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ANCIENT BEVERAGE BREWED IN MILWAUKEE MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN — NPR reports that archaeologist Bettina Arnold of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her research team worked with Lakefront Brewery to try to re-create an alcoholic beverage that had been placed in a bronze cauldron and buried in a grave sometime between 400 and 450 B.C. in what is now Germany. The recipe was based upon the research of paleobotanist Manfred Rösch, who analyzed the residues in the Iron Age cauldron. He found evidence of honey, meadowsweet, barley, and mint—ingredients in a type of beverage known as a braggot.

Bones, ancient grooming tools, even gold – these are all things you might expect to find if you go poking around an Iron Age burial site. What you might not expect to find is your new favorite tipple. But, back in 2016, archaeologists were stunned to uncover a 2,500-year-old cauldron that contained the remnants of an ancient alcoholic beverage.Project lead Bettina Arnold, from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, was investigating a burial mound – called a tumulus – dating back to between 400 and 450 BCE, when she and her team came across what appeared to be a bronze cauldron. But...

The UK’s Prevent program, which is supposed to be protecting the Sceptered Isle from terrorism, recently came under fire for treating actual Islamic terrorism as if it were a mental illness. But that doesn’t mean that Prevent has been wanting for terrorists: like its counterparts in the FBI, it has kept busy looking for “far-right extremists” and has now published a helpful guide to spotting those dangerous right-wingers. It turns out that they’re people who read Beowulf, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, 1984, and other great works of English literature. Gee, you’d almost get the idea that the Leftist culture warriors who...

Leicester University has denied it is dropping literary giant Geoffrey Chaucer for being 'too white' after proposing replacement modules focused on race and gender. Plans have emerged to shelve The Canterbury Tales and Beowulf - two of the most important works in English literature - in favour of a 'decolonised' curriculum. The English faculty has been told that the foundational texts could be replaced by more popular works - but Leicester said this wasn't down to their 'whiteness.' Dr Christine Rauer, a lecturer at the University of St Andrews, told MailOnline: 'It's hard to see why race, ethnicity, sexuality and...

You ever have one of those days when you can’t quite tell if something is satire or not? That’s what we’re going through right now. Normally you can check the source’s url—if it’s the Onion or some other funny-sounding publication, you can write it off as a joke and move on. But what happens when the source is the most prestigious university in the world? In case you missed it, the College’s Implementation Committee for the Policy on Membership in Single Gender Social Organizations (oh god we’re never writing that again) released its recommendations today. If you’re looking for a...

What was so great about Chaucer? Some people seem to think he more or less invented the English language. Well, did he? By no means. Discussing authors, should anyone ever compare Chaucer to the likes of Hamlet, Petrarch or Dante? Never. Geoffrey's major source of influence, Giovanni Boccaccio, was a pretty good writer of short stories, but on the other hand, Western literature really could've done without him. In style as well as content, Chaucer was an unaccomplished Boccaccio impersonator. There are plenty of good reasons to admire Britain, but contrary to what is regarded as an axiomatic truth in...

Scholars led by Professor Linne Mooney in the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, carried out research aimed at identifying the scribes who made the first copies of works by major authors of the 14th and early 15th centuries, including Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland. The project has launched a new freely-accessible website www.medievalscribes.com, created by the University of Sheffield's HRI, which illustrates each medieval or early modern manuscript of writings by five major Middle English authors: Chaucer, Langland, John Gower, John Trevisa and Thomas Hoccleve. Professor Mooney said:...

Al Gore reinvents the medieval racket of selling indulgences (pardons for one's sins, worth hundreds of years of penance in an invisible Purgatory). With due credit to Geoffrey Chaucer for the original: Now, good men, Earth forgive you each trespass, And keep you from the sin of greenhouse gas. My carbon offsets cure and will suffice, So that it gains me gold, or silver brings, Or else, I care not- brooches, spoons or rings. You must embrace fully Al Gore’s line of bull, While o’er your eyes we will pull the wool! An offset certificate I’ll give you, anon, And...

Heere Bigynneth the Tale of the Asse-Hatte. 1 Whan in Februar, withe hise global warmynge 2 Midst unseasonabyl rain and stormynge 3 Gaia in hyr heat encourages 4 Englande folke to goon pilgrimages. 5 Frome everiches farme and shire 6 Frome London Towne and Lancanshire 7 The pilgryms toward Canterbury wended 8 Wyth fyve weke holiday leave extended 9 In hybryd Prius and Subaru 10 Off the Boughton Bypasse, east on M2. 11 Fouer and Twyntie theye came to seke 12 The Arche-Bishop, wyse and meke 13 Labouryte and hippye, Gaye and Greene 14 Anti-warre and libertyne 15 All sondry...

With a winter that brought snow to Tucson, Ariz., and 70-degree weather to New York City -- along with an Academy Award for the global-warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" -- climate change has become more ingrained in the public consciousness. Not everyone may be willing to overhaul their lives to accommodate the environment, but more people are opting for the rising number of options offered by companies to neutralize their "carbon footprints," meaning the amount of energy they consume. Most carbon-offset programs require consumers to make small payments that in turn go to programs that create renewable energy or absorb...

Canterbury Cathedral is falling apart at the seams, with chunks of masonry dropping off its walls and a fifth of its internal marble pillars held together by duct tape.   An art student paints in the cloisters, but trustees say parts of the building may have to be closed to visitors for safety reasons The extent of the building's disrepair was revealed yesterday at the launch of a global campaign to raise £50 million over five years for urgent and long-term renovation and conservation.The cathedral, the mother church of worldwide Anglicanism which was founded in 597 by St Augustine,...

More than 500 students from English and performing arts classes at Oakland's Skyline High School were treated to a performance by hip-hop Chaucer rapper Dirk "Baba" Brinkman this week. Brinkman, 26, put to music literary classics "The Pardoner's Tale" and "The Wife of Bath's Tale" and rhymed along. Rappers aren't looking at classical work like Chaucer's for their material, Brinkman said, but the similarities are there. Ancient Anglo-Saxon forms and today's rap rhythms both use verses and couplets that end in rhyme, he said, and create poetry intended for oral expression. "Baba's taking 14th century Chaucer and making it accessible...

One of the smaller, but no less bloody skirmishes in the Culture War is being waged on the linguistic front. For those new to the field there are essentially two camps: one made up of linguists, lexicographers, academics or language liberals; the other of conservatives or prescriptivists, the so-called "linguistic luddites." The conservative's anguish over the decline of the English language, the linguists charge, is no different than his distress over the decline of culture in general. This "whining," writes linguist Alan Pagliere, is a mix of nostalgia, self-righteousness, and ignorance of the reality of the laws governing and of...

Book: Who Killed Chaucer? Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Chaucer: 15th Century Manuscript Illustration Nov. 7, 2003 — Geoffrey Chaucer, the 14th century author of The Canterbury Tales, may have been murdered, according to a new book authored by former "Monty Python" member Terry Jones and backed by a team of English literature scholars. According to Jones and his team, both Chaucer and his writings, including The Canterbury Tales, could have become "politically inconvenient" during the turbulent overthrow of King Richard II by Henry IV in 1399. Jones' new book, Who Murdered Chaucer?, is itself a bit of a mystery. A...

In the course of some renovation work at England's Canterbury Cathedral, a wall broke open to reveal a hollow cavity, in which was found a parchment manuscript, since dated to the later 14th century. It appears to be the work of the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer. However, the text is much faded and barely legible in places, so that the work of deciphering this manuscript is proceeding very slowly. The first few pages have now been transcribed, and their content is given below. Not all of the references can be understood at this distance in time, but the manuscript appears...