At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free. So, here is the main news from the channel for September.

Archaeology and human origins 🧑🏻‍🔬 In the Obi-Rakhmat cave in Uzbekistan arrowheads 80,000 years old have been found, the oldest long-range weapon in Eurasia. Plague DNA has been detected in 18 of 46 hunters of the Baikal region who lived 5,500 years ago, and it turns out that the early strains were anything but mild. In three caves in the south of Spain traces of cannibalism have been found. Beneath the Hôtel-Dieu hospital on the Île de la Cité a wall of Lutetia more than two thousand years old has been unearthed. In Staraya Russa an eleventh-century serpentine amulet was found, on which a holy warrior keeps company with the head of Medusa. The cultivated vine reached Iberia with the Phoenicians about three thousand years ago, long before the Romans. In Henan the first skeletal evidence of the punishment of cutting off the nose, described in the Chinese chronicles, has been found.

Exhibitions 🖼 The season was opened by Cosmoscow, but I consider the chief museum event of the year in Moscow to be the Ludwig gift at Zilart, shown in full for the first time. The All-Russian Museum of Decorative Art shows Vrubel through ceramics. The Rublev Museum has assembled more than a hundred monuments to child sainthood. At the Museum of the East there is an exhibition of three generations of the Volkov-Rybnikovs, at the Galeev Gallery Pakhomov has been brought together for the first time, and at AZ/ART the sculptors of the Thaw, nonconformists, stand beside academicians. The Ekaterina Foundation tells the history of the colour black after Pastoureau's book.

The market and museums 💰 The Getty has bought its first Velázquez, a portrait of Olivares of about 1626. The Picasso Museum will issue an edition of bronzes to pay for a new wing, while in Russia people are being tried for forged casts of Neizvestny that have passed through the Tretyakov Gallery. Hockney's dachshund will come up at auction for the first time, with an estimate of £1.5 to 2.5 million. The Bayeux Tapestry has come to the British Museum for the first time in almost a thousand years, and photographing it is forbidden. Caravaggio's "Bacchus" was taken off the wall of the Uffizi after a leak, while two Germans glued their own paintings next to the "Mona Lisa".

Theatre and literature 📖 The Electrotheatre marked Yuhananov's birthday with an evening called "Picnic. Requiem", and Anatoly Vasiliev sent a message for it. The Satirikon has begun its 88th season, still without a stage of its own. Rushdie and his wife have spoken about the film "Knife" on the 2022 attempt on his life. Evangelicals are outraged that the lion Aslan will be voiced by Meryl Streep. The Writers' Bookshop on Kuznetsky has opened again, which cannot be said of the Akademkniga on Vavilov Street.

Church and power ⛪️ Leo XIV prayed at Lourdes, while Macron first boycotted his masses and then took the pope by the elbow. The Synod of the Church of Greece withdrew the award of Metropolitan Ambrosios two weeks later, over his criticism. Nobody has ever seen Nikon's ban on tented roofs, and the villagers of Palekh built a tent-roofed bell tower in 1762-1774.

Empires and memory 🏰 Tsarevich George died in 1899 on the highway near Abastumani, having barely stepped off a petrol-driven tricycle. The "Admiral Kuznetsov" left Sevastopol for the North on the day of the Ukrainian referendum of 1991. By 1788 Australia was home to 2.22 million Aboriginal people, and 93% of them perished in less than eighty years. Tbilisi's "underground city" turned out to be the engineered foundation of an apartment house of 1912-1915. In 1903 Kustodiev photographed Novgorod, while Stelletsky photographed Kustodiev himself.

Science and methods 🔬 A NASA method for satellite imagery helps to read faded rock paintings. Thousand-year-old seeds from the port of Wenzhou have proved that the melon came to China from South Asia. In the fossilised dung of a dinosaur 66 million years old a feather has been found