History geekodrome

[LadyShea]

Originally Posted by livius drusus

I don't know how far down into the general population the Greekness went. I always thought the Fayuum portraits looked classically Middle Eastern/North African.

Something about the noses in old portraits. I see the same thing in medieval portraits as well. How did everyone before photography have long straight narrow noses? No upturns, no bumps, no flarey nostrils, no doglegs, no little buttons sticking out of the middle like a pig snout.

[Watser?]

Some of the people in old paintings have pretty ugly faces, with crooked noses etc. Usually not people who paid to have their portrait painted though.

[Ymir's blood]

The Northern Ren. painters portrayed some pretty interesting individuals.

[BrotherMan]

livius! DON'T LOOK!

Seven years of the internet have just disappeared.

The end of San Francisco-based Digg has been nigh for over two years, ever since founder Kevin Rose helmed a disastrous redesign in August 2010 and many of the site's users fled to Reddit, but the news-sharing behemoth plodded along, not realizing it was supposed to be dead. That is, until yesterday, when new owner Betaworks put a bullet in its head.

Here, take a look. At first glance, it looks a lot like Pinterest, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it only takes a couple clicks to realize all of the archives are gone. All of them. All of the Ron Paul idolatry. All of the ASCII facepalms. All of the linkbait. Gone.

And this could have a profound effect on the rest of the Internet.

[livius drusus]

I looked, damn me.

[Kyuss Apollo]

Tape! Both sides!



I am always amazed at how they can restore old documents.

show spoiler

[livius drusus]

Beautiful. Here's my favorite example of restoration magic. It's a 1770 plan of New York City by British Army officer Bernard Ratzer, one of only three known to survive, and it was treated like absolute shit for many, many years.



It's hard to believe those are the same thing, isn't it? But they are. That is the amazing work of paper conservationist Jonathan P. Derow working for the Brooklyn Historical Society.

[Ymir's blood]

Seen that one before.

[Kyuss Apollo]

still though!

[livius drusus]

He saw it on my blog, so really it was a compliment.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by Kyuss Apollo

Tape! Both sides!



I am always amazed at how they can restore old documents.

show spoiler

From that link:

“The baptismal certificate, dated 1899, belonged to my great-uncle Franz Fink from Austria,” she explained.

But he was born in Laibach, which is the German name for Ljubljana, now the capital of Slovenia (which used to be in Yugoslavia).

[fragment]

In 1899 Slovenia was part of Austria-Hungary.

[SR71]

This is an excerpt of an extra foral communication written by Vivisectus. I thought it was both pertinent to current events and informative in a historical way. It seems to have something to say in a general way about what lessons can be drawn from history. Also it involves Greeks.

Quote from Viv -

I hear the unfortunate cycle of instant news-story fame and copy-cat shootings continues in the land of the Merkins: apparently yet another person feels they should take out their sense of disillusionment on some unsuspecting crowd. Surely there are less grotesque ways of throwing your life away... but then again, apparently this kind of behaviour is as old as gossip: I learned today that it is called the seeking of Herostratic Fame, named after the man who burned down the Temple of Artemis just to get famous. Sadly, it works: roughly 2500 years later we still know his name, even though the authorities tried to make sure this did not happen by making it a capital crime to even mention his name. Perhaps we should start to re-style our reporting on these crimes, and single them out for particular disdain. Focus on the cowardice of picking unarmed, unsuspecting targets, on how pathetic it is to crave attention so much you are willing to commit atrocities for it, on the selfishness of taking lives just to satisfy some infantile need to be noticed.

[Watser?]

I wouldn't have known that Artemis-temple-burner's name, I keep forgetting it but people keep reminding me.

[Watser?]

A painting in the Historic Museum in The Hague turns out to be a bit more gruesome than it has been for the last century and a half. It is a painting of the murder of Johan de Witt (Johan de Witt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and his brother Cornelis by a lynchmob. After restoration it turns out that a cannon had been painted over the naked bodies of the two brothers. The murders of the brothers De Witt happened while the country was under attack by the French in 1672. The Orangist faction took the opportunity to seize power. Whether the murders were premeditated or spontaneous mob violence is still unclear. The newly restored painting shows how the mob are cutting off their fingers and other body parts...

Old:




New:

[Ymir's blood]

Well I suppose Dutch barbarity didn't begin with the seizure of CDs, then.

[livius drusus]

What a gorgeous restoration. Not just because of the naked dead guys either.

[Ymir's blood]

You are so obsessed with death. It can't be healthy. Why not think about normal stuff?

[Qingdai]

Paint detective, sounds more interesting than one would be lead to believe.

[Interview] Patrick Baty: Paint Detective - PreservationNation

[Ymir's blood]

Ooh I can see a picture deal:

Cold Colours, Cold Cases.

[Kyuss Apollo]

R.I.P. Eugene Genovese

[Angakuk]

Tibetan Buddha Statue Carved From Metorite

I thought this article was interesting on several levels, but I particularly want to comment on the following passages. The added emphasis is mine.

A priceless Buddha statue looted by Nazis in Tibet in the 1930s was carved from a meteorite which crashed to the Earth 15,000 years ago, according to new research.

It was stolen before the second world war during a pillage of Tibet by Hitler's SS, who were searching for the origins of the Aryan race.

One almost never sees artifacts in the British Museum or other prestigious collections described has having been looted or stolen, or their methods of collecting described as pillage (unless the article has as its particular focus the looting of national treasures under colonialist regimes). However, if the Nazis did it there is no hesitation about descrbing it in the harshest possible terms. Talk about your double standards.

[SR71]

Some 100 generations on, people still care. That is the most interesting part to me.

Spanish researchers find the exact spot where Julius Caesar was stabbed

Several ancient Roman texts describe the assassination of Julius Caesar in Rome, at the Curia of Pompey in 44 BC, which was the result of a plot among a group of senators to eliminate the General. This fact led to the formation of the second triumvirate and to the final outbreak of civil wars. Now, 2,056 years later, a team of researchers from the Spanish National Research Council has found the exact plot where the military man was stabbed.

[livius drusus]

I love that people still care too, most certainly myself among them.

That story makes me mad, though, because there are zero specifics, no picture of the concrete structure, not even an exact location for it. The Curia of Pompey was gigantic and the current part that's exposed in Largo Argentina is just a tiny fraction of it somewhere in the middle. There's no way they had permission to dig in there and it's not the "bottom" of the curia anyway, so it has to be somewhere else. Can't I even get a cross-street or something? I'd love to blog about it but until they announce a fact or two beyond "Julius Caesar mumble mumble" I am forced decline.

[ceptimus]

BBC News - Roman gold coins found in St Albans field