Month: October 2011

Remarkable Discovery in Southern India

This week, exciting news has emerged from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. An article in the Times of India has reported that Roman pottery remains have been discovered in the village of Naduvirapattu, located outside the city of Tambaram. In ancient times, Tamil Nadu lay at the nexus of overseas trade between East and West. Please read this article by clicking here.

The Panorama of Ancient Pergamon

If you are based in Germany or are near the vicinity of Berlin, be sure to visit a special show entitled “Pergamon: Panorama of the Ancient Metropolis,” at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum. The show, which opened earlier this month, includes a spectacular panoramic recreation of the city during the second century CE. Please read more about this exciting museum show, via the Wall Street Journal, by clicking here. The reviews and public reception has been overwhelmingly positive!

Ancient Paris Article and New Caligula Biography

For those of you interested in urban archaeology and the painstaking process of uncovering the past beneath our cities, please check out this recent article in France Today. It’s a gem! Also, for those of you interested in the Romans, be aware that there is a new biography on the infamous Caligula by the Swiss historian, Alyos Winterling. Please read the review in Canada’s major newsweekly, Maclean’s, here.

New Feature: External Articles

Our goal at Ancient History Encyclopedia is always to give you great content that cannot be found elsewhere on the internet, but we cannot deny that various universities and journals have already published excellent research papers (usually PDFs) that we would like to publish here on the site. Unfortunately, these papers are usually protected by copyright. Now we have found a way around this: We can now embed external papers as articles, but the papers remain on the site they were published on! While we still encourage you to write your own content for the site, it would be great if you could also add external papers as articles, whenever you find them! Simply create a new article, choose the “I want to link to an existing article on the internet” option, link to the paper, and add an abstract — done. You can find an example here.

Evidence of 100,000 year-old dye found

Dye was already being produced and used 100,000 years ago, an international team of researchers found in South Africa. They discovered two bowls containing traces of dye from sea snails in the Blombos-Cave near Cape Town. It is still unclear what the dye was used for: body paint, skin protection, or paint for art? The two bowls are now on display in the Iziko Museum in Cape Town. Read the original news story at Spiegel Online (in German).

Improved Timeline Search

I am proud to present a massively improved timeline search and visual timeline: I have categorized every timeline entry (which took quite a while, considering we have over 1000 entries, even though I did get some help) and you can now search the timeline by category. Categories include “Philosophy & Religion”, “States & Territories”, “War(fare) & Battles”, among others. I’ve also greatly improved the visual timeline feature: Each timeline entry is coloured according to its category, and the positioning of entries on the timeline is now working much better. I’m hope you’re going to love this feature! As always, feedback is most welcome!