February 2012

Saving the World’s Languages – Insubstantial Artifacts of History

 

Estimates place the number of languages that exist in the world today at approximately 7000.  This is a number that steadily declines over time as the world becomes more globalized and small native populations abandon their roots or die out.  Around half of the languages that still exist are considered threatened and will, if left unchecked, most likely disappear in the near future.

The Bloody White Baron

Ungern Von Sternberg

The Baron Ungern Von Sternberg is a legendary evil madman, the “Bloody White Baron” or “Mad Baron of Mongolia.” He was a warlord of the White Russians during the Russian Civil War, but his army was largely composed of Buriat Mongols from Siberia, among whom he was regarded as the avatar of an obscure Tibetan/Mongolian war god.

Sardinian Iron Age Soldiers Rising from the Dead

On the Italian island of Sardinia lie the remains of the ancient Sardinian culture.  Though they existed as a major power from the 16th to the late 6th century BCE, their history is relatively unknown today.  The big news in Sardinia concerns the progress of 8 years of work in restoring the remains of a small army of stone warriors that date back more than 2,700 years.  These stone monuments met their end at the hand of Carthaginian invaders who smashed them after conquering Sardinia, no doubt in an effort to remove the influence of Sardinian cultural practices.

China Losing Its Past?

One more nail in the coffin of history, China’s lack of concern for their heritage sites has ended in the destruction and disappearance of thousands of them.  Of the 765,000+ registered sites, around 44,000 have been destroyed in the last 20 years and another 25% of those that remain are falling apart.  The question comes to mind as to how and why so many important pieces of the past could be neglected so thoroughly as to leave them in complete devastation.

Color Photos from the Depression Era

A new perspective.

Today, we feel a disconnection from our not-too-distant past perhaps because of the color of the photographs. We have changed our viewing lens from black-and-white to color, and sometimes, when we look at black-and-white photos from the 1930’s and ‘40’s, it’s easy to think of them as historical, something dead and something gone. Perhaps that’s what’s so jarring about the Denver Post’s online gallery Captured: American in Color from 1939-1943. The photographs were some of the only color photographs taken during the Great Depression.

The Haitian Revolution

What Went Wrong?

The Haitian Revolution is the only successful slave revolt in human history- the only one. Yet Haiti today is a country with crushing problems at every level of society, from the rape gangs that terrorize its women to the fact that many of its people are literally eating dirt cookies in order to survive. So what went wrong? How could one of the most hopeful events in all of human history go so tragically astray?

Stepping into the Uncomfortable Past

While perusing the archaeological news recently, I came across an article which was talking about five students in Estonia who decided that they were going to attempt to live like people did in the Iron Age for five days.  While five days may not seem like a long time, when you think about what has to be given up, you might believe otherwise.  No electricity, no flushing toilets, no laundry, no washing machines or microwaves and no comfy chairs.  More importantly, however, is the fact that this experiment is a unique way to gain perspective on a time in history that is very different from our own.

Prehistoric Social Networking: Turns Out It May Not Be A "21-Century Thing" After All

Researchers have discovered that the same features of social networking today existed over 100,000 years ago.

The Pleistocene was a kind of “first Imperialism” for the human race. We emerged from the continent of Africa like an 18th century European power, spreading across the globe and growing exponentially in numbers. Evolutionary biologists predict that, in order fo those kinds of numbers, it would be necessary for cooperation and socialization to take place between the various groups of people, rather than just within their own communities. It was this theory that lead a group of researchers to look at our ancient ancestors inter-social behavior, or for a more 21st century-sounding term: social networking.

The Maya

And The Zapatistas

The Zapatistas are not yet history- their movements is still very much alive in the jungles of Chiapas, and their ideology of “Zapatismo” remains highly influential in newer movements such as Occupy. But the existence of the Zapatistas exemplifies a problem of history, which is a problem of interpretation. History is, after all, a process of interpretation, and it is very difficult to separate that process from the personal beliefs and prejudices of whoever is doing the interpreting.