Smithsonian.com: An Ancient Egyptian Spellbook Has Been Translated. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIw69jh5Bo
Monday, November 24, 2014
Decoding the Lost Diary of David Livingstone.
Smithsonian.com: Decoding the Lost Diary of David Livingstone. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIw9u6LyB8
Researchers have deciphered an ancient Egyptian handbook, revealing a series of invocations and spells.
Among other things, the "Handbook of Ritual Power," as researchers call the book, tells readers how to cast love spells, exorcise evil spirits and treat "black jaundice," a bacterial infection that is still around today and can be fatal.
The book is about 1,300 years old, and is written in Coptic, an Egyptian language. It is made of bound pages of parchment — a type of book that researchers call a codex.
Weird Facts About King Tut and His Mummy
"It is a complete 20-page parchment codex, containing the handbook of a ritual practitioner," write Malcolm Choat and Iain Gardner, who are professors in Australia at Macquarie University and the University of Sydney, respectively, in their book, "A Coptic Handbook of Ritual Power" (Brepols, 2014).
The ancient book "starts with a lengthy series of invocations that culminate with drawings and words of power," they write. "These are followed by a number of prescriptions or spells to cure possession by spirits and various ailments, or to bring success in love and business."
For instance, to subjugate someone, the codex says you have to say a magical formula over two nails, and then "drive them into his doorpost, one on the right side (and) one on the left."
The Sethians
Researchers believe that the codex may date to the 7th or 8th century. During this time, many Egyptians were Christian and the codex contains a number of invocations referencing Jesus.
However, some of the invocations seem more associated with a group that is sometimes called "Sethians." This group flourished in Egypt during the early centuries of Christianity and held Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, in high regard. One invocation in the newly deciphered codex calls "Seth, Seth, the living Christ." [The Holy Land: 7 Amazing Archaeological Finds]
The opening of the codex refers to a divine figure named "Baktiotha" whose identity is a mystery, researchers say. The lines read, "I give thanks to you and I call upon you, the Baktiotha: The great one, who is very trustworthy; the one who is lord over the forty and the nine kinds of serpents," according to the translation.
Mummy-Making Began Long Before Pharaohs
"The Baktiotha is an ambivalent figure. He is a great power and a ruler of forces in the material realm," Choat and Gardner said at a conference, before their book on the codex was published.
Historical records indicate that church leaders regarded the Sethians as heretics and by the 7th century, the Sethians were either extinct or dying out.
This codex, with its mix of Sethian and Orthodox Christian invocations, may in fact be a transitional document, written before all Sethian invocations were purged from magical texts, the researchers said. They noted that there are other texts that are similar to the newly deciphered codex, but which contain more Orthodox Christian and fewer Sethian features.
The researchers believe that the invocations were originally separate from 27 of the spells in the codex, but later, the invocations and these spells were combined, to form a "single instrument of ritual power," Choat told Live Science in an email.
Who would have used it?
The identity of the person who used this codex is a mystery. The user of the codex would not necessarily have been a priest or monk.
"It is my sense that there were ritual practitioners outside the ranks of the clergy and monks, but exactly who they were is shielded from us by the fact that people didn't really want to be labeled as a "magician,'" Choat said.
Some of the language used in the codex suggests that it was written with a male user in mind, however, that "wouldn't have stopped a female ritual practitioner from using the text, of course," he said.
Origin
The origin of the codex is also a mystery. Macquarie University acquired it in late 1981 from Michael Fackelmann, an antiquities dealer based in Vienna. In "the 70s and early 80s, Macquarie University (like many collections around the world) purchased papyri from Michael Fackelmann," Choat said in the email.
But where Fackelmann got the codex from is unknown. The style of writing suggests that the codex originally came from Upper Egypt.
"The dialect suggests an origin in Upper Egypt, perhaps in the vicinity of Ashmunein/Hermopolis," which was an ancient city, Choat and Gardner write in their book.
The codex is now housed in the Museum of Ancient Cultures at Macquarie University in Sydney.
Originally published on Live Science.
8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries8 Rulers of Ancient Egypt: Most Precise Timeline RevealedThe 7 Most Mysterious Archaeological Finds on Earth
Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://news.discovery.com/history/ancient-egypt/ancient-egyptian-handbook-of-spells-deciphered-141124.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Saturday, November 22, 2014
Roughly 9,000 years ago, humans had mastered farming to the point where food was plentiful. Populations boomed, and people began moving into large settlements full of thousands of people. And then, abruptly, these proto-cities were abandoned for millennia. It's one of the greatest mysteries of early human civilization.
The dawn of the age of agriculture falls during the "Neolithic," also known as the late stone age. At that time, about 12,000 years ago, people had already developed incredibly sophisticated stone tools, weapons, and clay vessels for cooking and storage. And when they found seeds that grew into particularly delicious plants, they took them along on their treks, planting them in river valleys on their route, so that they would have a tasty harvest the following year.
Earth Shots: Must-See Planet Pics
Once these informal farms had gotten a little bigger, it started to seem less advantageous to keep roaming when there was so much food in one place. In the Levant area along the eastern Mediterranean, nomadic groups who had once lived by hunting and gathering began settling down in small villages for part of the year.
The Rise and Fall of the Mega-Village
As people accumulated more food stores, women began giving birth to more children. Nomadic groups of 20 or 30 people became villages of 200. And some of those villages, like Çatalhöyük in the region today known as central Turkey, grew to a few thousand people.
It's hard to say what, exactly, Çatalhöyük was. Was it a city or just some kind of bizarre, outsized village? We know it lasted for millennia, with thousands of people living there continuously from about 7500 BCE to 5700 BCE. Perhaps we might say that was the closest thing to a city in the Neolithic, since hundreds more people lived there than in typical villages nearby. But it had none of the features we associate with the grand, walled cities that emerged thousands of years later in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
There were no palaces, no massive ziggurats or pyramids dedicated to the gods, and no signs of class distinction. Every family had a small, slightly rectangular one-room home with a hearth. Each home was roughly the same size. Streets didn't exist in Çatalhöyük — homes were erected next to each other, honeycomb-style, and people just walked over each other's roofs to get home through doors in their ceilings. Though there was art, there was no writing. And there was little in the way of specialized labor. Unlike in ancient Uruk or Mohenjo-Daro, there were no cottage industries in bead-making or weapons production. Families lived by hunting, but mostly by keeping farms and small herds of animals like goats in the nearby hills.
PHOTOS: Gourmet Astronauts: Favorite Space Food
Maybe Çatalhöyük didn't look much like cities as we know them, but it and other mega-sites were the most developed forms of settlement anywhere in the world at that time. They were the urban developments of their age, sheltering huge populations and fostering technological progress like cooking with dairy and making fired pottery (both were major high tech inventions in the Neolithic).
Here's where things get weird. In the mid-5000s BCE, Çatalhöyük was suddenly abandoned. The same thing happened to several other outsized village-cities in the Levant. Their populations drained away, and people returned to small village life for thousands of years. Below, you can see a graph showing how the size of settlements dropped dramatically about 7,000 years ago (5000 BCE).
Even more mysterious is the fact that we see a similar pattern — intensification of farming, booming population, growing settlements, and abandonment — elsewhere in the world. Farming came later to Western Europe and England, so we see this cycle starting roughly 5,000 years ago (around 3,000 BCE) in many European regions and in England.
What happened?
http://news.discovery.com/human/life/how-farming-almost-destroyed-ancient-human-civilization-141118.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Roughly 9,000 years ago, humans had mastered farming to the point where food was plentiful. Populations boomed, and people began moving into large settlements full of thousands of people. And then, abruptly, these proto-cities were abandoned for millennia. It's one of the greatest mysteries of early human civilization.
The dawn of the age of agriculture falls during the "Neolithic," also known as the late stone age. At that time, about 12,000 years ago, people had already developed incredibly sophisticated stone tools, weapons, and clay vessels for cooking and storage. And when they found seeds that grew into particularly delicious plants, they took them along on their treks, planting them in river valleys on their route, so that they would have a tasty harvest the following year.
Earth Shots: Must-See Planet Pics
Once these informal farms had gotten a little bigger, it started to seem less advantageous to keep roaming when there was so much food in one place. In the Levant area along the eastern Mediterranean, nomadic groups who had once lived by hunting and gathering began settling down in small villages for part of the year.
The Rise and Fall of the Mega-Village
As people accumulated more food stores, women began giving birth to more children. Nomadic groups of 20 or 30 people became villages of 200. And some of those villages, like Çatalhöyük in the region today known as central Turkey, grew to a few thousand people.
It's hard to say what, exactly, Çatalhöyük was. Was it a city or just some kind of bizarre, outsized village? We know it lasted for millennia, with thousands of people living there continuously from about 7500 BCE to 5700 BCE. Perhaps we might say that was the closest thing to a city in the Neolithic, since hundreds more people lived there than in typical villages nearby. But it had none of the features we associate with the grand, walled cities that emerged thousands of years later in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
There were no palaces, no massive ziggurats or pyramids dedicated to the gods, and no signs of class distinction. Every family had a small, slightly rectangular one-room home with a hearth. Each home was roughly the same size. Streets didn't exist in Çatalhöyük — homes were erected next to each other, honeycomb-style, and people just walked over each other's roofs to get home through doors in their ceilings. Though there was art, there was no writing. And there was little in the way of specialized labor. Unlike in ancient Uruk or Mohenjo-Daro, there were no cottage industries in bead-making or weapons production. Families lived by hunting, but mostly by keeping farms and small herds of animals like goats in the nearby hills.
PHOTOS: Gourmet Astronauts: Favorite Space Food
Maybe Çatalhöyük didn't look much like cities as we know them, but it and other mega-sites were the most developed forms of settlement anywhere in the world at that time. They were the urban developments of their age, sheltering huge populations and fostering technological progress like cooking with dairy and making fired pottery (both were major high tech inventions in the Neolithic).
Here's where things get weird. In the mid-5000s BCE, Çatalhöyük was suddenly abandoned. The same thing happened to several other outsized village-cities in the Levant. Their populations drained away, and people returned to small village life for thousands of years. Below, you can see a graph showing how the size of settlements dropped dramatically about 7,000 years ago (5000 BCE).
Even more mysterious is the fact that we see a similar pattern — intensification of farming, booming population, growing settlements, and abandonment — elsewhere in the world. Farming came later to Western Europe and England, so we see this cycle starting roughly 5,000 years ago (around 3,000 BCE) in many European regions and in England.
What happened?
http://news.discovery.com/human/life/how-farming-almost-destroyed-ancient-human-civilization-141118.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Friday, November 14, 2014
Researchers have just sequenced the genomes of 17 “supercentarians” -- people over 110 years of age -- and conclude that these long-lived individuals likely have genes that promote longevity, but the fountain of youth component remains elusive so far.
The good news, or bad, depending on how you look at it, is that lifestyle choices don’t seem to matter much for those hoping to reach such advanced ages, according to the study, which is published in the latest issue of PLOS ONE.
The Oldest Living Things in the World: Photos
“Lifestyle choices in terms of smoking, alcohol consumption, exercise, or diet do not appear to differ between centenarians and controls,” wrote Hinco Gierman and colleagues. “Controls” in this case refers to younger people who served as comparisons.
That aspect isn’t too surprising, given all of the interviews with people aged 100+ who say they still enjoy a glass of wine, a cigar or other indulgence, although most indicate that they do such things in moderation.
Gierman, of the Stanford University Departments of Developmental Biology and Genetics, and his team limited the majority of their analysis to 13 genomes from Caucasian females, just to avoid other major differences that might exist between various genomes.
The researchers suspect that super old people may be “enriched for a rare protein-altering variant” or variants that confer extreme longevity.
A possibility for the fountain-of-youth source is a gene called TSHZ3.
“From our gene-based analysis, the gene showing the most enrichment for protein-altering variants in supercentenarians compared to controls was the TSHZ3 transcription-factor gene,” the researchers wrote.
“Because it was the top hit,” they added, “we pursued this gene further in a study consisting of 99 genomes from subjects aged 98–105 years old. We found that TSHZ3 carried protein-altering variants in more of the long-lived subjects than the controls.”
The effect wasn’t incredibly strong, though. Instead, the researchers now suspect that multiple genes somehow come into play.
An interesting finding is that one of the supercentarians had a disease-associated genetic variant associated with a terrible heart condition. Some people with this pathogenic allele keel over from sudden cardiac death. Clearly that didn’t happen to this woman, who reached a ripe old age.
Oldest Human Ancestor Found in Lake Sludge
Cancer risk also seems to be lessened for supercentarians. The researchers report that there is a 19 percent lifetime incidence of cancer in the world’s oldest people compared to 49 percent in normal population.
The scientists have made their new data available on Google Genomics, so anyone researching longevity can have a go at finding the key, or keys, to a long life.
They concluded, “Supercentarians are extremely rare and their genomes could hold secrets for the genetic basis of extreme longevity.”
Photo: A 95-year-old Chilean man smiling. Credit: Diego Grez, Flickr
http://news.discovery.com/human/genetics/worlds-oldest-people-are-genetically-superior-141112.htm#mkcpgn=rssnws1
Friday, November 7, 2014
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Monday, November 3, 2014
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)