And Israel joined himself unto Baalpeor: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel.” — Numbers 25:3 What was it about Baalpeor, a god of the Moab people, that so ticked off the Lord? Presumably it was of his reputation for seducing people “by suggesting to them ingenious inventions that will make them […]
Field Notes
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The Sound of Bells
“Never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee,” cautioned poet John Donne 400 years ago. That was then. Weddings and funerals used to be prime bell-ringing events, when virtually every parish church in the western world had one or more bells hung in their tower or steeple. You won’t hear […]
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Listening to the Universe with LIGO
For as long as our kind has looked up at night, all our information about the universe has come from electromagnetic waves: mainly visible light (amplified by telescopes since Galileo’s time), infrared and ultraviolet light and, more recently, radio waves. That is, until 5:51 a.m. Eastern time on Sept. 14, 2015, when a half-second “chirp” […]
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The Bronze Age
Last week we saw how the three-part division of history proposed 200 years ago — Stone, Bronze and Iron ages — might have been a foursome if the Chalcolithic, or Copper Age, had been included. Although copper is relatively abundant and is occasionally found in its pure form, it’s not so useful as a tool […]
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The Bronze Age
We love dividing the world up into threes: animal, vegetable and mineral; mind, body and spirit; past, present and future; starter, entree and dessert. And so it was 200 years ago, when the curator of what was to become the National Museum of Denmark, Christian Thomsen, gave us the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and […]
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Runes in the Ruin
When diggers (calling them archaeologists would be too kind) broke into a 5,000-year-old Maeshowe passage grave in Orkney, Scotland, in 1851, they soon realized they weren’t the first intruders. The walls of the Neolithic tomb were covered with about 30 Nordic runes dating from the 12th century, one of the richest collections of such writing […]
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Unwrapping the Past
If you happen to be a time-traveler, do avoid Italy’s Bay of Naples on Aug. 24, 79 AD. That’s when Mount Vesuvius, dormant for 800 years, blew its top, completely engulfing several nearby Roman cities in a thick layer of volcanic ash. The disaster turned out to be a boon for future archaeologists. The most […]
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Science. It Works, etc.
No stranger to controversy, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene) invited it in spades during an appearance at Oxford University in February of 2013. Asked for evidence that scientific theory was valid, he responded, “[Science] works! Planes fly. Cars drive. Computers compute. If you base medicine on science, you cure people. If you base […]
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Ötzi the Iceman
Peering through a small, double-glazed viewing window at the brown, desiccated body of a man who died 5,300 years ago is an uncanny experience. Should he even be on display, for the likes of me and several hundred thousand visitors a year, in this museum in Bolzano, Italy? I tell myself that, since being discovered […]
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Westworld vs. Realworld
Along with my views on the utility of miniaturized modular nuclear reactors (“Nuclear Batteries,” June 15), I suppose the opinion that generates the most unpopular reaction is my belief that free will is a boondoggle. While the free will versus determinism debate has been going on in philosophers’ ivory towers and beery college dorms for […]
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Early, Early Man in the Americas?
Christmas some 30 years ago saw a half-dozen of us curious rubberneckers tramping over the so-called “Calico Early Man Site,” located half an hour east of Barstow, California. How early? At least 100,000 years, according to none other than the late Louis Leakey, who investigated the site starting in 1963, at the behest of Californian […]
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Tabby’s Star
Fifty years ago — November 28, 1967 — a strange signal from the heavens was detected by radio astronomers in Cambridge, England. It was essentially a pulsing beep-beep-beep, the beeps being a little more than a second apart. Was this a signal from an alien civilization, a calling card from afar? The researchers jokingly called […]