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Real monument men to protect cultural heritage threatened by war

The Army aims to recruit a ‘Monuments Men’ team of art and archaeology experts to help protect priceless cultural treasures in war zones and choke off terrorist funding from antiquities smuggling.

The specialist unit of up 40 advisers will be staffed by expert reservists with backgrounds in museums, archaeology, the art world or criminal investigations, according to proposals seen by the Telegraph.

The cultural property protection unit will mirror the ‘Monuments Men’ team of British and American art experts who saved priceless European art treasures carried off by the Nazis and were portrayed in a recent George Clooney film.

Specialists will deploy to warzones alongside commanders to advise on how to locate, protect and save cultural riches in the area they are fighting, according to the idea.

Full story here

December 29, 2015 0

National Museum, Baghdad: 10 Years Later

Source: National Museum, Baghdad: 10 Years Later

December 18, 2015 0

Pompeii Before the Romans

Source: Pompeii Before the Romans

December 18, 2015 0

Evidence of Roman Battle Discovered in The Netherlands

Source: Evidence of Roman Battle Discovered in The Netherlands

December 18, 2015 0

Nazi treasure train update

As we reported earlier it has long been rumoured that in the last days of WWII the Nazi’s who had assembled a vast treasure including 300 tons of gold brought a heavily armoured train to Wroclaw Poland. Continue reading “Nazi treasure train update” →

December 16, 2015 0

Stonehenge stolen from the Welsh, and moved?

A new study published in the journal Antiquity has archaeologists suggesting that Stonehenge was not originally located in Wiltshire where it is now. Continue reading “Stonehenge stolen from the Welsh, and moved?” →

December 16, 2015 0

Medieval Selfies

medievalbooks

Self-portraits of medieval book artisans are as exciting as they are rare. In the age before the modern camera there were limited means to show others what you looked like. In the very late medieval period, when the Renaissance spirit was already felt in the air, some painters made self-portraits or included themselves in paintings commissioned by others. Stunningly, the medieval painter Jan van Eyck showed himself in the portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and his fiance: he is staring at you from the mirror that is hanging behind the couple. For those who still didn’t get it, he painted above it Johannes de eyck fuit hic, “Jan van Eyck was here” (Fig. 1, more here). He added the date 1434 to the picture, making it a particularly early selfie.

Fig. 1 – Jan van Eyck, Giovanni Arnolfini and fiance (right) and mirror detail (left)

As far as producers of books is concerned, there were only two kinds…

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December 15, 2015 0

Plague in humans ‘twice as old’ but didn’t begin as flea-borne

New research using ancient DNA has revealed that plague has been endemic in human populations for more than twice as long as previously thought, and that the ancestral plague would have been predominantly spread by human-to-human contact—until genetic mutations allowed Yersinia pestis (Y. pestis), the bacteria that causes plague, to survive in the gut of fleas. Continue reading “Plague in humans ‘twice as old’ but didn’t begin as flea-borne” →

December 15, 2015 0

Millet: The missing link in prehistoric humans’ transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer

New research shows a cereal familiar today as birdseed was carried across Eurasia by ancient shepherds and herders laying the foundation, in combination with the new crops they encountered, of ‘multi-crop’ agriculture and the rise of settled societies. Archaeologists say

‘forgotten’ millet has a role to play in modern crop diversity and today’s food security debate.

Continue reading “Millet: The missing link in prehistoric humans’ transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer” →

December 15, 2015 0

Pompeii becomes a touch app

The app available for windows, iphone and android features 3D reconstructions of the various buildings located at Pompeii to get an idea of how it all looked before the eruption of Vesuvius. The app also features cutaway drawings of houses and public buildings. Continue reading “Pompeii becomes a touch app” →

December 15, 2015 0