Evelyn Waugh’s “Victorian Blood Book”: A Most Strange & Macabre Illustrated Book

in Books, Libraries, Literature, Religion | January 30th, 2020

Most U.S. read­ers come to know Eve­lyn Waugh as the “seri­ous” writer of the saga Brideshead Revis­it­ed (and inspir­er of the 1981 minis­eries adap­ta­tion). This was also the case in 1954, when Charles Rolo wrote in the pages of The Atlantic that the nov­el “sold many more copies in the Unit­ed States than all of Waugh’s oth­er books put togeth­er.” Yet “among the lit­er­ary,” Waugh’s name evokes “a sin­gu­lar brand of com­ic genius… a riotous­ly anar­chic cos­mos, in which only the out­ra­geous can happen—and when it does hap­pen is out­ra­geous­ly divert­ing.”

The com­ic Waugh’s imag­i­na­tion “runs to… appalling and macabre inven­tions,” incor­po­rat­ing a “lunatic log­ic.” The sources of that imag­i­na­tion now reside at the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin, who hold Waugh’s man­u­scripts and 3,500-volume library.

The nov­el­ist, the Ran­som Cen­ter notes, “was an invet­er­ate col­lec­tor of things Vic­to­ri­an (and well ahead of most of his con­tem­po­raries in this regard). Undoubt­ed­ly the sin­gle most curi­ous object in the entire library is a large oblong folio decoupage book, often referred to as the ‘Vic­to­ri­an Blood Book.’”

Waugh deeply admired Vic­to­ri­an art, and espe­cial­ly “those nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry ene­mies of tech­nol­o­gy, the Pre-Raphaelites,” writes Rolo. Still, like us, he may have looked upon scrap­books like these as bizarre and mor­bid­ly humor­ous, if also pos­sessed by an unset­tling beau­ty. (One 2008 cat­a­logue described them as “weird” and “rather ele­gant but very scary.”) More than any­thing, they resem­ble the kind of thing a goth teenag­er raised on Mon­ty Python and Emi­ly Dick­in­son might put togeth­er in her bed­room late at night. Such an artist would be car­ry­ing on a long “cher­ished tra­di­tion.”

“Vic­to­ri­an scrap­book­ing,” the Ran­som Cen­ter writes, “was almost exclu­sive­ly the province of women,” a way of orga­niz­ing infor­ma­tion, although “the esthet­ic aspect” could some­times be “sec­ondary.” The “Vic­to­ri­an Blood Book,” how­ev­er, is the work of a pater­fa­mil­ias named John Bin­g­ley Gar­land, “a pros­per­ous Vic­to­ri­an busi­ness­man who moved to New­found­land, went on to become speak­er of its first Par­lia­ment, and returned to Stone Cot­tage in Dorset to end his days.”

Inscribed to Bin­g­ley’s daugh­ter Amy on Sep­tem­ber 1, 1854, the book seems to have been a wed­ding present, made with seri­ous devo­tion­al intent:

How does one “read” such an enig­mat­ic object? We under­stand­ably find ele­ments of the grotesque and sur­re­al. But our eyes view it dif­fer­ent­ly from Vic­to­ri­an ones. As Gar­land’s descen­dants have writ­ten, “our fam­i­ly does­n’t refer to…‘the Blood Book;’ we refer to it as ‘Amy’s Gift’ and in no way see it as any­thing oth­er than a pre­cious reminder of the love of fam­i­ly and Our Lord.”

The “Blood Book“ ‘s actu­al title appears to have been Duren­stein!, which is the Aus­tri­an cas­tle where Richard the Lion­heart­ed was impris­oned. Assem­bled from hun­dreds of engrav­ings, many by William Blake, it appar­ent­ly depicts “the spir­i­tu­al bat­tles encoun­tered by Chris­tians along the path of life and the ‘blood’ to Chris­t­ian sac­ri­fice.” The “blood” is red India ink. The quo­ta­tions sur­round­ing each col­lage, accord­ing to the Gar­land fam­i­ly “are encour­ag­ing one to turn to God as our Sav­iour.”

One can imag­ine the “seri­ous” Waugh look­ing on this strange object with almost rev­er­en­tial affec­tion. He lapsed into a high­ly affect­ed, reac­tionary nos­tal­gia in his lat­er peri­od, announc­ing him­self “two hun­dred years” behind the times. One con­tem­po­rary declared, “He grows more old-fash­ioned every day.” But the sav­age­ly com­ic Waugh would not have been able to approach such a bizarre piece of folk col­lage art with­out an eye toward its use as mate­r­i­al for his own “appalling and macabre inven­tions.”

See a full scanned copy of the “Vic­to­ri­an Blood Book,” and down­load high-res­o­lu­tion images, online at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin’s Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

19th-Cen­tu­ry Skele­ton Alarm Clock Remind­ed Peo­ple Dai­ly of the Short­ness of Life: An Intro­duc­tion to the Memen­to Mori

Browse The Mag­i­cal Worlds of Har­ry Houdini’s Scrap­books

A Wit­ty Dic­tio­nary of Vic­to­ri­an Slang (1909)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Scorsese’s The Irishman in the Context of his Oeuvre–Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #29 Featuring Colin Marshall

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | January 30th, 2020

What dis­tin­guish­es the high­ly laud­ed 2019 film The Irish­man with­in direc­tor Mar­tin Scors­ese’s body of work? Fre­quent Open Cul­ture con­trib­u­tor Col­in Mar­shall joins Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about what we do and don’t con­nect with in Scors­ese’s work and how these films qual­i­fy as “art films” despite their watch­a­bil­i­ty, not to men­tion the big bud­gets and stars.

We cov­er CGI age alter­ation, the con­nec­tion to The Jok­er, his com­ments about the Mar­vel fran­chise vs. him being a fran­chise unto him­self, his use of music, and mak­ing films as an old guy. We hit par­tic­u­lar­ly on Rag­ing Bull, Taxi Dri­ver, Bring­ing out the Dead, The King of Com­e­dy, Good­fel­las, Gangs of New York,  The Depart­ed, Casi­no, Silence, and Cape Fear. (There are no sig­nif­i­cant spoil­ers about any of these oth­er films, just The Irish­man.)

Beyond just watch­ing or re-watch­ing a lot of films, here are some arti­cles we used to prep:

• “Explore the Films of Mar­tin Scors­ese” by Zach Holl­wedel
• “A Guide to Watch­ing Scors­ese Movies Like an Insid­er” by Ben Ken­ings­berg
• “Mar­tin Scors­ese Is Let­ting Go” by Dave Itzkoff
• “How To Watch The Irish­man (As A Minis­eries)” by Luke Park­er
• “Scorsese’s ‘The Irish­man’ Is a Big Lie. Here’s What Real­ly Hap­pened to Jim­my Hof­fa” by Vince Wade
• “The Irish­man: The Incon­ve­nient Truth About the Movie’s Cen­tral Con­fes­sion” by Julie MIller
• “Netflix’s Lim­it­ed ‘The Irish­man’ Release Is a ‘Dis­grace,’ Head of Movie The­ater Group Says” by Beat­rice Ver­ho­even
• “Mar­tin Scors­ese Does Not Rec­om­mend Watch­ing ‘The Irish­man’ on a Phone: ‘A Big iPad, Maybe’” by Erin Nyren
• “The Irish­man Shows The Lim­its of CGI Deag­ing” by Adri­enne Tyler
• “The De-Aging In ‘The Irish­man’ May Make You A Believ­er In This Con­tro­ver­sial Tech” by Jas­mine Ting

Col­in rec­om­mends the books Easy Rid­ers, Rag­ing Bulls, Scors­ese on Scors­ese, and Gang­ster Priest: The Ital­ian Amer­i­can Cin­e­ma of Mar­tin Scors­ese. Read Col­in’s Open Cul­ture arti­cles on Scors­ese. Also, Col­in reviews The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life in 2012.

Here’s that clip from Sin­gles about “the next Mar­tin Scorseeze.” Here’s Peter Boyle in Taxi Dri­ver giv­ing “Wiz­ard” advice. Watch Abed in Com­mu­ni­ty con­sid­er whether Nico­las Cage is good or bad.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

Hear the Voice of a 3,0000-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy: Scientists 3‑D Print His Throat & Mouth and Get Him to Speak … a Little

in History, Science | January 29th, 2020

“The Mum­my Speaks!” announces The New York Times in Nicholas St. Fleur’s sto­ry about Nesya­mun, a mum­mi­fied Egypt­ian priest whose voice has been recre­at­ed, sort of, “with the aid of a 3‑D print­ed vocal tract” and an elec­tron­ic lar­ynx. Does the mum­my sound like the mon­ster of clas­sic 1930’s hor­ror? Sci­en­tists have only got as far as one syl­la­ble, “which resem­bles the ‘ah’ and ‘eh’ vow­els sounds heard in the words ‘bad’ and ‘bed.’ ” Yet it’s clear that Nesya­mun would not com­mu­ni­cate with gut­tur­al moans.

This may not make the recre­ation any less creepy. Nesya­mun, whose cof­fin is inscribed with the words “true of voice,” was charged with singing and chant­i­ng the litur­gies; “he had this wish,” says David Howard, speech sci­en­tist at Roy­al Hol­loway, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, “that his voice would some­how con­tin­ue into per­pe­tu­ity.” Howard and his team’s 3‑D print­ed recre­ation of his mouth and throat has allowed them to syn­the­size “the sound that would come out of his vocal tract if he was in his cof­fin and his lar­ynx came to life again.”

Let’s imag­ine a dif­fer­ent sce­nario, shall we? One in which Nesya­mun speaks from the ancient past rather than from the sar­coph­a­gus. “Voice from the Past” is, indeed, what the researchers call their project, and they hope that it will even­tu­al­ly enable muse­um goers to “engage with the past in com­plete­ly new and inno­v­a­tive ways.”

If Nesya­mun could be made to speak again, St. Fleur writes, “per­haps the mum­my could recite for muse­um vis­i­tors his words to Nut, the ancient Egypt­ian god­dess of the sky and heav­ens: ‘O moth­er Nut, spread out your wings over my face so you may allow me to be like the stars-which-know-no-destruc­tion, like the stars-which-know-no-weari­ness, (and) not to die over again in the ceme­tery.”

Might we empathize? As Uni­ver­si­ty of York archae­ol­o­gist John Schofield puts it, “there is noth­ing more per­son­al than someone’s voice.” Hear­ing the mum­my speak would be “more mul­ti­di­men­sion­al” than only star­ing at his corpse. The nov­el­ty of this expe­ri­ence aside, one can imag­ine the knowl­edge his­to­ri­ans and lin­guists of ancient lan­guages might gath­er from this research. Oth­ers in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty have expressed their doubts. We may wish to tem­per our expec­ta­tions.

Piero Cosi, an Ital­ian speech sci­en­tist who helped recon­struct the voice of a mum­mi­fied ice­man named Ötzi in 2016 (speak­ing only in Ital­ian vow­els), points out the spec­u­la­tive nature of the sci­ence: “Even if we have the pre­cise 3‑D-geo­met­ric descrip­tion of the voice sys­tem of the mum­my, we would not be able to rebuild pre­cise­ly his orig­i­nal voice.” Egyp­tol­o­gist Kara Cooney notes the clear poten­tial for human bias­es to shape research that uses “so much infer­ence about what [ancient peo­ple] looked or sound­ed like.”

So, what might be the val­ue of approx­i­mat­ing Nesya­mun’s voice? In their paper, pub­lished in Nature Sci­en­tif­ic Reports, Howard and his co-authors explain, in lan­guage that sounds sus­pi­cious­ly like the kind that might invoke a clas­sic hor­ror movie mum­my’s curse:

While this approach has wide impli­ca­tions for her­itage management/museum dis­play, its rel­e­vance con­forms exact­ly to the ancient Egyp­tians’ fun­da­men­tal belief that ‘to speak the name of the dead is to make them live again.’ Giv­en Nesya­mun’s stat­ed desire to have his voice heard in the after­life in order to live for­ev­er, the ful­fil­ment of his beliefs through the syn­the­sis of his vocal func­tion allows us to make direct con­tact with ancient Egypt.

Learn more about the Nesya­mun’s vocal recre­ation in the videos above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did the Egyp­tians Make Mum­mies? An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Ancient Art of Mum­mi­fi­ca­tion

How to Make a Mum­my — Demon­strat­ed by The Get­ty Muse­um

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

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Discover the Disappearing Turkish Language That is Whistled, Not Spoken

in Language, Life | January 28th, 2020

We so often priv­i­lege indi­vid­u­als as the pri­ma­ry dri­vers of inno­va­tion. But what if tech­nol­o­gy is also self-orga­niz­ing, devel­op­ing as an evo­lu­tion­ary response to the envi­ron­ment? If we think of whis­tled lan­guage as a kind of tech­nol­o­gy, we have an excel­lent exam­ple of this self-orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple in the 42 doc­u­ment­ed whis­tled lan­guages around the world.

As we not­ed in a pre­vi­ous post, reports of whis­tled lan­guages go back hun­dreds of years in cul­tures that would have had no con­tact with each oth­er: Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co, north­ern Africa’s Atlas Moun­tains, the Brazil­ian Ama­zon, north­ern Laos, and the Canary Islands.

These are “places with steep ter­rain or dense forests,” writes Michelle Nijhuis at The New York­er, “where it might oth­er­wise be hard to com­mu­ni­cate at a dis­tance.” Such is the case in the vil­lage of Kuşköy, in “the remote moun­tains of north­ern Turkey,” notes Great Big Sto­ry:

“For three cen­turies” farm­ers there “have com­mu­ni­cat­ed great dis­tances by whistling. It’s a lan­guage called kuş dili that is still used to this day, though few­er peo­ple are learn­ing it in the age of the cell phone.” Also called “bird lan­guage” by locals, “for obvi­ous rea­sons,” this sys­tem of vocal tele­pho­ny, like all oth­er exam­ples, is based on actu­al speech. Nijhuis explains:

Kuşköy’s ver­sion [of whis­tled lan­guage] adapts stan­dard Turk­ish syl­la­bles into pierc­ing tones that can be heard from more than half a mile away. The phrase “Do you have fresh bread?,” which in Turk­ish is “Taze ekmek var mı?,” becomes, in bird lan­guage, six sep­a­rate whis­tles made with the tongue, teeth, and fin­gers.

The method may be avian, but the mes­sages are human, albeit in sim­pli­fied lan­guage for ease of trans­mis­sion. In the video above Muazzez Köçek, Kuşköy’s best whistler, shows how she trans­lates Turk­ish vocab­u­lary into melodies—turning words into music, an act of cod­ing with­out a com­put­er.

That this bio-tech­no­log­i­cal feat arose spon­ta­neous­ly to solve the same prob­lem the world over shows how us how humans col­lec­tive­ly prob­lem-solve. But of course, indi­vid­u­al­ism has its advan­tages. Despite the huge amount of data they gath­er on us, mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies have met one par­tic­u­lar human need.

In Kuşköy, “bird lan­guage is rapid­ly dis­ap­pear­ing from dai­ly life,” writes Nijhuis. “In a small town filled with nosy neigh­bors, tex­ting affords a lev­el of pri­va­cy that whistling nev­er did.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Whis­tled Lan­guages of the Canary Islands, Turkey & Mex­i­co (and What They Say About the Human Brain)

Speak­ing in Whis­tles: The Whis­tled Lan­guage of Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co

How Lan­guages Evolve: Explained in a Win­ning TED-Ed Ani­ma­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

What Is the Coronavirus?: Answers to Common Questions About the Mysterious New Virus Spreading Across China

in Health | January 28th, 2020

Above, The Guardian’s health edi­tor, Sarah Bose­ley, answers basic ques­tions you might have about the coro­n­avirus out­break in Wuhan, Chi­na.

What are the symp­toms? Where have cas­es been con­firmed so far? How is the virus trans­mit­ted? What are the avail­able treat­ments? Should I be pan­ick­ing? and more…

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it the CDC web­site.

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!

Jim Lehrer’s 16 Rules for Practicing Journalism with Integrity

in Current Affairs, Media, Television | January 27th, 2020

In 1988, stal­wart PBS news anchor, writer, and long­time pres­i­den­tial debate mod­er­a­tor Jim Lehrer was accused of being too soft on the can­di­dates. He snapped back, “If some­body wants to be enter­tained, they ought to go to the cir­cus.” The folksy quote sums up the Tex­an jour­nal­ist’s phi­los­o­phy suc­cinct­ly. The news was a seri­ous busi­ness. But Lehrer, who passed away last Thurs­day, wit­nessed the dis­tinc­tion between polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism and the cir­cus col­lapse, with the spread of cable info­tain­ment, and cor­po­rate dom­i­na­tion of the Inter­net and radio.

Kot­tke remarks that Lehrer seemed “like one of the last of a breed of jour­nal­ist who took seri­ous­ly the integri­ty of inform­ing the Amer­i­can pub­lic about impor­tant events.” He con­tin­u­al­ly refused offers from the major net­works, host­ing PBS’s Mac­Neil-Lehrer New­shour with cohost Robert Mac­Neil until 1995, then his own in-depth news hour until his retire­ment in 2011. “I have an old-fash­ioned view that news is not a com­mod­i­ty,” he said. “News is infor­ma­tion that’s required in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety… That sounds corny, but I don’t care whether it sounds corny or not. It’s the truth.”

To meet such high stan­dards required a rig­or­ous set of jour­nal­is­tic… well, standards—such as Lehrer was hap­py to list, below, in a 1997 report from the Aspen Insti­tute.

1. Do noth­ing I can­not defend.*
2. Do not dis­tort, lie, slant, or hype.
3. Do not fal­si­fy facts or make up quotes.
4. Cov­er, write, and present every sto­ry with the care I would want if the sto­ry were about me.*
5. Assume there is at least one oth­er side or ver­sion to every sto­ry.*
6. Assume the view­er is as smart and car­ing and good a per­son as I am.*
7. Assume the same about all peo­ple on whom I report.*
8. Assume every­one is inno­cent until proven guilty.
9. Assume per­son­al lives are a pri­vate mat­ter until a legit­i­mate turn in the sto­ry man­dates oth­er­wise.*
10. Care­ful­ly sep­a­rate opin­ion and analy­sis from straight news sto­ries and clear­ly label them as such.*
11. Do not use anony­mous sources or blind quotes except on rare and mon­u­men­tal occa­sions. No one should ever be allowed to attack anoth­er anony­mous­ly.*
12. Do not broad­cast pro­fan­i­ty or the end result of vio­lence unless it is an inte­gral and nec­es­sary part of the sto­ry and/or cru­cial to under­stand­ing the sto­ry.
13. Acknowl­edge that objec­tiv­i­ty may be impos­si­ble but fair­ness nev­er is.
14. Jour­nal­ists who are reck­less with facts and rep­u­ta­tions should be dis­ci­plined by their employ­ers.
15. My view­ers have a right to know what prin­ci­ples guide my work and the process I use in their prac­tice.
16. I am not in the enter­tain­ment busi­ness.*

In a 2006 Har­vard com­mence­ment address (at the top), Lehrer reduced the list to only the nine rules marked by aster­isks above by Kot­tke, who goes on to explain in short why these guide­lines are so rou­tine­ly cast aside—“this shit takes time! And time is mon­ey.” It’s eas­i­er to patch togeth­er sto­ries in rapid-fire order when you don’t cite or check sources or do inves­tiga­tive report­ing, and face no seri­ous con­se­quences for it.

Lehrer’s adher­ence to pro­fes­sion­al ethics may have been unique in any era, but his atten­tion to detail and obses­sion with access­ing mul­ti­ple points of view came from an old­er media. He “saw him­self as ‘a print/word per­son at heart’ and his pro­gram as a kind of news­pa­per for tele­vi­sion,” writes Robert McFad­den in his New York Times obit­u­ary. He was also “an oasis of civil­i­ty in a news media that thrived on excit­ed head­lines, gotcha ques­tions and noisy con­fronta­tions.”

Lehrer under­stood that civil­i­ty is mean­ing­less in the absence of truth, or of kind­ness and humil­i­ty. His long­time cohost’s list of jour­nal­is­tic guide­lines also appears in the Aspen Insti­tute report. “The val­ues which Jim Lehrer and I observed,” Mac­Neil writes, “he con­tin­ues to observe.” Jour­nal­ism is a seri­ous business—“behave with civility”—but “remem­ber that jour­nal­ists are no more impor­tant to soci­ety than peo­ple in oth­er pro­fes­sions. Avoid macho pos­tur­ing and arro­gant dis­play.”

Read more about Lehrer’s list of guide­lines at Kot­tke.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jour­nal­ism Under Siege: A Free Course from Stan­ford Explores the Imper­iled Free­dom of the Press

Jour­nal­is­tic Ethics: A Free Online Course from UCLA 

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

China’s 8,000 Terracotta Warriors: An Animated & Interactive Introduction to a Great Archaeological Discovery

in Art, History | January 27th, 2020

Unless you’re a Chi­nese his­to­ry buff, the name of Qin Shi Huang may not imme­di­ate­ly ring a bell. But per­haps his accom­plish­ments will sound famil­iar. “He con­quered the war­ring states that sur­round­ed him, cre­at­ing the first uni­fied Chi­nese empire” — mak­ing him the very first emper­or of Chi­na — “and enact­ed a num­ber of mea­sures to cen­tral­ize his admin­is­tra­tion and bol­ster infra­struc­ture,” writes Smithsonian.com’s Brig­it Katz. “In addi­tion to stan­dard­iz­ing weights, mea­sures and the writ­ten lan­guage, the young ruler con­struct­ed a series of for­ti­fi­ca­tions that lat­er became the basis for the Great Wall.”

Sec­ond only to the Great Wall as an ancient Chi­nese arti­fact of note is Emper­or Qin’s army: not the liv­ing army he main­tained to defend and expand his empire, fear­some though it must have been, but the even more impres­sive one made out of ter­ra­cot­ta.

“In 1974, farm­ers dig­ging a well near their small vil­lage stum­bled upon one of the most impor­tant finds in archae­o­log­i­cal his­to­ry,” says the TED-Ed les­son writ­ten by Megan Camp­isi and Pen-Pen Chen above: “a vast under­ground cham­ber sur­round­ing the emper­or’s tomb, and con­tain­ing more than 8,000 life-size clay sol­diers, ready for bat­tle,” all com­mis­sioned by Qin, who after ascend­ing to the throne at age thir­teen “began the con­struc­tion of a mas­sive under­ground necrop­o­lis filled with mon­u­ments, arti­facts, and an army to accom­pa­ny him into the next world and con­tin­ue his rule.”

Qin’s ceram­ic sol­diers, 200 more of which have been dis­cov­ered over the past decade, have stood ready in bat­tle for­ma­tion for well over 2000 years now. Stored in the same area’s under­ground cham­bers are 130 char­i­ots with 520 hors­es, 150 cav­al­ry hors­es, and a vari­ety of musi­cians, acro­bats, work­ers, gov­ern­ment offi­cials, and exot­ic ani­mals — all made of ter­ra­cot­ta, all life-size, and each with its own painstak­ing­ly craft­ed unique­ness. They pop­u­late what we now call a necrop­o­lis, an elab­o­rate­ly designed “city of the dead” built around a mau­soleum. You can get a 360-degree view of a sec­tion of Qin’s necrop­o­lis above, as well as a deep­er look into its his­tor­i­cal back­ground from the BBC doc­u­men­tary New Secrets of the Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors, the BBC doc­u­men­tary above, and this episode of PBS’ Secrets of the Dead.

Why direct so much mate­r­i­al and labor to such a seem­ing­ly obscure project? Qin, who also showed a great inter­est in search­ing far-flung lands for life-pro­long­ing elixirs, must have con­sid­ered build­ing a well-pop­u­lat­ed necrop­o­lis a rea­son­able bet to secure for him­self a place in eter­ni­ty. Nor was such an endeav­or with­out prece­dent, and in fact Qin’s ver­sion rep­re­sent­ed a civ­i­liz­ing step for­ward for the necrop­o­lis. “Ruth­less as he was,” write Camp­isi and Chen, he at least “chose to have ser­vants and sol­diers built for this pur­pose, rather than hav­ing liv­ing ones sac­ri­ficed to accom­pa­ny him, as had been prac­ticed in Egypt, West Africa, Ana­to­lia, parts of North Amer­i­ca,” and even pre­vi­ous Chi­nese dynas­ties. “You can’t take it with you,” we often hear today regard­ing the amass­ment of wealth in one’s life­time — but maybe, as Qin must have thought, you can take them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

One of World’s Old­est Books Print­ed in Mul­ti-Col­or Now Opened & Dig­i­tized for the First Time

How Ancient Greek Stat­ues Real­ly Looked: Research Reveals Their Bold, Bright Col­ors and Pat­terns

Roman Stat­ues Weren’t White; They Were Once Paint­ed in Vivid, Bright Col­ors

What Ancient Chi­nese Phi­los­o­phy Can Teach Us About Liv­ing the Good Life Today: Lessons from Harvard’s Pop­u­lar Pro­fes­sor, Michael Puett

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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.

Iconic Songs Played by Musicians Around the World: “Stand by Me,” “Redemption Song,” “Ripple” & More

in Music | January 27th, 2020

We here at Open Cul­ture love to see how well known and well loved songs pop up all over the globe in new and inter­est­ing forms. These cov­ers could be played on very un-rock instru­ments, or on ones we’ve nev­er heard of. We’ve seen schoolkids sing songs that their grand­par­ents loved, and we’ve heard senior cit­i­zens singing death met­al. Music unites us in trou­bling times, and we need more of it.

The above video from Play­ing for Change imag­ines a world where peo­ple from all four cor­ners of the earth play and sing a song togeth­er, and makes it real through the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy and inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

It start­ed in 2005 when Mark John­son heard street musi­cian Roger Rid­ley singing Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” in San­ta Mon­i­ca. Struck by Ridley’s emo­tive voice, he returned with record­ing equip­ment and began a process of bring­ing the world to join in. John­son record­ed Grand­pa Elliott in New Orleans shar­ing a verse, Wash­board Chaz pro­vid­ing wash­board rhythm, then Clarence Bekker in Ams­ter­dam tak­ing a verse, the Twin Eagle Drum Group pro­vid­ing a Native Amer­i­can rhythm, and so on. By the end of the video, John­son had racked up fre­quent fli­er miles and stitched togeth­er a cohe­sive track.

Years lat­er, the Play­ing for Change non-prof­it has accu­mu­lat­ed an impres­sive back cat­a­log of cov­er songs and has helped fund 15 music pro­grams world­wide.

One take­away is this: the world agrees on Bob Mar­ley. Whether he’s being polit­i­cal or spir­i­tu­al, every­body seems to get it. Here’s “War” fea­tur­ing Bono. Also see “Redemp­tion Song” here:

Oth­er stars have done guest spots to bring aware­ness to the project. Bun­ny Wail­er, Manu Chao and Bush­man singing “Soul Rebel”:

Most recent­ly, they record­ed “The Weight” with Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr:

And we always enjoy this ver­sion of the Dead­’s “Rip­ple.”

The videos are heart­warm­ing, but the music stands by itself with­out the glo­be­trot­ting. For those who need a good vibe injec­tion to start 2020, start here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Music Is Tru­ly a Uni­ver­sal Lan­guage: New Research Shows That Music World­wide Has Impor­tant Com­mon­al­i­ties

BBC Launch­es World Music Archive

Behold the MusicMap: The Ulti­mate Inter­ac­tive Geneal­o­gy of Music Cre­at­ed Between 1870 and 2016

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

How Humans Domesticated Cats (Twice)

in Biology, History, Nature, Travel | January 27th, 2020

Depend­ing on how you feel about cats, the feline sit­u­a­tion on the island of Cyprus is either the stuff of a delight­ful children’s sto­ry or a hor­ror film to be avoid­ed at all cost.

Despite being sur­round­ed on all sides by water, the cat pop­u­la­tion—an esti­mat­ed 1.5 mil­lion—cur­rent­ly out­num­bers human res­i­dents. The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty are fer­al, though as we learn in the above episode of PBS’ EONS, they, too, can be con­sid­ered domes­ti­cat­ed. Like the oth­er 600,000,000-some liv­ing mem­bers of Felis Catus on plan­et Earth—which is to say the type of beast we asso­ciate with lit­ter­box­es, laser point­ers, and Ten­der Vittles—they are descend­ed from a sin­gle sub­species of African wild­cat, Felis Sil­vestris Lybi­ca.

While there’s no sin­gle nar­ra­tive explain­ing how cats came to dom­i­nate Cyprus, the sto­ry of their glob­al domes­ti­ca­tion is not an uncom­mon one:

An ancient effi­cien­cy expert real­ized that herd­ing cats was a much bet­ter use of time than hunt­ing them, and the idea quick­ly spread to neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Kid­ding. There’s no such thing as herd­ing cats (though there is a Chica­go-based cat cir­cus, whose founder moti­vates her skate­board-rid­ing, bar­rel-rolling, high-wire-walk­ing stars with pos­i­tive rein­force­ment…)

Instead, cats took a com­men­sal path to domes­ti­ca­tion, lured by their bel­lies and cel­e­brat­ed curios­i­ty.

Ol’ Felis (Felix!) Sil­vestris (Suf­ferin’ Suc­co­tash!) Lybi­ca couldn’t help notic­ing how human set­tle­ments boast­ed gen­er­ous sup­plies of food, includ­ing large num­bers of tasty mice and oth­er rodents attract­ed by the grain stores.

Her inad­ver­tent human hosts grew to val­ue her pest con­trol capa­bil­i­ties, and cul­ti­vat­ed the rela­tion­ship… or at the very least, refrained from devour­ing every cat that wan­dered into camp.

Even­tu­al­ly, things got to the point where one 5600-year-old spec­i­men from north­west­ern Chi­na was revealed to have died with more mil­let than mouse meat in its system—a pet in both name and pop­u­lar sen­ti­ment.

Chow chow chow.

Inter­est­ing­ly, while today’s house cats’ gene pool leads back to that one sub-species of wild mack­er­el-tab­by, it’s impos­si­ble to iso­late domes­ti­ca­tion to a sin­gle time and place.

Both arche­o­log­i­cal evi­dence and genome analy­sis sup­port the idea that cats were domes­ti­cat­ed both 10,000 years ago in South­west Asia… and then again in Egypt 6500 years lat­er.

At some point, a human and cat trav­eled togeth­er to Cyprus and the rest is his­to­ry, an Inter­net sen­sa­tion and an if you can’t beat em, join em tourist attrac­tion.

Such high end island hotels as Pissouri’s Colum­bia Beach Resort and TUI Sen­satori Resort Atlanti­ca Aphrodite Hills in Paphos have start­ed cater­ing to the ever-swelling num­bers of unin­vit­ed, four-legged locals with a robust reg­i­men of health­care, shel­ter, and food, served in feline-spe­cif­ic tav­er­nas.

An island char­i­ty known as Cat P.A.W.S. (Pro­tect­ing Ani­mals With­out Shel­ter) appeals to vis­i­tors for dona­tions to defray the cost of neu­ter­ing the mas­sive fer­al pop­u­la­tion.

Some­times they even man­age to send a fur­ry Cyprus native off to a new home with a for­eign hol­i­day­mak­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Medieval Cats Behav­ing Bad­ly: Kit­ties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Cen­tu­ry Man­u­scripts

A New Pho­to Book Doc­u­ments the Won­der­ful Home­made Cat Lad­ders of Switzer­land

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York, The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Monty Python’s Terry Jones (RIP) Was a Comedian, But Also a Medieval Historian: Get to Know His Other Side

in Comedy, History, Television | January 24th, 2020

Mon­ty Python’s sur­re­al, slap­stick par­o­dies of his­to­ry, reli­gion, med­i­cine, phi­los­o­phy, and law depend­ed on a com­pe­tent grasp of these sub­jects, and most of the troupe’s mem­bers, four of whom met at Oxford and Cam­bridge, went on to demon­strate their schol­ar­ly acu­men out­side of com­e­dy, with books, guest lec­tures, pro­fes­sor­ships, and seri­ous tele­vi­sion shows.

Michael Palin even became pres­i­dent of the Roy­al Geo­graph­i­cal Soci­ety for a few years. And Palin’s one­time Oxford pal and ear­ly writ­ing part­ner Ter­ry Jones—who passed away at 77 on Jan­u­ary 21 after a long strug­gle with degen­er­a­tive aphasia—didn’t do so bad­ly for him­self either, becom­ing a respect­ed schol­ar of Medieval his­to­ry and an author­i­ta­tive pop­u­lar writer on dozens of oth­er sub­jects.

Indeed, as the Pythons did through­out their aca­d­e­m­ic and comedic careers, Jones com­bined his inter­ests as often as he could, either bring­ing his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge to absur­dist com­e­dy or bring­ing humor to the study of his­to­ry. Jones wrote and direct­ed the pseu­do-his­tor­i­cal spoofs Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Bri­an, and in 2004 he won an Emmy for his tele­vi­sion pro­gram Ter­ry Jones’ Medieval Lives, an enter­tain­ing, infor­ma­tive series that incor­po­rates sketch com­e­dy-style reen­act­ments and Ter­ry Gilliam-like ani­ma­tions.

In the pro­gram, Jones debunks pop­u­lar ideas about sev­er­al stock medieval Euro­pean char­ac­ters famil­iar to us all, while he vis­its his­tor­i­cal sites and sits down to chat with experts. These char­ac­ters include The Peas­ant, The Damsel, The Min­strel, The Monk, and The Knights. The series became a pop­u­lar book in 2007, itself a cul­mi­na­tion of decades of work. Jones first book, Chaucer’s Knight: The Por­trait of a Medieval Mer­ce­nary came out in 1980. There, notes Matthew Rozsa at Salon:

[Jones] argued that the con­cept of Geof­frey Chaucer’s knight as the epit­o­me of Chris­t­ian chival­ry ignored an ugli­er truth: That the Knight was a mer­ce­nary who worked for author­i­tar­i­ans that bru­tal­ly oppressed ordi­nary peo­ple (an argu­ment not dis­sim­i­lar to the scene in which a peas­ant argues for democ­ra­cy in The Holy Grail).

In 2003, Jones col­lab­o­rat­ed with sev­er­al his­to­ri­ans on Who Mur­dered Chaucer? A spec­u­la­tive study of the peri­od in which many of the fig­ures he lat­er sur­veyed in his show and book emerged as dis­tinc­tive types. As in his work with Mon­ty Python, he didn’t only apply his con­trar­i­an­ism to medieval his­to­ry. He also called the Renais­sance “over­rat­ed” and “con­ser­v­a­tive,” and in his 2006 BBC One series Ter­ry Jones’ Bar­bar­ians, he described the peri­od we think of as the fall of Rome in pos­i­tive terms, call­ing the city’s so-called “Sack” in 410 an inven­tion of pro­pa­gan­da.

Jones’ work as a pop­u­lar his­to­ri­an, polit­i­cal writer, and come­di­an “is not the full extent of [his] oeu­vre,” writes Rozsa, “but it is enough to help us fath­om the mag­ni­tude of the loss suf­fered on Tues­day night.” His lega­cy “was to try to make us more intel­li­gent, more well-edu­cat­ed, more thought­ful. He also strove, of course, to make us have fun.” Python fans know this side of Jones well. Get to know him as a pas­sion­ate inter­preter of his­to­ry in Ter­ry Jones’ Medieval Lives, which you can watch on YouTube here.

For an aca­d­e­m­ic study of Jones’ medieval work, see the col­lec­tion: The Medieval Python The Pur­po­sive and Provoca­tive Work of Ter­ry Jones.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry & Lega­cy of Magna Car­ta Explained in Ani­mat­ed Videos by Mon­ty Python’s Ter­ry Jones

John Cleese Revis­its His 20 Years as an Ivy League Pro­fes­sor in His New Book, Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years

Mon­ty Python’s Eric Idle Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Char­ac­ters

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness