Hear the Haunting Aztec “Death Whistle,” the Instrument That Made Sounds Resembling a Human Scream

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The received image of the Aztecs, with their sav­age bat­tles and fre­quent acts of human sac­ri­fice, tends to imply a vio­lence-sat­u­rat­ed, death-obsessed cul­ture. Giv­en that, it will hard­ly come as a sur­prise to learn of an Aztec musi­cal instru­ment dis­cov­ered in the hands of a sac­ri­ficed human body, or that the instru­ment has come to…

Why Abel Gance’s 1927 Napoléon Is “the Most Creative Film Ever Made”

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Since it came out this past Novem­ber, Rid­ley Scot­t’s Napoleon has drawn a vari­ety of crit­i­cal reac­tions. What­ev­er else can be said about it, it cer­tain­ly takes a dif­fer­ent tack from past depic­tions of that par­tic­u­lar French Emper­or. It was, per­haps, Scot­t’s good luck not to have to go up against the Napoleon…

The History of Cartography, the “Most Ambitious Overview of Map Making Ever,” Is Free Online

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FYI: The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press has made avail­able online — at no cost –five vol­umes of The His­to­ry of Car­tog­ra­phy. Or what Edward Roth­stein, of The New York Times, called “the most ambi­tious overview of map mak­ing ever under­tak­en.” He con­tin­ues:

Peo­ple come to know the world the way they…

The History of the Earth (All 4.5 Billion Years) in 1 Hour: A Million Years Covered Every Second

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From Kurzge­sagt comes the his­to­ry of our plan­et in one hour. They write: “Earth is 4.5 bil­lion years old — which is approx­i­mate­ly the same amount of time it took us to cre­ate this video. We’ve scaled the com­plete time­line of our Earth’s life into our first ani­mat­ed movie! Every sec­ond shows about a mil­lion…

Two Tiny Rembrandt Paintings Have Been Rediscovered & Put On Display in Amsterdam

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Many first-time vis­i­tors to the Lou­vre expe­ri­ence a let­down to dis­cov­er how small the Mona Lisa is -just 21” x 30”.

Mean­while, over in Ams­ter­dam, vis­i­tors have been flock­ing to the Rijksmu­se­um, eager to lay eyes on the two small­est for­mal works in the museum’s col­lec­tion.

Mea­sur­ing slight­ly less than 8” tall,…