27. Archaeologizer. Were-Platypus? She/her/they/ them. Likes women, cats, tea, coffee, alcoholic beverages, plants, archaeology, and the desert. Trigger warnings will be used and gifs will be tagged accordingly. This isn't a serious blog, except when it is.
some of you have never left your loom and shuttle to revel in the mountains with unbound hair and tear apart wild beasts with your bare hands and that really shows :/
maybe the real abomination unto nuggan is the friends we made along the way
New and Updated Career Options for 2019:
- Rakish dandy who spends three hours on his cravat every morning
- Romantic poet (who dies of consumption)
- Whaler c. 1850, in love with a harpooneer
- Late Victorian occultist
- Ambiguously gay Victorian/Edwardian groundskeeper
- Oxford student with a dark secret, c. 1910
- Bertie Wooster
- The subject of a J.C. Leyendecker illustration
- Climber in the Lake District during the Golden Age of Mountaineering
- Teddy boy
just because someone can articulate their point better doesn’t make them right, it makes them articulated.
and you aren’t stupid for having trouble articulating yourself.
jo diggs, mother earth father sky (detail), 1986
having a lot of maximalist bathroom feelings today
so someone just said they’re “really interested in history” how careful do you have to be?
“i just think history is interesting in general! i’m not interested in any specific part of it”: this person is most likely safe. never drop your guard though
“i’m interested in this specific subject or time period in history. (ex. ancient egypt, the golden age of piracy, the history of the printing press”: still probably safe. be on the lookout for certain risky historical subjects. you should know them you see them
“i’m really into WW2 history”: this is the caution zone, there’s plenty of valid reasons to be into WW2, but if they start talking about how Operation Sealion totally could have succeeded, it’s time to abort
“i’m specifically into roman history, the crusades, prussian military history, and WW2”: danger! do NOT talk about history with this person. in fact, do not talk to this person at all. you will regret it, you do not want to know what they think of the treaty of versailles or why germany lost the first world war
‘Atomic Mystery’. Daniel Martin Diaz.
New coins suggest that a pope existed who the Catholic Church says never reigned. And if that pope existed, it may have been the fabled Pope Joan…
Okay, I’m up too early because of nerves so I’m taking this on. Let’s have a look at interpreting and reporting ambiguous evidence! HEADLINE:
- “Rumored Female Pope” (ooh, women’s history!)
- “Denied by Catholic Church For Centuries” (gasp! boo! hiss!)
- “May Have Existed, New Evidence Shows” (hedged claim, but new evidence! exciting! a discovery!)
Except… no. The pull quote about probability? That’s from Michael Habicht, the archaeologist making the claim in the first place. And, well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? In the less sensationalist article to which this one links, what does seem clear is that (according to illustrations provided by said archaeologist) early coins have been found with a device consistent with the existence of a 9th-century Pope Johannes (Pope Joan’s alias, according to the legend.)
The article actually understates the patchiness and, er, variable reliability of the known chronology for late antique and early medieval popes, especially as per the Liber Pontificalis. But would I be willing to take the coins as evidence of an early medieval Pope John? Tentatively, sure, why not… except none of this work has been published academically.
Wait, what? Indeed. Habicht appears to have self-published his book about Pope Joan. There’s a slew of associated articles, but his published research is… on Egyptology. He’s an Egyptologist. He looks at medical evidence in Middle Kingdom skeletons. Which is really cool! But it means that he does not have medievalist-experience in looking at coins, manuscripts, Latin, manuscript stemmata, etc. If this middle-aged white man talks himself into lucrative fame while a generation of scholars struggles to get jobs, I am going to scream.
“But what about Pope Joan?” I hear you ask plaintively. Well, the story of Pope Joan (as distinct from that of Johannes Anglicus) dates to the thirteenth century. In other words, it comes from a time when there was considerable controversy over the roles of women in the church, and of religious women. It comes from a chronicle by a Dominican friar. (I’m sure it’s unfair of me to generalize Dominicans as mirthless enforcers of orthodoxy, but.) Versions of the story spread rapidly. To would-be reformers, it was an illustration of ecclesiastical corruption and scandal. To popular authors, she could serve a variety of purposes; for Boccaccio, she was a woman who ruined others by her wit (De claris mulieribus.) (More on Joan in late medieval manuscripts here.) The story of her giving birth during a procession strikes me as convenient propaganda: see, this is what will happen if women are put in positions of authority; their bodies will give them away, their bodies will be disruptive. The best scholarly monograph on Joan’s legend of which I know is this one; you can read a review of it here.
There are plenty of actual historical coverups to be outraged by; plenty of actual new discoveries to be excited about.
Talking about cats, this one just got her koi for this year. I wish you every year to be like that cat 年年有鱼
Photography by 镜视眼88
That cat is a very skilled little fisher.
Btw that’s both a visual and a literal Chinese pun and I’m literally laughing so hard right now (my parents say this every year) and I want everyone to understand this.
Here’s the two phrases you’ll need to know:
年年有鱼 (nián nián you yú) - “(I wish you have) fish every year”
年年有余 (nián nián you yú) - “(I wish you have) extra every year”
- this is a common blessing used in ChinaBoth the 鱼 and 余 characters sound exactly the same and here’s where the pun comes in.
Every Lunar New Year, as good luck, we eat “fish” so that we can “have fish every year”. In other words, we’re eating fish so that we can have extra every year.
Extra what, you ask? Extra everything! Extra money in the bank, extra food on our tables, extra happiness, etc, etc. It’s like an all-around blessing. Very kind and used often during Lunar New Year.
The cat has already gotten her “extra” (fish) for the year so the blogger is wishing you “fish” (extra) every year ^^
finally someone explained it, thank you<3
I am so delighted to learn that somebody else also has the tradition of eating puns for blessings on the New Year.
REBLOG FOR A GOOD EXTRA LUCKY YEAR
