Worth 1000 words
Whether it inspires a story or just serves to make your day more interesting, here’s an image to start your morning off with:
Tag: writing inspiration
Worth 1000 words
Whether it inspires a story or just makes your day a little more interesting, here’s an image to start the morning with:
Stranger than fiction: Science to the rescue
Archaeologists are notorious Luddites — forever crowing about how much we can discover with just a trowel, a bucket, and a strong constitution.
Technology, though, will not be denied, and every once in awhile it reminds us that we ignore it at our peril.
Case in point: archaeologists working at the site of Ashkelon, Israel uncovered a white, powdery surface they originally interpreted as a plaster floor inside a residential or ritual structure. When they subjected a sample of the material to spectroscopic analysis, however, they discovered it was something quite different from what they’d imagined. Rather than a fine floor, the white substance was decayed plant life and fecal matter. That’s right, folks, it was poop.
They hadn’t found the interior of a house or temple, but an animal pen.
Archaeology, meet Science. You two should hang out more often.
Here’s the article in the New York Times if you’d like to read more.
Worth 1000 words
Whether it inspires a story or just serves to make your day a little more interesting, here’s an image to start the morning with:
Worth 1000 words
Whether it inspires a story or just serves to make your day more interesting, here’s an image to start the morning with:
Stranger than fiction: shaman’s burial
Plenty of us write about magic and witches, but nothing can be cooler than this 12,000 year old shaman’s burial from the site of Hilazon Tachtit, Israel.
Walled away inside a cave high on a cliff face, this elderly, disabled woman was buried with an incredible array of grave goods, including 50 complete tortoise shells and select body-parts of a wild boar, an eagle, a cow, a leopard, and two martens, as well as a complete human foot (not her own). Many of these animals were either extremely rare or locally unavailable at the time, suggesting a great deal of planning and effort went into this woman’s interment. Plus, a human foot!
Thus far, this is one of the oldest known graves of a potential shaman.
Read more about it here.
Worth 1000 words
Whether it inspires a story or just serves to make your day a little more interesting, here’s an image to start the morning with:
Worth 1000 words
Whether it inspires a story or just makes your day a little more interesting, here’s an image to start the morning with:
Stranger than fiction: ancient shoes
Did you know that the world’s oldest evidence for shoe use comes not from preserved footwear but from human toe bones?
Well, it’s true.
Preserved sandals or other ancient footwear don’t appear in the archaeological record until around 9,000 years ago (from a site in California). This is because biodegradable materials tend to preserve poorly. Recently, though, physical anthropologists have speculated that we may be able to determine when humans began wearing shoes indirectly by examining their toe bones.
People who go barefoot develop stronger, more robust toes than those who wear supportive footwear. Archaeologists have found a decrease in the size and strength of toe bones among Homo sapiens in Europe and the Middle East around 30,000 years ago, suggesting it was at this time that they began to innovate new footwear technologies.
Eat your heart out Christian Louboutin!
Here’s the article from National Geographic if you want to know more.
Comedy or Tragedy? 