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Dante Alighieri is a symbol of Italy and its poetry, but also of the city he was born, Firenze. A proud Florentine, Dante never kept the love he had for his hometown a secret, so why is he buried in Ravenna? Well, because that’s where he passed, of course, but the matter of where his mortal remains should rest was the cause of mystery and diatribes for centuries. Dante rests, today, in a quiet corner of the Emilia-Romagna town, his marble mausoleum protected by sunlight and heat by the leafy beauty of an oak planted by poet and Nobel laureate...

New ancient DNA analysis has shed light on how the black rat, blamed for spreading Black Death, dispersed across Europe -- revealing that the rodent colonized the continent on two occasions in the Roman and Medieval periods. By analyzing DNA from ancient black rat remains found at archaeological sites spanning the 1st to the 17th centuries in Europe and North Africa, researchers have pieced together a new understanding of how rat populations dispersed following the ebbs and flows of human trade, urbanism, and empires...The study -- led by the University of York along with the University of Oxford and the...

Travel through time by lifting like passengers on the Titanic or swimming like the sixth U.S. presidentWhere you’re going, you don’t need a DeLorean. You’ve already got a time machine: your body. With it, you can do battle with medieval knights, walk on the decks of the Titanic, play ball on the White House lawn, or play a round of tennis with Henry VIII. This is how you really sweat to the oldies. Try these workouts from decades and centuries ago to experience what it was like to live—and move—in the past. Your heartrate will go on with the Titanic...

Shrouded within the park of Villa Demidoff, in Medici Villas (Unesco World Heritage List, 2013), Pratolino, Vaglia, Tuscany, just 7 miles north of Florence, Italy, there sits a gigantic 16th century sculpture - 14-meter-tall masterpiece statue - known as Colosso dell'Appennino, or the Appennine Colossus. The brooding structure was first erected in 1580 by Flemish sculptor Giambologna, pseudonym of Jean de Boulogne (Douai, 1529 - Florence, 1608).Created between 1579 and 1580, the statue was included in Francesco I de’ Medici’s collection of natural and artificial wonders, and ended up costing twice as much as the works needed to complete the...

In one of the most famous paintings in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy, Federico da Montefeltro gazes at his wife, Battista Sforza, as they stand in front of the landscape over which they ruled. Undulating hills rise to volcano-like peaks on which towns perch. The ragged Apennine mountains stalk the horizon, and what’s thought to be the Metauro river swirls below. Painted by Piero della Francesca in 1472, it’s one of the iconic artworks of the Renaissance. And yet few international visitors to the Uffizi know the area which gave Piero della Francesca, the artist, his inspiration. Today, Urbino...

For the better part of four centuries, Greenland's southern coast defined the westernmost edge of Viking occupation. Seduced by visions of verdant hills and fertile ground, in the late 10th century waves of Norse migrants set sail in hopes of an easier life abroad. At its peak, the colony's population numbered in the thousands, spread out across three major settlements. And then it ended. No word of hardship. No record of struggle. By the middle of the 15th century, the Norse experiment in Greenland was a bust. New research suggests we might have had it all wrong about the prime...

Archaeologists working to restore Paris’s fire-damaged Notre Dame cathedral have discovered something remarkable: previously unknown tombs hidden beneath the 850-year-old Gothic church. Workers made the discovery while installing ground-level scaffolding to help rebuild the church’s fallen spire, according to a statement from the French Ministry of Culture. When they realized that there was something buried at the spot where the transept crosses the nave, the cathedral called in the Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research to investigate. What they found were several tombs and a leaden sarcophagus, probably dating to the 14th century. “The floor of the transept crossing has revealed...

A team of adventurers, marine archaeologists and technicians located the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, east of the Antarctic Peninsula, using undersea drones...Mensun Bound, the expedition's exploration director and a marine archaeologist who has discovered many shipwrecks, said Endurance was the finest he had ever seen. It is upright, clear of the seabed and "in a brilliant state of preservation," he said.

In 2019, the Society for Classical Studies, a non-profit North American scholarly organization devoted to all aspects of Greek and Roman civilization, held a rather memorable conference in San Diego. Titled “The Future of Classics,” panelists were asked for their opinions on “the diminution of our future role” in society. One of the panelists, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, an associate professor of classics at Princeton who researches and teaches the Roman Republic and early Empire, wasted no time in making his point, calling for all Classics to die “as swiftly as possible.” Peralta, a black academic, criticized Classics for their failure...

Archaeologists at a city dig site have uncovered a medieval tiled floor dating back to around the 13th Century. The discovery was made in Gloucestershire at the location of the new £107m development, The Forum. The floor, made of glazed white and green tiles, belonged to the cloister of the city's medieval Whitefriars Carmelite Friary and was unearthed by the Cotswold Archaeology team. Archaeologist Anthony Beechey described the find as "extra special". Mr Beechey explained that the "beautiful tiled floor is in remarkably good condition". "Most of our Whitefriars findings are fragments of the original structure while this floor is...

In the late 1480s, Leonardo da Vinci sketched out a clever design for a one-person helicopter propelled by an "aerial screw." Starting in 2019, a University of Maryland engineering team designed and tested the underlying technology as part of a design contest. Then over the last year and a half, team member Austin Prete built Crimson Spin, an unmanned quadcopter drone using da Vinci's screwlike design, and flew it on several brief journeys. Although Prete built only a small drone, the technology could work with an aircraft big enough to haul a human. "I do believe it should be able...

A painting of Christ by Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli sold for $45.4 million at auction Thursday, some $5 million more than expected, Sotheby's announced. The portrait of a resurrected Christ, The Man of Sorrows, was the marquee item in the auction house's New York Old Master paintings sale. It fetched the highest price for a Renaissance painting in the past five years. "As the first major sale of 2022, today's auction result is a resounding vote of confidence for the international art market and the market for Old Masters," said Christopher Apostle, head of Sotheby's Old Masters Painting Department....

A metal detectorist has found what is believed to be one of England's earliest gold coins whilst searching farmland in Devon, on his first metal detecting search in over ten years. The find happened last September and at first the man was completely unaware of just how rare the coin was - it's thought to be one of only eight in existence. The coin is now going to be auctioned, and it could sell for as much as half a million pounds! ($670k). The coin is made from gold and depicts King Henry III. It is thought to have been...

During his lifetime, the French dramatist Moliere elevated comedy to a level of respect and importance once exclusively reserved for tragedy. In 2022, the 400th anniversary of the year of his birth, his name is often mentioned in the same breath as William Shakespeare and other literary titans. Moliere was the alias of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, born in 1622 to a upholsterer who served the royal household. He wrote his numerous plays well before the French Revolution, at a time when the authority of the king and the church was intact. Yet in his plays, which are still regularly performed today,...

A psychotherapist has claimed the trauma suffered by ancestors in the European witch hunts has harmed today's generation of women. Cali White, from West Sussex, insists women have inherited 'self-destructive' behaviours like a 'deep-rooted mistrust' of other females and a 'fear of being heard or seen' after their forebears had to adopt the traits to survive the witch hunts. During the Early Modern era - 1450 to 1750 - tens of thousands of women were executed as 'witches' across the continent. Cali is a lead curator of an exhibition I am Witch - Tales from the Roundhouse, which is to...

Man lying on his belly with another man using a weapon on his back. (Stora Hammar Stone) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stora_Hammars_stones#/media/File:Sacrificial_scene_on_Hammars_(II).png Famed for their swift longboats and bloody incursions, Vikings have long been associated with brutal, over-the-top violence. Between the eighth and 11th centuries, these groups left their Nordic homelands to make their fortunes by trading and raiding across Europe. Particularly infamous is the so-called "blood eagle", a gory ritual these warriors are said to have performed on their most hated enemies. The ritual allegedly involved carving the victim's back open and cutting their ribs away from their spine, before the lungs were...

A Viking sword found at a burial site in Orkney is a rare, exciting and complex artefact, say archaeologists.The find, made in 2015 on the northeast coast of Papa Westray, is being carefully examined as part of post-excavation work.Archaeologists have now identified it as a type of heavy sword associated with the 9th Century.The relic is heavily corroded, but x-rays have revealed the sword's guards to be highly decorated.Contrasting metals are thought to have been used to create a honey comb-like pattern.The remains of a scabbard, a sheath for the blade, was also found...The excavations at Mayback revealed a number...

#Disrupt Texts and its co-thinkers are dedicated enemies of enlightenment and education. Students, teachers and serious academics should treat them with derision, challenge them and expose their ignorance.

...bubonic plague may have reached England before its first recorded case in the Mediterranean via a currently unknown route, possibly involving the Baltic and Scandinavia...The Justinianic Plague is the first known outbreak of bubonic plague in west Eurasian history and struck the Mediterranean world at a pivotal moment in its historical development, when the Emperor Justinian was trying to restore Roman imperial power.For decades, historians have argued about the lethality of the disease; its social and economic impact; and the routes by which it spread. In 2019-20, several studies, widely publicised in the media, argued that historians had massively exaggerated...