Archive for June, 2007
By: The Scribe on June, 2007
It appears that ancient Egypt did more than just worry about their hair and clothes… they also had a serious concern about their teeth! Archaeologists working at the site of ancient Saqqara discovered a tomb that was dedicated to three royal dentists over 4,200 years ago.
The dentists’ tombs are constructed out of limestone and mud brick, and each have a series of elaborately carved hieroglyphs and paintings. The tomb of the chief dentist has an inscription actually identifying his name – “Iy Mry” – as well as images depicting himself and his family carrying out ritual sacrifices, playing games together, and making offerings to the dead. A protective curse inscription above the tomb’s entrance reads: “Anyone who enters my tomb will be eaten by a crocodile and a snake.”
The tombs were identifiable as those of dentists’ due to the use of two hieroglyphs above the names of all three men, showing an eye above a tusk. The location of their burial next to the Step Pyramid would have been a place of honor for them, suggesting their practice was given a great deal of respect by the ancient Pharaohs.
The two other dentists, buried in separate tombs next to the chief dentist, also have their names spelled out in hieroglyphs: Kem Msw and Sekhem Ka. They must have all worked together during their lifetimes, which would explain why all three tombs were so close to one another.
According to ancient Egyptian medical papyri, there were actually two classes of dentists in ancient Egypt, the iryw-ibew – literally, “dentists” – which was the lower class of dentists, while the high-class dentists were known as the ir-iryw-ibew, which translates as “great of those who are concerned with teeth”. It is possible that the lower class dentists functioned much like dental hygienists in modern dentistry – there are even surviving descriptions of how to make ancient fillings and cure bad breath!
One ancient Egyptian ‘breath sweetener’ recipe reads as follows:
“Take frankincense, myrrh, cinnamon, bark and other fragrant plants, boil with honey and shape into pellets.”
…sounds like the ancient Egyptians had their own Tic-Tacs…
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Tomorrow: World’s oldest bugs (yes they are still icky)
By: The Scribe on June, 2007
Nostradamus, born under the name Michel de Nostredame, was a French apothecary turned seer, whose book Les Propheties skyrocketed him to cult-like status after his death. Although often credited with predicting major events in the world, many of his “predictions” have been the result of misinterpretations or deliberate mistranslations of his extremely ambiguous quatrains.
As a child, Nostradamus grew up in Southern France’s Saint-Remy-de-Provence with at least eight other brothers and sisters. Although his family was originally Jewish, his father converted to Catholicism before Nostradamus was born. There is very little additional information known about his childhood, however when he was fifteen, Nostradamus attended the University of Avignon for studies. Only a year later, he was forced to leave the school when it was shut down from a plague outbreak, but he would eventually return to school at the University of Montpellier in 1529 to study medicine.
Unfortunately, Nostradamus was expelled from the school when they learned of his time spent as an apothecary before attending the University, which was a trade expressly forbidden by the school statutes. Undeterred, he continued to practice as an apothecary after the expulsion, and anyone wishing to read the expulsion document can actually still do so – it is still on file in the university library!
In 1531, Nostradamus married, but it was only a few years later that his wife and both children died from plague. It was after their death that he began to travel more frequently, often spending time in various places in France and Italy. During one visit to Italy, his interest in medicine began to wane, and in 1550, Nostradamus wrote his own almanac – and, thrilled at its success, continued to write at least one per year for quite some time. With an estimated 6,338 prophesies contained inside the almanacs, high-born officials and nobles soon started seeking out Nostradamus for advice on personal and public matters.
It was after this success that he set out to write a book of a thousand quatrains, which he purposely constructed in an ambiguous manner so as to avoid criticism and attack from religious fanatics. When they were finally published in their final form as one book, Les Propheties, Nostradamus was labeled by many as insane or fake, though the elites of society still seemed to find inspiration in his words. This admiration may have led him to his claim of spiritually inspired writing, and while he did spend time in prison in 1561 for his writings, it was simply because he had neglected to seek the permission of a bishop before publishing his work, as was written in a royal decree for all publications.
Because he did not practice magic to support his prophesies, he could not be persecuted by the Inquisition, as some have suggested, and his relationship with the established church was actually quite jovial. In 1566, Nostradamus passed away after a long battle with gout: a skilled pharmacist, medical professional and self-professed prophet whose works would go on to become some of the most mistranslated writings in the entirety of history.
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Tomorrow: Ancient Egyptian Dentistry!
By: The Scribe on June, 2007
Something North America seems to be famous for is revealing ancient flora… very, very ancient, in fact. In 2007, archaeobotanists working near Gilboa, Ohio, found what may be the world’s oldest known tree – a giant palm that lived around 380 million years ago.
Hearkening back 140 million years before the dinosaurs, and earlier than the Wollemia pine from Australia that may have lived with the dinosaurs, the Wattieza tree fern had a thin palm-like trunk with a top that resembled the fronds of a modern palm tree. It was likely only around 10 meters high during maturity, though this would have been high enough to reach sunlight through the dense forest canopy.
Archaeogeologists have identified this period of time as the Middle Devonian Period, between 397 and 385 million years ago, which is thought to have been an incubator period that saw the development of new reproductive strategies for land plants. Other life at the time included small insects, spiders, and oceanic crustaceans, as identified through fossil remains.
With the rise of land plants, the atmosphere and ecosystem of the entire Earth would have shifted, creating new micro-environments that could have sustained additional smaller plants and insects, eventually storing enough carbon to support an extensive amount of land life.
Previously, the oldest known tree was a plant called Archaeopteris, which had leafy twigs and long roots and branches, very unlike the small fern-leaves and reproductive spores from Wattieza. Archaeopteris was placed in the Late Devonian Period, around 359 million years ago.
The discovery of the world’s oldest tree has managed to shed significant insight into how the Earth’s landscape developed over the course of time, as well as helping to understand how much impact a forest’s growth can have on the rest of an area’s environment. So far, archaeobotanists have realized that it was the growth of these early forests and plant systems that must have paved the way for the sustainable development of early reptilian and mammalian life.
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Tomorrow: Nostradamus…OoOoOoooh
By: The Scribe on June, 2007
Previously here at the Ancient Standard, we brought you a story about a gladiator graveyard recently discovered at the site of the ancient city of Ephesus in Turkey. Now, it appears that forensic analysis of 70 gladiator skeletons has revealed some startling news about gladiator lifestyles – or rather, what they ate during their lives as gladiators.
Instead of conforming to the modern media image of gladiators as muscle-bound Playboys, gladiators in ancient Rome were actually overweight vegetarians – strong and muscular, yes, but with more than a little extra pudge around the middle. Using a method known as elementary microanalysis, palaeoanthropologists were able to determine that ancient gladiators lived off a diet that consisted mainly of barley, beans, and dried fruit.
A simple diet such as this, while increasing bone density and actually allowing the gladiators to become much stronger than normal, would result in a zinc deficiency, causing an imbalance in the gladiator’s internal chemistry. There would be too much of a natural chemical called strontium built up in the body, which would result in the gladiator becoming – rather literally – fat.
Why was this beneficial? Primarily, these layers of fat would have helped to protect their vital organs against piercing blows from opponents. It may have also helped them to heal much more quickly after being injured. Considering that most gladiators only survived for an average of three years in the ring, it was likely the case that gladiators “beefed up” during the fighting seasons and training, and then lost the weight soon after retirement (if they survived that long).
So, as much as Hollywood would like everyone to believe that gladiators were poster boys for fitness, the truth of the matter is that even though they were incredibly strong and relatively attractive men – in fact, unattractive men weren’t even considered for gladiatorial training – they were actually relatively overweight, moreso resembling lightweight sumo wrestlers than Russell Crowe’s movie-gladiator Maximus.
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Tomorrow: 380 Million year old tree…
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