Archive for 2007
By: The Scribe on June, 2007
Looking at almost any modern coin, it’s rare to find one that contains anything other than this standard decoration: an important civic symbol on one side, and a bust of a ruler on the other. Believe it or not, this traditional coin setup actually began several thousand years ago in ancient Greece.
The first coins to be minted actually came from two places, where the idea of making small metal medallions that could be traded as currency seems to have developed simultaneously. At the end of the 7th century, both China and Lydia had begun to make plain, round coins for trade. The Greek historian Herodotus, in his work the Histories, briefly mentioned that the Lydians were minting coins around 600 BC. Either way, it wasn’t for another 150 years that coins became prominent around the Greek city-states.
Before the Greeks used minted coins, they made use of small iron rods for currency, called ‘obols’. Since around six obols could fit into the hand of an adult, six obols became equivalent of one drachma coin, once the system transferred over to coinage. In ancient Greek, the word drachma actually means “the graspable” – thus making it a logical choice of name.
The island of Aegina was the first place in Greece to mint coins, made out of silver with a very basic geometric shape on either side. Around 500 BC, the Attic drachma had become widely used in the cities, but hadn’t yet spread to the outlying areas. These early Greek coins had Athena’s owl stamped on one side, the head of Athena on the other, and were made of almost pure silver.
The Athenians produced huge quantities of coins during the Classical era, around 450 BC, in order to finance their enormous building projects on the Athenian acropolis. They also needed finances to pay for the Peloponnesian War, and it wasn’t long before Athens was demanding the required tribute payments from surrounding city-states in coinage.
Although the pictures on ancient Greek coins remained the same basically until the rise of Alexander the Great – when he would mint his own coins with his image on them – this means that the artistic history of the ancient Greeks can be traced with these coins, as artists’ techniques and tools developed over several centuries.
Want to read more?
Tomorrow: More great ancient history!
By: The Scribe on June, 2007
Back In 2003, scientists stumbled across the fossilized remains of what has been dubbed the world’s oldest land-dwelling creature. Discovered in eastern Scotland, paleontologists have determined that the fossilized millipede is more than 420 million years old, beating out the previous record of a 400-million-year-old spider-like creature that was also found in Scotland.
The millipede has been dubbed “Pneumodesmus” by scientists, and it was actually discovered by an amateur scientist who found it near the fishing port of Stonehaven, along the coast.
The fossilized remains show a highly developed system of breathing for the creature, which has caused palaeontologists to wonder whether there were even earlier versions of millipedes with more primitive internal systems, suggesting that this one was the result of natural micro-evolutionary processes.
In 2004, a second fossil from around 438 million years ago was discovered in Scotland’s Rhynie, and was inside a piece of old, red sandstone. This fossil is considered the world’s oldest insect, and has been dubbed “Rhyniognatha hirsi”. Although its lack of wings may cause some to wonder whether it should be considered a land creature, the mandible structure is definitely that of an insect.
Since Scotland seems to be the haven for ancient fossilized bugs, scientists are beginning to understand why there is such a plethora of bug life on Earth today. If insects and crawling bugs had a ‘head start’ on over other living creatures millions of years ago, the amount of diversity of insect and bug life certainly begins to make logical sense!
Want to read more?
Tomorrow: A brief history of ancient Greek coins.
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…
Want to read more?
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.
Want to read more?
Tomorrow: Ancient Egyptian Dentistry!
Previous page | Next page
