She's Not Ancient, But She Sure Is Interesting!

From The New York Times

Out of the Debris, a Stone Goddess

By EVE M. KAHNPublished: February 28, 2013

Cece Saunders, Historical Perspectives

A 400-pound stone sculpture that
surfaced during archaeological digs in
Brooklyn last summer will be analyzed
to determine its age and maker.

A stone goddess slumbered unseen for decades below a Brooklyn overpass. Last summer, it surfaced during archaeological digs, and now scholars are puzzling over it.

 

An armless nude about three feet tall, the sculpture has thick, curly hair. It was found along Dock Street, near Front Street, once a hub for spice warehouses, so it has been named Ginger. Two Trees Management Company is building a mixed-use tower at the site.

      

“Ginger is a total surprise,” said Cece Saunders, an archaeologist who is the president of Historical Perspectives Inc., a cultural-resources consulting company that uncovered the 400-pound carving.

      

It was trapped in mid-20th-century demolition debris, leftovers from previous waves of construction there. Excavating equipment accidentally damaged the face and body before anyone noticed the statue. The digs also turned up more expected artifacts, like 18th-century foundation stones and pottery shards.

      

Those who have seen Ginger have suggested that she may have originally served as a garden ornament, ship ballast or brothel advertisement. Perhaps a subsequent owner dumped her after a significant other took offense at her buxom nakedness.

      

The sculptor probably had no formal training, but was definitely skilled.

      

“The chisel marks seem quite refined,” Carl F. Hammer, a Chicago dealer in outsider art, said in an e-mail after analyzing photos of Ginger.

      

The neighborhood, after all, has long attracted creative types. “There’s been an artistic presence on that street going back to Francis Guy,” a landscape painter who settled nearby in the 1810s, said Nicholas Evans-Cato, an artist who often depicts Brooklyn scenery.

      

This spring scientists will analyze flecks of blue-green paint in Ginger’s hair, to see if the ingredients reveal anything about the artwork’s age and maker. While the mysteries linger, Two Trees keeps it on view in an office hallway.

      

“Everybody kind of lights up when they see her,” said Hale Everets, a development manager at the company.  

****************************************************************

 

 

Katy Perry, 2013 Grammys

 Darlings!  Come on, surely you recognize "Ginger."  She's Katy Perry's grandmother, minus the Gucci -- coochi coochi cooo -- dress by the unfortunate designer who ran out of material...  Katy was simply honoring her "Grammy" at the "Grammys" by showing us more than we'd ever want to see of her "Mammys."  And not wearing underwear, tsk tsk.  

Do the Earliest Carved Female "Nudes" Have Meaning?

Perhaps they do. Then again, perhaps they were carved by dudes away from the warmth of the caves out on long hunting expeditions, and they just missed their ladies and their warm cozy fur beds.  There must have been a lot of "frigging in the rigging" going on back then for mankind to spread all over the earth the way the did and cause the extinction of so many animals. 

I also wonder if the change to a very different type of representation of the female body about 16,000 years ago was a world-wide thing?  And - is there a contimuum of figures from the "Gonnersdorf" style down to say, about 4000 BCE and the "bird woman" figurines (that's what I call them) from Crete and one spectacular example from pre-Dynastic Egypt -- I think it's Naqada III (c. 3500 BCE)?  Connections?  Is anybody out there thinking outside their small little boxes?????

6000 year old "Lady of Villers-Carbonnel" France (2011)

20000 yer old ivory carving found at Garabaldi, Italy

One of the most beautiful female forms ever created -
pre-Dynastic Egypt, bird goddess, c. 3500 BCE
housed at the Brooklyn Museum

Seeking Meaning in the Earliest Female Nudes

byMichael Balter on 27 February 2013, 4:40 PM

 

LONDON—About 35,000 years ago, prehistoric artists across Europe suddenly discovered the female form—and the art world has never been the same. The explosion of voluptuous female figurines sculpted out of limestone, ivory, and clay directly inspired Picasso and Matisse. Researchers have debated the figurines' meaning for decades. Now, two scientists think they have the answer. Presenting their work here last week at the European Palaeolithic Conference, they claimed that the objects started off as celebrations of the female form, then later became symbols that tied together a growing human society.

 

The talk, part of a special exhibition on Ice Age art at London's British Museum, surveyed the more than 20,000 year-history of female figurines, which are found at dozens of archaeological sites from Russia to France. The earliest such objects, which include the famous Venus of Willendorf from Austria (see photo) and a statuette recently found in Germany that some have called the "earliest pornography," date from as early as 35,000 years ago and are generally called the "Willendorf style" of prehistoric art.

 

It's an overtly sexual, earthy style: Many of the intricately carved figurines share features such as large, pendulous breasts, huge buttocks, and chubby legs with no feet. They display "female nakedness in all its splendor," said presenter Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, who co-authored the work with archaeologist Olaf Jöris, both of the MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre in Neuwied, Germany. Nevertheless, she pointed out, individual figurines differ in many aspects. They vary greatly in size; some are slim rather than fat; and some are hairless while others bear what appear to be elaborate headdresses, possibly reflecting clothing that prehistoric women actually wore. Moreover, during the Willendorf period, male figurines, many anatomically correct with penises and detailed facial features, also appear frequently, and occasional sculptures depict men and women side by side.

 

But beginning about 16,000 years ago, Gaudzinski-Windheuser told the audience, the Willendorf style gave way to a new type of image belonging to the so-called "Gönnersdorf style," named after a site in Germany that features both figurines and engravings of a much more schematic, stylized female form. The Gönnersdorf females, which are found throughout central and Western Europe, are headless and sport smaller breasts, although they usually have large, protruding buttocks. They were apparently meant to be viewed in profile, as their features are only clear when seen from the side. Engravings of these images on cave walls often depict scenes of a number of women together in groups, possibly dancing. Males are rarely depicted, either in sculptures or in engravings.

 

Gaudzinski-Windheuser and Jöris hypothesize that the Willendorf and Gönnersdorf styles express very different meanings. The Willendorf figurines, they argue, represent the overall idea of femaleness, but the emphasis is on individual women, represented by the many differences among the figurines. As a parallel, Gaudzinski-Windheuser suggested that the cute and chubby fictional stars of the children's TV show, Teletubbies—Tinky Winky, Po, Laa-Laa, and Dipsy—symbolize the common idea of a perfect, child-friendly world, and yet each Teletubby has their own individual personality. (For example, each is a different color and has a different symbol on its head.) Such a symbolic system, in which both individual and group identity were expressed simultaneously, might have been suitable for the earliest modern humans who colonized Europe about 40,000 years ago—and who probably lived in small, close-knit groups, especially as Ice Age glaciers spread across Europe and forced them to cluster together in warmer refugia, she said.

 

In contrast, the Gönnersdorf style arose near the end of the last Ice Age, about 16,000 years ago, when the glaciers were retreating and human populations grew and expanded, including into northern Europe. The new, abstract style of female figurine was much more standardized, with little individual variation, and could be made by nearly anyone, as opposed to the great artistic skill it took to make a Willendorf statuette, Gaudzinski-Windheuser told the meeting. These later depictions, which were unlikely to represent individual women, were used for communication of commonly held ideas of "femaleness" across far-flung social networks in Europe, which still needed to keep in touch to survive. In this way, she concluded, the images helped to solidify a "communal identity" among widely dispersed human populations.

Some researchers at the meeting, while cautioning that such interpretations are necessarily speculative, say that the pair's thesis has merit. "I rate it highly," says Clive Gamble, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. The figurines helped cement the social networks of expanding populations "whose insurance policy was having friends and relations over as big an area as possible." The change in styles from voluptuous to schematic females, Gamble adds, shows that "it's not over" even after "the fat lady sings."

Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at the Durham University in the United Kingdom, agrees. "Sabine and Olaf remind us" that prehistoric art could have "dramatically different" functions as conditions changed for human societies, he says. But Randall White, an archaeologist at New York University in New York City, says that he is "not a fan" of the hypothesis, arguing that it oversimplifies the dichotomy between the two styles of female depictions, which he thinks were not as clear-cut as the MONREPOS archaeologists claim.

2013 Reykjavik Open

Chess finished on February 27th.  Here are the winner and the female finishers in the top 100 (227 players):

Rk.			Name	Typ	sex	FED	RtgI	RtgN	Club/City	Pts.	TB1	TB2	TB3	Rp	n	w	we	w-we	K	rtg+/-
1		GM	Eljanov Pavel			UKR	2678	0		8.0	63.0	55.0	53.25	2799	10	8	6.10	1.90	10	19.0
2		GM	So Wesley	U20		PHI	2684	0		8.0	61.0	53.0	52.50	2753	10	8	6.77	1.23	0	0.0
3		GM	Amin Bassem			EGY	2631	0		8.0	56.5	49.0	49.00	2658	10	8	6.99

26

IM

Guramishvili Sopiko

w

GEO

2414

0

6.5

56.0

48.5

37.00

2437

9

5.5

4.78

0.72

10

7.2

42

WGM

Cherednichenko Svetlana

w

UKR

2307

0

6.5

51.5

44.5

33.75

2391

9

6

4.60

1.40

15

21.0

48		WGM	Tan Zhongyi		w	CHN	2466	0		6.0	57.0	49.0	32.75	2473	10	6	5.47	0.53	10	5.3
49		WGM	Huang Qian		w	CHN	2478	0		6.0	55.5	48.0	33.25	2431	10	6	6.22	-0.22	10	-2.2

52

WGM

Guo Qi

U18

w

CHN

2431

0

6.0

54.5

47.0

32.50

2440

9

5

4.58

0.42

10

4.2

59

WGM

Saduakassova Dinara

U16

w

KAZ

2312

0

6.0

52.5

45.5

30.50

2360

10

6

4.86

1.14

15

17.1

63

WGM

L'ami Alina

w

ROU

2362

0

6.0

51.5

43.5

28.75

2307

9

5

5.23

-0.23

15

-3.5

67

WGM

Mamedjarova Turkan

w

AZE

2280

0

6.0

48.5

42.0

26.75

2254

10

6

5.68

0.32

15

4.8

72

WGM

Wang Jue

U18

w

CHN

2375

0

5.5

56.5

49.0

30.00

2421

10

5.5

4.51

0.99

15

14.9

74

IM

Krush Irina

w

USA

2460

0

5.5

54.5

46.5

29.50

2317

10

5.5

6.74

-1.24

10

-12.4

97

WFM

Frisk Ellinor

w

SWE

2197

0

5.5

46.0

39.5

24.00

2132

10

5.5

5.77

-0.27

15

-4.1

The Evolution of Language and Genes

With the advent of jet travel and especially the internet, language is changing at a rate undreamed of just 60 years ago by linguists and etymologists.  I have been fascinated by the origins of languages and their subsequent spread and mutation as the population of mankind grew larger and larger and spread across the globe.  It also saddens me greatly that languages are going extinct every year, and until recently little to nothing was done to capture and record these languages before the last speaker died.  We are so arrogant - and ignorant!  Language probably holds the key to many mysteries of our journey from past to present, and yet we pay no attention.

Geneticists Estimate Publication Date Of The 'Iliad'

Joel N. Shurkin, ISNS Contributor

Date: 26 February 2013 Time: 06:11 PM ET

(ISNS) -- Scientists who decode the genetic history of humans by tracking how genes mutate have applied the same technique to one of the Western world's most ancient and celebrated texts to uncover the date it was first written.

The text is Homer's "Iliad," and Homer -- if there was such a person -- probably wrote it in 762 B.C., give or take 50 years, the researchers found. The "Iliad" tells the story of the Trojan War -- if there was such a war -- with Greeks battling Trojans.

The researchers accept the received orthodoxy that a war happened and someone named Homer wrote about it, said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist at the University of Reading in England. His collaborators include Eric Altschuler, a geneticist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, in Newark, and Andreea S. Calude, a linguist also at Reading and the Sante Fe Institute in New Mexico. They worked from the standard text of the epic poem.

The date they came up with fits the time most scholars think the "Iliad" was compiled, so the paper, published in the journal Bioessays, won't have classicists in a snit. The study mostly affirms what they have been saying, that it was written around the eighth century B.C.

That geneticists got into such a project should be no surprise, Pagel said.

"Languages behave just extraordinarily like genes," Pagel said. "It is directly analogous. We tried to document the regularities in linguistic evolution and study Homer's vocabulary as a way of seeing if language evolves the way we think it does. If so, then we should be able to find a date for Homer."

It is unlikely there ever was one individual man named Homer who wrote the "Iliad." Brian Rose, professor of classical studies and curator of the Mediterranean section at the University of Pennsylvania Museum, said it is clear the "Iliad" is a compilation of oral tradition going back to the 13th century B.C.

"It's an amalgam of lots of stories that seemed focused on conflicts in one particular area of northwestern Turkey," Rose said.

The story of the "Iliad" is well known, full of characters like Helen of Troy, Achilles, Paris, Agamemnon and a slew of gods and goddesses behaving badly. It recounts how a gigantic fleet of Greek ships sailed across the "wine dark sea" to besiege Troy and regain a stolen wife. Its sequel is the "Odyssey."

Classicists and archeologists are fairly certain Troy existed and generally know where it is. In the 19th century, the German archeologist Heinrich Schliemann and the Englishman Frank Calvert excavated what is known as the Citadel of Troy and found evidence of a military conflict in the 12th century B.C., including arrows and 5 feet of burned debris around a buried fortress. Whether it was a war between Troy and a foreign element, or a civil war is unknown, Rose said.

The compilation we know as the "Iliad" was written centuries later, the date Pagel is proposing.
The scientists tracked the words in the "Iliad" the way they would track genes in a genome.

The researchers employed a linguistic tool called the Swadesh word list, put together in the 1940s and 1950s by American linguist Morris Swadesh. The list contains approximately 200 concepts that have words apparently in every language and every culture, Pagel said. These are usually words for body parts, colors, necessary relationships like "father" and "mother."

They looked for Swadesh words in the "Iliad" and found 173 of them. Then, they measured how they changed.

They took the language of the Hittites, a people that existed during the time the war may have been fought, and modern Greek, and traced the changes in the words from Hittite to Homeric to modern. It is precisely how they measure the genetic history of humans, going back and seeing how and when genes alter over time.

For example, they looked at cognates, words derived from ancestral words. There is "water" in English, "wasser" in German, "vatten" in Swedish, all cognates emanating from "wator" in proto-German. However, the Old English "hund" later became "hound" but eventually was replaced by "dog," not a cognate.

"I'm an evolutionary theorist," Pagel said. "I study language because it's such a remarkable culturally transmitted replicator. It replicates with a fidelity that's just astonishing."

By documenting the regularity of the linguistic mutations, Pagel and the others have given a timeline to the story of Helen and the men who died for her -- genetics meets the classics.

Joel Shurkin is a freelance writer based in Baltimore. He is the author of nine books on science and the history of science, and has taught science journalism at Stanford University, UC Santa Cruz and the University of Alaska Fairbanks

Making a Difference: My Chess Buddy Ellen Wanek

I've written about Ellen Wanek before.  I met her at a Hales Corners Chess Challenge a few Challenges ago, and we hit it off immediately.  She's beautiful, and gracious, and so kind, and just has this effervescent personality that draws people to her.  You know how some people just have an aura about them?  Ellen has that kind of aura.  I am so happy to have met her. 

Ellen teaches kids how to play chess at Sheboygan area schools and has been a driving force behind getting a "Chess in the Park" program going in Sheboygan, too.  So glad to see Ellen - and her work - getting publicity!  And I'm so happy to read about more Wisconsin women getting actively involved in bringing chess to children - and to everyone. 

From The Sheboygan Press

Check mates: Students make their moves in chess tournaments
February 25, 2013
By Kali Thiel

Editor’s note: This is one in an occasional series of articles about Sheboygan-area residents who are going the extra mile to make Sheboygan and beyond a better place.

If you see a car around town with a “Chess Nut” vanity plate, it’s likely Ellen Wanek’s.

Wanek, 61, devotes much of her retired life to the game of chess. She’s a coach at four Sheboygan schools, she privately teaches about 10 students every week and she helps out at many of the area’s weekend chess tournaments.

“The woman is addicted to chess,” said Al Wanek, Ellen’s husband.

Wanek isn’t alone. There’s a growing interest in chess that’s sweeping across Sheboygan County schools. And on Saturday, nearly 200 area youth competed in the annual Acuity Chess Invitational put on by Acuity and the Wisconsin Scholastic Chess Federation.

Shawn Chrisman, director of the Acuity tournament, said more than 15 Sheboygan County schools were represented at the weekend tournament and he estimated around 400 youth in Sheboygan County are active in chess in some fashion.

The Acuity Invitational is one of about 10 tournaments offered in Sheboygan County from November to March each year. A few years ago, there weren’t even half that many though, said Katie Delahunt, WSCF board member.

When Delahunt moved to the Sheboygan area about eight years ago from Milwaukee, she said she was amazed that Sheboygan didn’t have many chess tournaments. Her children had been active in chess at their previous school and she missed having that opportunity for them.

“In Milwaukee, chess was a huge thing,” Delahunt said. “You played chess during the lunch hour or after school. Some schools were very elaborate and they even hired experts to coach. They’d bring in experts from Russia that are top players worldwide.”

Delahunt, the Sheboygan/Kohler Municipal Court judge, said she was instrumental in getting tournaments started in Sheboygan about six years ago and ever since then, chess has really taken off.

“The thing with tournaments is it motivates (the students),” Delahunt said. “The kids who are in a club then have a purpose.”

Wanek said she became involved with chess tournaments after volunteering for one at what was then Holy Name School about four years ago, and she’s been hooked ever since.

“When I saw this type of chess tournament with so many children, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I was just loving every minute of it,” Wanek said. “I have just really been giving my life to this the last few years through scholastic chess because I can see it just benefitting so many different areas of people’s lives.”

Among the numerous benefits chess offers, Wanek said it can boost IQ, promote creative thinking, improve teens’ decision-making skills and it can even help prevent dementia.

Delahunt said she likes that chess provides a different way for students to get involved at school.

“For kids who aren’t maybe basketball players or who don’t have another activity to do during the winter, it’s something great for them to do,” she said. “And they really enjoy it and it gets them focused and they learn how to win and lose. There are just so many benefits.”

The tournament at Acuity is unique in that it is the only area tournament that is free. Most tournaments charge $10 or so per competitor.

“It brings more kids out who have never played in a tournament before,” said Chrisman. “A lot of parents think, OK if this is a free tournament then I’ll try it out and as long as I know my kid likes it, I’ll spend that time.”

New to the Acuity Invitational this year was Random Lake seventh-grader Alexander Jentsch. Even though Jentsch said he’s been playing chess since about second grade, this was the first year he participated in tournaments.

Jentsch said he likes playing chess because it “keeps your brain working.”

His mom, Sheila Jentsch, said that even though she can’t play chess very well, she likes it because her son likes it, which is why she got permission from the Random Lake schools administration to start a chess club next year.

“Right now (my son) is the only one going to tournaments,” she said. “But I know there are other kids who play chess so I’m trying to get a group going.”

It was just last year that Lake Country Academy, Horace Mann Middle School, Lincoln Erdman Elementary, the Mosaic School and Grant Elementary/ESAA got clubs started. They already had a combined total of nearly 100 kids in the Acuity tournament this year.

Three of those schools — Horace Mann, Lincoln-Erdman and Lake Country — are Wanek’s proteges. She also coaches at Sheboygan Christian School.

“Having this in place as an educational tool is phenomenal, but the personal life values and training that this gives goes beyond even that,” Wanek said.

“It has been just an absolute wonderful time for my life. Here I am, I’m older, and instead of becoming a couch potato, this has just been a whole new horizon to really give your life to and I think it’s a worthwhile mission because these children are really being blessed by it,” she said.


Other blog posts about Ellen Wanek:

May 1, 2011:  Chess Queen, Ellen Wanek, Chess Coach
October 22, 2011:  Hales Corners Chess Challenge XIV (some photos)
April 22, 2012:  Hales Corners Chess Challenge XV (some photos - I was off my water pill and look horrid and bloated in all of the photos taken during this time; less than 2 months laters my heart problems revealed themselves, but in this event I won my first and only tournament game!)
June 28, 2012:  Sheboygan's Chess in the Park
July 14, 2012:  Of Kings, Queens and Castles -- Chess in the Park helps children improve game during the summer

Judit Polgar's Latest Book

Reported at Chessbase News (you can read the full review there):

GM Judit Polgar, 2011 World Cup, sporting her favorite
animal print - leopard! 

Judit Polgar: How I beat Fischer's record
05.02.2013– It is not often that we review books, but some simply call for attention. Such as this one by the strongest female in chess history, which was given to us by Judit during the London Chess Classic. We have known her since early childhood, and followed her career. The book was a trip down memory lane. We are pleased to share with you a sample chapter and a wonderfully annotated game.

Judit Polgar is one of the most celebrated chess players in the world, and as a woman competing in a male-dominated game, her achievements are unparalleled. It is not often that an active world-class player goes to the trouble of writing a highly personal account of their life and chess career, but now, with the help of the British publisher Quality Chess, the strongest female player of all time has made just such a gift to the chess world.

“I started flirting with the idea of publishing a collection of my best games a long time ago. For years, I was aware that the moment when I could fulfil my dream was far away. As a professional player, I spent most of my time and energy playing in tournaments and training, so each time the idea of my book popped up, I had to say to myself “Later, later...””

So writes Judit Polgar in the preface of her new book, How I Beat Fischer’s Record. The first in a three-part series, it documents her early life and chess development, spanning a period from the early 1980s up to 1991. The latter was the year in which she made history by achieving the grandmaster title approximately one month younger than Bobby Fischer.

Will any chess femme take her place?  Beth Harmon, where are you when we need you???  I don't expect to see one in what's left of my lifetime.

Snow Day Trick

Hola darlings!

It's a snow day at Maison Newton toda.  The snow started coming down about 2:30 p.m. yesterday and its still snowing hard out there now.  With winds out of the northeast (off Lake Michigan) of 20 to 35 mph there has been drifting even though the snow is wet and heavy.  The temperatures are mild, hovering around 32 degrees F.  This is one of those stealth blizzards...

I got up extra early this morning and took a look outside, and listened to the traffic reports on the radio.  Highways in bad shape, city of Milwaukee schools closed!  Straight snow fall around here, I'd say 8 inches of wet very heavy snow, and it's compacting even as I sit here and type this -- not good.  I have drifts up to 5 feet high.  So much for the forecasters' predictions that "the wet heavy snow won't drift much."  HA!  I have a good 18 inches of snow to shovel through in my driveway to make an 18 inch wide path from my front porch to the road.  Ain't happening until the snow stops (it shows no signs of doing so), and will take hours to do, as I can only shovel for 10 minutes at a time, then take a 30 minute break, monitoring my breathing and pulse the entire time.  I wasn't kidding when I wrote about having a bad heart.  Mr. Don's killed him, I'm not going to let mine kill me by being foolish trying to clear a path on my 30 foot long driveway. 

I've got a 3 foot high barrier of snow boulders at the base of the driveway caused by the plow coming through the subdivision a couple of times.  Since I got up before 6:30 a.m. another couple of inches have fallen, and its still going (may stop at noon).  Just piling up more and more and more, so I can count on the plow coming through at least once and possibly twice to pile up yet more snow boulders at the foot of my driveway.  By the time this is over I may have a five foot high wall of snow boulders to burrow through in order to get to the road.  Yep, ain't going anywhere today. 

One of the Ladies of the Bus sent me this interesting trick this morning.  See if you can figure it out!  I did after doing the trick twice, and saying to myself "you know this can't be real, figure it out, Woman!"  I'm that proud of myself, too, for doing so, LOL!

Woogie Card Trick 
 

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!

 

Good luck. After you have thought about this for a while, pass it on to those

poor unsuspecting friends you just love to pull something over on.

The 'Le Woogie' Card Trick. Performed by: Le Woogie

Pick one of the following cards. Don 't click on it; just keep it in your head.

 

 

scroll down when you have your card,

Think about your card for 20 seconds in front of Le Woogie.

 

Le Woogie will attempt to read your mind!

Scroll down after 20 Seconds




The Great Le Woogie Has Removed Your Card!

SCARY ISN'T IT. Now scroll up and do it again, this will freak you out!

The Latest on Egyptian Blue

Ancient "Egyptian blue" pigment points to new telecommunications, security ink technology
February 20, 2013

A bright blue pigment used 5,000 years ago is giving modern scientists clues toward the development of new nanomaterials with potential uses in state-of-the-art medical imaging devices, remote controls for televisions, security inks and other technology. That's the conclusion of an article on the pigment, Egyptian blue, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. 

Hieroglyphics from the Tomb of Nebamun: The wall paintings in this tomb use Egyptian blue, considered humanity's first synthetic pigment, which new research shows could be used in new nanomaterials
 

Tina T. Salguero and colleagues point out that Egyptian blue, regarded as humanity's first artificial pigment, was used in paintings on tombs, statues and other objects throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. Remnants have been found, for instance, on the statue of the messenger goddess Iris on the Parthenon and in the famous Pond in a Garden fresco in the tomb of Egyptian "scribe and counter of grain" Nebamun in Thebes. They describe surprise in discovering that the calcium copper silicate in Egyptian blue breaks apart into nanosheets so thin that thousands would fit across the width of a human hair. The sheets produce invisible infrared (IR) radiation similar to the beams that communicate between remote controls and TVs, car door locks and other telecommunications devices.

"Calcium copper silicate provides a route to a new class of nanomaterials that are particularly interesting with respect to state-of-the-art pursuits like near-IR-based biomedical imaging, IR light-emitting devices (especially telecommunication platforms) and security ink formulations," the report states. "In this way we can reimagine the applications of an ancient material through modern technochemical means."

 More information: Article: Nanoscience of an Ancient Pigment, Journal of the American Chemical Society.


See also The Mail Online, Talk like an Egyptian: Ancient paint used to decorate Pharoahs' tombs is set to be the basis of telecommunication devices, February 22, 2013

3-D Image of the World's Oldest Die

Ancient icosahedron: 3D printing ressurrects the world’s
oldest die

Feb. 19, 2013 (4:52 pm) By: Graham Templeton

While it’s unlikely that the ancient Egyptians had anything like Dungeons and Dragons (Sarcophagi and Serpents?), we’ve never been shy about misappropriating the discoveries of pre-Christian Pharaohs. Why start now? A few months ago the internet became aware of a 20-sided die carved in serpentine and dated to the first few centuries BC. Inlaid with ancient Greek symbols, it was almost certainly used for gambling and/or simple games of chance, but it was quickly heralded as the originator of the critical hit. Forget 20s — a true gamer rolls Kappas.

Now, the inevitable: a 3D-printable model of the die makes it attainable by those of us without a professional art thief on retainer. Starting at $17 and ranging to over $300, depending entirely on the materials and finishing used, this die is sure to spice up any friendly dungeon-crawl.

It is also, unfortunately, likely to confuse any such gathering of the nerds, as it features the same Ptolemaic symbols as the original. Unless you’re willing to incorporate yet another chart into your role-playing sessions, this one will likely stay on the shelf as a display.

The confluence of nerd interests, increasingly medieval printing materials, and the simplicity of a die’s design has actually led to quite a number of stylistically ancient dice. It turns out that almost any primary sold can look ruggedly ancient when made out of pitted steel.

The thorn dice have attracted a fair amount of attention, as heavy metal steampunk or caltrops D4; the sheer variety of the die designs out there should threaten the dice-making industry.

Tang Dynasty Maids Cemetery Uncovered in Xi'an

Palace maids cemetery unearthed in NW China

Updated: 2013-02-26 15:38

(Xinhua)

XI'AN - A public cemetery uncovered in the city of Xi'an, capital of Northwest China's Shaanxi province, was used for maids of the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907), an archaeologist told Xinhua Tuesday.

A dozen tombs, located in the west of the thousands-year-old city, were found in April, 2012, Liu Daiyun, a Shaanxi Archeology Research Institute researcher said.

Since then, the tombs have been examined.

"The structures of the tombs in this region are similar, and they have obvious characters of the Tang Dynasty. According to the epitaph of a 70-year-old maid, we deduced that the place was a public cemetery for maids of the imperial palace," Liu said.

Archaeological data showed the maids were buried individually. Archaeologists said that the epitaphs of each maid showed a specific and strict hierarchy in the imperial palace.

"There are two types of maids according to the epitaphs. Five of them died of old age, and the rest were "Wanggongni" -- maids who became nuns because the emperor they served died before them," Liu said.

Archaeologists also excavated a variety of funerary objects in the tombs, including lacquer, bronze, stone wares, animal figures and bronze waistbands.

"The discovery provides significant objects and literal materials for those researching the political system, lives, funeral customs and women in the palace of Tang Dynasty," Liu added.

**********************************************

Holy Shi Wang-mu!  So, once a female went into service for the Emperor, she was there until she died or the Emperor died first, and then she was sequestered away as a nun in a Buddhist retreat somewhere?

WSCF 8th Annual All Girls Tournament

Hola darlings!

Blizzard here tonight, it's awful out there.  In my email a notice this evening from the Wisconsin Scholastic Chess Federation:

8th Annual All GirlsTourament At Cardinal Stritch April 13th

The annual All Girls chess tournament will be held this year at Cardinal Stritch College in Fox Point. What is special this year is that there is a fund drive to make the tournament free for all students. Organizers are planning for between 150 and 200 girls from across the state. If the fund drive reaches its goal the tournament will be free for all. Each participant will recieve a t-shirt and a $5 food voucher. Eligible partipants will be able to compete for $1000 in scholarships and 28 trophies in four divisions. Complete information can be found on the informational flyer . Check out further information and if you can, make a donation.  Every little bit helps!   To date close to $1300 has been raised toward the $7000 goal.

This is a great event for our local chess femmes and, indeed, girls come from all over Wisconsin and elsewhere to compete. 

It would be FABULOUS if the fund-raising goal is reached that will enable each girl to play for free!  Please consider making a tax-deductible contribution.

Is that you, Arsenoe?

One archaeologist thinks she has found the remains of Cleopatra's younger half-sister.

Article at newobserver.com

Archaeologist: Bones found in Turkey are probably those of Cleopatra's half-sister

Published: February 24, 2013

 

By John Bordsen

Long-buried bones and a missing monarch. Add some historical notoriety and modern technology and you have a heck of a captivating, science-driven story.

Just this month, it was announced that bones found under a parking lot in Leicester, England, belonged to King Richard III. DNA evidence, according to the lead archaeologist at the excavation, proved this “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

For Hilke Thur, a Vienna-based archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a similar quest awaits empirical closure. The locale is more exotic – western Turkey – and the evidence is much more difficult to analyze: The bones in question are a bit more than 2,000 years old.

She will cover this and other aspects of her work in a March 1 lecture at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh.

The title: “Who Murdered Cleopatra’s Sister? And Other Tales from Ephesus.”

In a recent interview, Thur discussed…

What took her to Ephesus
“I’m an architect as well as an archaeologist, and Ephesus – a large and important city on the coast of Asia Minor centuries before it became part of the Roman Empire – has long been one of the biggest archaeological sites. It is the main excavation of the Austrian Archaeological Institute.

“I was a student when I started working there in 1975, and have based a great deal of my career around the site. From 1997 to 2005, I was assistant director of the Ephesus excavations.

“An English engineer directed the first archaeological digs there in 1869, but since 1895, only Austrian-led projects have permission to do that, though Turks sometimes have excavations. I’d like to add that it’s quite an international team there, with researchers from all over the world.

“My specialty is interpreting buildings and monuments. The excavations of one monument, The Octagon, began in 1904. In 1926, a grave chamber was found inside The Octagon. The skeleton inside it has been interpreted to be that of a young woman about age 20.”

What thickened the plot

“When I was working with the architecture of The Octagon and the building next to it, it wasn’t known whose skeleton was inside. Then I found some ancient writers telling us that in the year 41 B.C., Arsinoe IV – the half-sister of Cleopatra – was murdered in Ephesus by Cleopatra and her Roman lover, Marc Antony. Because the building is dated by its type and decoration to the second half of the first century B.C., this fits quite well.

“I put the pieces of the puzzle together.”

The eight-sided clues

“In antiquity, ordinary people were not buried within the city. That privilege was only for special people – those with an aristocratic background, or people who did special things for their city. So the body must have belonged to a special person. Also, the skeleton was of a woman.

“Then there is the shape of the building. While The Octagon exists only as ruins today, its pieces have been photographed. The images were digitized and ‘virtually rebuilt’ on a computer. The shape of the building, an imperial grave monument [how do we know it is an imperial grave monument?], resembles the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The lighthouse, destroyed centuries ago, was built at Alexandria, on the Egyptian coast, by the Ptolemy dynasty from which Cleopatra and Arsinoe IV were descended.

“The center portion of the lighthouse tower was octagonal, which was quite unusual at the time.”

Forensic evidence

“The site of The Octagon has a grave chamber. It was opened in 1926, but the opening was very small, and no one entered it until later on.

“The skull had been removed for tests; it disappeared in Germany during World War II. But there are photos of the skull, and notes written down by those who examined it.

“In 1985, the back side of the chamber became accessible, and I re-found the skeleton – the bones were in two niches. The body was removed and examined. The bones were found to be those of a woman younger than 20 – 15 or 16, perhaps.

“The revised age was used for arguments against my theory of the body belonging to Arsinoe IV, but those arguments didn’t find anything to disprove my theory.

“This academic questioning is normal. It happens. It’s a kind of jealousy.”

What would prove her theory

“They tried to make a DNA test, but testing didn’t work well because the skeleton had been moved and the bones had been held by a lot of people. It didn’t bring the results we hoped to find. [What results did it bring?]

“I don’t know if there are possibilities to do more of this testing. Forensic material is not my field.

“One of my colleagues on the project told me two years ago there currently is no other method to really determine more. But he thinks there may be new methods developing. There is hope.”  

**************************************************************************A fascinating story!  Here is a little more about the Octogon at Ephesus and the Princess Arsinoe IV (lots of information online about this interesting tomb, but not much more about Arsinoe IV.  Historians do not even know when she was born.  Guess the Ptolemys did not keep good birth records): The Octogon, Tomb of the Ptolemaic Arsinoe IV  (a site that appears to be a tourist promotion for the city of Ephesus).  Note the last sentence at of this article:  in 41 BC, at Cleopatra's instigation, Mark Antony ordered her executed on the steps of the temple. She was given an honorable funeral and a modest tomb.  I couldn't help but notice the contrast between the description of the tomb by the archaeologist who has spent so many years studying it (an imperial grave monument) and the description quoted above (a modest tomb).  Of course, I suppose one does not necessarily refute the other; after all, the tomb could have been imperial but modest at the same time, right? 

 The photo above is of a reconstruction of the Octogon at Ephesus from the Ephesus Museum in Vienna, Austria, taken from Harvard University's library online service.   And from Tynedalehouse.com, a long article discussing the pros and cons for views taken over the years that the remains in question are, or are not, those of Arsinoe IV, which also provides further background information on Arsinoe IV.  Fascinating reading! 

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/24/2697973/archaeologist-says-bones-found.html#storylink=rss#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/24/2697973/archaeologist-says-bones-found.html#storylink=rss#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/02/24/2697973/archaeologist-says-bones-found.html#storylink=rss#storylink=cpy

Anne Ulrich Wins 2012 Junior Grand Prix Title

What wonderful news!  Anne Ulrich has taken first place in the 2012 Final Chess Magnet Junior Grand Prix Top Standings.  Here are the top 10:

ID	Name	State	JGP Points	Events
13498420	ULRICH, ANNE E	WI	12607	14
14640907	HOFFMAN, EVAN	CA-S	11549	21
14898470	MADDEN, KERRIGAN	CA-S	10137	23
13258867	ABE, MAHIRO	NY	9255	11
14472386	PATEL, ADVAIT	WV	7690	22
14117950	YU, JENNIFER R	VA	7516	18
14143035	ASARIA, DANIAL	CA-S	7267	11
14547128	KOBLA, VISHAL	VA	7266	14
13999045	LIANG, AWONDER	WI	6926	9
14836268	PROLEIKO, JULIAN	MO	6924	11

As you can see, Anne won by a little more than 1,000 points!  I met Anne at one of the Hales Corners Chess Challenges.  She and her sisters, Rachel and Susan, have participated in several of the Challenges.

I was not able to locate a list of prior USCF Junior Grand Prix winners, so I cannot be 100% certain that Anne Ulrich is the first female to win this title, but I think it likely she may be.  Congratulations to Anne!