sean

Oh my god dude look! A new kind of wild beast, right there! It's up to us to name it....... [brows furrow for three hours] Wildebeest

BREAKING: Total Monkey War

archaeology.org/news/2025/01...

face to face

liberals do things more sneakily so stupid, well meaning people like you eat it up. Take care!

"There is hope in this sense only..."

from Once upon a Time in the West by Jan Zwicky

"There is hope in this sense only..."

from Once upon a Time in the West by Jan Zwicky

"Norse encounters with North American indigenous peoples seem to have filtered into Irish immrama [tales of a hero's journey to the Otherworld]"

Traditional song-maps of seafaring Tubetube islanders (Papua New Guinea) use birds as measurement

"When the song refers to long distances between islands, birds are often mentioned to indicate the relative closeness of land."

CROCODILIAN EARTH MONSTER

It definitely does, the Luba were traditionally nonliterate and only developed an orthography in the 19th century whereas these memory boards are definitely older, perhaps quite ancient

"Lukasa, "the long hand" (or claw), is a memory device that was created, manipulated and protected by the Bambudye, a once powerful secret society of the Luba."

(nowadays the southern Democratic Republic of Congo)

"A superbly realized line portrait of a giraffe. This artist had the skills of a modern cartoonist."

2,000-6,000 years old, Namibia

"This was first thought to illustrate a battle, but it is now considered more likely to represent the mystical struggle against evil spirits by shamans in trance."

Pakhuis Pass, Clanwilliam District, Western Cape, South Africa

Oh wait a second. Thank god. Nevermind.

This page is unintentionally left blank. We are trying our best to fix it. We are so fucking sorry.

"Have you met him? He really secretes charisma. It spews from his orifices and pores. Quite charming."

I like when people say someone "oozes charisma" cause imo "oozing" is usually one of the least charismatic things to do

As we turn the page on a new year, a quote from writer Caroline Van Hemert, which has stuck with me even though it didn't make it into her final piece:

"Change--even in its most destructive forms--isn't a cue to abandon the future but instead to greet it with greater imagination."

#FossilFriday The beautifully preserved Jebel Irhoud 1 basal H. sapiens skull from Morocco, dated about 300,000 years old

Itinerary for 2025. You heard it here first. Don’t get left behind.

Denys Thompson on how integral poetry/song is for non-literate/non-mass-literate societies

Lucretius, 1st Century BC // scientists, 2013

we’ve gotta revive this trend

saffron vending machine in Mashhad

[developing the keyboard that maximally fucks with language and culture]

For constructing his world map, Anaximander is considered by many to be the first mapmaker.[22]: 23  Little is known about the map, which has not survived. Hekatæus of Miletus (550–475 BC) produced another map fifty years later that he claimed was an improved version of the map of his illustrious predecessor. The oldest reference to a map in China comes from the 3rd century BC.[41]: 534  This was the event of 227 BC where Crown Prince Dan of Yan had his assassin Jing Ke visit the court of the ruler of the State of Qin, who would become the first leader to unify China, Qin Shi Huang (r. 221–210 BC). Jing Ke was to present the ruler of Qin with a district map painted on a silk scroll, rolled up and held in a case where he hid his assassin's dagger.[41]: 534  Handing to him the map of the designated territory was the first diplomatic act of submitting that district to Qin rule.[41]: 534  Jing then tried and failed to kill him. From then on, maps were frequently mentioned in Chinese sources.

googling when the first known European map was made: "6th century B.C., not much known about it. 50 years later another guy made a slightly better one."

googling when the first known Chinese map was made: [incredibly cinematic tale of a failed assassin, on the edge of my seat]

thank you :)