Free Republic

"The Black Book of Carmarthen," dating to 1250, contains texts from the ninth through 12th centuries, including some of the earliest references to Arthur and Merlin. "It's easy to think we know all we can know about a manuscript like the 'Black Book,' but to see these ghosts from the past brought back to life in front of our eyes has been incredibly exciting," Myriah Williams, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement. "The drawings and verse that we're in the process of recovering demonstrate the value of giving these books another look." ... "The...

The 750-year-old Black Book of Carmarthen is the first Welsh text to include medieval figures such as King Arthur and Merlin... Now, thanks to high resolution photography and UV lighting, some of its secrets have finally been revealed... The collection of poetry and illustrations was penned by one scribe in the 13th Century who added to it over the years. It was then passed from owner to owner, with more additions being made in the margins... But 300 years after it was first written the then owner, believed to be Jaspar Gryffyth, decided to purge the pages of anything that...

Half a millennium after Leonardo da Vinci's death, his influence is alive and well in many of the modern machines we see and use every day. An inventor, engineer, scientist, and artist, da Vinci was the quintessential Renaissance Man, and one of history's brightest minds. Not only did he have the vision to create early versions of game-changing modern gadgets, but he was also the extremely gifted painter who birthed the world's most famous work of art, the Mona Lisa, and the equally iconic Last Supper. "He was the first to insist that mechanical devices should be designed in keeping...

An iron working hearthstone was discovered on Newfoundland, hundreds of miles from the only noted Viking location to date. Another thousand-year-old Viking colony might have been found on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. The finding of the old Viking location on the Canadian coast could drastically change the story of the exploration of North America by the Europeans prior to Christopher Columbus.

Archaeological evidence suggested that 25 individuals whose remains were found in a burial pit near a Crusader castle near Sidon, Lebanon, were warriors who died in battle in the 1200s. Based on that, Tyler-Smith, Haber, and their colleagues conducted genetic analyses of the remains and were able to sequence the DNA of nine Crusaders, revealing that three were Europeans, four were Near Easterners, and two individuals had mixed genetic ancestry... ...when the researchers sequenced the DNA of people living in Lebanon 2,000 years ago during the Roman period, they found that today's Lebanese population is actually more genetically similar to...

The Italian peninsula seems to shimmer and shine with history and art, from graceful, full bodied nymphs set against make-believe cypresses and oaks, to crumbling mounds of marble on which lie the almost breathable, almost visible words of lives, songs, and politics past. But before all the art, before the reawakening, before the soldiers cloaked in scarlet and gold, and the senators in their Senate hall...before the reign of emperors and tyrants was a race of peoples whose culture lived on in the greatest empire the world has ever known. They were the Etruscans, a mysterious tribe that scattered throughout...

An ancient concoction for eye infections seems to really work. The potion, which contains cattle bile, kills the "superbug" methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, researchers at Britain's University of Nottingham report. In fact, it worked better than the current gold standard for MRSA infections of the flesh, the antibiotic vancomycin, an expert at Texas Tech University found. Now researchers are working to see just what's in the salve that kills germs so effectively. It started with a joint project by two wildly different departments at the University of Nottingham. Dr. Christina Lee, an Anglo-Saxon expert in the School of English,...

Archaeologists and citizen scientists have unearthed what may be the monastery of Princess Aebbe, who was born a pagan but later spread Christianity along the northeastern British coast during the seventh century. Once the pagan-turned-Christian princess (615-668) became an abbess, she established the monastery at Coldingham, a village in the southeast of Scotland. But the monastery was short-lived; Viking raiders destroyed it it in 870. Archaeologists have been looking for the remains of this monastery for decades. Excavators have now located a narrow, circular ditch, which is likely the "vallum," or the boundary that surrounded Aebbe's religious settlement, DigVentures, a...

In desperate circumstances people are often driven to perform feats of mythical proportions. In the late 1100s the medieval kingdom of Georgia was resisting the onslaught of the Mongol hordes, the most devastating force Europe had ever seen. Queen Tamar ordered the construction of this underground sanctuary in 1185, and the digging began, carving into the side of the Erusheli mountain, located in the south of the country near the town of Aspindza. When completed this underground fortress extended 13 levels and contained 6000 apartments, a throne room and a large church with an external bell tower. It is assumed...

Jennifer Millar keeps trash bags and hand sanitizer near her tent, and she regularly pours water mixed with hydrogen peroxide on the sidewalk nearby. Keeping herself and the patch of concrete she calls home clean is a top priority. But this homeless encampment off a Hollywood freeway ramp is often littered with needles and trash and soaked in urine. Rats occasionally scamper through, and Millar fears the consequences. Infectious diseases—some that ravaged populations in the Middle Ages—are resurging in California and around the country, and are hitting homeless populations especially hard. Los Angeles recently experienced an outbreak of typhus—a disease...

This Medieval Man Used a Knife as a Prosthetic Limb The man’s skeleton bears signs of frequent ‘biomechanical force,’ according to a new study image: https://thumbs-prod.si-cdn.com/8ovq0YUyqFxilC3FolzWf9RVfXg=/800x600/filters:no_upscale()/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/c0/c9/c0c9b13f-c35f-416c-9a28-7f53c4e41f9a/micarelli-5.jpg knife prosthetic The man's limb appears to have been removed by blunt force trauma and a knife was later secured in its stead. (Micarelli et al. 2018) By Brigit Katz APRIL 20, 2018 In 1985, archaeologists discovered a medieval necropolis in northern Italy, which, over the years, yielded the remains of 222 individuals. Amid these remains, the skeleton of one adult male stood out because his hand appeared to have been amputated at the...

fter an absence from Italy of nearly 500 years, beavers are back. The species, which was once widespread across Europe, has been spotted in Italy’s northerly region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The animals are believed to have wandered over the border from neighbouring Austria or possibly Slovenia. An adult beaver was filmed by a camera trap in a forest near Tarvisio, a town that lies in the triangle where Italy, Austria and Slovenia converge. “The reason beavers disappeared from Italy is simple – for hundreds of years they were trapped for their fur and also prized for their meat,” Paolo Molinari,...

The records include dates and times, Cesario said, which makes them useful to modern-day astronomers. Planet Nine, if it exists, would have about 10 times the mass of Earth and orbit 20 times farther from the sun than Neptune does... Scientists suspect the existence of Planet Nine because it would explain some of the gravitational forces at play in the Kuiper Belt, a stretch of icy bodies beyond Neptune. But no one has been able to detect the planet yet, though astronomers are scanning the skies for it with tools such as the Subaru Telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano....

The Sack Of Baghdad In 1258 – One Of The Bloodiest Days In Human History MEDIEVALFeb 15, 2019 Jay Hemmings   SHARE:FacebookTwitter When we think of the darkest, most bloody days of human history, our minds inevitably turn to the horrors of modern warfare. We think of battles like The Somme in WW1, or Stalingrad or Leningrad in WW2, or murderous regimes like Pol Pot’s or Hitler’s.As bloody and brutal as these events were, they were often spread over periods of weeks, months, or years. Their huge death tolls accumulated over time.However, when talking about the biggest loss of life...

From the days of the sword through the advent of the guillotine, Charles-Henri Sanson killed some 3,000 people during his bloody career. On Jan. 5, 1757, King Louis XV of France departed the Palace of Versailles. While he was walking toward his carriage, a strange man suddenly shoved past the palace guards, striking the king in the chest with a penknife. The assailant was arrested and the king was ushered inside, bleeding from what turned out to be a minor chest wound. No longer fearing for his life, King Louis’ concern shifted from his own bodily injury to the kind...

About eight hundred years ago, a ship sank in the Java Sea off the coast of the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. There are no written records saying where the ship was going or where it came from -- the only clues are the mostly-disintegrated structure of the vessel and its cargo, which was discovered on the seabed in the 1980s. Since the wreck's recovery in the 1990s, researchers have been piecing together the world that the Java Sea Shipwreck was part of. In a new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science, archaeologists have demonstrated a new...

Discovery suggests women worked as top artists in Middle Ages more often than thought They couldn't figure out the blue. Scientists studying tartar from the teeth of medieval skeletons hoped to learn a thing or two of about diets of the Middle Ages. But when they put the teeth and jaw of one woman under a microscope, they were surprised to see hundreds of tiny flecks of blue, reports the BBC. After much sleuthing, they figured out that the blue came from lapis lazuli, a rare and expensive stone ground into powder to make dye for sacred manuscripts. Typically, male...

he weird habit of licking the end of a paintbrush has revealed new evidence about the life of an artist more than 900 years after her death. Scientists found tiny blue paint flecks had accumulated on the teeth of a medieval German nun. The particles of the rare lapis lazuli pigment likely collected as she touched the end of her brush with her tongue. The researchers say it shows women were more involved in the illumination of sacred texts than previously thought.

A silver medieval ring thought to be up to 600 years old has been unearthed by a man who took up metal detecting after watching a TV sitcom. The gold-gilded ring was found by Gordon Graham in a field in the north of the Isle of Man. Archaeologists believe the piece, which is engraved with geometric shapes, dates from between 1400 and 1500 AD. An inquest hearing at Douglas Courthouse declared the ring can be officially classed as treasure. Allison Fox, a curator of archaeology at Manx National Heritage, said it may date back to the time when the first...

During the construction of London's massive "super sewer," archaeologists discovered something unusual in the mud: a 500-year-old skeleton of a man still wearing his thigh-high leather boots. The Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) announced this week that the skeleton was unearthed on the shores of the Thames, near a bend in the river downstream from the Tower of London. "By studying the boots, we've been able to gain a fascinating glimpse into the daily life of a man who lived as many as 500 years ago," said Beth Richardson, a finds specialist who analyzes artifacts at MOLA Headland, a consortium...