Welcome to the 33rd episode of History News This Week. Please note that History News This Week will be online every Sunday at 09:30 PM Indian Standard Time i.e. 04:00 PM GMT. This week I have five interesting pieces of news items from the world of History and Archaeology followed by three wonderful articles. Let’s begin!
Links to the news items, articles, latest released books and the history podcast recommendation of the week below:
Stonehenge mystery cracked after evidence for 'ancient supercomputer' identified at site
Poisonous gas wave may have snuffed out half of all sea life in Earth's 1st mass extinction
Ancient Scythians used human skin for leather, confirming Herodotus' grisly claim
Archaeologists uncover ancient city of Changgan
Ancient Mesopotamian Bricks Hold a ‘Memory’ of the Earth’s Magnetic Fields Millennia Ago
Are Neanderthals and Homo sapiens the same species?
The KGB After Stalin
How writing 'made us human'—an 'emotional history' from ancient Iraq to the present day
Links to order 'Selene: The Moon Goddess and the Cave Oracle' below:
Amazon India:
Paperback
Kindle
Amazon USA:
Paperback
Kindle
History podcast recommendation of the week:
Mission History
Please don't forget to checkout Historylogy.com for latest book reviews and tidbits from the pages of history.
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Coming up: History News This Week - Episode: 033
Namaste Friends. My name is 'Shinil Subramanian Payamal' and you are listening to the Historylogy podcast.
Welcome to the 33rd episode of History News This Week. Please note that History News This Week will be online every Sunday at 09:30 PM Indian Standard Time i.e. 04:00 PM GMT.
This week I have five interesting pieces of news items from the world of History and Archaeology followed by three wonderful articles. Let’s start!
1st ─ Stonehenge mystery cracked after evidence for 'ancient supercomputer' identified at site
It's unclear what Britain's ancient people really used the megalith for, though one scientific study points towards one sole purpose.
The comprehensive study published by a team of scientists found crucial evidence at the site to suggest that it was used as a "supercomputer" to study astronomy.
2nd ─ Poisonous gas wave may have snuffed out half of all sea life in Earth's 1st mass extinction
About 510 million years ago, a deadly combination of low oxygen and surging hydrogen sulphide may have been what decimated 45% of all ocean life.
3rd ─ Ancient Scythians used human skin for leather, confirming Herodotus' grisly claim
The ancient Scythians — nomadic warriors and pastoralists who flourished on the steppes of Europe and Asia — turned human skin into leather, a new study finds.
The discovery confirms a claim made by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus that the Scythians (circa 800 B.C. to A.D. 300) used human flesh for leather.
4th ─ Archaeologists uncover ancient city of Changgan
The discovery was made in present-day Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, China, during excavations near the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, also known as the Great Bao’en Temple.
Excavations revealed evidence of occupation dating back more than 3,000 years during the Shang (1600 BC-1046 BC) and Zhou (1046 BC-256 BC) dynasties, while occupational evidence from the Tang period has led to the discovery of the ancient city of Changgan.
5th ─ Ancient Mesopotamian Bricks Hold a ‘Memory’ of the Earth’s Magnetic Fields Millennia Ago
By studying the iron oxide embedded in ancient bricks from Mesopotamia, archaeologists have confirmed the existence of a planetary anomaly that happened during the Levantine Iron Age around 3,000 years ago, resulting in a huge spike in the Earth’s magnetic field strength.
Now, coming to the three articles:
1st ─ Are Neanderthals and Homo sapiens the same species?
Neanderthals, which disappeared from the archaeological record roughly 40,000 years ago, have long been considered our closest evolutionary relatives. But almost since the first discovery of Neanderthal remains in the 1800s, scientists have been arguing over whether Neanderthals constitute their own species or if they're simply a subset of our own species, Homo sapiens, that has since gone extinct.
So what does science say? In particular, what does the genetic evidence, which didn't exist back when many early hominins were first discovered, show?
2nd ─ The KGB After Stalin
In 1954 a new agency was founded: the KGB. While less violent and arbitrary than what it replaced, its insidious reach soon permeated Soviet society.
3rd ─ How writing 'made us human'—an 'emotional history' from ancient Iraq to the present day
Evidence suggests that writing was invented in southern Iraq sometime before 3000 BC. But what happened next? Anyone interested in this question will find ‘How Writing Made Us Human’ by Walter Stephens both an enjoyable and stimulating read. It offers what it calls an "emotional history" of writing, chiefly referencing academics and writers in the Western tradition.
Latest history book release of the week:
‘Selene: The Moon Goddess and the Cave Oracle’ written by Steve Moore is our pick of the week.
An examination of the myths of the Moon goddess and how she appeared to the original creators of those myths in ancient Greece.
A deeply erudite and meticulously researched survey, this book explores the perennial curiosity our closest orbital neighbour continues to instil, providing at once an unprecedented body of historical research and a critical armature for the author’s lauded prose reverie Somnium.
History podcast recommendation of the week:
‘Mission History’, a collaboration of Black Barrel Media and QCODE is our pick of the week.
Focusing on military history, the show has flavors of Ken Burns in both tone and attention to detail. Mission History examines one conflict in history at a time, promising future seasons on the Trojan War and Viking Raids.
I will provide links to all the news items, articles, books and podcast mentioned above in the show notes. Please feel free to check them out.
Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the ‘History News This Week’. Hope you found it interesting.
Please don't forget to subscribe to the Historylogy podcast on your favourite podcasting app and check Historylogy.com for book reviews and interesting tidbits from the pages of History. Looking forward to hearing from you. Have a great day and take care. Bye!