Archaeology · Observations · Science
It seems that, for the tenth time this month, I shall have to propose rewriting the textbooks on prehistory. This time the culprit is a high-profile study by an international team of scientists, which pushes back the timeline of the mastery of fire by hundreds of thousands of years!
Architecture · Moscow · Observations · Heritage · Society
Well, Muscovites will long remember the architect Kuznetsov and other officials of the city administration with kind words, as they look at the gaps in the historic fabric of the centre, filled with highly valuable items of elite real estate. Take, for instance, the site of the former Baldina apartment
Science · Palaeontology · Nature · Humour
The first: the European fallow deer bears the Latin binomial name Dama dama. And this Dama has nothing whatever to do with the word dame, "woman". Dama was used in ancient Rome for small hoofed animals that grew easily accustomed to people, and is thought to go back
Faith · Madrid · Monarchies · Society
Leo XIV has flown into Madrid at the start of a six-day visit to Spain, to be held under the motto "raise your gaze". The country is passing through difficult times, especially as regards the unity of its people: society is quite literally split over migration, abortion
Archive · Art · People
Ever seen a Pushkin like this? Not the most popular nor the most comprehensible of his portraits, usually called the "Linyov" portrait after an unidentified amateur artist, Ivan Logginovich Linyov. The authorship of this work, like its provenance, is enigmatic. Originally the portrait was signed simply "I.
NB!
Coming Up · Art · Museums · People
The AZ/ART Centre for Contemporary Art has opened "The Wrong Horizon", an exhibition of Anya Zhelud, assembled to coincide exactly with the anniversary of the artist's death. Paintings, objects and installations spanning twenty-five years, among them early works of 2000-2001 that the public
NB!
Archaeology · Heritage · Science
In 1990, off the coast of Benicarló, at the underwater site of Piedras de la Barbada in eastern Spain, 43 iron helmets were raised from a depth of six metres. For over thirty years they were held to be Roman, if only because helmets are a commonplace Roman find in
Archive · Society
On 20 January 1991 the first referendum in the history of the USSR was held in Crimea, with the following question put to the vote: "Are you in favour of the re-establishment of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic as a subject of the USSR and. The right
Art · New York
There is, in principle, no genuine Bosch on the open market: not a single fully attributed painting or drawing by him has come up at auction since 1985, everything moves through private channels, and the surviving works of the master number some two dozen and a half worldwide, all of
Archaeology · Faith · Observations · Society · Ethnography
In Lima, ahead of the presidential run-off, shamans gathered on Herradura beach and blessed portraits of both candidates, Fujimori and López Aliaga. The rite is repeated there every year and before every vote, and it is no exotica staged for the amusement of tourists but a living example of