Q&A: How did pasta come to Europe and when did it first become established in Italy?

History Extra

That the food crops up in so many cultures isn’t surprising: pasta is basically unleavened bread that has been boiled rather than baked.

There was long a fond myth that Marco Polo (1254–1324) brought pasta back to Italy from his travels in China, though what in fact he said was that he had found the Chinese eating lagana (sheets or ribbons of noodles or wheat pasta) similar to that already found in Italy.

Pasta as we know it today, made from durum wheat and water, was being produced in Sicily by the 12th century (and probably much earlier), and was probably introduced by Arab colonists. North Africa’s variation on pasta is, of course, couscous. It’s thought the Arabs used dried noodles on journeys and military campaigns as it kept well for long periods. Dried pasta would later be used by European seafarers.

Pasta spread across Italy where production remained hard, physical work; pasta-makers would generally sit and knead the dough with their feet. For this reason, it was expensive until industrialised kneading and extrusion methods were pioneered in Naples in the late 1700s. Only then did it become part of the diet of most Italians, before spreading across the world.

Answered by Eugene Byrne, author and historian.

Game of Queens: when women ruled Renaissance Europe

History Extra

Isabella I of Castille, Anne de Beaujeu and Catherine of Aragon were three of the queens linked by a complex web of mothers, daughters, mentors and proteges. (Getty Images)

After her accession ceremony on 13 December 1474, Isabella of Castile rode through the streets of Segovia – behind a horseman holding a naked sword. Even her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, was shocked, protesting that he had never before heard of a queen “who usurped this masculine attribute”. But Isabella’s reign ushered in an explosion of female rule, unequalled until our own day. In the 16th century, England, Scotland, France, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal and Hungary all came at one time or another to be controlled by a woman, whether as regent or queen regnant.

 These rulers were linked by a complex web of mothers and daughters, mentors and proteges. Lessons were passed from Isabella of Castile to her daughter Catherine of Aragon and thence Mary I, and from the French regent Anne de Beaujeu to Louise of Savoy, through Louise’s daughter Marguerite of Navarre to her daughter Jeanne d’Albret, to Marguerite’s admirer Anne Boleyn and thus to Elizabeth I.

Their experiences are echoed today. Headlines about Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Nicola Sturgeon and Hillary Clinton emphasise a powerful woman’s looks and likeability; the problem of gendered abuse, of seeming tough enough for high office without being dubbed unfeminine; the question of whether female leaders will relate to each other, and exercise their power, in a specifically female way.

The age of queens did not outlast the 16th century. Women had found themselves at the forefront of the great religious divides that tore Europe apart, but those divisions meant that, though Anne Boleyn could be educated in two foreign countries, her daughter Elizabeth never set foot out of her own land. We introduce 10 key female figures who dominated 16th-century Europe, and explore the relationships that linked them.

 Isabella I of Castile (1451–1504)
Before she even took the throne, Isabella broke with tradition by arranging her own marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon, uniting the two main Spanish kingdoms. They ruled together as the mighty Catholic Monarchs, famous for their expulsion of the Moors and Jews, for establishing the Inquisition in Spain, and for their sponsorship of Christopher Columbus. Ferdinand and Isabella produced only one short-lived son but several influential daughters – among them Catherine of Aragon who in 1509 married England’s king Henry VIII.

Catherine of Aragon 
(1485–1536)
Catherine was defined by Spanish heritage. Henry VII of England sought the valuable Spanish alliance by wedding her to his eldest son, Arthur; after Arthur’s early death she married his younger brother, Henry VIII. As regent in 1513, “in imitation of her mother Isabella”, she rallied English troops to resist a Scottish assault. But as daughter to a successful queen regnant she was poorly placed to understand her husband’s obsessive desire for a son. When her marriage was rent by Henry’s infatuation with her former protege Anne Boleyn, Catherine still, after almost 30 years in England, described herself as a stranger in the land, appealing for help to her former sister-in-law Margaret of Austria.

Margaret of Austria 
(1480–1530)
The child of Mary of Burgundy (ruling duchess of what would later be known as the Netherlands) and future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, Margaret was, while still a toddler, contracted to the French king-to-be Charles VIII. When that alliance fell through she married Juan, heir of Isabella and Ferdinand, and then, after his early death, the Duke of Savoy. After he died she returned to the Netherlands where for many years she ruled as regent on behalf of her nephew, the future emperor Charles V. She raised four of his sisters, all of whom became queens consort – of France, Portugal, Denmark and Hungary. Mary of Hungary succeeded her aunt as regent of the Netherlands and raised another generation of influential nieces. Though Margaret of Austria never bore a living child, she has been called the Grand Mère – ‘Great Mother’ – of Europe.

Anne de Beaujeu. (Getty Images)

Anne de Beaujeu 
(aka Anne of France, 1461–1522)
Eldest daughter of the French king Louis XI, Anne was widely noted as a woman of great ability. The Salic Law, however, prohibited her from acceding to the throne. Instead, on Louis’ death she acted as regent in all but name during the minority of her younger brother Charles VIII. Anne wrote an advice manual for noblewomen, Enseignements [Lessons for my Daughter] that has been compared to Machiavelli’s The Prince. “When it comes to the government of their lands and affairs, [widows] must depend only on themselves; when it comes to sovereignty, they must not cede power to anyone,” was one of her maxims. Anne was in charge of the upbringings of Margaret of Austria during her marriage to Charles VIII, and of Louise of Savoy.

Louise of Savoy (1476–1531)
 Louise’s status rose steadily as several French kings in succession died without heir until the closest in line to the throne was François, her son by the Count d’Angoulême. After François I became king in 1515, Louise was widely regarded as the power behind his throne. In 1529 she sat down with Margaret of Austria (her childhood playmate when they were both raised in Anne de Beaujeu’s care) to negotiate the so-called ‘Ladies’ Peace’ of Cambrai. Neither Louise’s son François nor Margaret’s nephew Charles could compromise their dignity by being the first to talk of reconciliation but, Margaret wrote: “How easy for ladies… to concur in some endeavours for warding off the general ruin of Christendom, and to make the first advance in such an undertaking!”

Marguerite of Navarre 
(aka Marguerite d’Angoulême, 1492–1549)
 Louise of Savoy’s daughter Marguerite was also in Cambrai when the ‘Ladies’ Peace’ was negotiated. Louise, François and Marguerite were so close that they were known as ‘the trinity’; neither of Marguerite’s two marriages (to the Duc d’Alençon and to Henri II of Navarre) impeded her devotion to her brother, nor her sway over his court. Author of the book of short stories known as the Heptaméron, Marguerite was an intellectual leader among the great ladies who sought to reform the Catholic church. The number of ideas, books and contacts they had in common suggests that Marguerite became a role model for Anne Boleyn during the latter’s years in France. Anne would later send word to Marguerite that her “greatest wish, next to having a son, was to see you again”.

Anne Boleyn (c1501–36)
 In 1513 Anne came to the court of Margaret of Austria as one of her maids, before spending seven years at the French court. This continental education gave her a glamour that made her a star when she returned to England. But it also gave her the opportunity to witness the religious reforms promoted by Marguerite of Navarre, and to see women exercising power in a way still unfamiliar in England. Before her marriage to Henry, Anne – as an active promoter of French interests – was seen as a useful alternative to the Habsburg Catherine. But a few years later, when a Habsburg alliance was desirable, that French identification contributed to her fall.

Elizabeth I (Getty Images).

 Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
Thanks in part to her long reign, Anne Boleyn’s daughter is remembered by many as England’s greatest monarch. She represents the apogee of an age of queens – which, however, was perhaps already waning before her death. Elizabeth might be seen as exemplifying many of the maxims laid down for powerful women at the beginning of the 16th century by the French regent Anne de Beaujeu (above). Elizabeth’s motto was Video et taceo – I see but say nothing. “Have eyes to notice everything yet to see nothing, ears to hear everything yet to know nothing,” Anne de Beaujeu had urged.

Elizabeth corresponded with Jeanne d’Albret, Catherine de Medici and the influential Ottoman consort Safiye. But the religious divisions of the Reformation denied her the easy contact with other women across the continent that had been enjoyed by earlier generations, and fostered her long rivalry with her Catholic kinswoman Mary, Queen of Scots.

 Jeanne d’Albret 
(1528–72)
In 1555 Marguerite’s daughter Jeanne inherited her father’s Navarrese kingdom. Reared in her mother’s reforming tradition, in 1560 she publicly converted to the Protestant faith. Joining France’s Huguenot rebels inside the besieged fortress of La Rochelle, she became a heroine of the Reformation. When summoned to appear before the Inquisition, Jeanne was saved by the intervention of Catherine de Medici, even though the latter was on the other side of the religious divide. Catherine tried to promote religious tolerance, but the marriage of her daughter Marguerite to Jeanne’s son Henri in 1572 provoked the slaughter of Huguenots known as the Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (pictured below). “You cannot govern too wisely with kindness and diffidence,” Anne de Beaujeu had said – the final bitter ‘Lesson’ with which her daughters were to end the century.

St Bartholemes Day Massacre. (Getty images)

Mary I (1516–58)
Catherine of Aragon inculcated in her daughter Mary her own belief in the validity of her marriage to Henry VIII, and her own resolute Catholicism. “We never come unto the kingdom of Heaven but by troubles,” she assured her daughter. Mary’s determined resistance to her father’s religious reforms was attributed to her “unbridled Spanish blood”. She endured years of real hardship before, in 1553, the death of her younger brother Edward (and a passage of armed resistance reminiscent of her female forebears) brought her to the throne. Once on it, as observers noted, she always favoured Spain and promoted her mother’s religion. She married Philip of Spain and her efforts to restore the Catholic faith, involving the persecution of Protestants, earned her the sobriquet ‘Bloody Mary’.

Sarah Gristwood is the author of Game of Queens: The Women Who Made Sixteenth-Century Europe (Oneworld, 2016)

Five things you didn’t know about the Caucasus

History Extra

Situated on the border of Asia and Europe between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus is shrouded in myth and mystery. In Sunday Feature: Caucasian Roots, Hughes examines the fables surrounding the Caucasus, and tests how far they are backed up by reality. She follows the trail of the Caucasus in antiquity from the Black Sea coast of Ancient Colchis to the shadow of Mount Ararat in Armenia. 

 Here, writing for History Extra, Hughes reveals five things you (probably) didn’t know about the Caucasus… 

 ‘White Caucasian’ 

 Every year millions of people around the world describe themselves as being ‘White Caucasian’. But why? 

 The answer is a combination of sexual fantasy and pseudo-science. In 1775 the anthropologist and passionate craniologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach published the first draft of his thesis dividing the world in to five ‘varieties’: Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malay, American Indian and Caucasian. 

 He developed his findings from his own collection of 60 skulls, among which was the remains of a young Georgian woman [as in the American state] – the ‘Caucasian’ variety. Believing this skull to be ‘perfect’, and moved by tales of the 17th-century Huguenot travel-writer Sir John Chardin – who described Georgian women as being simply the most beautiful in the world – Blumenbach concluded that the Caucasus was the locus for the origin of white people. 

 We have been calling ourselves Caucasian ever since. 

 Dmanisi’s early man

 In a hilltop settlement close to the Armenian/Georgian border, excavations [details of which were fully published in 2013] uncovered the remains of five men and women of the homo erectus variety. Some standing under 3ft tall, these dated back 1.8 million years – making them the very oldest discovered outside Africa. 

 One male had been kept alive despite having a deformed jaw and no teeth – suggesting he was fed, and that these pre-humans operated guided by empathy. The group may well have been attacked and eaten by sabre-toothed tigers. Best-selling myths 

 Some of the most tenacious and popular myths from the ancient world are located in the Caucasus. This was said to be the home of Amazons, of Medea and her aunt Circe, where Jason adventured with his Argonauts and where Prometheus was chained to a rock for the crime of stealing fire from the gods. 

 Early and prodigious metalworking did take place in the region – perhaps sparking those tales of Prometheus meddling with fire and being bound to the Caucasian mountains with iron rivets. 

Drunk Noah 

 We’re told that Noah’s ark came to rest on Mount Ararat (Marco Polo popularised this as being the Mount Ararat in modern-day Turkey, just across the border from Armenia), and that he came down to cultivate the land and to plant vines – from which he ‘became drunken’. 

 The region claims to be the first to have domesticated the vine. Certainly, winemaking equipment and residues, 8,000 years old, have recently been discovered in both Georgia and Armenia.  

Djabal al-Alsun 

 Mediaeval Arab geographers described this isthmus of land between the Black and the Caspian Seas as that “of many languages”. That tradition continues today – 40 languages are spoken in the region. 

Recently in the Areni cave the world’s oldest leather shoe was found – dating back to c3500 BC. Rather than being a ‘liminal’ and ‘remote’ place, as the Caucasus was often described by classical authors, the area has long been a crossroads and congruence of cultures.

 Circassian beauties 

 The idea of gorgeous, languorous women from a remote land promised good box office takings: PT Barnum ‘imported’ Caucasian women who, for a dime, would recount the tale of their capture and life in the Sultan’s Ottoman harem – and then liberation by one of PT Barnum’s agents. 

 Generally these were, in reality, young Irish girls who had their hair coiffured into ‘wild-woman’ bouffant hairstyles – reminiscent of the afro. The reason for this seems to have been a visual indicator of ‘slave’, and a cultural reference to the thick hair and sheepskin hats of native Caucasians. The false hairdos were held in place by a combination of beer and egg white. 

 The Circassians were in fact a tribe from North West Caucasus, but their name became interchangeable with Caucasian. Beauty treatments such as ‘The Bloom of Circassia’ lotion were bestsellers in Europe and the US throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

 Dr Bettany Hughes is an award-winning historian, author and broadcaster – she is currently writing a new history of Istanbul. Visit www.bettanyhughes.com to find out more.

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Black Death

History Extra

Plague victims in Perugia. From a 14th century manuscript of the vernacular text 'La Franceschina'. (Photo By DEA / A. DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)

Here, writing for History Extra, medieval historian Samuel Cohn shares 10 lesser-known facts…

1) The Black Death (October 1347 to c1352) did not eradicate a third of Europe’s population

Open almost any textbook on western civilisation and it will claim that the Black Death felled one-third of Europe’s population. In fact, in some places such as a village on an estate in Cambridgeshire manorial rolls attest that 70 per cent of its tenants died in a matter of months in 1349, and the city of Florence tax records drawn up shortly before and after the Black Death suggest that its toll may have been about the same in 1348.
Yet, the plague skipped over or barely touched other villages, even within Cambridgeshire, and may not have infected at all vast regions such as ones in northern German-speaking lands. Given the state of record-keeping and preservation, we will probably never be able to estimate the Black Death’s European toll with any precision.

2) The Black Death was not a disease of the black rat transmitted to humans by fleas

Not only textbooks but serious monographs on the Black Death and its successive waves of plague into the early 19th century in Europe go on about rats (usually the black ones) and fleas without qualification. But what is the evidence?
No contemporary observers described any epizootic [animal epidemic] of rats or of any other rodents immediately before or during the Black Death, or during any later plagues in Europe – that is, until the ‘third pandemic’ at the end of the 19th century. Yet in subtropical regions of Africa and China, descriptions of ‘rat falls’ accompanying a human disease with buboes in the principal lymph nodes reach back at least to the 18th century.
As for fleas, unlike during the ‘third pandemic’, when plague cases and deaths followed closely the seasonal fertility cycles of various species of rat fleas, no such correlations are found with the Black Death or later European plagues before the end of the 19th century. 

3) The Black Death was not a disease of poverty

Not only do contemporary chroniclers list important knights, ladies, and merchants who died during the Black Death, but administrative records also point to a wide swath of the population felled in 1348–49. Furthermore, many wealthy and well-fed convents, friaries, and monasteries across Europe lost more than half of their members; some even became extinct.
However, by the third or fourth wave of plague in the last decades of the 14th century, burial records and tax registers reveal that the disease had evolved into one of the poor.


_{A Venetian plague doctor, c1800. (Photo By DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini/Getty Images)}

4) The Black Death was not a disease only of large cities and towns and villages in the lowlands

In 1348–49, some of the worst-hit regions were in mountainous and in relatively isolated zones, such as in Snowdonia in Wales or the mountain village of Mangona in the Alpi fiorentine, north of Florence, whose communications with cities were less frequent than places further down the slopes and closer to cities.
The experiences of these isolated villages may have been similar to small mining villages in Pennsylvania or in South Africa, or Inuit settlements in Newfoundland under attack by another highly contagious pandemic, the Great Influenza of 1918–19, in which they experienced mortalities from 10 to 40 per cent – many times higher than in New York City or London.

5) The Black Death did not afflict all major European cities and towns on principal trade routes

For reasons that are difficult to explain, cities such as Milan and Douai in Flanders, both major hubs of commerce and industry, appear to have escaped the Black Death in 1348 almost totally unscathed.
In the case of Milan, only one household fell victim to the disease, at least according to chronicles, and the plague was successfully contained. Meanwhile, Douai chronicles, monastic necrologies, and archival records (recording, for example, the deaths of magistrates, and last wills and testaments) show no certain signs of the plague entering that city until the plague of 1400.

6) The Black Death did not result everywhere in the massacre of Jews or the blaming of other minorities

In German-speaking lands, France along the Rhine, and parts of Spain, municipal governments, castellans, bishops, and the Holy Roman Emperor accused Jews of spreading the Black Death by poisoning foodstuffs and water sources, and massacred entire communities of men, women, and babies for these supposed crimes.
The accusations and massacres, however, were not universal between 1348 and 1351. Massacres did not arise in the British Isles (where, at least in England, Jews had been expelled in 1290 by Edward I), and no clear evidence pinpoints any such violence in Italy (except for the Catalans in Sicily). Nor are any massacres recorded in the Middle East.

7) The first ‘quarantine’ was not invented in Venice – rather it was a ‘trentine’ first legislated in Ragusa

The phrase ‘quarantine’ (the exclusion and isolation of those coming from infected regions, or of others suspected of carrying plague, to avoid them mixing with uninfected populations for a certain number of days) was coined in Venice in the early 15^th century, based on a 40-day period of isolation (with Biblical resonances). But the city of Ragusa [present-day Dubrovnik] had beaten the Venetians to the punch in 1377 with a plague ‘quarantine’ of 30 days.
By the early modern period, ‘quarantine’ often had been curtailed further. The period deemed necessary to isolate suspected carriers in Milan during its plague of 1557–75, for instance, had dropped to eight daysfor certain categories of suspicion.


_{Clothes infected by the Black Death being burnt, c 1340. An illustration from the 'Romance of Alexander' in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)}

8)  All human attempts to end the plague in Europe were not in vain

Cities that managed to keep plague beyond their borders were those that devised and implemented quarantine: border controls at city gates, harbours, and mountain passes; individual health passports (which identified a person and certified where he or she came from), and other related measures such as spy networks to signal when a plague had erupted in a foreign city or region.
Ragusa was a pioneer in this regard, with its earliest ‘quarantine’ and its increasingly sophisticated measures to isolate the infected and control its borders during the late 14th and 15th centuries. Its last plague was in 1533, while in England it was 1665–56, in the Baltic region 1709–13, and Northern Africa and the Middle East the 19^th century. Many Italian regions followed Ragusa’s lead, and after them, other regions of western and central Europe.

9) Despite the thousands who sacrificed their lives assisting spiritually or physically the afflicted during the Black Death, the church awarded none of them with blessed or saintly status

From October 1347 in Sicily to the early 1350s further north, contemporary chroniclers decried peoples abandonment of sick family members, and criticised clergymen and doctors who were ‘cowardly’ in reneging on their responsibilities to escape the plague’s vicious contagion. However, occasionally contemporary writers also praised those who stayed on to nurse the afflicted, and who often lost their lives in so doing.
Curiously, the church did not recognise any of these martyrs during the Black Death with elevations to beatitude or sanctity.
The first to be so recognised did not appear until the 15^th century, and those who intervened to help those afflicted by the plague (that is, during their own lifetimes and not as post-mortem miraculous acts) remained rare even during 16^th and 17th centuries.

10) The Black Death travelled 30 to 100 times faster over land than the bubonic plagues of the 20th century

It is thought that the Black Death spread at a rate of a mile or more a day, but other accounts have measured it in places to have averaged as far as eight miles a day.
By contrast, scientists in South Africa, New Orleans, and other places affected by bubonic plague in the early 20th century devised experiments to clock their plague’s spread, and found it moving no faster than eight miles a year. It spread so slowly because modern bubonic plague was a rodent disease and often one dependent on the house rat.

These extreme differences in the spread of the Black Death and the bubonic plagues of modern times are seen despite the revolutions in transport with steam power, railway, and, by the early 20th century, automobiles.
Samuel Cohn is professor of medieval history at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of Cultures of Plague: Medical Thinking at the End of the Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 2010) and The Black Death Transformed: Disease and Culture in Early Renaissance Europe (Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd, 2002).

Stone Age Text Links Australia to Europe: Initial Evidence for Worldwide Travel by an Ancient Stone Age Civilization

Ancient Origins

Dr. Derek Cunningham has recently introduced a new intriguing theory to archaeology that many geometric patterns seen worldwide are a form of ancient text, with the angular writing based on the astronomical values used by astronomers to measure time and predict eclipse events. In this theory it was noted that many geometrical patterns seen throughout the archaeological record align to angles matching the circa 1 degree sidereal motion of earth as it travels around the sun; the 5.1 degree angle of the moon’s orbital plane relative to Earth, the 18.6 year lunar cycle, and the 27.32 day sidereal month.

One of his early studies was the preliminary analysis of Saksaywaman Temple in Peru, where he argued that the polygonal walls of the temple align, and also the entire temple complex were designed to align to these key astronomical values. In this theory the angular offsets are argued to be either offsets angled to either above or below the vertical or to the left and right of the horizontal; with perhaps the direction of the offset marking a vowel sound and the angle the sound of the consonant. Thus it is quite possible that the walls could have created a basic but readable text.

The polygonal walls of Saksaywaman in Peru

Arrangement of stones in a wall at Saksaywaman. Astronomical values can be found in the form of an angular array, offset to either above or below the horizontal, or the right or left of the vertical. Photo credit: Derek Cunningham

In Derek’s most recent study of this proposed angular text, he has returned with what can only be said is a well thought out study that takes direct aim at the often used counter argument that the alignments are actually totally random.
In this new test, Derek reasoned that if all geometric patterns found worldwide are entirely random, then even if within the experiment deliberate bias is shown to align the geometric image so that one particular angle dominates - in other words to force an optimum angular alignment - then because in the counter argument all lines are entirely randomly distributed, then the secondary to quaternary values should also be entirely random. In other words, only the primary value optimised should be the same.
If, however, the various geometric patterns found worldwide are as Derek claimed an ancient form of text, then perhaps the exact same secondary, tertiary and quaternary angular values should be emphasised in the various ancient images. And that is exactly what he found.
Using the 5.1 degree angle representing the moon’s orbital plane relative to Earth as a key reference point for his study, a very careful study of Australian geometric images has revealed that the secondary to quaternary angles seen most in geometric artwork does repetitively and routinely aligned to the same secondary to quaternary angular values. For the preliminary study Australia was chosen because it has remained isolated for much of its history, and thus the observed result could not be argued to be caused by potential long distance trade routes.
Derek then chose to extend this study to look at to various geometric images found in Europe. This included a comparison with the Polygonal walls found at Delphi, and an interesting analysis of the extremely archaic and unusual fan motif found carved on a tibia bone of a straight-tusked elephant at Bilzingsleben in Germany. In each case the intent was to directly compare the European secondary to quaternary angular values with those seen in ancient Australian geometrics.

Photograph showing part of the Polygonal Wall found under the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Image taken by Dr. Derek Cunningham.

 

Image of a 20,000-year-old Cylcon held in the collection of ancient writing of Martin Schøyen. Here a detailed analysis of the various lines present on the stone showed an identical angular distribution to the Polygonal Stone Wall found at Delphi 
After a careful study of the angular distribution produced by the various polygonal stones found at Delphi it was determined that the same angular preferences seen in Australia are indeed found in distant Europe. Specifically, it was found that European and Australian art both emphasised the 18.6 year lunar cycle and the 27.32 day sidereal month; and because identical primary to quaternary values were seen, the statistical analysis argues that the link between these images must date back at least 50,000 years ago. This suggests that an ancient Stone Age civilization was actively traveling the world, leaving behind postcards for us to find.
One of the more unusual visual pieces of evidence gathered in this particular study was an engraved stone found in Australia that replicates a geometrical pattern discovered in Bilzingsleben Germany. The Australian stone was discovered by Jennifer Summerville, who then passed the stone on to Derek for a more detailed analysis.

Astronomical alignments of Aboriginal engravings found on a stone in Australia

Fan-motif found on the Bilzingsleben elephant tibia bone found in Germany

As can be seen the stone creates a fan motif that is identical in structure and angular content to the more famous fan-motif that is found on the Bilzingsleben elephant tibia bone. The bone is currently dated by archaeologist John Feliks to be circa 400,000 years old.
Equally intriguing, the exact same angular values can be found in the various geometric images found in Lascaux Cave. These geometrics are at a minimum circa 13,000 years old.
The various similarities seen in the geometric artwork found in Australia and Europe have long been known. What really has been missing until now is a simple method to measure the “artistic intent” of the Stone Age artist who made these patterns.
As astronomical values are inherently numerical in nature this creates the potential to analyze mathematically ancient artwork for intent, and also to create a method that allows us to directly compare artwork that is entirely dissimilar. This is a major breakthrough in the study of the ancient past.
With this new ability to directly compare dissimilar geometrical images an entirely new experimental technique is created that for the first time ever allows us to read the drawings left behind by our very distant ancestors.
Top image: Aboriginal rock paintings that show astronomical alignments.

Medieval kebabs and pasties: 5 foods you (probably) didn’t know were being eaten in the Middle Ages

History Extra

Here, freelance writer George Dobbs reveals five examples of commonplace courtly dishes that wouldn't look too out of place on your dinner table today.

Sweet and sour

Sweet and sour rabbit is one of the more curious dishes included in Maggie Black's The Medieval Cookbook. Found in a collection of 14th-century manuscripts called the Curye on Inglish, it includes sugar, red wine vinegar, currants, onions, ginger and cinnamon (along with plenty of “powdour of peper”) to produce a sticky sauce with more than a hint of the modern Chinese takeaway.
The recipe probably dates as far back as the Norman Conquest, when the most surprising ingredient for Saxons would have been rabbit, only recently introduced to England from continental Europe.

 

Pasta

In the same manuscript we find instructions for pasta production, with fine flour used to “make therof thynne foyles as paper with a roller, drye it hard and seeth it in broth”. This was known as 'losyns', and a typical dish involved layering the pasta with cheese sauce to make another English favourite: lasagne.
Sadly the lack of tomatoes meant there was no rich bolognese to go along with the béchamel, but it was still a much-loved dish, and was served at the end of meals to help soak up the large amount of alcohol you were expected to imbibe – much as an oily kebab might today.
In Thomas Austin's edition of Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books, you can find several other pasta recipes, including ravioli and Lesenge Fries – a sugar and saffron doughnut, similar to the modern Italian feast day treats such as frappe or castagnole. The full edition, including hundreds of medieval recipes, can be found online through the University of Michigan database.

Rice dishes

Rice was grown in Europe as early as the 8th century by Spanish Moors. By the 15th century it was produced across Spain and Italy, and exported to all corners of Europe in vast quantities. The brilliant recipe resource www.medievalcookery.com shows the wide variety of ways in which rice was used, including three separate medieval references to a dish called blancmager.
Rather than the pudding you might expect, blancmager was actually a soft rice dish, combining chicken or fish with sugar and spices. Due to its bland nature, it was possibly served to invalids as a restorative.
There were also sweet rice dishes, including rice drinks and a dish called prymerose, which combined honey, almonds, primroses and rice flour to make a thick rice pudding.

 

Pasties

Wrapping food in pastry was commonplace in medieval times. It meant that meat could be baked in stone ovens without being burnt or tarnished by soot, while also forming a rich, thick gravy.
Pie crusts were elaborately decorated to show off the status of the host, and diners would often discard it to get to the filling. However, there were also pastry dishes intended to be eaten as a whole. In The Goodman of Paris, translated into English by Eileen Power, we find a recipe for cheese and mushroom pasties, and we're even given instruction on how to pick our ingredients, with “mushrooms of one night... small, red inside and closed at the top” being the most suitable.

Candy

Subtleties are a famous medieval culinary feature. The term actually encompasses the notion of entertainment with food as well as elaborate savoury dishes, but it's most often used to refer to lavish constructions of almond and sugar that were served at the end of the meal.
These weren't the only way to indulge a sweet tooth, however. Maggie Black describes a recipe in the Curye on Inglish that combines pine nuts with sugar, honey and breadcrumbs to give a chewy candy. And long before it was a health food, almond milk was a commonplace drink at medieval tables. 
So what have we learned? From just a few examples it's easy to see that, despite technological restrictions, cookery of this period wasn't necessarily unskilled or unpalatable. It's true that a cursory glance over recipe collections reveals odd dishes such as gruel and compost, which look about as appetising as their names suggest. But for every grim oddity there were many more meals that still sound mouthwatering today. In fact, many of our modern favourites may have roots in medieval kitchens.

George Dobbs is a freelance writer who specialises in literature and history.

A Toxic Price to Pay: Wealthy citizens in medieval Europe had poisoning from lead-glazed plates

Ancient Origins

Rich city dwellers in medieval northern Europe had elevated lead and mercury levels that probably caused them serious health problems. Fewer rural people, who were poorer, had elevated heavy metals and those that did had less of the toxins in their systems than city dwellers.
An analysis of medieval skeletons by a Danish research team shows poisonous lead had entered the bodies of people buried in cemeteries in northern Germany and Denmark. The study says the lead could have been introduced through several sources but rules out absorption after death.
The medieval people would not have known how poisonous lead is, of course, or they probably wouldn’t have used it to glaze their kitchenware and put it in coins. Other sources of the heavy metal in the villagers’ systems may have included the lead-lined roofs, where drinking water was collected, as well as stained-glass windows.
The researchers examined the remains of people from six cemeteries, both urban and rural, in the two countries and revealed high levels of lead and mercury for city dwellers. Fewer people who lived in the countryside had elevated levels, says a press release from Southern Denmark University.

"The exposure was higher and more dangerous in the urban communities, but lead was not completely unknown in the country. We saw that 30 percent of the rural individuals had been in contact with lead—although much less than the townspeople,” Professor Kaare Lund Rasmussen of University of Southern Denmark’s Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy, said in the press release.

"Lead poisoning can be the consequence when ingesting lead, which is a heavy metal. In the Middle Ages you could almost not avoid ingesting lead, if you were wealthy or living in an urban environment. But what is perhaps more severe, is the fact that exposure to lead leads to lower intelligence of children.”

A stained-glass window in Schleswig, German; remains in a cemetery there were analyzed for the study. Only the rich could afford such windows. (Photo by Frank Vincentz/Wikimedia Commons)

Some of the symptoms of lead poisoning in kids include learning difficulties, developmental delay, loss of appetite and weight, vomiting, hearing loss, fatigue and sluggishness, according to WebMd. Constipation and abdominal pain affect both children and adults. WebMD.com says children are primarily at risk of lead poisoning, but adults too suffer ill effects from it, including high blood pressure, joint and muscle pains, lower mental function and headache. Adults also suffer from pain or numbness of extremities, bad moods, abnormal or reduced sperm counts and premature birth or miscarriage.
The glazed pottery, used more in the more affluent towns than in the country, was a big source of lead, according to the press release from the University of Southern Denmark.

"In those days lead oxide was used to glaze pottery. It was practical to clean the plates and looked beautiful, so it was understandably in high demand. But when they kept salty and acidic foods in glazed pots, the surface of the glaze would dissolve and the lead would leak into the food," Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen and colleagues examined 207 skeletons from cemeteries in Rathaus Markt in Schleswig (Germany) and Ole Worms Gade in Horsens (Denmark). The remains from both were from medieval cemeteries in wealthier towns that had more contact with the world than people in the countryside.

An aerial shot of Skt. Alberts cemetery on the island of Ærø, Denmark (Aegislash; Museum/SDU)

They also studied bodies from cemeteries in St. Clements outside of Schleswig (Germany), Tirup outside of Horsens (Denmark), Nybøl in Jutland (Denmark) and St. Alberts Chapel on the island of Ærø (Denmark), the press release says,
The team tested the skeletons mercury content. That element, also poisonous to humans, was employed in making red pigment cinnabar and for gilding. Medicines were also prepared from mercury to treat syphilis and leprosy, the press release states.
Again, city dwellers had more mercury than rural folk. Amazingly, about half the people examined had leprosy, which was treated with mercury.
Featured image: The skull of a young girl who suffered from syphilis; she would have been a candidate for treatment with mercury in the Middle Ages. (Birgitte Svennevig/SDU)
By Mark Miller

New study claims gerbils, not rats, responsible for bringing plague to Europe

Bubonic plague, the most common form, is associated with painful, swollen lymph nodes, called buboes as shown above. After an incubation period of two to six days, symptoms appear, including severe malaise, headache, shaking chills and fever. P (CDC)
For hundreds of years, the arrival of the bubonic plague in Europe in the mid-14th century has been blamed on rats. However, a new study released this week has put a different rodent under suspicion: gerbils.
Scientists at the University of Oslo in Norway have claimed that that the deadly disease was repeatedly brought to Europe from Asia via trade routes such as the Silk Road, and with gerbils, not rats as the carriers.

 

"If we're right," study co-author Nils Christian Stenseth told the BBC, "we'll have to rewrite that part of history."
The study examined over 7,700 tree ring records that revealed climate information about Europe during that period. They found that outbreaks in Europe occurred approximately 15 years after a spell of wet weather and warmer temperatures in Asia, which would have bolstered the gerbil and flea populations. By contrast, the timing of the outbreaks in Europe did not appear to coincide with any weather pattern on the continent.
Previously, black rats who had stowed away on merchant ships were thought to have enabled the plague to establish itself in Europe, with fleas spreading the bacteria by jumping from infected rat to humans. However, Stenseth told NPR that according to that theory, rats and their fleas should still be spreading plague in European cities today, when in fact, it has been nearly 300 years since a major outbreak.
The study theorizes that fleas carrying the plague bacterium jumped from gerbils to pack animals and humans, some of whom were traders who brought the disease to Europe. The next step is to analyze the DNA of plague bacteria, which can be found in the skeletons of its victims. If the Oslo theory is correct, the bacterial DNA would vary widely across each outbreak, as the disease would have likely changed each time it entered Europe.
Historians have estimated that the first outbreak of plague in medieval Europe, between 1346 and 1353, killed between 75 million and 200 million people, at least a third of the continent's population.
Click for more from the BBC.
Fox News

Ancient partial skull from Israeli cave linked to migration of humans from Africa to Europe

This undated photo provided by the Israel Antiquities Authority on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015 shows a partial human skull excavated from a cave in Israel's western Galilee region. (AP Photo/Israel Antiquities Authority, Clara Amit)
NEW YORK –  Long ago, humans left their evolutionary cradle in Africa and passed through the Middle East on their way to Europe. Now scientists have found the first fossil remains that appear to document that journey, a partial skull from an Israeli cave.
The skull dates from around 55,000 years ago, fitting into the period when scientists had thought the migrants inhabited the area. And details of its anatomy resemble ancient skulls from Europe, Israel Hershkovitz of Tel Aviv University in Israel wrote in an email.

He and others present the finding in a paper released Wednesday by the journal Nature. The skull, which lacks facial features and its base, was found in Manot Cave in the Galilee region of northern Israel.

The migrants are called modern humans because of their anatomy. The earliest remains of modern humans in Europe date to about 45,000 years ago.
Experts not connected with the work were impressed. "This is the first evidence we have of the humans who made this journey," apart from some ancient tools, said Eric Delson of Lehman College and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Although finding a fossil that fits so well with what was believed about the ancient migration might be expected, "we didn't have it before," he said.
"We could predict theoretically what we would find. They've found it. ... Up until now, that was a ghost."
Katerina Harvati of the University of Tuebingin in Germany said the skull gives clues about the anatomy of the migrants. Since Neanderthals were already known to inhabit the area, the skull also documents that they and modern humans co-existed there, as suspected, Harvati said.
That supports the idea that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred there, experts said. Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London wrote in an email that the skull is the first fossil of a modern human from western Asia that is well-dated to the estimated time of the interbreeding, some 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.
 Fox News

Historic castles for sale

Become King of the Castle for as little as £475,000... and as much as £12 million!



They say an Englishman’s home is his castle - but let’s face it, very few of us can afford to say that and literally mean it.
Unless, of course, you buy one of the amazing historic castles for sale around Britain. Believe it or not, the asking prices range from £475,000 to £12 million. Take a peek inside...

http://money.uk.msn.com/mortgages-and-homes/historic-castles-for-sale-1#image=1

US airmen flew to save Europe; now the race is on to rescue their artwork

As D-day's 70th anniversary draws near, a new project is seeking out lost airbase art left behind by US bomber groups

USAAF: lost artwork from the second world war in pictures

Robin Stummer

A wartime mural created at Wendling airbase in Norfolk, which is now a car scrap yard. Photograph: Si Barber

They drew cartoons, graffiti, murals, glamour "pinups", combat scenes, mission records and maps. US servicemen at bomber and fighter bases in central and eastern England between 1942 and 1945 created a huge but largely unrecorded body of wartime artwork, some of which has survived more than 70 years in collapsing and overlooked buildings.
As the 70th anniversary of D-Day approaches, a "last chance" search is under way to find and record the scattered vestiges and fading memories of the largest air armada ever assembled – before decay, demolition and redevelopment remove the final traces.
New research might also offer clues to the fate of the "Sistine chapel" of wartime airbase artwork in Britain – a large mural by the celebrated cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather, painted at a US base in Northamptonshire in 1944. The 30m mural, in part depicting a ship bringing GIs back to New York, has not been seen since the 1950s.
The US air assault on Europe began on 4 July 1942 with an attack on targets in Holland, two-and-a-half years after the first RAF raids. The buildup to D-Day and its aftermath gave rise to the largest body of combat aircraft assembled on one front – 28,000 Allied bombers, fighters and transports.
Wartime airbase art will be surveyed with surviving military buildings and runways as part of The Eighth in the East, a social history project focused on the region from which the US Eighth Air Force operated – the East Midlands and East Anglia. Small museums devoted to the air war are dotted across East Anglia, but The Eighth in the East is the first time a large-scale study of the effects and legacy of the US military presence has been attempted.
The artworks and graffiti offer a poignant glimpse into the lives of aircrew, mostly aged between 20 and 23, who were unlikely to reach the required 25 completed missions allowing them to return to the US. As the war progressed, the number of completed missions entitling crew to leave combat duties – and gain membership of the Lucky Bastard Club – was raised to 30, then 35. Film stars James Stewart and Walter Matthau served with US bomber crews during the war, flying from Old Buckenham airbase, Norfolk. Stewart became a highly decorated colonel.
The Eighth in the East will explore the sociological and cultural impact of the sudden arrival amid rural communities of hundreds of thousands of US servicemen and women and tens of thousands of aircraft. By D-Day the Eighth Air Force was using 70 airstrips and 200 bases, mainly in Norfolk and Suffolk, flying daylight missions over Europe while the RAF took to the skies by night.
In the runup to the invasion, the Eighth Air Force was joined by the largest airforce ever assembled, the Ninth – 250,000 personnel, 3,500 aircraft – which was based across southern East Anglia and made use of dozens of airbases extending to the outskirts of London itself.
The US air offensive in Europe claimed the lives of 26,000 Eighth Air Force personnel, with 18,000 wounded.
"Second world war archaeology is a fairly new discipline," says Hannah Potter, community archaeologist for The Eighth in the East. "It's a wholly different approach than that for ancient archaeology. We have photographs from the time that can be matched with what's there now. Artworks in the bases will be gone soon. Murals which, when photographed in the 1980s, were brightly coloured, have now gone. The buildings weren't meant to last, so it's a challenge to preserve them. All you can do is record them.
"We're asking for public help with identifying and recording their own local buildings from the war, but a lot are on private land. This is a huge part of our history."
Several hundred unrecorded buildings are thought to survive in East Anglia and the Midlands. Few, if any, will have statutory protection and they are being lost. But the sites of old airbases are attracting a new kind of visitor. "We've been pestered by people interested in ghosts, who want to spend evenings here for the atmosphere, just to listen," says Ian Hancock of the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum, at the wartime Flixton airbase near Bungay. "But there are so many explanations for noises, the creaking, that you do get. Now a lot of the aviation museums do night-time opening, just for the feel of it."
"We are on the edge of this period becoming history," says Potter. "We're losing so many veterans now, and we're at the limit of what we can do. But we're having a lot of people coming to us who were children at the time. For them, it was a hugely exciting time."
Finding the Bairnsfather mural, though not an aim of The Eighth in the East, would restore a missing chapter in the story of one of Britain's greatest soldier-artists. Bairnsfather's Old Bill character – a stoical, moustachioed old hand of the western front – became a first world war symbol. During the second world war, Bairnsfather served as official cartoonist to US forces. Stationed at Chelveston airbase in Northamptonshire, he created several large artworks there during 1944 and 1945. All have vanished.
"The mural is a great missing piece of his work," says Mark Warby, chairman of the Bairnsfather Society. "It would be fantastic if anything could be discovered."
For the dwindling number of veterans, the old bases stir acute memories. "We were frightened when we were flying – all of the time, all of us," recalls Clarence Rowntree who, as a 20-year-old gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress, was based at Kimbolton airbase in Cambridgeshire. Now 90, he completed 30 missions in a bomber named Mairzy Doats after the 1940s hit song, and thus joined the Lucky Bastard Club. A later crew on the same aircraft were not so lucky when it was lost over the North Sea in August 1944. "But it wasn't that tense on the base, when we weren't flying," says Rowntree. "They used to put on a lot of boxing competitions to keep us busy. But, yes, when we were flying we were frightened."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/17/artwork-yanks-left-behind
 

The Phil Naessens Show: The NBA Arrives in London and That’s a Bad Thing

http://phillipnaessens.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/the-phil-naessens-show-the-nba-arrives-in-london-and-thats-a-bad-thing/

 

 

On this edition of the Phil Naessens Show we’re focusing on the San Antonio Spurs, NBA Globalization and the Atlanta Hawks meet up with the Brooklyn Nets in London England

 

Segment 1: Pounding the Rock Lead Writer Aaron Stampler joins Phil to discuss the injuries to the San Antonio Spurs and whether or not it’s a good idea to sign Andrew Bynum plus much more.       

 

Segment 2: Rush Olson joins Phil to discuss thoughts he has in regards to the NBA and the WNBA establishing teams worldwide plus much more.

 

Segment 3: Welcome to Loud City Lead Writer Zeb Benbrook joins Phil to discuss whether or not it’s a good idea to play regular season NBA games outside of America and preview Thursdays Brooklyn Nets vs. the Atlanta Hawks being held in London England and much more