On an uninhabited Caribbean island, archaeologists were amazed to discover a series of cave drawings pre-dating European contact. This was a surprise because the drawings are so well-preserved. Over 70 winding caves on the island of Mona, between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, contain art. Some are scratches on the rock. Others are more sophisticated, with paint made from sophisticated organic materials such as bat droppings, plant gums, minerals like iron, and materials from native trees like turpentine trees. The islanders were putting a lot of work into their art, deep where the light of day could not illuminate their creations.

The researchers noted that the indigenous people of Mona Island believed that the sun and moon emerged from beneath the ground. So exploring deep into the expansive network of subterranean caves, and making art there, is interpreted by today’s archaeologists as a highly spiritual act. 

According to UNESCO, the site of San Agustín in Colombia is host to the largest collection of megalithic sculptures in South America. San Agustín is a massive necropolis strewn with some 40 burial mounds and 600 stone statues fashioned from volcanic rock. These statues range in height from only a few inches to around 20 feet! They depict grotesque monsters, club-wielding warriors and animals such as eagles, jaguars and frogs. The vast majority of the monuments date to between the 00s to 700s CE. Sadly, little about the site is understood – why it was created, what kept it in use for over 600 years, and why the site was finally put out of use.

Coca Does Not Equal Cocaine

Use of coca leaves, the leaves which can be used to make cocaine, is traditional in the Andes. In fact, its consumption dates to the very earliest of ancient South American cultures. We have evidence that coca was consumed in what is today Ecuador as early as the 8000s BCE. This is hardly surprising. Coca is extremely useful.

The leaves contain a powerful alkaloid which acts as a stimulant. Its effects include raised heart rate, increased appetite, and suppressed hunger and thirst. Its muscle-relaxing properties mean coca leaves are great for menstrual cramps. And that also helps treat altitude sickness, but opening up the respiratory tract and relieving the feeling of shortness of breath and tightness in the chest. Further, coca leaves have antibacterial and analgesic properties. It also aids in digestion and preventing constipation. Finally, the leaves themselves are nutritionally beneficial. They are rich in iron, vitamin B, and vitamin C. No wonder coca leaves continue to be a large part of Andean culture through today.

A Potential New Viking Site Found in Canada!

An expert in detecting buried structures from satellite images, Sarah Parcak, identified a second likely site on the southernmost tip of Newfoundland. Well-known site L’Anse aux Meadows is on the northern tip of Newfoundland. It was debated whether the sagas’ account of a place good for growing grapes was true, but the newly found site might be southern enough. The new site, Point Rosee, broke ground in the summer of 2015. The dig found remains of turf walls and an ironworking fireplace. This is not solid evidence yet. The excavations could be evidence, for instance, of the Basque whalers who sheltered on the island from the early 1500s. But the excavations continue. Hopefully they will find more proof, one way or the other, about the Vikings’ exploration of America.

The Steppe Geoglyphs of Kazakhstan were accidentally discovered by Dmitriy Dey, an archaeology enthusiast, while he was using Google Earth to look for pyramids. The Steppe Geoglyphs consist of more than 200 rings, squares, and lines. Each measure around 1 meter (3 ft) high and 12 meters (40 ft) wide. They were built by an unknown civilization in the Turgai area of Northern Kazakhstan. Because of their massive size, the glyphs can only be fully viewed and appreciated from space. At the moment we have no idea what they were for or why they were built.

The Temple of the Maker of the Earth

Pachacamac is located on the coast of Peru and 32 km south of Lima. It was an important sacred site, with an oracle, and burial sites, which was visited by pilgrims of many ancient Andean cultures for over 2,000 years. Pachacamac was sacred up through Incan Empire in the 1400s, and stopped being a site of pilgrimage only with the coming of the Spanish and their alien religion. The site was named after the god of the same name (Pacha Kamaq) who was considered the ‘Maker of the Earth’ by coastal peoples. The god’s sacred wooden statue was worshiped at the site, situated inside a large temple complex built on a stepped earthen platform. There was also likely an oracle on the site in the 1st millennium BCE.

Since his discovery in 1996, scientists, Native American groups, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have fought over his remains. Personally, h-nf first heard about the remains, and the anger around them, in middle school. It has been far too long that this man, whoever he was when he lived, has not been allowed to lay at rest.

This coin, clearly Chinese and dating to the Ming Dynasty, was found on an island just offshore in Kenya. It is hard proof that Emperor Yongle’s great fleet under Zheng He came to the African coast.

Mayan stucco mask from Palenque, in Mexico. Circa 700s CE.

Meet Lillian Wald (1867 - 1940). After growing up in Ohio and New York, Wald became a nurse. She briefly attended medical school and began to teach community health classes while attending classes. One day in 1892, she was approached by a young girl who kept repeating “mommy … baby … blood”. Wald gathered some sheets from her bed-making lesson and followed the child to her home, a cramped two-room tenement apartment. Inside, she found the child’s mother who had recently given birth and needed medical treatment. The doctor tending to her had left because she could not afford to pay him. This was Wald’s first experience with poverty; she called the episode her “baptism by fire” and dedicated herself to bringing nursing care, and eventually education and access to the arts, to the immigrant poor on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Lillian D. Wald started the Visiting Nurse Service in 1893, and two years later she opened the Henry Street Settlement. The Henry Street Settlement was initially named the Nurses’ Settlement. It was (and remains) not-for-profit social service agency in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It provided both medical care to those who could otherwise not afford it, and a social center with a gymnasium added in 1895. Wald also worked on behalf of women’s rights and the welfare of children, establishing the Women’s Trade Union League and spearheaded a federal organization to help children. After years lobbying for this idea, the Children’s Bureau was established in 1912.

Bottle in the shape of a gourd. Chimu, pottery, circa 1200 - 1400. Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian.

“The Drunkard.” A Maya clay figurine from Jaina Island. Circa 400 - 800 CE

In the fall of 1942, British inventor Geoffrey Pyke had developed a material made from a mixture of ice and wood chips. Called pykrete, the substance not only floated, but stayed frozen at warm temperatures for a longer period than regular ice. It also repelled bullets. He pitched it to the Allies, as a substance which just might help the war at sea against German u-boats.  Canada and the United States might have thrown their industrial muscle behind the European campaign, but supply ships were regularly knocked out by German torpedoes. Hundreds of ships and their crews were lost to U-boats lurking below the ocean surface in “wolf packs.” If they were unable to get their supply ships around the wolf packs, Great Britain would slowly starve to death.

Because they were desperate, Pyke’s rather wacky invention was not only considered, but approved and promoted personally by the British Chief of Combined Operations during the war, Lord Mountbatten. A prototype was built in a remote Alberta lake in a Canadian national park. But support for the project waned. Despite Lord Mountbatten giving an in-person demonstration of the bullet-blocking abilities of pykrete compared to regular ice to President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, the project was quietly abandoned in early 1944.

Canadians are much more proud of the War of 1812 than the U.S. or Great Britain. In fact, Canada sees the war as setting the country on the “slow path toward nationhood.” While the U.S. Congress declined to create a national bicentennial commission, let alone a monument, the Canadian government allocated almost $30 million to bicentennial events running from 2012 through 2016, including unveiling a new national war monument.

It is so detailed, I do not want to post it. Instead, you need to follow the link so you can see it properly. Zoom in, zoom out, read what the symbols mean, play around with it. This map is worth it.

The Austrian village of Jungholz is connected to the rest of the country by a single point, the summit of the mountain Sorgschrofen. The summit marks a “quadripoint,” a point that touches four distinct territories — here, Austria to the north and south and Germany to the east and west.

Which raises a difficult question: how could someone travel from “main” Austria to Jungholz without leaving Austria? At the summit, Austria meets Germany at a single, indivisible point. If you looked at it with an increasingly powerful microscope, that point would only get increasingly small. So nobody is small enough to cross over it without entering a little Germany in the process. On the other hand, no one from Germany can go over the mountain without entering a little Austria, too.