Old photograph of a narrow stone chamber with geometric patterns on its walls and four people sitting at its base.

NB! · Archaeology · Archive · Observations · Humour

Old photograph of a Mexican excavation with people seated by an ornamented wall

While we are in Mexico, here is another old photograph, from an excavation. I shan't go into details, just look at how romantic it appears. Indiana Jones would shed a tear

Archaeology · Architecture · Observations

Besides the design of the pyramid, with its nine-tiered sides and four staircases facing the cardinal points, it is interesting that beneath the building, at a depth of some 25 metres, lies a karst lake, which is thought capable of threatening the structu

Besides the design of the pyramid, with its nine-tiered sides and four staircases facing the cardinal points, it is interesting that beneath the building, at a depth of some 25 metres, lies a karst lake, which is thought capable of threatening the structure's survival in the future,

Archaeology · Art · Museums · Observations · Paris

Statue of the Seated Scribe Kai in the Louvre, with eyes of rock crystal and quartz

In big museums I always head first for the Egyptian antiquities gallery. You never know what unique artefacts may turn up there. Even collections as colossal as the Louvre count the legacy of Ancient Egypt among their chief treasures. And if you hurried through the Louvre's Egyptian gallery

NB! · Cinema · Observations · Humour

These films are of such dreadful quality that you cannot tell whether it is a backstage shot or a proper frame

The East · Museums · Observations · Pop Culture · Ethnography

Summer jacket of salmon skin sewn by a Nanai woman in the Amur valley

SALMON-SKIN CLOTHING WOULD BE FIT EVEN FOR A KING. This summer jacket, which looks like a tsar's baby-shirt, is made of salmon skin. It was sewn by a Nanai woman from the Amur valley, though the piece looks like a statement coat from a Dries Van

Museums · Observations · Science · Palaeontology

How Museum Skeletons Were Reconstructed from One or Two Bone Fragments

Incidentally, most skeletons on display in museums are reconstructed from one or two fragments. The originally supposed shape of these models depended solely on the imagination of their author: the first palaeontologists dreamed up improbable Loch Ness monsters and flying brontosaurs. Not infrequently, when checked, exhibits created 100 years ago

Observations · Palaeontology · Nature · Humour

Cacops, regarded as one of the first amphibians, and how it escaped larger predators

Kakops lived at the end of the Cretaceous and dwelt on the banks of watercourses. Of interest because he is reckoned one of the first amphibians. Short legs and a short tail helped him to hop smartly into the water whenever larger predators drew near. Little is known of him;

Bright yellow sulphur crystals on a greyish-beige porous rock against a black background.

NB! · Geography · Observations · Nature · Humour

Sulphur crystals in a photograph from the Natural History Museum, London

Sulphur crystals. At school it looked far worse

Archaeology · Observations · Palaeontology · Humour

Coprolites as a source of scientific data and a material for decorative objects

GEMSTONES. Anyone with an interest in dinotopia will surely have come across the curious archaeological material I shall be discussing today. And newcomers are in for a lesson: stalactites hang from the roofs of caves, stalagmites grow up from the floor, and coprolites are simply fossilised shit. Coprolites are not

NB! · Books · Observations · Nature