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Showing posts with label ancient history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ancient history. Show all posts


We Don't Hear Nearly Enough About The Epic Female Leaders of the Past, So Today I Wanted to Share the Story of the Warrior Queen Tomyris....
By Mark Skalinski

 Tomyris lived in the 6th century BC and, following the death of her husband, became the widowed leader of the Massagetae: a nomadic warrior-like tribe who lived by cattle herding and fishing along the River Araxes in Central Asia (close to modern day Kazakhstan). According to the ancient historian Herodetus, her people were monotheists who worshipped the sun god and held the unusual custom of offering up their elders to the sun god as sacrifices and even meals "and those who thus end their days are reckoned the happiest". They were said to fight on horseback and foot and favoured battle axes as weapons. The tribe were awe inspiring to behold: "their arms are all either of gold or brass...[with]..belts and girles of gold." Their horses were similarily armoured with breastplates of brass "but..gold about the reins, the bit, the cheekplates."
It is little wonder that her people attracted the attentions of another covetous ruler: Cyrus the Great, the king of Persia.
Cyrus had a fantastic reputation in war and his contemporaries warned his enemies that "'wherever Cyrus directed his attack, [the] people could in no way escape.;" He was keen to conquer the lands of the Massagetae, but he decided first to feign diplomacy by offering Queen Tomyris' hand in marriage. She was suspicious and scoffed at what she saw as an attempt to steal her lands, rejecting his proposal. incensed, Cyrus declared war on the tribe and began a frenzied effort of bridge-building to cross the river Araxes into Tomyris' lands. Seeing this, the queen attempted a last piece of diplomacy;
" '[Cyrus] be content to rule in peace in your own kingdom, and bear us to see reign over the countries that are ours to goven.'" Tomyris declared, "'However, I know you will not choose to hearken to this counsel, since there is nothing you less desirest than peace and quietness, come now, if you are so desirous of meeting the Massagetai in arms, leave your useless toil of bridge-making...'"
She suggested instead that either they would come to him or he to her to fight the battle. 


-Croesus' Crime-


 Initially Cyrus saw the advantages of fighting the Queen's army on his own grounds, but his advisor Croesus instead had a more cunning plan that violated all rules of ancient warfare at the time. He suggested that they send out the weakest section of Cyrus' army to fight the section of the Queen's army she would in turn send out. The Queen's victory would be assured and, jubilant, her army would then have Cyrus' cooks to create a huge banquet for them. The Massagatae would be unused to the foods and - most importantly - wines of Cyrus' culture as they were instead accustomed to drinking only milk. Thus intoxicated and with their guards down the rest of Cyrus' forces would rush forwards in the night and slaughter their way to victory. Keen not to be outdone by a woman, Cyrus approved the plan and it went off without a hitch. Tomyris' own son - Spargapises - was even captured.
Tomyris demanded revenge and sent out an ultimatum:

 "'You bloodthirsty Cyrus, pride not yourself on this poor success: it was the grape-juice ---which when you drink it, makes you so mad, and as you swallow it down brings up to your lips such bold and wicked words -- it was this poison by which you ensnared by child, and so overcame him, not in fair open fight. Now hear what I advise, and we sure I advise you for your good. Restore my son to me and get you from the land unharmed, triumphant over a third part of the host of the Massagetai. Refuse, and I swear by the sun, the sovereign  lord of the Massagetai, bloodthirsty as you are, I will give you your fill of blood.'"

 Before hearing of the ultimatum, Spargapises, realising his predicament, committed suicide. The furious and grieving mother vowed revenge.

-The Furious Battle and the Fallen King-
By Jason Porath
The battle that followed was a long and punishing one that made use of arrows, spears, daggers and battle-axes, crushing thousands under its weight on both sides. The Massagatae gained the upper hand and slaughtered the Persian soldiers without mercy, counting Cyrus himself among the dead.
Hearing of Cyrus' death the Queen pushed ahead to seek out his body on the battlefield and performed a very personal revenge that would forever place her in the hsitory books. It was said that she cut off King Cyrus' head and thrust it into a wineskin filled with blood.

"'See now, I fulfil my threat.'" She declared, "'You have your fill of blood.'"

Apparently Tomyris kept that wineskin with her for the rest of her life in memory of her dead son.
Tomyris has become a legend and it is not known what happened to her after this fateful battle. But she was, and always will be, a key figure in Iranian history.





Other Preludes Posts on Extraordinary Women Throughout History:





  • The Wicked Women of History





  • The Golden-Eyed Lady of Sharh-e Suketh





  • Mary Toft's Rabbits
  • A Cukold By Consent 





  • Fantastic Female Inventors 





  • Bess of Hardwick: The First Lady of Chatsworth 





  •  #herstory

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    Sources

    There are countless social media sites out there for the picking.
    And as sure as you'll be able to pick up 87,000 pictures of One Direction in very slightly different poses, you can also find yourself some pretty awesome history posts too. This week, I wanted to share some of the fascinating, emotional and occasionally creepy history posts that I've found on Pinterest.
    One in a billion....
    From The Meta Picture via Erin McGuire
    Not just the Egyptians..


    From The Meta Picture via Eizabeth Hough


    A US soldier mocks Hitler...
    From Flickr.com via Talyn McFarlane


    Tallest man and shortest man in the world, with an average lady...

    From Buzzfeed.com via Hailea Reign





    Graffiti in the Tower on London...

    From Flickr.com via Charlie Haynes



     Intolerable Cruelty: In 1901 a woman in Poiters, France was found having been confined to her room for 24 years by her mother...
    From imigur.com via Bridgette LaShae
    Damage to the Ribcage from Corset in 19thc London...

    From fuckyeahforensics on Tumblr, via Bridgette LaShae


     Horses are for sissies....

    From Buzzfeed.com via Erika Cucci

    Native American mother and child...


    From Nikon David via Melanie Adamd

    St.Valentius (Wasselden, Germany). The town's church hold's the world's largest collection of fully articulated and bejewelled skeletons...

    From Buzzfeed via NoGames216
    Plan of Nippur. Perhaps one of the most ancient urban images at reduced scale. From the mid-2nd millennium BC

    From Hilprecht Collection, Friedrich Schiller Universitat, Jena. History of Cartography, Vol.I, fig 6.7, via Marcy Ganow


    The Fallen of Mount Everest...

     
    From Buzzfeed.com, via Carmen Elliott


     "Llullaillaco Maiden": a 15 year old girl who was sacrificed during the Inca Empire. It is thought as a mix of religious rite and social control. She was chosen a year prior to her death, fed a ritualistic diet to help her gain weight, drugged and left at the shine at the Volcano Llullaillaco where she died of exposure. Her body was preserved at 82 ft for 500 years and she is thought to be the best preserved Andean mummy ever found...

    From TheLadyGoogle via Rebecca Lacey

    1900s Mother and Child...

    from Flickr.com via Meredith Moran Coronato


    Daredevil...

    Via Kris DayVincent

    I hope that you've enjoyed this instalment. Needless to say, we've barely even scratched the surface of what you can find on Pinterest, so why not take a look for yourself and share your favourite posts in the comments?






    Nowadays we don't really think of short (or long) sightedness as any sort of disability.

    It's commonplace to the point of near invisibility. CBS statistics state that approximately 61% of the population needed some form of sight or reading aids in 2012 (as compared to 57% in 2001). The number only increases as the population weighs in with an increasingly towards older generations and as our lives become more affixed to our screens and books. 
    Take away your glasses and contact lenses, however, and it's soon very clear just how vulnerable you are.

    Usually I'm reminded of this when I go to the hairdressers. They sit me down, I take my glasses off and instantly I'm plunged back into a world of vague fuzzy shapes. I put blind trust in what the hairdresser is snipping away at. While we make small talk I look straight ahead and try not to squint, and I try to give friendly eye contact when I can't actually see her eyes. There's always something unsettling in holding a conversation with a face that, for all intents and purposes, has more in common with Slenderman's than something human.
    I find it hard not to think how difficult life would be without my glasses when I sit in that chair, and how much they enrich my life.

    So how was life like for people before glasses were invented? And who were the people in history who worked to give the precious gift of sight?
     




    There is debate about just how developed ancient eye-correction was.
     
     According to the scholar Edward Rosen, the first known reference to a pair of eyeglasses was in 1305 when Friar Giodarno di Rivolta remarked 'It is not yet twenty years since there was found the art of making eyeglasses which make for good vision, one of the best and most necessary the world has.'  However, the inventive use of lenses and the like to correct faulty vision potentially much older.
     
    Astriophanes (approx 450-385 bc) mentions plan-convex lenses and globes of water that were used to see, and the Roman Seneca is said to have read through a globe of water. However, the use of these aids were not so widespread as to stop a prominent Roman in 100bc from complaining in a letter that he lamented his poor eyesight preventing him from reading. He instead had to rely on his slave reading out any text for him.
     
    While it is not confirmed what its use was, the Nimrud Lens is the oldest known lens found in the world and is dated to somewhere between 4,500-3,500 years old. It's entirely possible that people could have used this to aid them in reading. It is thought that the Romans, Babylonians, Greeks and even Vikings all could create similar lenses of varying quality (thought it is suggested that the vikings instead had these manufactures in the Byzantium empire).
     
    The Nimrud Lens
      
    Eyeglasses as we now know them were likely created in medieval times.

    While the gradual wearing of sight is a common ailment of people as they grow older, it is likely that the increase in reading and scholastic learning in the Medieval period drew more attention and inventiveness to the problem of long-sightedness. In 1289 di'Popozo wrote that "I am so debilita-ted-by age that without the glasses known as spectacles, I would no longer be able to read or write. These have recently been invented for the benefit of poor old people whose sight has become weak"

    Monastic populations were often the focus for the development of eyeglasses. For example, in the 14th century, it is thought that Friar Alessandro reverse-engineered earlier sight-aids and transformed them into a useful eyeglass, proceeding to share the invention with the population. This was a significent shift away from the norm of invention: in the times before copyrighting craftsmen endeavoured to keep their methods a secret in order to better profit from them, so Alessandro's act of kindness allowed for a great leap forwards in the technology.
     
    Art at the time begins to depict people wearing spectacles and they were gradually associated as a status symbols for learned men, though of course this was dictated to by the shifting fashions of the time.
     
    It wasn't until the 16th century that concave lenses were created for the short-sighted rather than the long-sightedness that is a usual symptom of age. Perhaps the most famous customer for these new short-sighted glassed was Pope Leo the 10th, who used to wear them while he was hunting. Sometime between 1760 and 1780 Benjamin Franklin began experimenting with even fusing the two, creating verifocals.
     

    While the efficiency of glasses were dependant on the sophistication of glass-making technology, perhaps the biggest design challenge was how on earth to keep them on your head!
     
    Many spectacles were designed on a hinge that would perch on the edge of the nose like scissors or could be held up to the face. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was common to have glasses on a stick to hold up opera-style, and ribbons were commonly used to affix glasses more tightly to the face in order to get a better focus from them. In 1781-89 glasses with sliding extension temples were created, but these didn't see widespread use until the 19thc.
    Nowadays, the commonest style is through temple bars that hook around the ears but, even so, Opthalmologist Melvin Rueban insisted that these spectacles were 'one of technology's best examples of poor engineering design'.
     Modern glasses designs can be adjusted through heating and which curve around the ear, supported by adjustable nose-pads and springs, though any glasses user could quickly tell you that these are still far from perfect.
     
     
    Nowadays, technology has advanced to the point of potentially erasing the need for frames all together.
     
    Spectacle frames are and, for the foreseeable future, will continue to be the most popular option for vision correction due to their practicality and relative(!) cheapness. However, we are now lucky enough to have the options of contact lenses and laser eye correction to cure short or long sightedness.
     
    Contact lenses were suggested as early as 1845 by Sir John Herschel, but it was F. E Muller who first put them into practice by blowing a glass lens over the eyeball of a man whose lid has been destroyed by cancer. This contact lens was said to have lasted until his death 20 years later. While further experiements and studies commenced, it wasn't until the 1940s that a full variety of contact lenses became available to the public and widely used.
    By 1964 some 6 million people in the US wore contact lenses, with 65% of which were female. Given the vulnerability of spectacles to rather severe criticism in fashion, and the close link of traditional female identity with her looks, this is rather unsurprising.
     
     

    In the 1970s the development of the excimer laser offered a ground breaking alternative to both spectacles and contact lenses - what if short or long sightedness could actually be cured?
    Stephen L Trokel used it to experiement on the eyes of cadavers and then living animals, seeing how their corneas could be altered for the better. In 1988 Trokel was lucky enough to have a willing human participant: a 60-year old woman who was due to have her eye removed due to a malignant melanoma asked if they would like to experiment on her. Trokel's colleague, Marguerite MacDonalD performed the first photorefractive Keratectomy on the lady that year. By the early 1990s the procedure was approved in Canada and the US.
    In 1999 the development of wavefront technology allowed doctors to map out a patient's prescription on the unique corneas and by 2002 100% bladeless surgery was finally possible.


    Sight correction has come a long way in our history and it can only get better
     
    Currently scientists are even on the verge of helping the blind to see.
    In 2009, following a work accident, the builder Martin Jones was left blind but, luckily, with one eye still intact. Groundbreaking surgery, carried out by the surgeon Christopher Liu, allowed one of Martin's teeth to act as a replacement lens. While admittedly quite a grisly procedure, it allowed Martin to see his wife after 12 years of blindness. As the tooth is part of Martin's body, there is a far smaller chance of his body rejecting it than if it was made form synthetic materials.

    How Martin Jones gained his sight back

    Oxford University's smart glasses are designed to help near-blind users by amplifying what little available sight they have.
     The device takes 3d objects and alters the images, making them into bright defined silhouettes.
     One user, Lyn Oliver, was diagnosed with Retinis Pigmentosa in her early 20s which gradually led to extensive vision loss. She relies on her guide dog Jess to navigate, but using the glasses made this significantly easier.
     
    “If Jess stops, the glasses can tell me if she’s stopped because there’s a kerb, there’s something on the floor or it’s roadworks, and it’ll give me a sense of which way she may go around the obstacle.
    ‘If people are stood outside a shop talking, they often go silent when they see me and watch me walk past. But they’ve disappeared as far as I am concerned. Have they moved? Have they gone inside the shop?
    “There’s a sudden stress about avoiding them. The glasses help remove this layer of stress and they do it in a way that is natural to the person using them. After taking them off I was missing them." 
    Here are the smart glasses in action:



     


    Clearly there is still a lot of work to be done but it's amazing how far we have come in giving preserving the most precious of our senses.


    Sources

    Today I wanted to show you a little gem I found on Tumblr. I've copied the thread here for your viewing pleasure as proof that, even in ancient times, medical genius and general badassery were both very much alive:

    ---


    archiemcphee:

    "Here’s an awesome little piece of history:
    Archaeologists in the Burnt City have discovered what appears to be an ancient prosthetic eye. What makes this discovery exceptionally awesome is the striking description of how the owner and her false eye would have appeared while she was still alive and blinking:
    [The eye] has a hemispherical form and a diameter of just over 2.5 cm (1 inch). It consists of very light material, probably bitumen paste. The surface of the artificial eye is covered with a thin layer of gold, engraved with a central circle (representing the iris) and gold lines patterned like sun rays. The female remains found with the artificial eye was 1.82 m tall (6 feet), much taller than ordinary women of her time. On both sides of the eye are drilled tiny holes, through which a golden thread could hold the eyeball in place. Since microscopic research has shown that the eye socket showed clear imprints of the golden thread, the eyeball must have been worn during her lifetime. The woman’s skeleton has been dated to between 2900 and 2800 BCE. 
    So she was an extraordinarily tall woman walking around wearing an engraved golden eye patterned with rays like a tiny sun. What an awesome sight that must have been.
    [via TYWKIWDBI]
     knottybear:
    Wow.
    fangirequeen:
    SOMEONE DRAW HER PLEASE
     beecharts:


    CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!!

    kitsunecoffee:
    CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW AN ANCIENT CRAFTSMAN WAS PRESENTED WITH PEOPLE LOOKING FOR HELP TO NORMALIZE THEIR DISABILITY. AND THEN SAID ‘NAH FUCK THIS WE’RE GOING TO MAKE YOU LOOK BADASS."

    ----

    The internet asks, and it shall deliver.
    I have to admit that the comment thread amused me no end, but this really is a fascinating discovery (made way back in 2006). Just like the discovery of the Antikythera mechanism, the ancient world always has the capacity to surprise us with it's creativity and ingenuity.

    The 'Burnt City' of Shahr-e Suketh was one of the world's largest cities at the dawn of the urban era (our bronze age) and was thought to be home to a civilised people who were both farmers and craftspeople. Is is also thought by some, after analysing grave evidence, that mothers here held social and financial prominence. In the graves of some female inhabitants were found 5,000 year old insignias that were thought to belong to only distinguished members of the city, and these may have been used as seals for important documents or as visual reminders of their high status.

     The city itself is thought to have been unique and distinct to many other surrounding cultures of the time and is thought to be proof of civilisation east of prehistoric Persia that was independent of Mesopotamia. It is also thought, due to a mix of burial positions, that the city held multiple cultures.

    Studies were still underway in 2010 by Iran's Archeology Research Center and Newcastle University, and the site still proves to be a rich treasure trove of artefacts awaiting discovery.



    Sources
    Originally found on Tumblr via geyserofawesome and kitsune coffee
    Shahr-e Suketh 'The Burnt City'
    Original blog article at TYWIWDBI
    Drawing by Nick Beecher
    Iran Review - The Burnt City