"A keen-eyed archaeology student made the find of a lifetime when she spotted one of the oldest swords on record, mistakenly grouped with medieval artifacts in a secluded Italian museum." Source: Live Science (March 2020)
"The ancient sword was thought to be medieval in origin and maybe a few hundred years old at most — but studies have shown that it dates back about 5,000 years, to what is now eastern Turkey, where swords are thought to have been invented, in the early Bronze Age."
"Numerous attempts have been made to reconstruct Viking Age round shields, this possibly being one of the most characteristic pieces of equipment carried by warriors of that period. Such reconstructions vary in quality, ranging from inexpensive plywood shields to expensive planked shields that have been constructed through painstaking efforts and attention to detail. In spite of such efforts, however, several important questions regarding Viking Age shield constructions have gone unanswered (especially regarding the use of hide in shields)– until now." Source: Society For Combat Archaeology (2019).
"...Based on the newest research results, the Trelleborg Viking Fortress [next video] is, together with Society for Combat Archaeology, now launching the experimental archaeology project TheViking Shield: The First Authentic Viking Age Shield. The aim of the project is to produce the first fully authentic Viking Age round shield where all elements of the shield construction can be referenced to specific sources."
English captions available.
Note: "The type of shield used by the Vikings can be traced back to the Iron Age. It consists of thin planking, which forms a circular shape. In the middle is a dome of iron to protect the shield bearer’s hand. This is called the shield boss and is often the only part which is preserved after 1000 years in the ground. The date of a shield can be established from the form of the shield boss, which varied throughout the Iron Age and the Viking period. Shield bosses are often found in graves, in which shields accompanied the dead on their final journey." Source: National Museum of Denmark.
"How did humans get to be so smart, and when did this happen? To untangle this question, we need to know more about the intelligence of our human ancestors who lived 1.8 million years ago. It was at this point in time that a new type of stone tool hit the scene and the human brain nearly doubled in size." Source: The Conversation (2017).
"Some researchers have suggested that this more advanced technology, coupled with a bigger brain, implies a higher degree of intelligence and perhaps even the first signs of language. But all that remains from these ancient humans are fossils and stone tools. Without access to a time machine, it’s difficult to know just what cognitive features these early humans possessed, or if they were capable of language. Difficult – but not impossible.
"Now, thanks to cutting-edge brain imaging technology, my interdisciplinary research team is learning just how intelligent our early tool-making ancestors were. By scanning the brains of modern humans today as they make the same kinds of tools that our very distant ancestors did, we are zeroing in on what kind of brainpower is necessary to complete these tool-making tasks."
"[Christopher Stringer] is one of the leading proponents of the recent African origin hypothesis or 'Out of Africa' theory, which hypothesizes that modern humans originated in Africa over 100,000 years ago and replaced, in some way, the world's archaic humans, such as Homo floresiensis and Neanderthals, after migrating within and then out of Africa to the non-African world within the last 50,000 to 100,000 years." Source: Wikipedia.
It now appears that Stringer is rethinking the Out of Africa theory, at least to some extent:
"I'm thinking a lot about species concepts as applied to humans, about the 'Out of Africa' model, and also looking back into Africa itself. I think the idea that modern humans originated in Africa is still a sound concept. Behaviorally and physically, we began our story there, but I've come around to thinking that it wasn't a simple origin." Source: Edge (2011?).
Stringer apparently still believes that modern humans evolved in Africa, but "the exact processes involved in our African origin are still unclear. We don't know exactly when it happened, we don't know exactly where it happened" and "our picture is still limited in terms of the sites that have been excavated and the information we've got from them."
The most interesting thing about this article is that Stringer seems to believe that there are different types of modern humans. These variations can be traced back to the probable interbreeding of modern humans with human ancestors like the Neanderthals. According to Stringer, "this means that in a sense some modern humans have got more archaic genes than others. [Emphasis added] That does seem to be so. So it leads us on to ask again: what is a modern human?" (1)
Stringer argues that "our evolutionary story is mostly, but not absolutely, a Recent African Origin," but the recent [2017] analysis of Graecopithecus frebergifossils discovered in Greece and Bulgaria have called this into question. According to this new study "the birthplace of modern human beings may have been the eastern Mediterranean and not Africa..." (Ancient Origins 2017) It's still too early to know whether this study is accurate, though, and some sources are already saying that there's not enough evidence to back the claim. Whatever the case, it's starting to look like the Out of Africa Theory is oversimplified, if not completely inaccurate.
(1) Stringer's conjecture that some modern humans have more archaic genes than others is a dangerous thing to say in today's toxic environment of political correctness. The idea that people aren't genetically identical is blasphemous. As for the Out of Africa Theory, the current orthodoxy regarding human origins is so mixed up with modern identity politics that a lot of people will resist the idea that it could be wrong no matter how much evidence is produced in the future.
"The human language pathway in the brain has been identified by scientists as being at least 25 million years old -- 20 million years older than previously thought." Source: Science Daily.
Note: These results are based on a comparison between modern primate and human brains. According to one neurologist, "'This discovery has tremendous potential for understanding which aspects of human auditory cognition and language can be studied with animal models in ways not possible with humans and apes. The study has already inspired new research underway including with neurology patients.'"
"An international team of researchers has put together a new image of Neanderthals based on the genes Neanderthals left in the DNA of modern humans when they had children with them about 50,000 years ago. The researchers found the new information by trawling the genomes of more than 27,000 Icelanders. Among other things, they discovered that Neanderthal children had older mothers and younger fathers than the Homo-Sapien children in Africa did at the time." Source: Science Daily.
Note: The new study also shows that "the Neanderthals may have had children with another extinct species of human (Denisovans), before they met Homo Sapiens, and that these children have been fertile and transferred genes from both species further on to modern people.
Rome was in serious economic trouble before it finally collapsed in the west, but a narrow focus on taxation and economic policies doesn't really explain what caused the collapse. On the list of factors which caused the decline of Rome, the economy has to take second place to problems like almost constant civil war, the loss of control over the provinces, and the systemic corruption and incompetence of the Roman government. Still, there's no doubt that the economy played a major factor in the last stages of the decline of the empire.
"Taxes in the Roman Empire, in comparison with modern times, were certainly no more excessive. In many cases they are far less per capita than anything we can compare to today. However, the strain of tax revenues was heavily placed on those who could most influence the economy and it would have dire consequences. (1) The economic struggles that plagued the late Imperial system coupled with the tax laws certainly played a part in the demise of the world greatest empire." Source: UNRV
(1) The point here, I think, is that the Romans were getting most of their tax revenue from the productive sectors of the economy. When those sectors went into decline tax revenues inevitably went into decline as well. This lack of resources limited the government's ability to protect the empire and created all sorts of other problems.
Rather than focusing strictly on taxes, it would be more accurate to say that the revenues the Roman state depended upon were increasingly disrupted by the growing number of threats and emergencies it faced and that this led to the over-taxation that just made everything worse. The stability of the Roman system was based in large part on its predictability. When that disappeared, things began to spiral out of control.
"[The Roman fiscal system] was predicated, in its mature form in the 2nd cent., on a basic predictability of expenditure and revenue and on the state's ability to exercise uncontested authority over the territory of the empire. However, potential problems in the form of sudden emergencies or increases in expenditure were already apparent in the later 2nd cent." Source: Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), 3rd ed. revised.
Over-taxation was one response to the serious problems that started to emerge in the late Imperial period. According to the OCD, "the state's ability to raise revenues was undermined by its failure to maintain routine central authority over the empire; the census-system [required for taxation] collapsed, invasion and civil war destroyed accumulated capital and crops. To meet its needs the state resorted to irregular and arbitrary requisitions in kind and to runaway debasement of the coinage."
In other words, Rome's economic problems were primarily caused by the loss of control of its empire which were in turn caused by deeper political issues. It should be also be kept in mind that the western empire was relatively poor in comparison to the east, which is where most of the money and resources were found. Taxation, in and of itself, didn't contribute to the collapse of Rome. It was the disruption of the system for tax collection, a disruption caused by the loss of military control and territorial integrity, that led to the economic problems the later emperors had to deal with.
Modern writers who focus on over-taxation and inflation in the Roman empire are actually looking at the circumstances during the last stages of the decline. The economic problems of the late Imperial period were symptoms, not causes, of the fall of Rome in the west.
"Books existed in Egypt long before they came into use in Greece," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). "Systems of writing had been invented and developed for administrative purposes in both Egypt and Mesopotamia by c. 3000 BC."
Vellum is a type of parchment made from animal skins. From what I can tell, the widespread use of parchment was a relatively late development. Most early books were written on papyrus. According to the OCD, "parchment played only a minor role compared with papyrus, which remained the dominant writing material throughout Greek and Roman antiquity," but "leather was also used in Egypt to produce rolls for literary texts." According to Herodotus, "the Ionians also used leather rolls at a time when papyrus was scarce."
Note: If, like me, you can't understand half of what this girl is saying, closed captions are available.
Vellum was considered to be the "best quality of prepared animal skin," according to Wikipedia, so it was generally reserved for important literary works, religious texts, and the like. At the Library of Alexandria, papyrus rolls were sometimes kept "in a vellum cover with a colored label," according to the OCD, and "parchment codices had come into use for classical literature by the 1st cent. AD." Papyrus and parchment sheets were sometimes mixed together, perhaps to save money.
Parchment gradually replaced papyrus as the centuries went by. "For codices, the advantages of parchment over papyrus are obvious: less fragile folds, greater durability, greater capacity, and they are easier to use. Constantine ordered 50 parchment copies of the Scriptures for the churches in Constantinople, and Jerome records that the papyrus manuscripts in the library of Caesarea, having become worn by use, were replaced by parchment codices." (OCD)
For important books, at least, it sounds like parchment replaced papyrus in the same way that DVDs replaced videocassettes. This is a classic example of technological innovation in the ancient world.
"Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the fourth millennium BCE. The earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012 and 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor located on the Red Sea coast. These documents date from c. 2560–2550 BCE (end of the reign of Khufu). The papyrus rolls describe the last years of building the Great Pyramid of Giza. In the first centuries BCE and CE, papyrus scrolls gained a rival as a writing surface in the form of parchment, which was prepared from animal skins." Source: Wikipedia.
"Papyrus could be used in the manufacture of a variety of objects. Skiffs made by binding the long stalks together were used from the Predynastic era on for local transport and hunting," according to the Metropolitan Museum. "...Perhaps the most important use for the papyrus plant was as a writing surface, created from strips of the pith found inside the stalk laid down in layers and dried under pressure. This was formed into rolls that could be left intact or cut into sheets; later, codices were also used. Thanks to the preservative qualities afforded by the dry climate of Egypt’s deserts, the remains of many documents on papyrus have been recovered from the Egyptian sands."
Note: Widely used in the ancient world and middle ages, wax tablets or tabulae ceratae (cera = wax) were "thick pieces of wood usually of an oblong shape, covered over with wax," according to Lacus Curtius (LC).
"These tabulae were sometimes made of ivory and citron-wood [citrus? Thyine wood?] ... but generally of a wood of a more common tree, as the beech, fir, &c. The outer sides of the tablets consisted merely of the wood; it was only the inner sides that were covered over with wax. They were fastened together at the back by means of wires, which answered the purpose of hinges, so that they opened and shut like our books ..."
Wax tablets are still being manufactured and sold today, but I don't know of any writers who actually use them. The next video clip, from HBO's great series Rome, shows Octavian (the future Augustus) using a wax tablet to compile a list of political enemies to be executed. I suppose you could use a wax tablet for transient notes and so on, but they're a little large to carry around. The "laptops of the ancient world" do have one critical advantage over modern laptops, however, namely they don't have any distractions.
According to Wikipedia, "[t]he earliest surviving exemplar of a boxwood writing tablet with an ivory hinge was among the finds recovered from the 14th-century BCE Uluburun Shipwreck near Kaş in modern Turkey in 1986. This find further confirmed that the reference to writing tablets in Homer [?] was far from anachronistic. An archaeological discovery in 1979 in Durrës, Albania found two wax tablets made of ivory in a grave believed to belong to a money lender from the 2nd century CE."
A 2000-year-old wax tablet used by a student in Greece. Closed-captions helpful.
"The Greeks probably started using the folding pair of wax tablets, along with the leather scroll in the mid-8th century BCE." (Wikipedia) "...In the first millennium BCE writing tablets were in use in Mesopotamia as well as Syria and Palestine."
A number of Roman wax tablets (minus the wax) have been discovered in Britain. Next video is from 2016.