October 2011

83 Centimeters Adds To the Mystery of the Teotihuacan City

"The Teotihuacan is one of the great mysteries in history. "

Saburo Sugiyama, an archaeologist from Japan, has unearthed an amazing discovery which adds to the mystery of the ancient Teotihuacan City approximately 30 miles northeast of Mexico City. What he has discovered is that the 83 centimeters is repeated over and over in the architecture of the city which is approximately 7 square miles - and almost unbelievably 83 kilometers in surface area! This is an amazing coincidence all to itself.

 

What this means isn't exactly clear but when a pattern like this emerges that is repeated so frequently and with such precision it almost always means something significant.

Archeologists Find Intact Viking Burial Site in Scotland

An evidently high-status and battle-worn Viking’s burial site was discovered in Scotland by a team funded by the University of Manchester.

I’ve long been fascinated by the Viking culture, a loosely affiliated group of largely Scandinavian clans that went “a’viking” (which is to say, looting, pillaging, and even conquering in some cases) across western and central Europe during the Middle Ages. Made up of ethnic Danes, Norsemen (modern Norwegians), Swedes, and various other smaller groups; these groups were the most feared men and women in the European world at that time. Largely Scandinavian farmers that were pushed from their ancestral homelands by the expansion of the Catholic church, they adopted a warfaring way of life and built it into a cultural and religious heritage. Much of their day-to-day life, and particularly their warrior-based hierarchy, is still relatively unknown. However, a recent find by a team of archeologists from the University of Manchester may shed more light on these Medieval warriors.

Was Vincent Van Gogh Murdered?

New evidence points to the possibility that Van Gogh was shot (accidentally...by someone else).

Over 120 years it has been widely accepted that Vincent Van Gogh ended his own life. Isolated and frequently depressed, his life was a litany of melancholic anecdotes, from his unrequited love affair to his self-mutilation (He cut off his own ear in one particular fit of depression). Historians have described Van Gogh's death as one in which he shot himself in the chest in a field in France, and then returned to an inn he had been staying at to die two days later. However, a recent book by the authors of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Jackson Pollock: An American Saga, propose a different story; one in which Van Gogh did not shoot himself, but was murdered.

History or Historicity?

I’m pretty ambivalent on taking a liberal approach to recreating historical events on film or in books. It’s a difficult question and one that really has no answer. There are two questions relevant to any interpretation. The first being is it better for people to have a inaccurate representation, an interpretation rife with literary license? Or, is it better for the common man to know nothing about a historical event at all, to live a life in which he isn’t aware that this event even happened? This is a conundrum that has to come to anyone with an interest in representing historical facts in a way that is commercially viable and presented with a want to appeal to consumers.

Cannibalistic Ancient Mexican Xiximes Tribe

The Xiximes, and probably their neighbors the Acaxees, killed and ate enemies to help the corn grow.

The Xiximes people of northern Mexico were an ancient culture that lived in stone and clay hovels nestled into cliffsides in what is now Durango state. Historical documents by Jesuit missionaries described the Xixemes as “barbarian” and “savage”, relating numerous incidents of cannibalism as part of their cultural heritage. A recent archeological operation has uncovered evidence confirming the Jesuits’ stories. The Xiximes were indeed cannibalistic, a part of their cultural and religious heritage. In fact, newfound bones show that their form of cannibalism was highly selective and ritualized, but have developed as a way for the tribe to subsist through famine.