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Rich People Destroyed Their Own feet With Pointy Shoes in Medieval England – All for Fashion

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Pointy Medieval Shoes - Deposit Photos

Being fashionable usually comes at a cost, and stylish people toward the end of the Middle Ages in Britain paid a steep price for wearing pointy shoes. Pointy-shoe wearers often developed bunions, a type of foot deformity in which a bony mass forms at the base of the big toe and pushes that toe inward at an angle. While many factors can cause bunions, known medically as hallux valgus, this condition was far less common in the 13th century and earlier, when footwear styles were less extreme, according to a new study. As these fashion victims grew older, they incurred … Read more

New Stonehenge Discovery Echoes Merlin’s Tale

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Stonehenge - Pixabay

The earliest megalithic circle at Stonehenge was first built in the west of Wales more than 5,000 years ago, before its stones were dug up and dragged over 140 miles (225 kilometers) to its present site in the west of England, new research suggests. The findings also support a wild legend that the mythical wizard Merlin ordered giants to move Stonehenge from Ireland and rebuild it in its current location. The researchers discovered the remains of the original stone circle in the Preseli Hills in Wales, near the ancient quarries where geologists have determined that Stonehenge’s famous bluestones were cut. … Read more

HISTORY: Did Amazons Really Exist?

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female archer - amazon - deposit photos

Were the Amazons of ancient Greek mythology — fierce female warriors said to have roamed a vast area around the Black Sea known as Scythia — real? Or were they as fictitious as other Greek myths, such as Aphrodite emerging from genitals thrown into the sea or Jason stealing a golden fleece? Modern historians assumed that the Amazons, first documented by the poet Homer in the eighth century B.C., were fantasy. But then, in the 1990s, archaeologists began identifying ancient female skeletons buried in warrior graves in the same region. Some skeletons were found with combat injuries, such as arrowheads … Read more

HISTORY: What Was Stonehenge For?

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Stonehenge - pixabay

Stonehenge is perhaps the most famous of all the henges, vast circular monuments constructed from wood or stone that litter the British countryside. The prehistoric monument was most likely erected in what is now England sometime between 3000 B.C. and 2000 B.C. and some of the stones were transported all the way from neighboring Wales — no small feat for a Stone Age civilization. It must have surely been a gargantuan effort and it begs the question: Why on Earth did they bother? Why did Stone Age people build so many henges? “The short answer is that I don’t know … Read more

Nine Cool Ancient Weapons Discovered in 2020

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beautoful hilt - live science

Ancient swords, elaborate daggers, even early artillery — 2020 turned up a number of intriguing ancient weapons that tell the story of the violence of the past. These discoveries cover hundreds of thousands of years of human history, ranging from the ice age to medieval times.  A Beautiful Hilt A mushroom hunter in the Czech Republic was out in the woods this spring when he discovered far more than delectable fungi.  Sticking out of the soil was a piece of metal. Mushroom hunter Roman Novák kicked at it and realized it was the blade of a sword. He started digging and … Read more

Queer Female Pirates Unerased From History

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Inexorable - Lesbian Pirates

Two trailblazing female pirates who shared a tender same-sex romance have been commemorated with a striking new statue. Anne Bonny and Mary Read, born in the late 18th century, have largely been erased from history by predominantly male historians – but now, they are taking their rightful place in the annals of the past. The women, who were lovers, have been immortalised by artist Amanda Cotton in a sculpture titled Inexorable. Previewed at London’s Execution Docks on 18 November, the artwork was commissioned to mark the launch of Hell Cats, a new Audible podcast that celebrates Bonny and Read’s lives … Read more

Was This Viking Warrior Gender Fluid?

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Vikings - Pixabay

An ancient Viking warrior who was given a hero’s burial may have been “transgender, non-binary or gender fluid”, according to researchers. Three years ago, the ornately dressed remains of a high-status Viking warrior from the mid-900s were discovered alongside swords, spears and two slaughtered horses in Birka, Sweden. Following studies, it was assumed that the remains of the Viking warrior were those of a female – a finding that threw into question a once commonly-accepted view that Vikings ascribed to traditional gender roles. Now, three years on, scholars are questioning whether the remains could actually have been those of a … Read more

Remains of a Warrior Woman Found in Siberia

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Siberian Warrior Woman - Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Archaeologists in Siberia have unearthed a 2,500-year-old grave holding the remains of four people from the ancient Tagar culture — including two warriors, a male and female — and a stash of their metal weaponry.  The early Iron Age burial contained the skeletal remains of a Tagarian man, woman, infant and older woman, as well as a slew of weapons and artifacts, including bronze daggers, knives, axes, bronze mirrors and a miniature comb made from an animal horn, according to the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.  The Tagar culture, a part of the Scythian civilization (nomadic warriors who … Read more

AI “resurrects” Roman Emperors

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roman emperors - Courtesy of Daniel Voshart/The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ancient Roman emperors’ faces have been brought to life in digital reconstructions; the unnervingly realistic image project includes the Emperors Caligula, Nero and Hadrian, among others.  The features of these long-dead rulers have been preserved in hundreds of sculptures, but even the most detailed carvings can’t convey what these men truly looked like when they were alive. To explore that, Canadian cinematographer and virtual reality designer Daniel Voshart used machine learning — computer algorithms that learn through experience — in a neural network, a computing system processes information through hierarchies of nodes that communicate in a manner similar to neurons in a brain. In … Read more

Newly Translated Christian Texts Discuss “Demon Circles” and “Wizard Battles”

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wizard - pixabay

Have you ever heard the story of a wizard battle that supposedly took place when an early church was constructed? Or how about the story of a border guard who defied King Herod’s orders and spared Jesus’ life? Scholars have now translated these and other “apocryphal” Christian texts (stories not told in the canonical bible) into English for the first time. More than 300 Christian apocryphal texts are known to exist, Tony Burke, a professor of early Christianity at York University in Toronto, Canada, wrote in the book he edited “New Testament Apocrypha More Noncanonical Scriptures (Volume 2)” (Eerdmans, 2020). … Read more