Archaeology · The East · Art · Museums

Snake-legged giants on a 2nd century BC relief from Aphrodisias in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum

The Greeks called the battle of the Olympian gods against the giants a Gigantomachy: creatures born of the earth who rose against the new divine order. The photograph shows a fragment of a relief of the 2nd century BC from Aphrodisias. It is now kept in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.

NB! · Moscow · Observations · Pop Culture

Incidentally, Madonna came rolling into Russia in 2006 all the same, protests notwithstanding

Archaeology · Observations · Science · Ethnography

Vessels 4,500 years old with traces of beer or grog found in northeastern Poland

Thirteen vessels 4,500 years old have been found in north-eastern Poland. Nine of them bear chemical traces of fermentation: lactic, acetic and levulinic acids, the by-products of yeasts and bacteria, and biomarkers of wheat and barley, fruit and resins. The researchers from the University of Warsaw call

NB! · Ethnography

Charming Shoes Made by the Craftsmen of the Southern Ute Tribe, Living in South-Western Colorado

Black and white image of a face: hair of paper strips, eyes, nose and mouth of wire, and sprigs of lily of the valley along the face.

Art

Portrait of flowers and wire made without a camera on photographic material

Photogram "Lilies of the Valley", Varvara Rodchenko, 1990. The image was produced photochemically, but without a camera. Flowers and wire were laid upon the photographic material and lit so that their shadow was imprinted

Archaeology · Science · Nature

Why Humans Became Right-Handed: Oxford Study Links It to Brain Size and Upright Walking

Nine people in ten are right-handed. Other primates show no such picture: chimpanzees and gorillas may also prefer one hand, but far less often and far less markedly. Scientists have long been trying to work out why humans, specifically, have gone so far. There is no shortage of hypotheses:

A woman in a red sweater and glasses holds a painted wooden spoon beside a glass containing pelmeni in champagne.

NB! · Observations · Mores · Humour

Pelmeni in champagne and the notion of the mysterious Russian soul in the 21st century

The Mysterious Russian Soul: Twenty-First-Century Edition

Observations · Society

Observation on a plagiarist who casts himself as the victim and on modern society

You see, a man is caught in flagrant plagiarism, yet he contrives to turn the situation so that he himself becomes the victim. In my view, that in itself is a most powerful statement about modern society

Art · Observations · Society

The story of the Kazakhstani artist's project withdrawn from the Biennale takes on a new meaning as she is accused of plagiarising the work of Chiharu Shiota, a contemporary Japanese artist based in Berlin, who has been creating similar installations sinc

It turns out that the Kazakhstani officials may not have been censoring a statement about repressions at all, but trying to avoid the charge of exhibiting plagiarism. Which, in fact, is just what the official side says: the artist, so we are told, was pointed to an improper borrowing and

Art · Museums · Observations · Society

It Turns Out the Biennale Also Has a Kazakh Pavilion, and a Scandal to Go With It

"The Machine", an installation by the artist Assel Kadyrkhanova devoted to Stalinist repression and the Red Terror, was secretly dismantled by the administration of the pavilion itself before the opening, and the spot where it had been displayed was hung with a black curtain. Officials are reported to

Archaeology · Science · Humour

Dental calculus is the last kind of stone an archaeologist expects to find, yet Elena Fiorin and her colleagues have published measurements of mercury concentrations not in bones but in the dental plaque of those buried at two leprosaria: St Leonard in…

76 samples of dental plaque and 45 of soil showed that the inmates of the leprosaria carried between 0.11 and 9.7 mg/kg of mercury, that is, several times more than the control groups from ordinary cemeteries. This confirms that lepers were indeed treated with mercury. It was

Architecture · Art · Moscow · Heritage · People

Monument to Tairov and Koonen on Tverskoy Boulevard and the Fate of the Kamerny Theatre

A new monument to Alexander Tairov and Alisa Koonen, founders of Moscow's legendary Kamerny Theatre, on Tverskoy Boulevard, where they staged upheavals and discoveries in world theatre. Today the Kamerny is called legendary because it has literally entered the textbooks and become part of the great heritage of

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