A Brief History of the Concept Album: From Woody Guthrie, to the Beatles and Pink Floyd, to Taylor Swift

in History, Music | May 19th, 2023

Though Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band holds some­thing of an hon­orary cul­tur­al posi­tion as “the first con­cept album,” the Bea­t­les them­selves did­n’t hear it that way. The term “con­cept album,” as defined by Poly­phon­ic host Noah Lefevre in his new video above, denotes “a set of tracks which hold a larg­er mean­ing when togeth­er than apart, usu­al­ly achieved through adher­ence to a cen­tral theme.” Despite being one of the finest col­lec­tions of songs com­mit­ted to a sin­gle vinyl disc in the nine­teen-six­ties, Sgt. Pep­per’s does — apart from its open­ing and clos­ing tracks — reflect few pains tak­en to assure a the­mat­ic uni­ty.

Oth­er con­tenders for the first con­cept album, in Lefevre’s telling, include Woody Guthrie’s 1940 Dust Bowl Bal­lads, Frank Sina­tra’s 1955 In the Wee Small Hours, John­ny Cash’s 1959 Songs of Our Soil, and The Ven­tures’ 1964 The Ven­tures in Space. Part of the ques­tion of des­ig­na­tion has to do with tech­nol­o­gy: we asso­ciate the album with the twelve-inch long-play­ing record, which did­n’t come on the mar­ket until 1948. (Dust Bowl Bal­lads had to sprawl across two 78 rpm three-disc sets.)

And even then, it was almost two decades before the LP “caught on as the default for­mat for musi­cal releas­es, allow­ing musi­cians to have more scope and vision for their albums” — that, thanks to expan­sive gate­fold sleeves, could lit­er­al­ly be made vis­i­ble. There began what I’ve come to think of as the hero­ic era of the album as an art form.

This era was marked by releas­es like The Moth­ers of Inven­tion’s Freak Out!, The Who’s Tom­my, Mar­vin Gaye’s What’s Going On, David Bowie’s Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars, Pink Floy­d’s The Dark Side of the Moon and lat­er The Wall. “The sev­en­ties were a gold­en age for the con­cept album,” Lefevre adds. “It was a time when musi­cians had the space and bud­get to exper­i­ment, and when new tech­nolo­gies were push­ing music into entire­ly unex­pect­ed places.” Par­tial­ly demol­ished by punk and majes­ti­cal­ly revived by hip-hop, the con­cept album remains a viable form today, essayed by major twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry pop artists from The Week­nd and Kendrick Lamar to Tay­lor Swift and BTS — none of whom have quite man­aged to cap­ture the entire zeit­geist in the man­ner of Sgt. Pep­per’s, grant­ed, but cer­tain­ly not for lack of try­ing.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Pink Floyd Built The Wall: The Album, Tour & Film

How Pat­ti Smith “Saved” Rock and Roll: A New Video Makes the Case

When David Bowie & Bri­an Eno Made a Twin Peaks-Inspired Album, Out­side (1995)

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon Turns 50: Hear It Get Psy­cho­an­a­lyzed by Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin

What Makes a Cov­er Song Great?: Our Favorites & Yours

The True Mean­ing of Queen’s Rock Epic “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The First Full 3D Scan of the Titanic, Made of More Than 700,000 Images Capturing the Wreck’s Every Detail

in History, Technology | May 18th, 2023

Even the most ardent ship­wreck enthu­si­asts among us must make peace with the fact that, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, we’ll nev­er get to see the Titan­ic for our­selves. But now, at least, we have a sub­sti­tute in the form of the ship’s “dig­i­tal twin,” based on more than 700,000 images col­lect­ed under­wa­ter over 200 hours.“It pro­vides a unique 3D view of the entire ship, enabling it to be seen as if the water has been drained away,” report BBC News’ Rebec­ca Morelle and Ali­son Fran­cis. “The scan was car­ried out in sum­mer 2022 by Mag­el­lan Ltd, a deep-sea map­ping com­pa­ny, and Atlantic Pro­duc­tions, who are mak­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the project.”

You can catch a glimpse of how the scan looks in the clip from the Times at the top of the post, but it only hints at its true lev­el of detail. “The joint mis­sion by Mag­el­lan and Atlantic Pro­duc­tions deployed two sub­mersibles nick­named Romeo and Juli­et to map every mil­lime­ter of the wreck, includ­ing the debris field span­ning some three miles,” writes Ars Techi­ca’s Jen­nifer Ouel­lette.

“The result was a whop­ping 16 ter­abytes of data, along with over 715,000 still images and 4K video footage. That raw data was then processed to cre­ate the 3D dig­i­tal twin. The res­o­lu­tion is so good, one can make out part of the ser­i­al num­ber on one of the pro­pellers.”

“The bow, now cov­ered in sta­lac­tites of rust, is still instant­ly rec­og­niz­able even 100 years after the ship was lost,” write Morelle and Fran­cis. “Sit­ting on top is the boat deck, where a gap­ing hole pro­vides a glimpse into a void where the grand stair­case once stood.” As one might expect, the Titan­ic has come through twelve decades at the bot­tom of the North Atlantic ocean some­what worse for wear, and get­ting worse all the time. “Microbes are eat­ing away at it and parts are dis­in­te­grat­ing. His­to­ri­ans are well aware that time is run­ning out to ful­ly under­stand the mar­itime dis­as­ter.” Indeed, there will come a day when the remains of the Titan­ic will have van­ished com­plete­ly. But even then, its dig­i­tal twin — or, per­haps, dig­i­tal ghost — will have more to teach us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

See the First 8K Footage of the Titan­ic, the High­est-Qual­i­ty Video of the Ship­wreck Yet

Watch the Titan­ic Sink in Real Time in a New 2‑Hour, 40 Minute Ani­ma­tion

Watch 80 Min­utes of Nev­er-Released Footage Show­ing the Wreck­age of the Titan­ic (1986)

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

Titan­ic Sur­vivor Inter­views: What It Was Like to Flee the Sink­ing Lux­u­ry Lin­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Behold the International Ink Library Created by the U.S. Secret Service: Features A Collection of 12,000 Ink Samples

in History, Technology | May 17th, 2023

Late though it may be in the age of print, we still envi­sion ran­som or oth­er threat­en­ing notes in the same way we have for gen­er­a­tions, with their demands incon­gru­ous­ly spelled out with indi­vid­ual let­ters, each one a dif­fer­ent size and font, tak­en from the pages of news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines. This clas­sic cut-and-paste method of ran­som note con­struc­tion pre­sum­ably emerged as means of evad­ing minds like that of Trista Gins­berg, a doc­u­ment ana­lyst spe­cial­iz­ing in hand­writ­ing at the Secret Ser­vice. She appears in the Great Big Sto­ry above, which comes to focus on one facil­i­ty at the Ser­vice’s head­quar­ters in par­tic­u­lar: the Inter­na­tion­al Ink Library.

“The Secret Ser­vice has the largest ink library in the world,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. Its more than 12,000 sam­ples of dif­fer­ent inks include “pens, bot­tled ink, and print­er car­tridges.” These come in handy when, say, “some­one writes a threat­en­ing let­ter to the pres­i­dent.”

A doc­u­ment ana­lyst like Iri­na Geiman sam­ples the let­ter’s ink, and then, by com­par­ing it to the inks in the library, “she can fig­ure out what kind of ink was used, and, hope­ful­ly, it can help solve the case.” Geiman also explains a less dra­mat­ic type of case that comes across her desk rather more often: at-home inkjet coun­ter­feit­ing of $20 bills.

Though that may not be the high­est exam­ple of the coun­ter­feit­er’s art, the art itself moti­vat­ed the cre­ation of the Secret Ser­vice in 1865 as a branch of the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment. “Fol­low­ing the Civ­il War,” says the Secret Ser­vice’s FAQ, “it was esti­mat­ed that one-third to one-half of the cur­ren­cy in cir­cu­la­tion was coun­ter­feit.” It was in 1901, after the McKin­ley assas­si­na­tion, that “the Secret Ser­vice was first tasked with its sec­ond mis­sion: the pro­tec­tion of the pres­i­dent.” Hence the cul­tur­al cur­ren­cy of the image of the would-be pres­i­dent assas­sin evad­ing gov­ern­men­tal pur­suit while labo­ri­ous­ly assem­bling his mis­sives one let­ter at a time — sure­ly rea­son enough for the Secret Ser­vice to have put togeth­er a top-secret Inter­na­tion­al Glue Library.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Ink is Made: The Process Revealed in a Mouth-Water­ing Video

Books Made with Dis­ap­pear­ing Ink Strate­gi­cal­ly Fade Away

Anato­my of a Fake: Forgery Experts Reveal 5 Ways To Spot a Fake Paint­ing by Jack­son Pol­lock (or Any Oth­er Artist)

Read the CIA’s Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al: A Time­less Guide to Sub­vert­ing Any Orga­ni­za­tion with “Pur­pose­ful Stu­pid­i­ty” (1944)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Take Carl Jung’s Word Association Test, a Quick Route Into the Subconscious (1910)

in History, Psychology | May 16th, 2023

We’ve all, at one time or anoth­er, been asked to say the first thing that pops into our heads in response to a cer­tain word or phrase. It may have hap­pened to us in school, in a mar­ket research group, or per­haps in a job inter­view at a com­pa­ny that regards itself as some­what out­side-the-box. Most such exer­cis­es, and the the­o­ries sup­port­ing their effi­ca­cy as a tool for reveal­ing the speak­er’s inner self, orig­i­nate with the work of the Swiss psy­chi­a­trist-psy­cho­an­a­lyst and then-pro­tégé of Sig­mund Freud Carl Jung.

Jung pub­lished his descrip­tion of this “asso­ci­a­tion method” in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Psy­chol­o­gy in 1910, and you can see the sto­ry of its cre­ation — ani­mat­ed in the usu­al Mon­ty Python-esque paper-cutout style — told in the new School of Life video above. In his word-asso­ci­a­tion test, says nar­ra­tor Alain de Bot­ton, “doc­tor and patient were to sit fac­ing one anoth­er, and the doc­tor would read out a list of one hun­dred words. On hear­ing each of these, the patient was to say the first thing that came into their head.” The patient must “try nev­er to delay speak­ing and that they strive to be extreme­ly hon­est in report­ing what­ev­er they were think­ing of, how­ev­er embar­rass­ing, strange, or ran­dom it might seem.”

Tri­al runs con­vinced Jung and his col­leagues that “they had hit upon an extreme­ly sim­ple yet high­ly effec­tive method for reveal­ing parts of the mind that were nor­mal­ly rel­e­gat­ed to the uncon­scious. Patients who in ordi­nary con­ver­sa­tion would make no allu­sions to cer­tain top­ics or con­cerns would, in a word asso­ci­a­tion ses­sion, quick­ly let slip crit­i­cal aspects of their true selves.” The idea is that, under pres­sure to respond as quick­ly and “unthink­ing­ly” as pos­si­ble, the patient would deliv­er up con­tents from the instinct-dri­ven sub­con­scious mind rather than the more delib­er­ate con­scious mind.

Jung used 100 words in par­tic­u­lar to pro­voke these deep-seat­ed reac­tions, the full list of which you can see below. While some of these words may sound fair­ly charged — angry, abuse, dead — most could hard­ly seem more ordi­nary, even innocu­ous: salt, win­dow, head. “When the exper­i­ment is fin­ished I first look over the gen­er­al course of the reac­tion times,” Jung writes in the orig­i­nal paper. “Pro­longed times” mean that “the patient can only adjust him­self with dif­fi­cul­ty, that his psy­cho­log­i­cal func­tions pro­ceed with marked inter­nal fric­tions, with resis­tances.” He found, as de Bot­ton puts it, that “it was pre­cise­ly where there were the longest silences that the deep­est con­flicts and neu­roses lay.” In Jung’s world­view, there were the quick, and there were the neu­rot­ic: a dras­tic sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, to be sure, but as he showed us, some­times the sim­plest lan­guage goes straight to the heart of the mat­ter.

1. head
2. green
3. water
4. to sing
5. dead
6. long
7. ship
8. to pay
9. win­dow
10. friend­ly
11. to cook
12. to ask
13. cold
14. stem
15. to dance
16. vil­lage
17. lake
18. sick
19. pride
20. to cook
21. ink
22. angry
23. nee­dle
24. to swim
25. voy­age
26. blue
27. lamp
28. to sin
29. bread
30. rich
31. tree
32. to prick
33. pity
34. yel­low
35. moun­tain
36. to die
37. salt
38. new
39. cus­tom
40. to pray
41. mon­ey
42. fool­ish
43. pam­phlet
44. despise
45. fin­ger
46. expen­sive
47. bird
48. to fall
49. book
50. unjust
51 frog
52. to part
53. hunger
54. white
55. child
56. to take care
57. lead pen­cil
58. sad
59. plum
60. to mar­ry
61. house
62. dear
63. glass
64. to quar­rel
65. fur
66. big
67. car­rot
68. to paint
69. part
70. old
71. flower
72. to beat
73. box
74. wild
75. fam­i­ly
76. to wash
77. cow
78. friend
79. luck
80. lie
81. deport­ment
82. nar­row
83. broth­er
84. to fear
85. stork
86. false
87. anx­i­ety
88. to kiss
89. bride
90. pure
91. door
92. to choose
93. hay
94. con­tent­ed
95. ridicule
96. to sleep
97. month
98. nice
99. woman
100. to abuse

Relat­ed con­tent:

Carl Jung Offers an Intro­duc­tion to His Psy­cho­log­i­cal Thought in a 3‑Hour Inter­view (1957)

How Carl Jung Inspired the Cre­ation of Alco­holics Anony­mous

Carl Jung Explains His Ground­break­ing The­o­ries About Psy­chol­o­gy in a Rare Inter­view (1957)

The Vision­ary Mys­ti­cal Art of Carl Jung: See Illus­trat­ed Pages from The Red Book

Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Can­not Stand a Mean­ing­less Life’ (1959)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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James Brown’s Historic Concert, Staged 24 Hours After Martin Luther King’s Assassination, Is Now Restored and Free to Watch Online

in History, Music | May 15th, 2023

Thanks to James Brown’s offi­cial YouTube chan­nel, you can now watch a remas­tered and restored ver­sion of a his­toric con­cert. The chan­nel pref­aces the con­cert with these words:

On April 5th 1968, James Brown gave a free con­cert at The Boston Gar­den which became a thing of leg­end. Only 24 hours ear­li­er civ­il rights activist Dr Mar­tin Luther King had been assas­si­nat­ed result­ing in wide­spread vio­lence across the Unit­ed States. The may­or of Boston was per­suad­ed to let the con­cert go ahead and it was broad­cast live across the city by WGBH-TV. Fea­tur­ing inspir­ing speech­es and leg­endary per­for­mances, James Brown’s con­cert is said to have con­tributed major­ly to main­tain­ing calm and peace through­out the city that night.

To learn more about the per­for­mance, see our sep­a­rate post: James Brown Saves Boston After Mar­tin Luther King’s Assas­si­na­tion, Calls for Peace Across Amer­i­ca (1968)

The setlist, com­plete with time stamps, appears below:

00:00 Intro
01:57 If I Ruled The World
05:40 James Brown Speech
12:55 Tom Atkins Speech
17:45 Kevin White Speech
20:59 That’s Life
24:22 Kansas City
28:45 Soul Man (Bob­by Byrd)
31:08 You’ve Got To Change Your Mind (feat. Bob­by Byrd)
35:51 I’m In Love (Bob­by Byrd)
38:22 Sweet Soul Music (Bob­by Byrd)
40:23 Mus­tang Sal­ly (Bob­by Byrd)
43:36 Med­ley: It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World / Lost Some­one / Bewil­dered
57:30 Tell Mama (Mar­va Whit­ney)
59:36 Check Your­self (Mar­va Whit­ney)
01:05:02 Chain Of Fools (Mar­va Whit­ney)
01:07:38 I Heard It Through The Grapevine (Mar­va Whit­ney)
01:10:24 Maceo Park­er Com­e­dy Rou­tine
01:20:20 Get It Togeth­er
01:27:30 There Was A Time
01:38:40 I Got The Feel­in’
01:42:40 Try Me
01:45:35 Med­ley: Cold Sweat / Ride The Pony / Cold Sweat
01:57:20 Maybe The Last Time
02:01:32 I Got You (I Feel Good)
02:02:04 Please, Please, Please
02:04:34 I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

When James Brown Played Rik­ers Island Prison 50 Years Ago (1972)

The Best Com­mer­cial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup (1992)

James Brown Gives You Danc­ing Lessons: From The Funky Chick­en to The Booga­loo

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The Story of the Flatiron Building, “New York’s Strangest Tower”

in Architecture, History | May 10th, 2023

Few out­side New York know the Flat­iron Build­ing by name, but peo­ple every­where asso­ciate it with the city. That owes in part to its ten­den­cy to appear in the vin­tage imagery of New York that adorns the walls of cafés, hotel rooms, and den­tists’ offices across the world. And that, in turn, owes in part — in very large part — to the Flatiron’s unusu­al shape, the result of a design meant to max­i­mize the prof­it of a tri­an­gu­lar plot of land bound­ed by Fifth Avenue, Broad­way, and East 22nd Street. You can hear the sto­ry of the build­ing, “New York’s strangest tow­er,” in the new video from archi­tec­ture-and-engi­neer­ing Youtube chan­nel The B1M just above.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured The B1M here on Open Cul­ture for videos on sub­jects like Europe’s lack of sky­scrap­ers — a con­di­tion that cer­tain­ly does­n’t afflict Man­hat­tan, though at the time of the Flat­iron Build­ing’s con­struc­tion in the first years of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the sky­scraper itself was still a fair­ly nov­el con­cept.

Laws gov­ern­ing con­struc­tion changed to keep up with devel­op­ments in the tech­nolo­gies of con­struc­tion: “Fol­low­ing a recent change in the city’s fire codes,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor, “this became one of the ear­li­est build­ings in New York to shun load-bear­ing mason­ry and instead take advan­tage of steel for its struc­tur­al frame.”


The Flatiron’s archi­tects were Fred­er­ick P. Dinkel­berg and Daniel Burn­ham, the lat­ter of whom is now remem­bered as the orig­i­nal king of the Amer­i­can sky­scraper. In fact, the very term “sky­scraper” was coined in response to the Mon­tauk Block, a high-rise he designed in Chica­go. But while the Mon­tauk Block stood only between 1883 and 1902, the Flat­iron con­tin­ues to stand proud — if, at 22 sto­ries, no longer rel­a­tive­ly tall — on the three-cor­nered plot where it first arose 120 years ago.  Alas, it has also “sat emp­ty since 2019, when its last ten­ants, Macmil­lan Pub­lish­ers, moved out.” After that began a series of ren­o­va­tions, and after that began “mul­ti­ple dis­agree­ments among the build­ing’s cur­rent own­ers and future ten­ants,” which cul­mi­nat­ed in a court-ordered auc­tion of the build­ing won by a bid­der who sub­se­quent­ly van­ished. But how­ev­er deep the Flat­iron plunges into legal lim­bo, its sta­tus as a New York icon will sure­ly remain intact.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New York’s Lost Sky­scraper: The Rise and Fall of the Singer Tow­er

Watch the Build­ing of the Empire State Build­ing in Col­or: The Cre­ation of the Icon­ic 1930s Sky­scraper From Start to Fin­ish

An Archi­tect Demys­ti­fies the Art Deco Design of the Icon­ic Chrysler Build­ing (1930)

A Trip Through New York City in 1911: Vin­tage Video of NYC Gets Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

Why Europe Has So Few Sky­scrap­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What the Great Pyramids of Giza Originally Looked Like

in Architecture, History | May 9th, 2023

Ask any­one who’s trav­eled to the Great Pyra­mids of Giza: no mat­ter how many times you’ve seen them in pho­tographs or on tele­vi­sion, you’re nev­er real­ly pre­pared to come face-to-face with them in real life. But you can get fair­ly close to at least the appear­ance of real life by see­ing the Pyra­mids in 4k res­o­lu­tion, as they’re pre­sent­ed in the video above from trav­el, archi­tec­ture, and his­to­ry Youtu­ber Manuel Bra­vo (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his expla­na­tion of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi’s dome atop the Flo­rence Cathe­dral). This isn’t just vaca­tion footage: Bra­vo tells the sto­ry of the Pyra­mids, puts them in con­text, and even incor­po­rates vir­tu­al re-cre­ations of what they would have looked like in their hey­day.

We know the Pyra­mids as icon­ic ruins, undoubt­ed­ly mighty but also seri­ous­ly dilap­i­dat­ed. When they were built in the 26th cen­tu­ry BC, they were cov­ered in white lime­stone exte­ri­or shells, giv­ing them the strik­ing­ly smooth if chro­mat­i­cal­ly reversed appear­ance of a 2001-style mono­lith — a char­ac­ter­is­tic that no doubt encour­ages cer­tain the­o­rists who imag­ine the con­struc­tion process as hav­ing been exe­cut­ed by beings from out­er space.

The tech­ni­cal­ly inclined Bra­vo pre­sum­ably has lit­tle time for such notions, fill­ing the video as he does with details about the archi­tec­ture and engi­neer­ing of the Pyra­mids, many of them thor­ough­ly human in nature, such as the delib­er­ate­ly con­fus­ing pas­sage­ways meant to throw off plun­der­ers.

Along with high-res­o­lu­tion footage and ren­der­ings of what the Pyra­mids looked like then and look like now, Bra­vo also includes his own on-foot explo­rations, show­ing us cor­ners of the com­plex (and one espe­cial­ly claus­tro­phobe-unfriend­ly tun­nel) that we don’t nor­mal­ly see unless we take a tour our­selves. This close-up per­spec­tive gives him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect the mod­ern human expe­ri­ence of these ancient mon­u­ments to their vast scale and his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­tant con­cep­tion. To be awed and even over­whelmed is per­haps the most nat­ur­al response to the Pyra­mids, and for some, it’s worth the trip to expe­ri­ence that feel­ing alone. For oth­ers, answer­ing the ques­tion of exact­ly how and why they awe and over­whelm becomes the work of a life­time.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Walk­ing Tour Around the Pyra­mids of Giza: 2 Hours in Hi Def

Take a 360° Inter­ac­tive Tour Inside the Great Pyra­mid of Giza

Take a 3D Tour Through Ancient Giza, Includ­ing the Great Pyra­mids, the Sphinx & More

What the Great Pyra­mid of Giza Would’ve Looked Like When First Built: It Was Gleam­ing, Reflec­tive White

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Cats Migrated to Europe 7,000 Years Earlier Than Once Thought

in Biology, History, Life, Science, Travel | May 9th, 2023

The ani­mals were imper­fect,

long-tailed,

unfor­tu­nate in their heads.

Lit­tle by lit­tle they

put them­selves togeth­er,

mak­ing them­selves a land­scape,

acquir­ing spots, grace, flight.

The cat,

only the cat

appeared com­plete and proud:

he was born com­plete­ly fin­ished,

walk­ing alone and know­ing what he want­ed.

- Pablo Neru­da, excerpt from Ode to the Cat

We find our­selves in agree­ment with Nobel Prize-win­ning poet, and cat lover, Pablo Neru­da:

Those of us who pro­vide for felines choose to believe we are “the own­er, pro­pri­etor, uncle of a cat, com­pan­ion, col­league, dis­ci­ple or friend of (our) cat”, when in fact they are mys­te­ri­ous beasts, far more self-con­tained than the com­pan­ion­able, inquis­i­tive canine Neru­da immor­tal­ized in Ode to the Dog.

We can bestow names and social media accounts on cats of our acquain­tance, chan­nel them on the steps of the Met Gala, attach GPS track­ers to their col­lars, give them pride of place­ment in books for chil­dren and adults, and try our best to get inside their heads, but what do we know about them, real­ly?

We even got their his­to­ry wrong.

Com­mon knowl­edge once held that cats made their way to north­ern Europe from the Mediter­ranean aboard Roman — and even­tu­al­ly Viking — ships some­time between the 3rd to 7th cen­tu­ry CE, but it turns out we were off by mil­len­nia.

In 2016, a team of researchers col­lab­o­rat­ing on the Five Thou­sand Years of His­to­ry of Domes­tic Cats in Cen­tral Europe project con­firmed the pres­ence of domes­tic cats dur­ing the Roman peri­od in the area that is now north­ern Poland, using a com­bi­na­tion of zooar­chae­ol­o­gy, genet­ics and absolute dat­ing.

More recent­ly, the team turned their atten­tion to Felis bones found in south­ern Poland and Ser­bia, deter­min­ing the ones found in the Jas­na Strze­gows­ka Cave to be Pre-Neolith­ic (5990–5760 BC), while the Ser­bian kit­ties hail from the Mesolith­ic-Neolitic era (6220–5730 BC).

In addi­tion to clar­i­fy­ing our under­stand­ing of how our pet cats’ ances­tors arrived in Cen­tral Europe from Egypt and the Fer­tile Cres­cent, the project seeks to “iden­ti­fy phe­no­typ­ic fea­tures relat­ed to domes­ti­ca­tion, such as phys­i­cal appear­ance, includ­ing body size and coat col­or; behav­ior, for exam­ple, reduced aggres­sion; and pos­si­ble phys­i­o­log­i­cal adap­ta­tions to digest anthro­pogenic food.”

Regard­ing non-anthro­pogenic food, a spike in the Late Neolith­ic East­ern Euro­pean house mouse pop­u­la­tion exhibits some nifty over­lap with these ancient cat bones’ new­ly attached dates, though Dr. Dani­jela Popović, who super­vised the pro­jec­t’s pale­o­ge­neti­cians, reports that the cats’ arrival in Europe pre­ced­ed that of the first farm­ers:

These cats prob­a­bly were still wild ani­mals that nat­u­ral­ly col­o­nized Cen­tral Europe.

We’re will­ing to believe they estab­lished a bulk­head, then hung around, wait­ing until the humans showed up before imple­ment­ing the next phase of their plan — self-domes­ti­ca­tion.

Read the research team’s “his­to­ry of the domes­tic cat in Cen­tral Europe” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

A 110-Year-Old Book Illus­trat­ed with Pho­tos of Kit­tens & Cats Taught Kids How to Read

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

via Big Think

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day, human ser­vant of two feline Mail­room Böyz, is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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