Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Plants & Incense already traveled The Silk Road as China officially began trade with the West in 130 B.C.

Journey of the Magi by Hieronymus Bosch 1500-1510

The Silk Road was an ancient network of trade routes connecting China & the Far East with the Middle East & Europe. Established when the Han Dynasty in China officially opened trade with the West in 130 B.C., the Silk Road routes remained in use until 1453 A.D., when the Ottoman Empire boycotted trade with China & closed them.
Stefano Di Giovanni Sassetta (Italian artist, 1394-1450) Journey of the Magi along The Silk Road 1435

The Middle Ages refers to the period of European history from the fall of the Roman Empire in the West (5C) to the fall of Constantinople (1453).  In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages (or medieval period) lasted from the 5C to the 15C.  The Middle Ages is the middle period of the 3 traditional divisions of Western history: classical antiquity, the medieval period, & the modern period.
The Meeting of the Magi on The Silk Road by Maestro de Saint Bartholomew 1480

The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High, & Late Middle Ages. During the High Middle Ages, which began after 1000, the population of Europe increased greatly as technological & agricultural innovations allowed trade to flourish.  The Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. For Europe as a whole, 1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no firmly agreed upon end date. Events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Christopher Columbus's first voyage to the Americas in 1492, or the Protestant Reformation in 1517 are sometimes used.

Ancient Societies also Stopped to Smell the Flowers


The spectrum of smells in ancient societies, & their possible cultural meanings, are being explored by scientists who study odor molecules, old documents & other archaeological finds. Here, a carved relief of an ancient Egyptian queen smelling a lotus flower represents the fragrant world that pharaohs & their families inhabited.

Ancient "Smellscapes" are wafting out of Artifacts & Old Texts

Science News. By Bruce Bower. May 4, 2022   

Ramses VI faced a smelly challenge when he became Egypt’s king in 1145 B.C. The new pharaoh’s first job was to rid the land of the stench of fish & birds, denizens of the Nile Delta’s fetid swamps.

That, at any rate, was the instruction in a hymn written to Ramses VI upon his ascension to the throne. Some smells, it seems, were considered far worse than others in the land of the pharaohs.

Surviving written accounts indicate that, perhaps unsurprisingly, residents of ancient Egyptian cities encountered a wide array of nice & nasty odors. Depending on the neighborhood, citizens inhaled smells of sweat, disease, cooking meat, incense, trees & flowers. Egypt’s hot weather heightened demand for perfumed oils & ointments that cloaked bodies in pleasant smells.

“The written sources demonstrate that ancient Egyptians lived in a rich olfactory world,” says Egyptologist Dora Goldsmith of Freie Universität Berlin...

Archaeologists have traditionally studied visible objects. Investigations have reconstructed what ...buildings looked like based on excavated remains & determined how people lived by analyzing their tools, personal ornaments & other tangible finds.

Rare projects have re-created what people may have heard thousands of years ago at sites such as Stonehenge (SN: 8/31/20). Piecing together, much less re-creating, the olfactory landscapes, or smellscapes, of long-ago places has attracted even less scholarly curiosity. Ancient cities in Egypt & elsewhere have been presented as “colorful & monumental, but odorless & sterile,” Goldsmith says.

Changes are in the air, though. Some archaeologists are sniffing out odor molecules from artifacts found at dig sites & held in museums. Others are poring over ancient texts for references to perfume recipes, & have even cooked up a scent much like one presumably favored by Cleopatra. In studying & reviving scents of the past, these researchers aim to understand how ancient people experienced, & interpreted, their worlds through smell...

Researchers generally assume that Tayma in what’s now Saudi Arabia .was a pit stop on an ancient network of trade routes, known as the Incense Route, that carried frankincense & myrrh from southern Arabia to Mediterranean destinations around 2,300 to 1,900 years ago. Frankincense & myrrh are both spicy-smelling resins extracted from shrubs & trees that grow on the Arabian Peninsula & in northeastern Africa & India. But Tayma was more than just a refueling oasis for trade caravans.

The desert outpost’s residents purchased aromatic plants for their own uses during much of the settlement’s history, a team led by Huber found. Chemical & molecular analyses of charred resins identified frankincense in cube-shaped incense burners previously unearthed in Tayma’s residential quarter, myrrh in cone-shaped incense burners that had been placed in graves outside the town wall, & an aromatic substance from Mediterranean mastic trees in small goblets used as incense burners in a large public building...

Other researchers have gone searching for molecular scent clues in previously excavated pottery. Analytical chemist Jacopo La Nasa of the University of Pisa in Italy & his colleagues used a portable version of a mass spectrometer to study 46 vessels, jars, cups & lumps of organic material.

These artifacts were found more than a century ago in the underground tomb of Kha & his wife Merit, prominent nonroyals who lived during Egypt’s 18th dynasty from about 1450 B.C. to 1400 B.C. The spectrometer can detect the signature chemical makeup of invisible gases emitted during the decay of different fragrant plants & other substances that had been placed inside vessels...

Re-creating Cleopatra’s perfume

A tradition of fragrant remedies & perfumes began as the first Egyptian royal dynasties assumed power around 5,100 years ago, Goldsmith’s research suggests. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic & cursive documents describe recipes for several perfumes. But precise ingredients & preparation methods remain unknown...

That didn’t stop Goldsmith & historian of Greco-Roman philosophy & science Sean Coughlin of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague from trying to re-create a celebrated Egyptian fragrance known as the Mendesian perfume. Cleopatra, a perfume devotee during her reign as queen from 51 B.C. to 30 B.C., may have doused herself with this scented potion. The perfume took its name from the city where it was made, Mendes.

Excavations conducted since 2009 at Thmouis, a city founded as an extension of Mendes, have uncovered the roughly 2,300-year-old remains of what was probably a fragrance factory, including kilns & clay perfume containers. Archaeologist Robert Littman of the University of Hawaii at Manoa & anthropological archaeologist Jay Silverstein of the University of Tyumen in Russia, who direct the Thmouis dig, asked Goldsmith & Coughlin to try to crack the Mendesian perfume code by consulting ancient writings.

After experimenting with ingredients that included desert date oil, myrrh, cinnamon & pine resin, Goldsmith & Coughlin produced a scent that they suspect approximates what Cleopatra probably wore. It’s a strong but pleasant, long-lasting blend of spiciness & sweetness, they say.

Ingredients of a re-creation of an ancient fragrance called the Mendesian perfume consist of pine resin, cinnamon cassia, true cinnamon, myrrh & moringa oil. Cleopatra herself may have worn the ancient scent. A description of the Thmouis discoveries & efforts to revive the Mendesian scent — dubbed Eau de Cleopatra by the researchers — appeared in the Sept. 2021 Near Eastern Archaeology.

Goldsmith has re-created several more ancient Egyptian perfumes from written recipes for fragrances that were used in everyday life, for temple rituals & in the mummification process...

In the royal palace, for instance, the perfumed smell of rulers & their family members would have overpowered that of court officials & servants. That would perhaps have denoted special ties to the gods among those in charge, Goldsmith wrote in a chapter of The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East, published in September of 2021.

In temples, priests anointed images of gods with what was called the 10 sacred oils. Though their ingredients are mostly unknown, each substance apparently had its own pleasing scent & ritual function...

Scent is a powerful part of the human experience. Today, scientists know that smells, which humans might discriminate surprisingly well, can instantly trigger memories of past experiences... 

People in modern settings probably perceive the same smells as nice or nasty as folks in ancient Egypt or other past societies did, says psychologist Asifa Majid of the University of Oxford. In line with that possibility, members of nine non-Western cultures, including hunter-gatherers in Thailand & farming villagers in highland Ecuador, closely agreed with Western city dwellers when ranking the pleasantness of 10 odors, Majid & her colleagues report April 4 in Current Biology.

Smells of vanilla, citrus & floral sweetness — dispensed by pen-sized devices — got high marks... 

So, even if the ancients tagged the same odors as pleasurable or offensive as people do today, culture & context probably profoundly shaped responses to those smells.

Working-class Romans living in Pompeii around 2,000 years ago — before Mount Vesuvius’ catastrophic eruption in A.D. 79 — provide one example. Archaeological evidence & written sources indicate that patrons of small taverns throughout the city were bombarded with strong smells, says archaeologist Erica Rowan of Royal Holloway, University of London. Diners standing or sitting in small rooms & at outdoor counters whiffed smoky, greasy food being cooked, body odors of other customers who had been toiling all day & pungent aromas wafting out of nearby latrines.

The smells & noises that filled Pompeii’s taverns provided a familiar & comforting experience for everyday Romans, who made these establishments successful, Rowan suspects. Excavations have uncovered 158 of these informal eating & drinking spots throughout Pompeii.

Roman cities generally smelled of human waste, decaying animal carcasses, garbage, smoke, incense, cooked meat & boiled cabbage, Classical historian Neville Morley of the University of Exeter in England wrote in 2014 in a chapter of Smell & the Ancient Senses. That potent mix “must have been the smell of home to its inhabitants & perhaps even the smell of civilization,” he concluded.

Ramses VI undoubtedly regarded the perfumed world of his palace as the epitome of civilized life. But at the end of a long day, Egyptian sandal-makers & smiths, like Pompeii’s working stiffs, may well have smelled home as the air of city streets filled their nostrils.

See:

A. Arshamian et al. The perception of odor pleasantness is shared across cultures. Current Biology. Published April 4, 2022. 

D. Goldsmith. Smellscapes in ancient Egypt. In K. Neumann & A. Thomason, eds., The Routledge Handbook of the Senses in the Ancient Near East. New York, September 2021.

D. Goldsmith. Fish, fowl & stench in ancient Egypt. In A. Schellenberg & T. Krüger, eds., Sounding Sensory Profiles in the Ancient Near East. SBL Press, 2019.

B. Huber et al. How to use modern science to reconstruct ancient scents. Nature Human Behavior. Published March 28, 2022. 

B. Huber et al. An archaeology of odors: Chemical evidence of ancient aromatics at the oasis of Tayma, NW Arabia. 11th International Conference on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Munich, April 3–7, 2018.

R.J. Littman et al. Eau de Cleopatra: Mendesian perfume & Tell Timai. Near Eastern Archaeology. Vol. 84, September 2021.

N. Morley. Urban smells & Roman noses. In M. Bradley, ed., Smell & the Ancient Senses. New York, December 2014.

J. La Nasa et al. Archaeology of the invisible: The scent of Kha & Merit. Journal of Archaeological Science. Vol. 141, May 2022. 

E. Rowan. The sensory experiences of food consumption. In R. Skeates & J. Day, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Sensory Archaeology. New York, November 2019.

The Woman who Figured Out what Mankind is Made of after Thousands of Years Passed

The answer to this fundamental question of astrophysics was discovered in 1925 by Cecilia Payne (1900-1979) & explained in her Ph.D. thesis. Payne showed how to decode the complicated spectra of starlight in order to learn the relative amounts of the chemical elements in the stars. In 1960 the distinguished astronomer Otto Struve referred to this work as “the most brilliant Ph.D. thesis ever written in astronomy.”

Cecilia Payne was born in Wendover, England. After entering Cambridge University she soon knew she wanted to study a science but was not sure which one. She then chanced to hear the astronomer Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882-1944) give a public lecture on his recent expedition to observe the 1919 solar eclipse, an observation that proved Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity. 

She later recalled her exhilaration: “The result was a complete transformation of my world picture. When I returned to my room I found that I could write down the lecture word for word.” She realized that physics was for her.

Later, at Cambridge Observatory Cecilia told Professor Eddington, that she wanted to be an astronomer. He suggested a number of books for her to read, but she had already read them. Eddington then invited her to use the Observatory’s library, with access to all the latest astronomical journals. 

"There is no joy more intense than that of coming upon a fact that cannot be understood in terms of currently accepted ideas." declared Cecilia Payne

Payne realized early during her Cambridge years, that a woman had little chance of advancing beyond a teaching role, & no chance at all of getting an advanced degree in England. 

Women in the USA had only won the right to vote in national elections in 1920, just 3 years before Payne left England in 1923 for the United States. Here she met Professor Harlow Shapley (1885-1952), the new director of the Harvard College Observatory, who offered her a graduate fellowship. 

Cecilia Payne became the 1st person to earn a PhD in astronomy from Harvard University. Her 1925 graduate thesis proposed that the Sun & other stars were made predominantly of hydrogen, & described as "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy." (Payne received the 1st Ph.D. in astronomy from Radcliffe College for her thesis, since Harvard did not grant doctoral degrees to women.)

But Harvard did have the world’s largest archive of stellar spectra on photographic plates. Astronomers obtain such spectra by attaching a spectroscope to a telescope. This instrument spreads starlight out into its “rainbow” of colors, spanning all the wavelengths of visible light. The wavelength increases from the violet to the red end of the spectrum, as the energy of the light decreases. A typical stellar spectrum has many narrow dark gaps where the light at particular wavelengths (or energies) is missing. These gaps are called absorption “lines,” & are due to various chemical elements in the star’s atmosphere that absorb the light coming from hotter regions below.

The study of spectra had led to the science of astrophysics. In 1859, Gustav Kirchoff & Robert Bunsen in Germany heated various chemical elements & observed the spectra of the light given off by the incandescent gas. They found that each element has its own characteristic set of spectral lines—its uniquely identifying “fingerprint.” In 1863, William Huggins in England observed many of these same lines in the spectra of the stars. The visible universe, it turned out, is made of the same chemical elements as those found on Earth.

Beginning in the 1880s, astronomers at Harvard College such as Edward Pickering, Annie Jump Cannon, Williamina Fleming, & Antonia Maury had succeeded in classifying stars according to their spectra into seven types: O, B, A, F, G, K, & M. It was believed that this sequence corresponded to the surface temperature of the stars, with O being the hottest & M the coolest. In her Ph.D. thesis (published as Stellar Atmospheres [1925]), Payne used the spectral lines of many different elements & the work of Indian astrophysicist Meghnad Saha, who had discovered an equation relating the ionization states of an element in a star to the temperature to definitively establish that the spectral sequence did correspond to quantifiable stellar temperatures. Payne also determined that stars are composed mostly of hydrogen & helium. However, she was dissuaded from this conclusion by Princeton astronomer Henry Norris Russell (1877-1957), who thought that stars surely would have the same composition as Earth. (Russell conceded in 1929 that Payne was correct.) 

In principle, it seemed that one might obtain the composition of the stars by comparing their spectral lines to those of known chemical elements observed in laboratory spectra. Astronomers had identified elements like calcium & iron as responsible for some of the most prominent lines, so they naturally assumed that such heavy elements were among the major constituents of the stars. In fact, Princeton's Henry Norris Russell at Princeton had concluded that if the Earth’s crust were heated to the temperature of the Sun, its spectrum would look nearly the same.


When Cecilia Payne arrived at Harvard, a comprehensive study of stellar spectra had long been underway. Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941) whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification.  Annie was nearly deaf throughout her career. She was a suffragist & a member of the National Women's Party.

Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941)

Annie had sorted the spectra of several hundred thousand stars into seven distinct classes. She had devised & ordered the classification scheme, based on differences in the spectral features. Astronomers assumed that the spectral classes represented a sequence of decreasing surface temperatures of the stars, but no one was able to demonstrate this quantitatively.

Cecilia Payne, who studied the new science of quantum physics, knew that the pattern of features in the spectrum of any atom was determined by the configuration of its electrons. She also knew that at high temperatures, one or more electrons are stripped from the atoms, which are then called ions. The Indian physicist M. N. Saha had recently shown how the temperature & pressure in the atmosphere of a star determine the extent to which various atoms are ionized.

Payne began a long project to measure the absorption lines in stellar spectra, & within two years produced a thesis for her doctoral degree, the first awarded for work at Harvard College Observatory. In it, she showed that the wide variation in stellar spectra is due mainly to the different ionization states of the atoms & hence different surface temperatures of the stars, not to different amounts of the elements. She calculated the relative amounts of eighteen elements & showed that the compositions were nearly the same among the different kinds of stars. She discovered, surprisingly, that the Sun & the other stars are composed almost entirely of hydrogen & helium, the two lightest elements. All the heavier elements, like those making up the bulk of the Earth, account for less than two percent of the mass of the stars.

Most of the mass of the visible universe is hydrogen, the lightest element, & not the heavier elements that are more prominent in the spectra of the stars! This was indeed a revolutionary discovery. Harlow Shapley sent Payne’s thesis to Professor Russell at Princeton, who informed her that the result was “clearly impossible.” To protect her career, Payne inserted a statement in her thesis that the calculated abundances of hydrogen & helium were “almost certainly not real.”

She then converted her thesis into the book Stellar Atmospheres, which was well-received by astronomers. Within a few years it was clear to everyone that her results were both fundamental & correct. Cecilia Payne had showed for the first time how to “read” the surface temperature of any star from its spectrum. She showed that Cannon’s ordering of the stellar spectral classes was indeed a sequence of decreasing temperatures & she was able to calculate the temperatures. The so-called Princeton Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a plot of luminosity versus spectral class of the stars, could now be properly interpreted, & it became by far the most powerful analytical tool in stellar astrophysics.

From the time she finished her Ph.D. through the 1930s, Payne advised students, conducted research, & lectured—all the usual duties of a professor. Yet, because she was a woman, her only title at Harvard was “technical assistant” to Professor Harlow Shapley. 

In 1933, Payne traveled to Europe to meet Russian astronomer Boris Gerasimovich, who had previously worked at the Harvard College Observatory & with whom she planned to write a book about variable stars. In Göttingen, Ger., she met Sergey Gaposchkin, a Russian astronomer who could not return to the Soviet Union because of his politics. Payne was able to find a position at Harvard for him. They married in 1934 & often collaborated on studies of variable stars. She was named a lecturer in astronomy in 1938, but even though she taught courses, they were not listed in the Harvard catalog until after World War II.

In collaboration with colleague John Whitman, she rendered this early X-ray image of the supernova remnant Cassopeia-A in 1976 using yarn & needlepoint. 

Despite being indisputably one of the most brilliant & creative astronomers of the 20C, Cecilia Payne was never elected to the elite National Academy of Sciences. But times were beginning to change. In 1956, she was finally made a full professor (the 1st woman so recognized at Harvard) & chair of the Astronomy Department.

Her fellow astronomers certainly came to appreciate her genius. In 1976, the American Astronomical Society awarded her the prestigious Henry Norris Russell Prize. In her acceptance lecture, she said, “The reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the 1st person in the history of the world to see something or to understand something.” 

See:

American Museum of Natural History: Cecilia Payne & the Composition of the Stars

Encyclopedia Britannica: Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin 

Archival Collections:

Collections of Cecilia Payne- & Sergei Gaposchkin. Wolbach Library, Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.

Papers of Harlow Shapley, 1906-1966; HUG 4773.10 Box 89. Harvard University Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Papers of Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin, 1924, circa 1950s-1990s, 2000; HUGB P182.5, P182.50. Harvard University Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Link.

Project PHaEDRA. Wolbach Library, Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass. Link.

Radcliffe College Alumnae Association Records, ca.1894-2004; RG IX, Series 2, box 241. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Wilbur Kitchener Jordan Records of the President of Radcliffe College, 1943-1960; RG II, Series 3, boxes 27, 60. Radcliffe College Archives, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Bibliography: 

Bartusiak, Marcia. 1993. “The Stuff of Stars.” The Sciences, no. September/October: 34–39.

Boyd, Sylvia. 2014. Portrait of a Binary : The Lives of Cecilia Payne & Sergei Gaposchkin. Penobscot Press.

DeVorkin, David. 2010. “Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: C.H. Payne, H.N. Russell & Standards of Evidence in Early Quantitative Stellar Spectroscopy.” Journal Of Astronomical History & Heritage 13 (2): 139–44.

Gaposchkin, Cecilia Helena Payne. 1984. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: An Autobiography (“The Dyer’s Hand”) & Other Recollections. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.

Gaposchkin, Sergei. 1970. The Divine Scramble. Self-Published.

Gingerich, Owen, Katherine Haramundanis, & Dorrit Hoffleit. 2001. The Starry Universe: The Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Centenary. L. Davis Press.

Popova, Maria. 2017. “Stitching a Supernova: A Needlepoint Celebration of Science by Pioneering Astronomer Cecilia Payne.” Brain Pickings (blog). May 10, 2017. 

Russell, Henry Norris. 1929. “On the Composition of the Sun’s Atmosphere.” The Astrophysical Journal 70 (July): 11.

Spiller, James. 2015. Frontiers for the American Century: Outer Space, Antarctica, & Cold War Nationalism. First edition. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science & Technology. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Woodman, Jennifer. 2016. “Stellar Works: Searching for the Lives of Women in Science.” Dissertations & Theses, June.

"We Are Made of Starstuff.”

Dear old Hubble & the new James Webb Telescope, the largest space observatory to date, & thousands of scientists around the world will lead us into countless universes & 100 billion galaxies of composed of dying stars expelling dust & gas - elements & gases interchangeable with ours. We are part of infinity living on a tiny blue dot in space. “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

"The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

"It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

―American astronomer Carl Sagan (1934-1996), Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

Spring 2022 at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania

There have been many stewards of the land that is now called Longwood Gardens. For centuries, the native Lenni Lenape tribe fished the streams, hunted its forests, & planted its fields. Evidence of tribe's existence is found in quartz spear points that have been discovered on & around the property.

In 1700, a Quaker farmer named George Peirce purchased 402 acres of this English-claimed land from William Penn’s commissioners. Over the next several years, George & his descendants cleared & farmed the rich land that would one day become Longwood Gardens. In 1730, one of George’s sons, Joshua, built a brick farmhouse that, now enlarged, still stands today.

Known as Peirce’s Park, the land became a popular destination for visitors. However, due to declining interest by the family, the trees came under threat of being cut down by a local lumber company. Pierre du Pont stepped in & bought the land to preserve it.

In 1798, George’s twin great-grandsons, Samuel & Joshua, actively pursued an interest in natural history & began planting an arboretum that eventually covered 15 acres. The collection included specimens from up & down the Eastern seaboard & beyond. By 1850, the land had become one of the best collections of trees in the country. The arboretum boasted one of the finest collections of trees in the nation & had become a place for the locals to gather outdoors – a new concept that was sweeping America at the time. Family reunions & picnics were held at Peirce's Park in the mid to late 19C.

As the 19C US fought its way to the 20C, the heirs to the land lost interest in property & allowed the arboretum to deteriorate. The property passed through several hands in quick succession, until a lumber mill operator was contracted to remove the trees from a 41-acre parcel within the original lands in early 1906. 

It was this threat that moved one man to take action. In July 1906, 36-year-old Pierre du Pont purchased the farm primarily to preserve the trees. But he didn’t stop there. Much of what guests see today – the beauty & majesty & magic of the Earth that is Longwood Gardens – was shaped by the remarkable vision & versatility of Pierre du Pont. See: Longwood Gardens History for more. 

“Beauty awakens the soul to act.” - Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

Mythical Gardens - The Garden of Eden at Creation - Illuminated Manuscripts

Animals & Humans Emerging from the Earth Together; from an illustrated manuscript version of Augustine's City of God, c. 1475 (The Hague, RMMW, 10 A 11, fol. 300v) This garden seems to ha a natural curved road with trees evenly planted on both sides

In Western iconography the early Christian garden is usually defined by the Biblical story of Adam & Eve, the original lovers thrown out of paradise for tasting forbidden fruit, & cast into the wilderness to define their own lives & gardens. Before the Western printing press, illustrated manuscripts & early depictions of landscapes in portrayals of Biblical gardens give us a glimpse of gardens familiar & imagined during the periods the images were created. 

Gardens are often mentioned in the Bible. In the language of the Hebrews, every place where plants & trees were cultivated with greater care than in the open field, was called a garden. Fruit & shade trees, with aromatic shrubs, sometimes constituted the garden; though roses, lilies, & various gardens were used only for table vegetables, Genesis 2:8-10 15:1-21; 1 Kings 21:2; Ecclesiastes 2:5,6.

Genesis 2:8 “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed...And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it."

Monday, April 18, 2022

17C Spring - Flowers, Fertility, Sensuality, & Delight.

1620 Lady as Spring, by Follower of Abraham Janssens, also called Abraham Janssens Van Nuyssen (Flemish, 1573-1632)  Spring brings flowers, fertility, sensuality, & delight.  

Spring is the perfect time to celebrate Earth's Beauty & Bounty.  Flowers gave beauty & inspiration to mankind's basic struggle to live & to populate & to protect his home-base, The Earth.  Holding on to The Sweet Divine - The Lord God took man & put him in the Garden of Eden to work it & to keep it...Genesis 2:15.



Mythical Gardens - The Garden of Eden at Creation - Illuminated Manuscripts

Illuminated Manuscript, Bible (part), Creation of the world, (and Eve!) Walters Manuscript W.805, fol. 6v detail. Here is a beautiful natural garden with trees & shrubs full of birds, water fowl, & even a squirrel in a tree.

In Western iconography the early Christian garden is usually defined by the Biblical story of Adam & Eve, the original lovers thrown out of paradise for tasting forbidden fruit, & cast into the wilderness to define their own lives & gardens. Before the Western printing press, illustrated manuscripts & early depictions of landscapes in portrayals of Biblical gardens give us a glimpse of gardens familiar & imagined during the periods the images were created. 

Gardens are often mentioned in the Bible. In the language of the Hebrews, every place where plants & trees were cultivated with greater care than in the open field, was called a garden. Fruit & shade trees, with aromatic shrubs, sometimes constituted the garden; though roses, lilies, & various gardens were used only for table vegetables, Genesis 2:8-10 15:1-21; 1 Kings 21:2; Ecclesiastes 2:5,6.

Genesis 2:8 “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed...And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it."

Saturday, April 16, 2022

The Angel said Fear not...He is Risen

Angel by Melozzo da Forli (Italian Renaissance artist, 1438-1494). Vatican Museums.

And the angel...said Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Matthew 28:5–6

Music-making Angel by Melozzo da Forli (Italian Renaissance artist, 1438-1494) from fresco paintings of the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli, the Vault of the Sacristy of Saint Mark. Vatican Museums.
Music-making Angel by Melozzo da Forli (Italian Renaissance artist, 1438-1494) from fresco paintings of the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli, the Vault of the Sacristy of Saint Mark. Vatican Museums.
Music-making Angel by Melozzo da Forli (Italian Renaissance artist, 1438-1494) from fresco paintings of the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli, the Vault of the Sacristy of Saint Mark. Vatican Museums.
Music-making Angel by Melozzo da Forli (Italian Renaissance artist, 1438-1494) from fresco paintings of the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli, the Vault of the Sacristy of Saint Mark. Vatican Museums.
Music-making Angel by Melozzo da Forli (Italian Renaissance artist, 1438-1494) from fresco paintings of the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli, the Vault of the Sacristy of Saint Mark. Vatican Museums.
Music-making Angel by Melozzo da Forli (Italian Renaissance artist, 1438-1494) from fresco paintings of the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli, the Vault of the Sacristy of Saint Mark. Vatican Museums.
Music-making Angel by Melozzo da Forli (Italian Renaissance artist, 1438-1494) from fresco paintings of the Basilica dei Santi Apostoli, the Vault of the Sacristy of Saint Mark. Vatican Museums.
Angel by Melozzo da Forli (Italian Renaissance artist, 1438-1494). Vatican Museums.

Sunday, April 10, 2022

Jesus Arrives in Jerusalem

Giotto di Bondone (Florentine painter, c 1267-1337). Triumphal Entry

Jesus Arrives in Jeruselem

Fresco of Jesus' Entry by Pietro Lorenzetti, an Italian artist in the early 14C

Jesus Arrives in Jeruselem

A Serbian Icon of Jesus’ Entry to Jerusalem

Sunday, March 27, 2022

15C Madonna & Child in a Garden

 

Unknown Master, Flemish (15C in Brussels) Virgin and Child.  National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

The unidentified artist who executed this panel is sometimes referred to as the Master of the Embroidered Foliage, based on his characteristic foregrounds, carpeted with flowers & decorative leaves. He appears to have been active in Brussels & the South Netherlands, & was apparently influenced by Flemish masters Rogier van der Weyden c 1399-1464 & Hugo van der Goes, (c 1440—1482).

Here the Virgin sits on a high=back turfed bench protected within a walled garden enclosure.  The Metropolitan Museum notes that turf benches were among the most distinctive features of medieval gardens depicted in manuscripts, paintings & tapestries. 

Medieval garden benches may be rectangular, circular, L-shaped, or U-shaped; the U-shaped type is known as an exedra. The benches were usually constructed with low-walled frames made out of brick, wood, stone, or wattle (often woven willow). 

Most bench frames were filled with soil & the surfaces were topped with turf. Turf seats were placed in the middle of the garden or against one of its walls, & were sometimes incorporated into the design of an enclosure. 

Arbors or trellises were sometimes built into the seat to provide shade & shelter.  Circular garden benches usually were constructed around single trees.

Not all turf benches were constructed within a frame; some had grass growing on all sides. The same plants & flowers depicted in the lawn are often shown growing in the turf of the bench. 

In medieval depictions, turf benches are usually occupied by the Virgin, or by a pair of lovers. 

While figures are often shown sitting on the bench, the Virgin Mary is sometimes shown seated on the ground, occasionally leaning back against a bench, as a symbol of humility.

The simplest form of turf bench is the four-walled rectangular frame with turf growing only on the top of the bench. Such benches are common in representations of medieval gardens.

Friday, March 25, 2022

The Annunciation of the coming Birth of Jesus to Mary in Spring Gardens - Illuminated Manuscripts

The Annunciation in a Garden, Book of Hours (Bodmer Hours), ca. 1400–1410 Michelino da Besozzo (Italian, act. 1388–1450). Renaissance (about 1400–1600) manuscript artists depicted gardens in a variety of texts, and their illustrations attest to the Renaissance spirit for the careful study of the natural world. In a society then dominated by the church, gardens within the miniature & in the margins surrounding were also integral to a Christian visual tradition.

The Annunciation is a day of celebration for many Christians throughout the world which reminds them of the time when the Virgin Mary was asked by the Lord to bring into the world a Savior who would be named Jesus.  Mary as Mother of Jesus was prophesized in Isaias 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, & bear a son, & his name shall be called Emmanuel.”
Psalter Annunciation in Garden, 1180. (National Library of theNetherlands) The Annunciation ca 1450, Book of Hours

The Annunciation is mentioned only a few times in the New Testament. The gospel of Matthew begins by describing the heritage of Jesus stating “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham:” (Matthew 1:1). In Chapter 1:2-16, continues listing Jesus’ heritage ending with a conclusion in verse 16 stating “And Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” (Matthew 1:16).  Matthew describes the Annunciation of Mary. The Virgin Mary was found with a child, before she & Joseph “came together” Matthew 1:18). Joseph had concerns about what to do in this situation, until an angel of the Lord appeared to him in his sleep, saying: “Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her, is of the Holy Ghost. & she shall bring forth a son: & thou shalt call his name Jesus. For he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:20-21).
 The Annunciation in a Garden from the Book of Hours,  Flanders c.1460

Luke is the only other gospel to mention the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary. Luke states that: “the angel Gabriel was sent from God into a city of Galilee, called Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; & the virgin’s name was Mary. & the angel said unto her: 'Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women..And the angel said to her: fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God. Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, & shalt bring forth a son; & thou shalt call his name Jesus.” (Luke 1:26-31)  Mary, being of such a young age, was in wonder, because she had not been with any man. Gabriel answered “.The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, & the power of the most High shall overshadow thee. & therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” (Luke 1:35)
The Annunciation to Mary by the Archangel Gabriel, with Anne Boleyn's note in the lower margin (London, British Library, MS King's 9, f. 66v).
The Annunciation in a Garden, about 1469

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

In 875 AD Imagining the origin of the Gospels

Illuminated Manuscript, Gospels of Freising, Evangelist Portrait of Matthew, Walters Art Museum Ms. W.4, fol. 33v Freising, Germany c 875.

A gospel is an account describing the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The most widely-known gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John.  Some Christians use the term "gospel," otherwise known as the "good news," in reference to the general message of the biblical New Testament.  Here Matthew, Mark, Luke, & John are portrayed with a few of their fierce friends writing about the life of Jesus.
Illuminated Manuscript, Gospels of Freising, Evangelist Portrait of Mark, Walters Art Museum Ms. W.4, fol. 90v Freising, Germany c 875.
Illuminated Manuscript, Gospels of Freising, Evangelist Portrait of Luke, Walters Art Museum Ms. W.4, fol. 126v Freising, Germany c 875.
Illuminated Manuscript, Gospels of Freising, Evangelist Portrait of John, Walters Art Museum Ms. W.4, fol. 178v Freising, Germany c 875.

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

9000-year-old Obsidian Tools Found at Bottom of Lake Huron

The two ancient obsidian flakes recovered from a now submerged archaeological site beneath Lake Huron represent the oldest & farthest east confirmed occurrence of western obsidian in the continental United States.

Obsidian, or volcanic glass, is a prized raw material for knappers, both ancient & modern, with its lustrous appearance, predictable flaking, & resulting razor-sharp edges.

As such, it was used & traded widely throughout much of human history.

Obsidian from the Rocky Mountains & the West was an exotic exchange commodity in Eastern North America.

“Obsidian from the far western United States is rarely found in the east,” said Dr. Ashley Lemke, an anthropologist in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at the University of Texas at Arlington.

The two ancient obsidian artifacts were recovered from a sample of sediment that was hand excavated at a depth of 32 m (105 feet) in an area between two submerged hunting structures at the bottom of Lake Huron.

“This particular find is really exciting because it shows how important underwater archaeology is,” Dr. Lemke said.

“The preservation of ancient underwater sites is unparalleled on land, & these places have given us a great opportunity to learn more about past peoples.”

The larger artifact is a mostly complete, roughly triangular, biface thinning flake made from a black & translucent material with a sub-vitreous texture.

The second artifact is a small, very thin, translucent flake on a material visually similar to the larger specimen.

“These tiny obsidian artifacts reveal social connections across North America 9,000 years ago,” Dr. Lemke said.

“The artifacts found below the Great Lakes come from a geological source in Oregon, 4,000 km (2,485 miles) away — making it one of the longest distances recorded for obsidian artifacts anywhere in the world.”

See: PacTV site 16th November, 2021

Friday, November 12, 2021

What We Have Learned, so far, about Ancient Cave Art


Neil Bockoven tells us that the oldest works of "cave art" presently documented are handprints in Tibet that may be 226,000 years old  - probably Denisovan or Neanderthal (Zhang et al. 2021). 

The oldest Homo sapien drawing is a cross-hatching on a piece of red ochre made more than 73,000 years ago in South Africa (Henshilwood et al. 2018).

The oldest known cave painting is a Neanderthal's 64,000-year-old, red hand stencil in Spain (Hoffmann et al. 2018). 

Nearly 350 caves that contain prehistoric art have been discovered in Europe, but a lot has been found elsewhere too. The most common subjects in cave paintings are large animals, such as horses, bison, aurochs, and deer, as well as tracings of human hands. 

The oldest representational painting - of a warty pig - is found in Indonesia and dates to at least 45,500 years (Brumm et al. 2021). All of these wonderful works of art help define the early edge of human abstract thinking. 

See Ancient Wonders of Archaeology, Art History & Architecture

Sunday, October 31, 2021

Halloween's Celtic & Christian Origins


More than 2,000 years ago the Celtic people believed summer came to an end on October 31st, so in anticipation of the end of "the season of life" & the beginning of "the season of death," Celts would celebrate Samhain or Samain (pronounced "sah-win") or "Summer's End."

In the 19C, one academic explained, "The Samhain feast...was, like the Greek Apaturia, partly devoted to business...other wise the feast, which occupied, not only Samain or the first of November, but also the three days before and the three days after it."

The festival segment of Samhain focused on the harvest & death of crops & the approaching season of cold & darkness, to symbolize the the transition from life to death. The Celts thought the veil between this world & the next was thinnest during Samhain & that spirits & fairies could more easily move between the two realms. Some might pass from the living to the dead, and some dead ancestors might come to visit during this time. The Celtic celebration of Samhain was the New Year’s Day on the Celtic calendar.


In ancient times the festival was said to be celebrated with a great assembly at the royal court in Tara, the archaic hill fort and bastion of the Irish kings. The festival began after a ritual fire was set ablaze on the Hill of Tlachtga. This bonfire served as a beacon, signaling to people gathered atop hills all across Ireland to light their ritual bonfires. 

This ritual was called the Féile na Marbh in old Irish, meaning the 'festival of the dead' took place on the night of Samhain, or “Oíche Shamhna” and and was said to fall on the 31st of October. 

The word 'bonfire' itself is a direct translation of the Gaelic tine cnámh or Bone Fire, because villagers were said to have cast the bones of the slaughtered livestock upon the flames. October was the traditional time for slaughter - for preparing stores of meat and grain to last through the coming winter. 

With the bonfire ablaze, the villagers extinguished all other fires and then each family then solemnly lit its hearth from the local common flame, thus bonding the families of the village together with the symbolic bones of their ancestors. English travelers of the 19C are said to have witnessed this ritual.

In some homes, a door would be opened to the west & a beloved dead relative would be specifically invited to attend the celebration. Villagers might leave a candle or other light burning in a western window to guide the dead home. 

On Samhain Eve, the Celts lit their bonfires & laid out harvest gifts for the souls traveling through the corporeal plane on their way to the next realm. Families would leave food & wine on their doorstep to aid the souls passing over & to keep the pesky ghosts at bay. 

Many wore costumes when leaving the house hoping to be mistaken for ghosts themselves. The Celts believed dressing up both honored the good spirits & helped avoid the bad ones.


Ancient Celtic legends supported this concept of transition from life to death.

 In one, Nero, while begging from door-to-door on Samhain, discovered a cave leading directly into the fairy realm. 

In another, gods called Fomorians demanded tribute from Celtic mortals, who offered harvest fruits to these gods at Samhain. 

This story reinforced the Celtic tradition of setting out harvest gifts for souls crossing over & for the ghosts gathered near at Summer's End.

Sometime in the 8C, Pope Gregory IV changed the date originally set for All Saints' Day to the same day as Samhain, essentially merging the traditions connected to those holidays & making the church more attractive to non-believers. The Catholic Church established November 1st as All Saints Day (also known as All Hallows) & November 2 as All Souls Day.

A traditional Irish Halloween carved turnip jack-o-lantern

Incorporating the existing Celtic custom of going door-to-door on Samhain, the church encouraged a practice called "souling." The practice of dressing up in costumes & begging door to door for treats on holidays goes back to the Middle Ages. 

Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of “souling,” when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). 

It originated in Ireland & Britain, although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy. Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1593), when Speed accuses his master of “puling [whimpering, whining], like a beggar at Hallowmas.”

In 19C England, one writer reported, "The custom of "souling"...is carried on with great zeal in this neighbourhood." Another wrote of "children who are singing their "Souling Song" under my window." One noted, "Soul-cakes...to give away to the souling-children."

James Elder Christie (British artist, 1847-1914) Halloween Frolics

The traditions of "guising," & "mumming" grew into an event where masked individuals would go door-to-door disguised as spirits dancing & singing in exchange for food & wine. 

A 19C Scottish song noted, "In a guizing excursion, he sung some verses." 

The custom of mumming was first written about in the 1400s in English. In 1546, it was noted, "The disguising and muming that is vsed in Christemas tyme." 

By 1801, one writer explained, "A sport common among the ancients...consisted in mummings and disguisements." (The Danish word mumme meant to parade in masks. The term guising was first used in written English in 1563. )

In order to see as they paraded at night, Irish participants would carve faces into turnips & potatoes to light as lanterns, as they passed from house to house, & to set outside their doorways to light dark steps & to scare away evil spirits.