History

Here we bring you the fascinating world of history, U.S. history, archeological history, anthropological, natural, and historical figures. To know where we’re going we must first understand where we’ve been.

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Archaeologists Discover Forgotten Foods Hidden in 15,000-Year-Old Kitchens

University of Utah – SciTechDaily

Microscopic plant residues found on bedrock metates offer new insights into the diets and cultural practices of ancient Indigenous communities in the American West.

The mortar, pestle, and cutting board in your kitchen are modern descendants of ancient tools known as manos and metates, which have been found at archaeological sites across the globe. A mano is a handheld stone used in combination with a metate, a large, flat stone or a naturally worn depression in bedrock, to grind and process food from plants and animals. These bedrock versions, often called open-air metates, are especially common in archaeological contexts, with some dating back as far as 15,500 years.

Now, researchers at the Natural History Museum of Utah are applying advanced techniques to recover microscopic plant residues trapped in the tiny cracks of these ancient grinding surfaces. Read more here.

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What Archaeologists Are Uncovering About the Buddha in His Legendary Nepali Hometown

Jeffrey Bartholet / Smithsonian MAGAZINE

Shortly after dawn, more than 200 monks from an order of Tibetan exiles carry carefully bundled scriptures and 108 gold-gilt Buddha statues in a long procession toward the site revered as Siddhartha Gautama’s birthplace. Some monks beat drums or wave sweet incense. Some wear ritual crowns or hold elaborately tasseled umbrellas. Some play brass-and-copper dungchen, or long horns, which vibrate with an eerie rumble that is said to resonate with the otherworldly beauty of the Buddha’s teachings.

The parade arrives at a large white building of brick and steel. Most of the monks circumambulate the building, walking past a polished sandstone pillar placed here in the third century B.C. and along the edges of a pond where it is said that Maya Devi, Siddhartha’s mother, bathed herself before childbirth. A smaller group of senior Tibetan monks enter the building. There, standing before a fourth-century A.D. bas-relief of Maya Devi giving birth, and above an ancient “marker stone” that is said to identify the precise nativity spot, the men conduct a purification ritual, offering a symbolic lamp of wisdom to dispel forces of ignorance from…Read more here.

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Archaeologists Discover Tomb of Unknown Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh

Eli Wizevich – smithsonianmag.com

Before archaeologists confirmed the discovery of the tomb of Thutmose II last month, more than a century had passed since Howard Carter and a team of Egyptian laborers unearthed the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.

Now, for the second time in what is already proving to be a landmark year for the study of ancient Egypt, archaeologists have discovered yet another ancient king’s tomb.

This time around, however, there’s just one snag: No one knows which king it belonged to.

A joint Egyptian-American archaeological team made the discovery in the Mount Anubis necropolis in Abydos, a major city in ancient Upper Egypt, according to a statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The tomb is thought to date back to the Middle Kingdom’s Second...Read more here.

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Flannery O’Connor Wanted to Shake Her Readers Awake. Her Family Wanted Her to Write the Next ‘Gone With the Wind’

Ellen Wexler / Smithsonian MAGAZINE

When the film Gone With the Winddebuted in 1939, an extravagant premiere gala unfolded over three days in downtown Atlanta. Thousands gathered outside Loew’s Grand Theater, which had been decorated to resemble a Southern plantation home, to watch the stars arrive. Four Confederate veterans in uniform were presented to thunderous applause. The crowds saw the sweeping romantic drama, based on Margaret Mitchell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1936 novel, as their story. But just a few hours southeast of the city lived a 14-year-old named Flannery O’Connor, who thought the spectacle was ridiculous.

O’Connor loathed the historical epic, though she and Mitchell had a lot in common. Both were raised by Irish Catholic families in Georgia, where Catholics were seen as outsiders by the Protestant majority, and both drew on their roots in their fiction. The similarities ended there. O’Connor rejected literature driven by nostalgia and sentimentality, qualities that she felt defined Mitchell’s work. Read more and see video here.

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