameras can detect light too faint for the naked human eye. In rendering this information as an image we can understand, astronomy photographers must make practical and aesthetic choices about contrast, brightness and colour. Here, the photographer has chosen a subdued palette to emphasise the delicate structure of the nebula’s dust clouds.

 

Receiving the Galactic Beam: Here, the photographer has caught the moment when the Milky Way appears to line up with the giant 64-metre dish of the radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in Australia.

 

Photographers on the Rim of Mývatn Craters: although displays of aurorae have become more common as the sun nears the peak of its 11-year cycle of activity in 2013, these hilltop observers in northern Iceland were lucky to witness such a spectacular example

 

Solar Max: Loops of plasma known as ‘prominences’ on the surface of the sun. The seething surface is also pockmarked with sunspots. Both features only become visible when a filter is used to remove the glare

 

Herbig-Haro Objects in the Pelican Nebula: jets of material blast from the poles of some newborn stars. Here, these ‘Herbig-Haro objects’ can be seen emerging from the thick dust and gas clouds of the Pelican Nebula, a stellar nursery in the constellation of Cygnus.

 

Leaning In: familiar stars and constellations form a line rising up behind this windswept tree in Dartmoor National Park in the southwest of England. Just above the horizon is Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, followed by the unmistakeable outline of Orion the Hunter. Above this is the triangular face of Taurus the Bull with the orange star Aldebaran, the disc of the moon and the bright, compact cluster of the Pleiades.

 

Northern Lights XXIII: A vast sweep of shimmering aurora light appears to follow the frozen shoreline in this shot. To capture all of the different sources of light – the stars, the aurora and the streetlights of the distant towns – is a tricky balancing act

 

Full view of Noctilucent cloud: noctilucent clouds are made of tiny ice crystals high in the atmosphere, around 80km above the ground. Their name means ‘night shining’ in Latin and they only become visible during deep twilight conditions. Here, they put on a spectacular display above the Pennine Hills of northern England.

 

Venus Transit at the Black Sea: transits of Venus are rare. Transits occur in pairs eight years apart, with each pair separated by more than a century. On each occasion, Venus only takes around six hours to cross the disc of the sun.

 

 

 

• 
  photo: Institute of Nuclear Chemistry

  One of the glass beads found in Bavaria: The blue color indicates a admixture of cobalt.

Antique jewelry found in Bavaria – believed to be the origin region with Natron

Mainz – Colorful glass beads were in the Roman Empire – and not only there – a popular jewelry. German researchers have now investigated the origin of some of these beads and can draw conclusions about ancient commodities and trade routes, such as the University of Mainz reported.

Overall, the researchers studied 42 glass beads that had been excavated at four different sites of ancient settlements in present-day Bavaria. The region was then inhabited by Rhaetians, a people of unknown origin, which had been incorporated in the first century BC the Roman Empire. 38 of the beads are from the early imperial period, four from late Roman times, the fourth century.

The majority of the investigated glass beads comes from excavations near Oberammergau. For the archaeological site, it was a place of sacrifice of Rhaetians settled there. The glass beads, which served the population as jewelry, show traces of burning a sacrificial fire. Other found objects seem to have been deliberately placed for specific patterns.

Once across the empire through

With the help of the research reactor TRIGA the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry of the University of Mainz neutron activation analysis could be used to establish that thematerials did not come to this Pearls from the area. The analyzes showed that all the beads are made ​​of soda glass with a sodium content of up to 20 percent and, therefore, at least in raw material sodium, and possibly even the finished lens blank, must come from the vicinity of Lake Natron in Egypt such as the Wadi Natrun.

In antiquity, a melting temperature of 1,800 degrees Celsius for pure sand could not be reached. Therefore, a flow agent to lower the melting point had to be added, usually vegetable ash or natural soda. Plant ash was freely available in all regions and was used depending on the position of the glass workshops. Plant ash from sea or shore plants contain more saline soil by sodium, while inland outweighs the potassium content of the plants. Since the extraction of sodium is very complex from plant ash was used for frequent natural soda ash from Egypt. 

Teaser 1:

Read out loud the text inside the triangle below:

 

You likely said, “A bird in the bush”, right?

Look again! The word “THE” is repeated twice. 🙂

Don’t worry, 95% of people reading this will fall for it too.

 

Teaser 2:

Next, let’s play with some words.

What do you see?

 

In black you can read the word “GOOD”. But in white, the word “EVIL” pops up. (Inside each black letter is a white letter).

It’s all very physiological too, because it visualizes the concept that good can’t exist without evil (or the absence of good is evil).

 

Teaser 3:

Now, what do you see?

 

You may not see it at first, but the white spaces read the word “optical”, and the blue landscape reads the word “illusion”.

Look again if you didn’t catch it the first time.

Can you see why this painting is called an “optical illusion”?

 

Teaser 4:

What do you see here?

 

This one is quite tricky!

The word “TEACH” reflects as the word “LEARN”.

 

Teaser 5:

Last one.

What do you see?

 

You probably read the word “ME” in brown.

But… when you look through “ME” you will see “YOU”!

 

Teaser 6:

This teaser is called “Alzheimer’s’ eye test” and it’s the most…. well… you’re about to find out:

Count every “F”‘ letter in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS…

 

Well how many F’s did you count?

WRONG!

THERE ARE 6 F’s — no joke.

READ IT AGAIN.

Really, go back and try to find the 6 F’s before you scroll down.

Still can’t find 6 F’s? Well the reason why is further down…

 

..

…

….

……

…….

………

…………

……………

………………..

……………………

…………………………

………………………………

……………………………………

………………………………………..

…………………………………………….

…………………………………………………

…………………………………………………….

The brain cannot process ‘OF’.

 

FACT: IF you got 3 F’s, that’s normal, but four is quite rare.

Send this to your friends. It will drive them crazy!

 

Teaser 7:

Just simply read the following paragraph:

” Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.

The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.

Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs psas it on !! “

 

Rate this:

 

The “fairy coffins” discovered on Arthur’s Seat, a hill above Edinburgh, in 1836. Were they magical symbols, sailors’ memorials—or somehow linked to the city’s infamous mass murderers, Burke and Hare? Photo: National Museum of Scotland.

It may have been Charles Fort, in one of his more memorable passages, who described the strange discovery best:

London Times, July 20, 1836:

That, early in July, 1836, some boys were searching for rabbits’ burrows in the rocky formation, near Edinburgh, known as Arthur’s Seat. In the side of a cliff, they came upon some thin sheets of slate, which they pulled out.

Little cave.

Seventeen tiny coffins.

Three or four inches long.

In the coffins were miniature wooden figures. They were dressed differently in both style and material. There were two tiers of eight coffins each, and a third one begun, with one coffin.

The extraordinary datum, which has especially made mystery here:

That the coffins had been deposited singly, in the little cave, and at intervals of many years. In the first tier, the coffins were quite decayed, and the wrappings had moldered away. In the second tier,  the effects of age had not advanced so far. And the top coffin was quite recent looking.

 

Edinburgh in 1830

Fort’s short account is accurate, so far as it goes—and for more than a century not much more was known about the origin or purpose of the strange miniature coffins. Fewer than half of them survived; theScotsman, in the first known published account, explained that “a number were destroyed by the boys pelting them at each other as unmeaning and contemptible trifles.” Those that were brought down from the hillside eventually found their way into the collection of Robert Frazier, a South Andrews Street jeweler, who put them on display in his private museum. When, after Frazier’s retirement in 1845, the collection was auctioned off, this lot, described in the sale catalogue as “the celebrated Lilliputian coffins found on Arthur’s Seat, 1836,” sold for just over £4. The coffins thus passed into unknown private hands, and remained there until 1901, when a set of eight, together with their contents, were donated to the National Museum of Scotland by their then-owner, Christina Couper of Dumfriesshire.

Circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that these coffins were the same group as the one Frazier obtained in 1836, but few more details are available. The first newspaper reports appeared some three weeks after the initial discovery, and none named any of the boys. One much later account, which is unreferenced and which appeared in the Edinburgh Evening News as late as 1956—but which is so detailed that it may have been based on some otherwise unknown contemporary source—adds that the find was made on June 25, 1836, and notes that the niche, which was “about a foot in height and about 18 inches wide,” was opened up with trowels: tools it seems reasonable to suppose a group of boys out rabbiting might have had about their persons.

Arthur’s Seat–a long-extinct volcano–looms above Edinburgh, and has always had the air of a place apart. Photo: Wikicommons.

Another intriguing detail in the same account states that the surviving coffins were retrieved the “next day” by the boys’ schoolmaster, one Mr. Ferguson, who was a member of a local archaeological society. The coffins were still unopened at this point, the reporter Robert Chapman added, but “Mr. Ferguson took them home in a bag and that evening he settled down in his kitchen and began to prise the lids up with a knife…. Mr. Ferguson took them to the next meeting of his society and his colleagues were equally amazed.” Where Chapman got this information remains unknown, but a search of the contemporary street directories shows that two schoolmasters named Ferguson were working in Edinburgh in 1836–George Ferguson as a classics master at Edinburgh Academy, and Findlay Ferguson as a teacher of English and math at Easter Duddingston.

The Chapman account at least explains how the surviving coffins found their way from the boy discoverers into the hands of the city’s learned gentlemen. In these murky circumstances, it is unsurprising that the precise spot where the find was made is only vaguely known. The Scotsman reported that the boys who unearthed the coffins had been “searching for rabbit burrows on the north-east range of Arthur’s seat” when one spotted “a small opening in the rocks, the peculiar appearance of which attracted their attention.” Another account, which appears to have circulated orally in Edinburgh at this time, and which was put in writing by a correspondent to Notes & Queries under the headline, “A Fairy’s Burial Place,” puts it a good deal more dramatically:

While I was a resident at Edinburgh, either in the year 1836 or 1837, I forget which, a curious discovery took place, which formed the subject of a nine days’ wonder, and a few newspaper paragraphs. Some children were at play at the foot of Salisbury Craigs, when one of them, more venturesome than the others, attempted to ascend the escarpment of the cliff. His foot slipped, and to save himself from a dangerous fall, he caught at a projecting piece of rock, which appeared to be attached to the other portions of the cliff. It gave way, however, beneath the pressure of his hand, and although it broke his fall, both he and it came to the bottom of the craig. Nothing daunted, the hardy boy got up, shook himself, and began the attempt a second time. When he reached the point from whence the treacherous rock had projected, he found that it had merely masked the entrance to a large hole, which had been dug into the face of the cliff.

Salisbury Crags, on the left, and Arthur’s Seat. Photo: Geograph, made available under CCL.

The Scotsman‘s account is, I think, to be preferred here—Notes & Queries adds various other details which are known to be untrue, such as the statement that the coffins had “little handles, and all the other embellishments which the undertakers consider necessary to respectability” —but it is actually broadly in line with N&Q‘s with regard to location. Conversely, another Edinburgh paper, theCaledonian Mercury, describes the spot as lying “at the back of Arthur’s Seat”–that is, on the south side of the hill. Given the relative accessibility of the northern face, and the length of time that appears to have separated the burials from their discovery, it is perhaps marginally more likely that the exact site of the find was neither Salisbury Crags nor the north range of Arthur’s Seat, but a spot to the south, in a relatively remote location on the far side of the Seat from Edinburgh itself. This ties in rather intriguingly with the notion that Findlay Ferguson of Easter Duddingston may have been the schoolmaster associated with the find, since Duddingston lies directly beneath the southern face of Arthur’s Seat. Whatever the facts, it seems clear from the contemporary sources that the coffins were found not in a substantial “cave” on the hillside, as is sometimes supposed, but in a small gap in the rocks. The Scotsman, again, has the clearest description:

The mouth of this little cave was closed by three thin pieces of slate-stone, rudely cut at the upper ends into a conical form, and so placed as to protect the interior from the effects of the weather.

According to one later account, in a record in the so-called “Continuation Catalogue” of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, at least one of these slates was “rudely shaped like the headstone of a grave.” As for what the boys found when the slates had been removed, it was “an aperture about twelve inches square in which were lodged seventeen Lilliputian coffins, forming two tiers of eight each, and one on a third, just begun!” Each of the coffins, the Scotsman added,

contained a miniature figure of the human form cut out in wood, the faces in particular being pretty well executed. They were dressed from head to foot in cotton clothes, and decently laid out with a mimic representation of all the funereal trappings which usually form the last habiliments of the dead. The coffins are about three or four inches in length, regularly shaped, and cut out from a single piece of wood, with the exception of the lids, which are nailed down with wire sprigs or common brass pins. The lid and sides of each are profusely studded with ornaments, formed with small pieces of tin, and inserted in the wood with great care and regularity.

So much for the circumstances of the discovery. The greater mystery, as the Scotsman was swift to point out, was what exactly the coffins were, who had placed them in their hiding place, and when. Several potential explanations were advanced, the most popular being that the burials were part of some spellwork, or that they represented mimic burials, perhaps for sailors lost at sea. Most of these solutions, however, assumed that the newspapers of the day were correct to state that the burials had been made over a considerable period of time. According to the Edinburgh Evening Post, for instance,

in the under row the shrouds were considerably decayed and the wood rotten, while the last bore evident marks of being a very recent deposit.

This assumption is, however, hard to prove. The discovery was made not by some trained archaeologist, who made a painstaking examination before moving a single piece of wood, but by a group of boys who appear to have thoroughly mixed up the coffins by hurling them at each other, and who never gave any first-person account of their find. The best that can be said is that several of the surviving coffins display considerably more decay than the others—the most obvious sign being the rotten state (or complete absence) of the figurines’ grave clothes—but whether the decay was the product of time or simply weathering is not now possible to say. It may be that the decayed coffins were simply those that occupied the lower tier in the burial nook, and so were most exposed to water damage. If that’s the case, there is no need to assume that the burials stretched over many years.

Five of the eight surviving coffins discovered in 1836. The photo shows the differences in the clothing of their wooden occupants as well as their varying states of preservation and the two different techniques used to fashion them. Credit: National Museum of Scotland

This matters, because the only comprehensive study yet made of the “fairy coffins” strongly indicates that all postdate 1800, and that the odds favor a deposit or deposits made after about 1830—within about five years, in other words, of the discovery of the cache. The work in question was carried out by Allen Simpson, a former president of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts and currently a member of the faculty of History and Classics at Edinburgh University, and Samuel Menefee, senior associate of the Center for National Security Law at the University of Virginia, and it was published, regrettably obscurely, in the journal of the city’s local history society: The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club.

Simpson and Menefee began their work by describing the eight surviving artifacts (which can still be seen today, on display in the National Museum of Scotland). Two, they note, were originally painted pink or red; the interior of one is lined with paper, made with rag fiber and datable to the period after 1780. As for the details of the construction:

Each coffin contains an ‘occupant’ and has been hollowed from a solid piece of wood. Each also has a lid which has been held in place by pins of various sizes, driven down through the sides and ends of the coffin base. In many instances the pin shafts are still in place, though some are bent over; when the lids were prised off the coffins most of the hand-wound pin heads became detached…. Although the type of wood has not previously been commented on, it has now been identified as Scots pine. Coffin dimensions vary…those now accessible for study are 3.7 to 4.1 inches long, 0.7 to 1.2 inches wide, and 0.8 to 1.0 inches deep with their lids in place….

Judging by the longitudinal scoring on the base of the recess, a sharp knife—probably a hooked knife—has been used. The fact that the surfaces at the ends of the recess are so cleanly cut indicates that the knife has been very sharp; but the user has apparently not been a woodworker by trade because he has not had access to an edged tool such as a chisel to cut out the base of the recess, and has had difficulty in controlling the depth of the cuts (which have even penetrated the base of coffin No.5).

There are two types of external shape. Five of the coffins (Nos 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8) have been carved with square-cut corners and edges, although most have slightly bowed sides so that the coffin has a taper at each end. However, the remaining three (Nos 3, 5 and 7) have a pronounced rounding of the edges and ends of the coffin; this suggests a different manual approach…and may indicate that the coffins could have been carved by two different individuals.

A side view of one of the figurines found on Arthur’s Seat, showing how one arm has been removed to allow it to fit inside its coffin. Photo: National Museum of Scotland.

As to who did the carving, Simpson and Menefee point out that “the most striking visual feature of the coffins is the use of applied pieces of tinned iron as decoration.” Analysis of this metal suggests that it is very similar to the sort of tin used in contemporary shoe buckles, and this in turn opens the possibility that the coffins were the work of shoemakers or leatherworkers, who would have had the manual skills to make the coffins but would have lacked the specialist carpentry tools needed to make a neater job of it.

The figurines found within the coffins were also studied. Each of the eight is neatly carved from close-grained white wood, and they share almost identical proportions, varying in height by no more than 5 millimeters—about a fifth of an inch. Some have arms, but several dolls have had them removed, apparently to allow the figure to fit neatly into its coffin. This suggests that the figures were not carved specifically for the purpose of burial, but have been adapted from an existing set; Simpson and Menefee—noting their “rigidly erect bearing,” indications that they originally wore hats, and their carefully carved lower bodies “formed to indicate tight knee breeches and hose, below which the feet are blackened to indicate ankle boots”—believe they are the remnants of a group of toy soldiers, and note that each is made to stand upright with the addition of a slight weight on its front, which might have been supplied by the addition of a model musket. (There would have been no need to ensure carvings intended simply as corpses would stand upright.) The features are very similar, and “it seems unlikely that the figures were ever intended to represent particular individuals.” Moreover, “the open eyes of the figures suggest that they were not carved to represent corpses.”

Based on their appearance, the authors tentatively date the group to the 1790s; no dendrochronological analysis or carbon dating, however, has been done on the collection. Several of the surviving figurines are still clad in well-preserved “grave clothes.” As Simpson and Menefee point out, “single-piece suits, made from fragments of cloth, have been moulded round the figures and sewn in place. With some figures there is evidence of adhesive under the cloth. The style of dress does not relate to period grave clothes, and if it is intended to be representational at all then it is more in keeping with everyday wear…. The fact that the arms of figure No.8 were already missing when the figure was clothed suggests that the fabric was merely intended to cover the figures decently and not to represent garments.” All the fabrics are cheap, made of plain woven cotton, though one of the figures is clad in checks and three “seem to have commercially inked patterns applied to the cloth.”

Two more figurines, showing details of the stitching and clothing, crucial clues to their likely origin. Photo: National Museum of Scotland.

The evidence of the figurines makes dating the burials much easier. According to Naomi Tarrant, curator of European textiles at the National Museum of Scotland, the good condition of the surviving vestments suggests they were buried in the 1830s. More revealingly, one of the figures has been sewn into its grave clothes with a three-ply thread. Cotton thread replaced linen in Scotland from about 1800; “almost certainly,” Simpson and Menefee assert, “such thread would have been manufactured in the thread mills of Paisley, where tradition has it that cotton thread was not made before 1812.” Three-ply thread, according to Philip Sykas ofManchester Art Galleries–the leading expert on that topic – came into use in about 1830. Sykas believes that the mixture of one-, two- and three-ply threads found on the Arthur’s Seat figures “indicates a date in the 1830s.”

Now, none of this proves all the burials took place at so late a date as 1830; it is possible that the decayed surviving figurines represent interments that took place earlier than this, and also that the figurines sewn with one- or two-ply thread predate 1830. Nonetheless, it does seem possible to suggest that all the burials took place, at the outside, between about 1800 and 1830, and it is entirely likely that Simpson and Menefee are correct to state that all took place during the 1830s. This in turn suggests it is possible that all 17 figurines were interred at the same time, and the fact that the coffins seem to have been carved by at most two people and that the figurines apparently originally formed part of a single set implies that the burial(s) were carried out by the same person, or small group of people “over a comparatively short period.”

If this is true, write Simpson and Menefee, “the significant feature of the burial is that there were seventeen coffins,” and “it is arguable…”

that the problem with the various theories is their concentration on motivation, rather than on the event or events that caused the interments. The former will always be open to argument, but if the burials were event-driven—by, say the loss of a ship with seventeen fatalities during the period in question—the speculation would at least be built on demonstrable fact. Stated another way, what we seek is an Edinburgh-related event or events, involving seventeen deaths, which occurred close to 1830 and certainly before 1836. One obvious answer springs to mind—the West Port Murders by William Burke and William Hare in 1827 and 1828.

William Burke, one half of the infamous pair of “resurrection men” responsible for 17 murders in the Scottish capital during the late 1820s.

Simpson’s and Menefee’s solution to the mystery is certainly dramatic— so much so it seems that nobody has actually asked whether the pair searched for news of any Scottish shipwreck from the early 1830s, as they suggest it might be wise to do. (It would appear that they did not.) The West Port murders, after all, were and remain notorious: They were committed in Edinburgh by two Irish laborers, Burke and Hare, to profit by supplying corpses to Edinburgh’s medical school, where they were in great demand for dissection. The pair’s victims, mostly indigents who, they supposed, would not be missed, numbered 17, of whom one expired of natural causes while the rest were murdered. The killers’ trial, in which Hare turned King’s evidence and Burke was convicted and later hanged, was one of the sensations of the age. Crucially, in the authors’ view, the fact that all of the 17 victims were dissected, and consequently had no decent burial, may have inspired a “mimic burial” on Arthur’s Seat:

Considering beliefs such as the alleged mimic burial given to Scottish sailors lost at sea, it would not be unreasonable for some person or person, in the absence of the seventeen dissected bodies, to wish to propitiate these dead, the majority of whom were murdered in atrocious circumstances, by a form of burial to set their spirits at rest. While it is always possible that other disasters could have resulted in an identical casualty list, the West Port murders would appear to be a logical motivating force.

Since Simpson and Menefee first reported their findings in 1994, their thesis has been elaborated. TheEdinburgh Evening News reported in 2005 that George Dalgliesh, principal curator of Scottish history at the National Museum of Scotland, believes “the most credible theory is that [the coffins] were made by someone who knew Burke and Hare,” and so had a strong motive to make amends for their crimes. Attempts to suggest that Burke himself may have manufactured and buried the pieces in an agony of contrition seem to fail on the problem that the murderers were arrested almost immediately after committing their 17th killing, leaving little or no time for any burial to be made; a DNA sample for Burke has been obtained from the murderer’s skeleton, which is preserved at Edinburgh University, but no traces of DNA could be recovered from the buried figurines.

There is, moreover, one potentially fatal objection to the theory that the Arthur’s Seat coffins are connected to the West Port murders: no fewer than 12 of Burke and Hare’s victims were female, yet the clothed bodies found in the coffins were uniformly dressed in male attire.

Without knowing more about burial customs in early 19th-century Scotland it is hard to know how worrying this objection is, but certainly it would appear no more difficult to clothe a figurine in a miniature dress than it would be to stitch on trousers. In the absence of firm evidence of any connection to the activities of Burke and Hare, I would suggest the first step in any future investigation should be to examine Scottish newspapers published between, say, 1820 and 1836, for evidence of any other disasters involving the deaths of 17 people—ideally, none of them women. Two titles, the Scotsman and theCaledonian Mercury, have now been digitized, and could be searched by a determined researcher. We await further developments.

A close up of two of Edinburgh’s mysterious miniature dolls. Are these intended to be the faces of two victims of the notorious bodysnatchers Burke and Hare? Credit: National Museum of Scotland.

Rate this:

 

British archaeologists have unearthed a giant complex near the ancient city of Ur in southern Iraq.

The area is believed to have been home to Abraham, father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

As the find is 4,000 years old, roughly the same age as Abraham himself, it raises the tantalising possibility of a direct link with one of history’s most significant religious figures.

Dig: Archaeologists at work on a site in Iraq near the ancient city of Ur believed to be 4,000 years old

The large city was discovered by a team from the archaeology department of Manchester University, led by Stuart Campbell.

The site is roughly the size of a football field, around 80 metres on each side.

 Complexes of that size from 2,000BC are extremely rare, according to Dr Campbell.

One of the most extraordinary archaeological items discovered at the site is a clay plaque of a worshipper approaching a sacred site dressed in a flowing robe.

 

Exquisite: This clay plaque from the site shows a worshipper in a flowing robe approaching a sacred place 

Progress: This is the first time in three decades that British archaeologists have been able to work in Iraq

The dig is a rare example of good news stemming from the invasion of Iraq, as it is the first British excavation in the country for nearly 30 years.

As Saddam Hussein was increasingly cut off from the international community it became more difficult for scholars to entry the country.

And in the early years following the Western invasion of the country, conditions were far too unstable to allow archaeological work.

 

Civilisation: This image of a ram is one of many exquisite objects found near Ur during previous excavations

The Mesopotamian culture of 4,000 years ago is already well known for creating the conditions for the first cities to thrive.

Exquisite objects from the area include the Standard of Ur, a mosaic picture now in the British Museum.

Abraham is said in the Book of Genesis to have been born in a city called Ur of the Chaldees before travelling towards the Holy Land.

It is unclear whether or not this city should be identified with the Mesopotamian civilisation of Ur.