ThinkingShift

I’ve collected some choice stories for ThinkingShift’s How Curious! regular feature. Our world can still be wondrous, bizarre, amusing and touching despite all the cruelty that goes on.

Dinosaur did it. Our first story suggests that giant pterodactyls might still be cruising the skies or that a Washington man pulled over by police has been smoking the whacky tobaccy. A 29-year old dude smashed his car into a streetlight at 11.20pm. The cops arrived and this dude’s excuse - one word - pterodactyl. Now this guy might have been smoking magic mushrooms but reports of giant winged creatures have come out of Africa and people in Texas in 1976 reported sightings of enormous flying creatures with faces like cats. Texas: mmm…isn’t this the home state of Prez Bush? Say no more! So next time you’re faced with explaining things to the cops, simply say the pterodactyl did it. Source: Fortean Times

We’re not that smart. Apparently, the Boskops were smarter than us. The Boskops were early humans who lived in southern Africa between 30,000 and 10,000 years ago. Fossil records tell us they were similar to modern humans but with child-like faces and huge melon-shaped heads that encased a brain 30% larger than our own. And according to a cognitive scientist, the Boskops probably had a mental life beyond anything we can imagine - fabulous memories, more insightful and self-reflective than modern humans. But the jury’s still out on this question as far as I can tell: if they were so smart, why are they extinct? Source: Discover Magazine

Melting mole. Should you need to bore your way through ice, grab the nearest mole. In Antarctica, there are hairless pink mole-like creatures that have body temperatures of 110 degrees. They live in labyrinthine tunnels under the ice and bore their way through ice with their heads, melting it along the way to scoffing a penguin or two. The bony plates on the animals’ heads radiates heat, melting ice so that poor penguins fall through and become dinner. Source: Discover Magazine.

Knut: psychopathic bear. Knut’s a pretty famous and cute polar bear who lives at Berlin Zoo. I have to admit I don’t visit zoos because I hate to see animals as spectator sport, for humans to ogle at. And Knut’s keepers now say that Knut has turned into a publicity seeking psychopath and “a combination of abused child-soldier and abused child-star — treated as a useful spectacle, with too little regard for his long-term psychological well-being”. Apparently, he chucks a hissy fit if he’s not the centre of attention. Sad. Source: The Atlantic.

Caffeine to the rescue. I gave up coffee in January, well reduced my intake really. Maybe that was a bad move. Because it seems that caffeine might just protect the brain from dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body. The ‘brain blood barrier’ is a filter which protects the central nervous system from harmful chemicals and cholesterol apparently makes this barrier leaky. Caffeine appears to stabilise this barrier. No word on how many coffees per day or whether they can be my beloved vanilla-flavoured lattes. Wonder if caffeine would make our brains grow to the size of the Boskops?! Source: BBC News

Since I was on a bit of a theme earlier this week around death, let’s have a look at what one Egyptologist is up to. Should you be thinking of donating your body to science, you might want to stipulate that you’d like to be placed in the hands of Egyptologists keen to recreate authentic Egyptian mummies and sprinkle you with a mountain of natron.

I’m not sure that a US man who snuffed it 13 years ago had this in mind when he donated his body to the pursuit of science, but he was handed over to Bob Brier, an Egyptologist at Long Island University and Ronald Wade, director of the Maryland State Anatomy Board. Brier and Wade set to work. They removed and pickled all the organs except the heart, buried the body under a ton of natron (which basically dried out the corpse) for 30 days. Then they sprinkled the dessicated body with frankincense and myrhh (an important part of the embalming process as well as making mummies smell pretty good).

Brier and Wade took the whole thing seriously even reciting sacred prayers as they wrapped the body tightly with pieces of linen. Herodotus did a brief sketch in The Histories of the mummification process and of course Hollywood movies were full of hooks going up the nasal cavity to scoop out the brain with Anubis watching over the ritual. But this is the first time in over 2000 years that mummification according to Egyptian techniques has been tried.

Brier examined hundreds of x-rays of mummies to try to reverse engineer things like how to drain the body of blood or remove the organs through a small incision in the belly. I won’t tell you the gruesome details of how they used a coat-hanger device to liquify the brain and inverted the body. The modern day mummy has now been sitting around at room temperature for nearly 15 years with no signs of decay.

In a rather bizarre case of KM in action, Brier offered up the mummy to other researchers so they could learn how to isolate DNA from the body without destroying mummified remains. This helped Angelique Corthals, a biomedical Egyptologist from the University of Manchester in England, determine the best way to isolate DNA from ancient specimens. The Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt (which Egyptologist, Zahi Hawass heads up and I love to watch on the Discovery Channel) was confident enough to let Corthals extract samples of DNA from an Egyptian mummy believed to be that of Queen Hatshepsut. Preliminary evidence suggests that the lost queen of Egypt has been found.

Well, when I go, I might just consider offering myself up as a modern day mummy. Thousands of years from now, when they dig me up, they might just think I was royalty launching myself into the After Life!

Source: Discover Magazine. Image credit: How are Mummies Made?

In Australia, we have a saying - “only in America” - meaning it could only happen in America, the land of the free, the bizarre, the (insert whatever word you like). But I have to admit Australia is giving the US a run for its money with our first How Curious story.

Pick up a new skill! If you’re thinking of expanding your skill base, you might consider taking up an Australian company’s offer - be a real life tester for condoms. Reuters tells us that Durex Australia is advertising for condom testers with the snappy advertising line of “Got what it takes to be an official condom tester?” (Mmmm…what’s an unofficial condom tester?). No doubt with a smirk on his face, the company’s Marketing Manager says: “With this job on your CV, it really will be a chance to brag to your mates about the special skills you possess, not to mention that your new role will work wonders with the opposite sex”.

Should you be interested in this “bed-testing position”, you stand the chance to win $AU1,000. Are you up for it?

Fancy a trip to Mars? If you’re in the mood to follow up condom testing with a bit of simulation, then the European Space Agency is looking for you. You’ll need 520 spare days to take part in a simulated mission to the Red Planet. You’ll be able to munch on “astronaut food”, experience the 40 minute delays in transmissions back to Earth; and hunker down in very, very isolated conditions. Once you reach Mars, you’ll be able to check out a faux landscape and it might be handy to speak Russian as the simulation will be carried out in a facility in Moscow. No word yet on whether volunteers will also be able to try out NASA’s new Russian-built US$19 million toilet! Photo credit: NASA images. Source: Space.com.

Check what’s in your freezer before you invite guests! A story from Reuters out of Brussels is extremely curious. A Belgian man threw a dinner party but forgot to tell his guests not to look in the freezer. One guest went to put leftovers in the freezer and found….the bodies of the man’s wife and son. Apparently, the couple argued a lot.

Look carefully at your cat. I have a vicarious cat - the moggy belongs to my next door neighbour. Said cat has 18 toes; I checked it out myself at the risk of being clawed. But UK cat, Des, is very special - he has 26 toes - 7 on his front paws and 6 on the back paws. Apparently, cats with extra digits were once very common in the area around the old county of Cardiganshire and were known as “Cardi-cats”. (Did they ever think to check what was in the cats’ milk in Cardiganshire?!) Des is a bit temperamental - I would be too if I had 26 toes and rather odd-looking, glowing eyes. But maybe it’s not Des’ best photo angle.

Source: BBC News. Photo credit: BBC News.

Is Mickey Mouse a lot older than we thought? Mickey was created in 1928…but maybe not. The Discovery Channel had a wonderful piece that I couldn’t resist sharing with you. In 900AD, a French artist created a bronze brooch that looks like…well, Mickey Mouse. This amazing find was unearthed at Uppåkra in southern Sweden. Although it might remind us of the iconic mouse, archaeologists say it represents a lion. Source: Discovery Channel. Photo credit: Discovery Channel.

This is very cool: Rome Reborn 1.0 is the world’s biggest computer simulation of an ancient city. Just released, an international team of archaeologists, architects and computer specialists from Italy, the US, UK and Germany have built a digital model of ancient Rome. Virtual Rome depicts the multi-cultural imperial city at its peak in 320 AD, under the Emperor Constantine and when Rome boasted one million inhabitants. Rome Reborn 1.0 shows almost the entire city within the 13-mile-long Aurelian Walls as it appeared at the time.

At the moment, video clips and still images of Rome Reborn 1.0 are available, but as the model is further populated, users will be able to navigate through the model, visiting classical buildings like the Colosseum or take a quick peek into the Roman Senate. Virtual Rome has been sourced from ancient maps and building catalogues, which revealed information about apartment buildings, private houses, inns, storage facilities, bakeries and so on.

The World Monuments Fund (WMF) has just announced its 2008 Watch list of the 100 endangered cultural and historical sites around the world. The WMF has a long history of working to protect and save cultural, historical and archaeological sites that are threatened by war or natural disaster, urban development, vandalism and neglect, and appearing for the first time on its Watch list: global climate change. The list is announced every 2 years and is compiled by an independent panel of experts who investigate sites of all types—from ancient to modern. “Monuments” can be archaeological sites; residential, civic, commercial, military, or religious architecture; cultural landscapes; and townscapes.

The WMF has done some great work. Since the Watch List was first launched in 1996, more than 75% of the sites have been saved or intervention has halted the inevitable decline into dust.

So what sites are endangered? you can go here yourself to find all 100 sites (including photos) because if I include them all, this would be the longest blog post in history probably! So I’ll only include a selection of sites and leave you to explore the rest. I’ll start off with my own country: Australia:

• Dampier Rock Art Complex, Australia: 10,000 BC to present. Third time on Watch List. Industrial development is the threat. Australian Aboriginals carved petroglyphs into the region’s numerous rock faces and outcroppings, giving this region the largest corpus of rock art in the world, with up to one million engravings. The site has been relisted for 2008 because the threat of industrial development of the area still hangs over it.
  
• Brener Synagogoe, Moises Ville, Argentina: 1909. First year on Watch List and threatened by lack of maintenance and lack of resources. This synagogue was the primary place of worship for the Jewish community for some 70 years. It is an important symbol of the community’s history and its founders - the judios gauchos (or Jewish Cowboys).The current state of the building has forced its closure to the public.
• Al-Azhar Mosque, Fez, Morocco: 12th Century. First year on Watch List. I’ve actually been here, so was saddened to see its appearance on the list. The mosque is in the centre of Fez and is an example of the austere Almohad style of architecture. The Almohad’s were a dynasty that ruled parts of North Africa and Spain between 1130 and 1269. The threat to the mosque comes from structural instability most likely caused by several adjoining houses collapsing onto the mosque in 2006.
• Pella Macedonian Tombs, Pella, Greece: 4th-2nd Centuries BC. First year on Watch List and endangered by climate fluctuations, humidity and structural weakness. These subterranean tombs tell us about the design and construction methods of this period, which is knowledge lost to the world. The best-known tomb of this style is that of King Philip II, father of Alexander the Great.
• Leh Old Town, Leh, India: 15th-17th Centuries. First year on Watch list, mainly due to development pressures and climate change. The Old Town of Leh was the capital of the once-independent Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh. It is a rare example of an intact historic Tibeto-Himalayan urban settlement. 55% of the 189 historic buildings are in poor condition, victims of seismic activity and the impacts of climate change, which is producing heavy rainfalls, and accelerating the deterioration.
• Modern Shanghai, China: 1920-1949. First appearance on list due to rapid urbanisation and development. Located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, Shanghai is China’s primary economic centre. Between WWI and WWII, many famous architects experimented with ideas around space and form, new or unusual building materials - this resulted in an eclectic mix of modernity and traditionalism. Examples of buildings by architects such as Alexander Leonard, Laszlo Hudec and Doon Da You are at risk - the 1933 Grand Theatre and Dr Wu’s villa of Hudec being vulnerable. Although preservation of historic buildings is happening, there is a lack of awareness of the importance and richness of recent architecture from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.
• Scott’s Hut and the Explorer Heritage of Antarctica: 1899-1917. First appearance on list. Reason? climate change impacts, snow and ice build-up. Robert Falcon Scott, of course, was involved in a legendary race to become the first person to reach the South Pole, up against Norwegian Roald Amundsen. Scott left behind his prefabricated, seaweed-insulated wooden cabin, along with some scientific equipment - but he never returned to camp having died on the return journey. And the cabin was later occupied by Sir Ernest Shackleton during his Imperial Trans Arctic expedition of 1914-1917. Supplies from both the Scott and Shackleton remain as historic artefacts and witness to the heroic age of Antarctic exploration.
• Herschel Island, Yukon Territory, Canada: 1890-1907. First time on list due to climate change impacts - rising sea levels; eroding coastline; melting permafrost. Herschel Island was first inhabited a millennium ago by the Thule ancestors of the present-day Inuit. After the discovery of whales, the island became a major hub for commercial whaling and the first European/American settlement in the 19th Century. Many whaling related historic structures still stand and numerous archaeological sites of the Thule and Inuit are scattered over the island. Sea levels have risen 10-20 centimetres in the past century; sea ice is disappearing; and the island has experienced violent storms that are battering the landscape.
• Historic Route 66, Chicago, IL, Los Angeles, CA: 1926-1970. First appearance on Watch List due to development pressures and general abandonment. I presume this is the Route 66 of song fame. Route 66 was originally a series of disconnected, unpaved local and state roads, which were commissioned to become part of the first Federal effort to develop a national US highway system. Route 66 facilitated westward mobility and was known for its roadside culture. During the 1930s Depression, the route was an escape from the so-called Dustbowl of the Midwest. It’s a symbolic image of American culture often referred to in literature, music and films.

Like the endangered species I recently blogged about, let’s hope these endangered cultural sites don’t meet a similar fate. Take the time to have a look at all 100 sites: it’s an eye-opener.

Apparently, a chook beat Columbus to America. Well, some chickens hitching a ride on a boat sailed to the Americas by Polynesian voyagers:)- Chilean archaeologists have dug up chicken bones at a site on the Arauco Peninsula in south-central Chile and sent the bones to the University of Auckland, New Zealand for carbon-dating and DNA testing.

The 50 chicken bones from at least five individual birds date from between 1321 and 1407 - around 100 years before the arrival of Europeans. And apparently this date range coincides with the colonization of the easternmost islands of Polynesia, including Pitcairn and Easter Island - the latter being a likely launch spot for a voyage to South America, which would have taken less than two weeks. The Chilean chicken DNA is genetically identical to prehistoric samples from Tonga and American Samoa, and a near identical match to Easter Island DNA samples.

It’s been hotly contested for many years that Polynesians beat Europeans to the Americas, but seems the humble chook bones just might be the first direct evidence and certainly shows that the chicken was introduced before the arrival of Europeans. Curiously, modern-day South Americans show no signs of Polynesian ancestry but apparently the Polynesians preferred to settle only on uninhabited islands. If they found other people already there, they’d push off back home.

The discovery of the Americas gets curiouser and curiouser the more you look into it. In 2003, a sun-drenched landscape in Mexico became a battleground when geoarchaeologists maintained that 160 pockmarks in a quarry were human footprints. The problem is the footprints are some 30,000 years older than they should be. These footprints are hotly contested as they may refute the conventional theory of the peopling of the Americas, which has its origins in the 1920s and suggests that big-game hunters from north-east Asia crossed the Bering land bridge linking Siberia and Alaska about 13,400 years ago and became the ancestors of modern-day Native Americans. These big-game hunters are known as the Clovis people (named after a site in Mexico where their distinctive tools were discovered). There is some evidence to suggest that human occupation occured at least 1000 years before the Clovis hunters arrived. But to claim that humans were roaming the Americas 30,000 years earlier still is shaping up to be a controversial issue.

Then there’s the 9300 year skeleton found in Oregon in the mid-1990s and other evidence that points to the possibility that east Asians may have arrived by foot and boat, along with European companions at least 25,000 years ago.

Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian sailor and anthropologist (who became well-known for his Kon-Tiki voyage in the 1940s) put forward the argument that a bunch of Egyptian pyramid experts schlepped across the Atlantic on a papyrus boat pre-2000 BC, landed in Central America and taught the indigenous population the art of pyramid building - hence the supposed similarity between Central American pyramid-style structures and the Egyptian pyramids.

Other theories suggest that the Americas were discovered by: the Lost Tribes of Israel; the Cathaginians; St Brendan the Navigator; the Chinese on a junk boat; the Viking, Erik the Red; Amerigo Vespucci; John Cabot (the latter two I’ve blogged about before).

Seems the name of the actual discoverer of the Americas has been lost in the mists of time, but I’m voting for the chook!

In an earlier post, I explored curiousity and asked whether we are still curious in our contemporary world stuffed full of information and abundance. And has our natural inquisitiveness been squelched by living and trying to survive in a world fraught with terrorism, crime, violence and choice, choice, choice?

In my research and wanderings, I come across stories that I find curious, bizarre or touching. So I’ve decided to collect these for a new, regular ThinkingShift feature - How Curious! if you’re not a curious person, then read no further. But for those who want to learn about how our world can still be a haven for the inquiring mind or can still delight us, read on! And feel free to leave a comment if you know of a curious story.

First up, a bird who brings new meaning to the word hatchback. A very confused seagull in Inverness, Scotland has decided that the roof of a car, parked in the airport’s long-term carpark, makes a very good nesting place. Apparently, a French car (Citroen) provides a comfortable flat surface for incubating eggs. No word on whether the owner of the car has returned to find a seagull happily ensconced.

Are you descended from Genghis Khan? well, maybe not. But 16 million Asian men can lay claim to being descended from the Mongul conquerer - but nyet Russian men. Geneticists found an interesting cluster of Y-chromosomes in 18 nations across North Eurasia and discovered closely-related lines, which fanned from a common ancestor. The cluster originated in Mongolia about 1000 years ago and its distribution pattern was within the boundaries of the Mongol Empire. Based on this evidence, researchers have concluded that there is a Genghiside dynasty but for some reason men from the Genghis Khan clan left no genetic trace in Russia. Very curious indeed!

Being a chocoholic, my curiousity was well and truly piqued by news that chocolate toothpaste can fight tooth decay. Wouldn’t it be great to hear your dentist say “now, floss and eat plenty of chocolate.” Apparently, an extract of cocoa powder that occurs naturally in chocolate might be an effective natural alternative to fluoride in toothpaste. The extract is a white crystal powder whose chemical makeup is similar to caffeine and helps harden tooth enamel. A peppermint flavoured prototype, with the cavity-fighting cocoa extract added, is being tested. I’d sure be a willing guinea pig for the chocolate flavoured variety!

For the history buffs: when President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address in 1863, he may have been in the early stages of a life-threatening illness. The current issue of the Journal of Medical Biography has a report by two researchers at the University of Texas, who have concluded that Lincoln suffered from a serious form of smallpox, a disease that was rampant in the United States at the time. Lincoln appeared to present with the clinical features of variola major - high fever, weakness, severe head and back pain, prostration, skin eruptions. Possibly Lincoln’s physicians kept the severity of the disease from the President so that ultimately the public would not be alarmed during the turmoil of the American Civil War. Lincoln recovered and led the country through to the conclusion of the conflict, before being assassinated in 1865. When Dr Washington Chew Van Bibber (love the name!) finally told Lincoln that he had “a touch of the varioloid” (old-fashioned name for smallpox), Lincoln is said to have quipped: “How interesting“.

And for the archaeology buffs: in a wonderful piece of serendipity, Belgian archaeologists have “accidentally” found the tomb of an Egyptian courtier who lived around 4000 years ago. While excavating a later burial site at the Deir al-Barsha necropolis near the Nile Valley town of Minya, south of Cairo, the archaeologists stumbled onto the tomb of Henu, an estate manager and high-ranking official during the first intermediate period (2181-2050 BC). Henu’s preserved mummy was still wrapped in linen, inside a large wooden coffin and sarcophagus, decorated with hieroglyphic texts addressed to the Egyptian gods Anubis and Osiris.

And finally: if you happen to have a stuffed whippet, the Lowry gallery at Salford Quays, UK would love to hear from you. The gallery is hosting an exhibition on the myths of northern life and is missing one vital element - a stuffed whippet. Say what?? Apparently, the exhibition is a tongue-in-cheek review featuring terraced streets, smoking chimney, driving rain, flat caps and whippets. Perhaps some UK ThinkingShift readers could enlighten us as to the curious meaning of whippets in this?

Being a closet Egyptologist and a die-hard fan of Zahi Hawass, I had to weigh into this fracas. Zahi Hawass is head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt - you might have seen him on the History Channel talking passionately about Egypt’s history. He’s quite a character and brings Ancient Egypt back to life. Nefertiti of course was the glamorous Queen of Egypt in the 14th Century BC and was said to be the most beautiful woman of her time. Her name means “a beautiful woman has arrived”.

The elegant Queen’s bust was unearthed in an artist’s studio in 1912 in Amarna by German archaeologist, Ludwig Borchardt and, according to the terms of a 1913 agreement, Nefertiti was spirited off to Germany and today can be viewed in Berlin’s Altes Museum and she is considered “German property”. Don’t know about you but somehow I just don’t equate Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt with Berlin! But the museum apparently considers that Nefertiti has become an integral part of the cultural identity of Germany and Hitler described the bust as a true treasure (mmm….last time I checked there were no Egyptian pharaohs in German history).

In fact, the Berliner Zeitung newspaper has defended Germany’s stance by saying: “The bust has been above ground and visible in Berlin for much longer than it ever was in Egypt…She has become the epitome of slimly modern beauty, the ideal of self-confident modern womanhood“. This is utter stupidity if you ask me. Nefertiti is a symbol of another time, another culture, half a world away from Germany.

The Germans claim legal ownership but Zahi Hawass and the Egyptians want her back. No doubt there would be issues about fragility of the bust of Nefertiti but many Egyptian artefacts have been sent on world tours. I remember seeing King Tut in Australia many years ago in all his golden glory. So I’m not convinced that Nefertiti is too fragile to make the trip back to Egypt. With appropriate temperature control and some savvy curators and archaeologists on the case, surely there’s a safe way to accompany her home?

Although museums do great work, they have also been implicated in illegally obtaining artefacts. Have a read of Roger Atwood’s great book, Stealing History, to learn just how far-reaching and entrenched the illicit trade in antiquities really is. No-one is saying that the Altes Museum has been dabbling in spurious claims or dark activities, but I for one cannot understand why Nefertiti cannot return home to Egypt where she is such an important part of the Egyptian psyche. And this question of legal ownership: surely the Egyptians have the legal claim to ownership despite Borchardt’s discovery? But since Nefertiti attracts tourist dollars, legal ownership is probably not the real issue.

This is shaping up to be a heated cat fight, with Zahi Hawass declaring that Egypt will never again organise antiquities exhibitions in Germany (can’t say I blame him). I was quite horrified to discover that in 2003, the Berlin museum allowed artists to temporarily attach Nefertiti’s bust to a bronze statue of a naked woman. This is disrespect to Egypt and its history I would have thought. Naturally, a row broke out between Egypt and Germany as a result.

I’m currently reading a book (which I’ll do a future post on) about the British Empire and what people on the eastern fringes of the Empire collected (in Egypt and India). The curiosities collected often formed sizable and valuable collections, which vanished or were scattered following the death of the collector. This is similar to what has happened to Egypt’s antiquities with private collectors and museums around the world laying claim. Zahi Hawass has made it his mission to bring together Egypt’s treasures and you gotta love him for that.

Egyptian antiquities on loan include The Zodiac ceiling from the Dendera Temple, currently located at the Louvre in Paris; the statue of Hemiunu, an architect of the Great Pyramid, housed in the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum in Germany; and the statue of Ankhaf, under whose rule the Chepren Pyramid was constructed, housed in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. Hawass quite naturally believes all these artefacts should be returned permanently to Egypt.

The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which is responsible for Berlin’s art treasures, has ruled out Nefertiti’s return to Egypt saying that the “3,000 year lady is travel weary“. Sounds like a pathetic excuse to me and really it must be Egypt that is weary of trying to have its cultural heritage returned to it. However, there is a campaign brewing that should help Hawass - Nefertiti Travels - which is calling for a public debate on the fracas. If you ask me about Nefertiti, my response is - Germany: Return to Sender.

Always on the lookout for the curious and interesting, I came across this article in National Geographic. Have you ever wondered how people in the ancient world kept from being on the nose without all our modern day accoutrements like roll-on deodorants and spray on perfumes?

Wonder no more - Italian archaeologists, nosing around on the island of Cyprus, have just announced they have discovered the world’s oldest known perfumes. In a marvellous piece of sychronicity, Cyprus is of course reputed to be the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, lust and beauty. And perfume of course is closely linked to romance and love.

Remants of the perfumes were found inside a 3,230m² factory that was part of a larger industrial complex at Pyrgos. An earthquake in 1850 BC shook the factory to the ground, but perfume bottles, mixing jugs and perfume stills were preserved under the collapsed walls.

As someone who has always been on the hunt for that ‘Arabian nights”-style heavy perfume oil that conjures up images of romantic desert nights under the stars (never found BTW: so if you know of one, leave me a comment!) - I was intrigued to know what were the ingredients used to concoct the perfumes.

The team of archaeologists whiffed the perfume remnants and made a study of the remains of the mixing jugs and identified 14 fragrances native to the Mediterranean region used in the perfume production.They found the ancient perfumers used extracts of anise, pine, coriander, bergamot, almond and parsley (not sure about the parsley bit!). They also discovered four fragrance recipes (I sure hope they get clever and find a commercial partner to market them).

The perfumes have now been recreated using techniques described by Pliny the Elder in his writings, which include grinding plants and herbs and mixing these with olive oil, then distilling in a clay apparatus. Lead archaeologist, Maria Rosaria Belgiorno of the National Research Council in Rome, certainly had it right when she said today’s fragrances just don’t compare to the ancient perfume oils: “We have lost the real world of natural fragrances,” she said, “because most of the perfumes of today are chemical reproductions of the natural fragrances and scents.”

Frankly, seems to me we’ve lost a lot in this world, not just the scent of classical perfumes.

I have been reading Roger Atwood’s book Stealing History about the illicit trade in antiquities. Atwood, in a book that is a mix of detective work and historical facts, illuminates the little known world of tomb raiders and the international antiquities dealers who enrich themselves at the expense of humanity’s cultural heritage. Despairingly, I read about looters and plunderers who dig up ancient objects they know will fetch a high price on the black market and who tread on human bones or carelessly shatter pottery that could give archaeologists an understanding of cultural context. Not to mention Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin, who spirited off with the so-called Elgin marbles from the Parthenon in Greece during the 1800s. The heart-wrenching part of the book for me was reading about how archaeologist, Walter Alva, discovered tombs of the Moche elite that tomb raiders had missed after ripping apart a nearby tomb. The Moche were contemporaneous with the Mayans in Peru. Like any good archaeologist, Alva knew that excavating objects in situ and noting surrounding items is critical to the interpretation of objects and the culture that created them. Alva discovered necklaces of fanged cat’s faces; golden beads with spider web patterns; golden rattles that tinkled when worn at the waist; the body of a young girl sprawled face down in the tomb’s cold interior. They told the story of a culture that was capable of creating extraordinarily beautiful and intricate jewellery and artefacts yet, at the same time, was a society capable of bloodthirsty acts of human sacrifice. The Moche’s religious beliefs and what some of the artefacts represented may only ever be partly known to us thanks to unscrupulous and careless thieves who do their work in the shadows of the night.

This led me to reflect on how future archaeologists will view 21st Century life. As they dig up grave sites from our time period, here’s a preliminary list of what they might find and how they’ll interpret what we stood for:

* skeletons of soldiers and weapons found in the area that was known as Iraq - after thousands of years of progression, 21st C people were still war-mongering
* tattered magazines showing (mostly) women with oddly frozen faces and impossibly straight pearly white teeth - 21st C people mutilated themselves with primitive chemicals, underwent bizarre plastic surgery rituals; and worshipped at the altar of Hollywood
* large caverns of space, sometimes with multiple levels - 21st C people congregated in spaces known as “shopping malls” for “retail therapy” because they had lost connectivity with fellow humans and with nature
* a family frozen in time due to a volcanic eruption, sitting in front of a large box - 21st C people had something called a TV or plasma into which they stared for hours on end; perhaps this was a form of therapy as their world was not going so well with climate change, poverty, pollution and other assorted evils…so they had to amuse themselves somehow.

But they may also find beautiful architectural constructions like the one from Thailand in the photo accompanying this post and they’ll conclude perhaps that 21st C people were also capable of astonishing feats of beauty and gentleness when they took the time to stop, think and respect the people and nature they co-existed with.