History

Telling Trinkets Amongst the Treasure 

The Sasanian Empire and its Enemies 

While the discovery of the 90-foot (27-meter) long sailing vessel in this tomb captured most of the public’s attention, the presence of items that were of Byzantine and Sasanian origin was also highly significant.  

Another intriguing find was an ancient Anglo-Saxon burial discovered at Taplow in Buckinghamshire. One of the individuals unearthed here was dressed in a Eurasian-style riding jacket, which was a most distinctive and unusual form of dress. And at a cemetery unearthed in Prittlewell in Essex, multiple artifacts from the east were found inside an Anglo-Saxon burial chamber, including a suit of protective clothing and a copper flagon decorated in a style associated with the Sasanian region. 

And there was more. The ship excavated at Sutton Hoo was filled with lumps of bitumen, which had previously been assumed to have been used in the ship’s caulking. But according to Simpson the Sasanians lined their pottery with bitumen, and also allegedly used it for medicinal purposes (bitumen was believed at the time to have pain-killing and disease-curing properties). 

Simpson believes that these warriors would have served under the Byzantine emperors Tiberius II and Maurice, who ruled from 578 to 602 and carried out a relentless campaign against the Sasanian Empire. It is notable that Maurice actually singled out the Anglo-Saxons for praise in his military journals, commenting that they were good at fighting in the forest. 

As to why anyone from England would have gotten involved in such distant warfare, Simpson explained that the Byzantines paid their mercenaries quite well, and that they also offered opportunities for adventure for Anglo-Saxon aristocrats and other Britons who were looking to demonstrate their courage in battle. 

Top image: Left; Anglo-Saxon Sword Belt End Ornament, Right; Anglo-Saxon Shoulder Clasp, both from Sutton Hoo Burial, 625-630, Source:CC0/ CC0 

University of Glasgow

Techniques developed to analyze the ripples in spacetime detected by one of the 21st century’s most sensitive pieces of scientific equipment have helped cast new light on the function of the oldest known analogue computer.

Astronomers from the University of Glasgow have used statistical modelling techniques developed to analyze gravitational waves to establish the likely number of holes in one of the broken rings of the Antikythera mechanism – an ancient artifact which was showcased in the movie  Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

While the movie version enabled the intrepid archaeologist to travel through time, the Glasgow team’s results provide fresh evidence that one of the components of the Antikythera mechanism was most likely used to track the Greek lunar year. They also offer new insight into the remarkable craftsmanship of the ancient Greeks.

Discovering the Antikythera Mechanism

The mechanism was discovered in 1901 by divers exploring a sunken shipwreck near the Aegean island of Antikythera. Although the shoebox-sized mechanism had broken into fragments and eroded, it quickly became clear that it contained a complex series of gears which were unusually intricately tooled.

Decades of subsequent research and analysis have established that the mechanism dates from the second century BC and functioned as a kind of hand-operated mechanical computer. Exterior dials connected to the internal gears allowed users to predict eclipses and calculate the astronomical positions of planets on any given date with an accuracy unparalleled by any other known contemporary device.

Inscriptions found on the Antikythera mechanism led to a number of breakthroughs in the creation of the “theoretically” rebuilt Antikythera device. (Tony Freeth et al. / Nature)

Reassessing the Mechanisms Specifications

In 2020, new X-ray images of one of the mechanism’s rings, known as the calendar ring, revealed fresh details of regularly spaced holes that sit beneath the ring. Since the ring was broken and incomplete, however, it wasn’t clear how just how many holes were there originally. Initial analysis by Antikythera researcher Chris Budiselic and colleagues suggested it was likely somewhere between 347 and 367.
 
Now, in a new paper published in the  Horological Journal, the Glasgow researchers describe how they used two statistical analysis techniques to reveal new details about the calendar ring.

They show that the ring is vastly more likely to have had 354 holes, corresponding to the lunar calendar, than 365 holes, which would have followed the Egyptian calendar. The analysis also shows that 354 holes is hundreds of times more probable than a 360-hole ring, which previous research had suggested as a possible count.

Professor Graham Woan, of the University of Glasgow’s School of Physics & Astronomy, is one of the authors of the paper. He said: “Towards the end of last year, a colleague pointed to me to data acquired by YouTuber Chris Budiselic, who was looking to make a replica of the calendar ring and was investigating ways to determine just how many holes it contained.

“It struck me as an interesting problem, and one that I thought I might be able to solve in a different way during the Christmas holidays, so I set about using some statistical techniques to answer the question.”

The Antikythera Mechanism (Fragment A – front); visible is the largest gear in the mechanism, approximately 14 centimeters (5.5 inches) in diameter. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Statistical Probability and Gravitational Waves

Professor Woan used a technique called Bayesian analysis, which uses probability to quantify uncertainty based on incomplete data, to calculate the likely number of holes in the mechanism using the positions of the surviving holes and the placement of the ring’s surviving six fragments. His results showed strong evidence that the mechanism’s calendar ring contained either 354 or 355 holes.

At the same time, one of Professor Woan’s colleagues at the University’s Institute for Gravitational Research, Dr Joseph Bayley, had also heard about the problem. He adapted techniques used by their research group to analyze the signals picked up by the LIGO gravitational wave detectors, which measure the tiny ripples in spacetime, caused by massive astronomical events like the collision of black holes, as they pass through the Earth, to scrutinize the calendar ring.

The Markov Chain Monte Carlo and nested sampling methods Woan and Bayley used provided a comprehensive probabilistic set of results, again suggested that the ring most likely contained 354 or 355 holes in a circle of radius 77.1mm, with an uncertainty of about 1/3 mm. It also reveals that the holes were precisely positioned with extraordinary accuracy, with an average radial variation of just 0.028mm between each hole.

Bayley, a co-author of the paper, is a research associate at the School of Physics & Astronomy. He said:

“Previous studies had suggested that the calendar ring was likely to have tracked the lunar calendar, but the dual techniques we’ve applied in this piece of work greatly increase the likelihood that this was the case.

It’s given me a new appreciation for the Antikythera mechanism and the work and care that Greek craftspeople put into making it – the precision of the holes’ positioning would have required highly accurate measurement techniques and an incredibly steady hand to punch them.”

Professor Woan added:

“It’s a neat symmetry that we’ve adapted techniques we use to study the universe today to understand more about a mechanism that helped people keep track of the heavens nearly two millennia ago.

We hope that our findings about the Antikythera mechanism, although less supernaturally spectacular than those made by Indiana Jones, will help deepen our understanding of how this remarkable device was made and used by the Greeks.”

The paper, titled ‘An Improved Calendar Ring Hole-Count for the Antikythera Mechanism: A Fresh Analysis’, is published in  Horological Journal.

Top image: Antikythera Mechanism on display at the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.               Source: Joyofmuseums/CC BY-SA 4.0

This article was first published under the title, ‘Gravitational Wave Researchers Cast New Light on Antikythera Mechanism’, and has been lightly edited, with spelling Americanized.

Post as AO

Throughout the National Gallery’s 200-year history, the London museum’s collection has served as both a cultural touchstone and a flashpoint for political swirl. In 1914, suffragist Mary Richardson strode into the gallery with a meat cleaver and slashed Diego Velázquez’s depiction of a mirrored nude woman, The Toilet of Venus (also called the Rokeby Venus), to protest the arrest of a fellow activist. During World War II, the gallery hid its masterpieces in Welsh mines for safekeeping, leaving a rotating “picture of the month” as a cultural reprieve for a bombed and battered London. Nearly 80 years later, in 2020, the gallery closed for an unprecedented 111 days, shifting, like other museums, to digital outreach amid the uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As the gallery prepares to celebrate the 200th anniversary of its founding on May 10, 1824, it’s worth reflecting on a broader question: What gives a national gallery of paintings—whether it’s the London museum, the National Gallery of Art in the United States or the National Gallery of Australia—such significance, and why does this type of collection matter today?

The United Kingdom’s National Gallery is “a free, current and constant reference point,” says Martin Caiger-Smith, head of the master’s program in curating at the London-based Courtauld Institute of Art. “It’s a voice of authority, for better or worse.” The gallery houses around 2,300 Western European paintings spanning the 13th to early 20th centuries, a collection that has historically reflected—and shaped—the canonical tradition of Western art history.

In the late 18th century, a trio of aristocratic collectors known as the Bridgewater Syndicate spurred a fervor for classical Western European art in the U.K. The syndicate’s profitable public exhibitions laid the groundwork for a permanent national institution that would continue to promote this shared visual idiom in art history.

“The National Gallery has held a special place in British history and culture for 200 years,” says the museum’s director, Gabriele Finaldi. “It was established specifically to create a collection of the best possible art for the enjoyment of the entire British public, for free.”

The gallery opened in London’s Pall Mall area in 1824, in the former townhouse of banker John Julius Angerstein. The government had purchased 38 paintings from Angerstein’s private collection, which were soon augmented by works from other collectors.

“Old Masters” like Titian, Raphael and Anthony van Dyck formed the majority of the gallery’s founding collection. But “from the very beginning, it [housed] British [and] contemporary art,” too, says Christine Riding, the gallery’s director of collections and research. “The longer history of the National Gallery shows you just how much people really grappled with the notion of, ‘If you’re a “national” gallery, should you just have national art?’ Or can you … be national in the sense of being a center of excellence and a center of human endeavor and creativity?”

The gallery’s initial ethos was informed by the era in which it was founded. “Like most national galleries, it was born of that early 19th-century sense of nationhood” that developed in Europe, says Caiger-Smith. That nationalism grew in the U.K. alongside an industrializing, urbanizing population. Its educational aims were spurred by “top-down” philanthropy—including the concept of making fine art freely available to the public—that aimed to address widening economic and social gaps.

National competitiveness also came into play. After the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, Riding explains, there was “a sense of slight embarrassment that the United Kingdom, despite having come out of the war … one of the wealthiest nations in the world, didn’t have the kind of provision that other [European] countries had” for publicly accessible art.

Unlike many European national collections, the London gallery was created through an “act of Parliament as the nation’s gallery, rather than [as] a nationalized royal collection,” says Riding. “To have something that from the very beginning was developed specifically for the public and collected for the public is actually a really good message in the 21st century.”

Other democratic, formerly colonized countries followed the U.K.’s lead in establishing free institutions in their capital cities—albeit with collections that have centered more closely around emerging ideas of national identity. The National Gallery of Canada was established in 1880, creating a wide-ranging collection that today highlights Indigenous and Canadian art. The National Gallery of Australia’s extensive, global holdings include the world’s largest collection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.

Though Australia’s national collection originated in the 1910s, the gallery’s establishment took a back seat to other political priorities until 1967, and the building was only completed—and dedicated by Elizabeth II—in 1982. Located in Canberra’s Parliamentary Triangle, on the lands of the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, it occupies a prominent position comparable to the U.S. National Gallery of Art’s prime location on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., a short stroll from the Capitol building.

The Washington gallery, established in 1937 through the donation of industrialist art collector Andrew Mellon and a joint resolution of Congress, provides another example of the ties between art, money and politics. It supplanted the previous “National Gallery of Art” that formed part of the varied holdings of the Smithsonian Institution and evolved into today’s Smithsonian American Art Museum. The U.S. collection—which is not part of the Smithsonian—centers European and American art. Its Neoclassical architecture evokes the same humbling, powerful motifs as the U.K. gallery, with a similar Grecian portico, central cupola and extended wings.

Angerstein’s townhouse could hardly compete with other national museums like France’s palatial Louvre, so Parliament agreed to fund a new home for the gallery. The imposing Neoclassical building seen today opened in Trafalgar Square in 1838. Its central London location—between the wealthy West End and underprivileged East End—was chosen to reinforce the idea of the gallery’s public, cross-class accessibility. The London gallery’s “popularity was almost immediate, and certainly by the 1850s, it was getting about a million visitors a year,” Caiger-Smith says.

In the decades since, the gallery’s prominence has been bolstered by the location and its symbolism. When the museum was founded, Trafalgar “was a very populist area,” Caiger-Smith says, and “the site of key public events and protests. In some ways, it still is.” London Pride and various protests march through the square today.

By extension, the gallery’s collection has also become a target for activists. Richardson set a precedent for painting-based protests that has continued into the present. In 1961, retired bus driver Kempton Bunton confessed to stealing a Francisco Goya portrait as an objection to retirees having to pay BBC television license fees, in an almost too-good-to-be-true story that was dramatized in the 2020 film The Duke. In 1987, Robert Cambridge shot at a Leonardo da Vinci drawing to express his dismay with “political, social and economic conditions in Britain.”

More recently, in 2022, environmental campaigners from Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers and glued their hands to the frame of John Constable’s The Hay Wain, returning in 2023 to attack the protective glass of the Rokeby Venus with hammers. The gallery’s art has served as a high-profile target for these disparate issues because of its national—and now global—recognition.

While the collection has served as a canvas for protest, it has equally been a source of inspiration, especially during times of upheaval. Despite evacuating much of its art to the cavernous Manod slate quarry during World War II, the gallery’s remaining “picture of the month” and popular lunchtime concert program earned public acclaim. A 1942 letter published in the London Times explained the offerings’ symbolism: “Because London’s face is scarred and bruised these days, we need more than ever to see beautiful things.”

The gallery also hosted contemporary exhibitions of war artists like Paul Nash, Henry Moore and Eric Ravilious. The museum’s wartime role “underlines how an institution like ours could actually be a real focus for culture and society,” Riding says, exemplifying its method of “bringing people together … galvanizing them and supporting them in a very positive way.”

“There’s a considerable loyalty to it,” Caiger-Smith says. After the museum closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, “the response we got from people when they were able to come again to the gallery was really moving,” Riding says. “It really showed that we did matter, and that people … wanted to come back.” Annual visitors numbered around six million pre-pandemic, returning to three million in 2023 after a steep drop in 2022.

The way the collection is shared and received by that audience is constantly changing. “How you represent the national story, or national stories, in an era of globalization … needs to be rethought and re-presented all the time,” Caiger-Smith says. Like many other U.K. museums, the gallery is in the process of “negotiating its past,” investigating the “the legacy of slave ownership [and] questioning where its collectors, its donors, its trustees got their money,” he adds.

Beyond this postcolonial shift, scholars are reconsidering the diversity and depth of national collections and their relationship to the art historical canon. National galleries “are seen to be central to upholding the canon, or what is important in art. That’s something which is increasingly under scrutiny … with ideas of opening up the canon and exploding the canon,” Caiger-Smith says. But change can come slower for a national institution: Consider, for instance, the London gallery’s acquisition of a single piece by George Bellows in 2014, the first major American painting to join its collections. “Those are quite radical moves for a historic collection of European painting,” the academic adds. “You move from where you are.”

According to Caiger-Smith, the gallery’s “great challenge is to remain relevant while its collection increasingly is seen to be centered in the past,” and to figure out “how you take the past into the future, particularly at a time when you might say, arguably, that white, European collections are seen by many, particularly the young, as less and less central, less and less relevant, even. How do you keep [it] contemporary?”

The gallery has continually navigated the malleable boundaries of its collections, categorizations and hierarchies in tandem with other U.K. institutions. In 1996, the gallery and the Tate Modern museum agreed that the former would collect paintings created up to 1900, while Tate would house modern and contemporary works. But history and modernity are not static categories: “Every year, [1900] gets that little bit further [into] the past,” Caiger-Smith points out.

How do you design a gallery room? | National Gallery

Riding sees a kind of symbiotic relationship between contemporary and historic art in the national collection. “All art was contemporary,” she says, and soon becomes historic. “No matter how cutting-edge [J.M.W.] Turner thought he was in his own lifetime … we now see him very much as a historical artist.” Though the gallery does not acquire contemporary art for its permanent collection, it has sponsored contemporary artist residencies since the 1980s.

“You underestimate at your peril how important contemporary artists have been” to the gallery’s history, Riding says. “So many of them were directors and forged the way that the National Gallery developed really for the first 80 years of its existence.” The curator adds that artists have also influenced the gallery’s collection through the donation of their own works, “in order to insert themselves into the grand narrative of Western painting.”

The museum has further aimed to contemporize its collection through digital access and social media, the demands of which have accelerated museums’ public-facing duties over the past few decades. “I’d argue that the National Gallery has been one of the most innovative of England’s national museums in recent years in sharing its collection both digitally and physically,” and in how it presents its exhibitions, says Maxwell Blowfield, author of the Maxwell Museums newsletter. The gallery has “gone far in ridding [itself] of an image of being a bit traditional and a bit stuffy. … If that shows other big institutions they, too, can be more nimble and more fun, then that’s a good thing.”

On May 10, the gallery will celebrate its bicentenary and evince its evolution into a contemporary model for what a museum can offer the public—even with a traditional collection. Plans for the bicentenary include mounting 12 displays of the gallery’s “National Treasures” across the U.K., taking significant works in the collection beyond the locus of London to reach the broader population.

“Public ownership and access to world-class paintings and art is just as vitally important now for a thriving civic society as it was in 1824, and these fundamental principles of excellence and access are still what guide us today,” says Finaldi, the museum director. To mark the anniversary, the gallery will also host a series of contemporary performance art events staged by Jeremy Deller, bolster online research and accessibility to its collections, create educational programs, and present exhibitions on van Gogh and 14th-century Sienese painting, culminating in an ambitious rehang of the permanent collection in 2025.

“Two hundred years later, we do things a little differently,” Finaldi says. “Key to this is that, although we are very proud to welcome millions of people each year to Trafalgar Square, we no longer expect everyone to have to come to us in order to discover the power of art. Our paintings are owned just as much by those in the U.K. who can’t visit Trafalgar Square as those who come to see their favorite painting every week.”

The director adds, “We continue to seek new ways to bring the experience of seeing and understanding great paintings to as many people as possible, through digital channels and also through an intense engagement with contemporary artists.”

Though the gallery’s approach may look different, its purpose remains constant. “Why people felt it was so important to [have a national gallery] 200 years ago is often the answer as to why it’s important now,” Riding says, “because in essence it’s all about … learning, creativity and engaging” people with art. Today, a national gallery is an ever-evolving space to preserve and interact with beauty, history, hierarchy, influence and power.

The conclusion of a month-long excavation by a renowned television archaeology TV show in Britain has revealed the uncovered missing fragments of a 6th century Byzantine bucket at the renowned Sutton Hoo site in Suffolk, England. Parts of the original bucket were discovered in 1986, and then in 2012, but the current dig provides the missing pieces of the puzzle. These fragments have been discovered along with other artifacts at the prehistoric site.

The archaeologists from Time Team had 80 volunteers from across the world participate at the Sutton Hoo site, described as England’s ‘Valley of the Kings’. They were supported by the National Trust and FAS Heritage, part of a 2 year long excavation project.

Volunteers of Time Team scour the excavated ground at Sutton Hoo site. (© National Trust)

Ship Burials and the Missing Bucket Pieces

This site gained international fame for the iconic Anglo-Saxon ship burial discovered in 1939, which revealed a burial chamber filled with valuable artifacts belonging to a prominent figure from the early 7th century AD, reports The BBC. This burial chamber has often been described as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of all time!

During this period, before the formation of a unified England, ship burials were exceptionally rare, indicating the buried individual was of great importance. Some historians speculate the burial could belong to King Raedwald, who ruled East Anglia during this era.

In 1986 and later in 2012, fragments of a richly decorated ancient Byzantine bucket, known as the Bromeswell Bucket, were found in Garden Fields near Sutton Hoo. Originally crafted in the eastern Mediterranean in the 6th century, the bucket predates the ship burial by approximately a century.

The bucket’s journey to Suffolk remains a mystery, but archaeologists, conservators, and volunteers hoped to uncover more pieces during their recent excavations. Fortunately, their efforts yielded great benefit.

Fragment of the Bromeswell Bucket found at the Sutton Hoo site. (© National Trust)

“Because of its proximity to fragments discovered much earlier, we had hoped this year’s dig would yield more of the Bromeswell Bucket. [It] originated from the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century – around a hundred years before the ship and its extraordinary treasure was put to rest,” provided Angus Wainwright, Regional Archaeologist for the National Trust.

For decades each fragment of the bucket has been painstakingly cleaned, re-shaped and mounted to show how it would have looked. (© National Trust)

Advanced Technology: Exploring Sutton Hoo’s Early History

Time Team employed advanced technology during the dig, part of a new two-year research project exploring Sutton Hoo’s early history. They utilized a combination of geophysical surveys, including X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), a method of chemical and elemental analysis. This technology enabled the team to confirm that the newly discovered fragments, along with some previously recovered and stored pieces, were indeed part of the Bromeswell Bucket.

“Earlier geophysical surveys carried out by Time Team had identified some mysterious anomalies, which led us to the excavation of Garden Field. It’s hoped that this two-year research project will help us to learn more about the wider landscape at Sutton Hoo and the everyday lives of the people that lived there, perhaps even shedding some light on why the Royal Burial Ground was placed where it was. So, this find is a great step on that journey,” explained Wainwright in a statement sent to IFLScience.

Excavation of newly found piece of the bucket. (©National Trust)

Since the initial discovery of the bucket fragments in the 1980s, researchers have meticulously cleaned, reshaped, and mounted them to restore the artifact’s former glory. Examination using Time Team’s specialized technologies revealed that the bucket had been damaged and repaired, with evidence suggesting the metal was soldered back together.

This find is just one of many discoveries from the month-long excavation. Further details will be unveiled in an upcoming Time Team documentary on the excavation. Meanwhile, the recovered objects will be processed and catalogued before returning to Sutton Hoo.

Top image: Left, the reconstructed Bromeswell Bucket, and right, a newly found fragment.           Source: © National Trust

By Sahir Pandey

Ancient human footprints, preserved in a dry lakebed at White Sands National Park in New Mexico, reveal remarkably vivid vignettes of life in the late Pleistocene: children jumping in puddles and splashing, a group of hunters stalking a giant sloth. The scientists studying these footprints initially estimated their age as between 11,500 and 13,000 years. But now, radiocarbon dating has allowed experts to make a bombshell discovery: The oldest of these footprints are nearly 23,000 years old.

For many decades, archaeologists were convinced that the first people to arrive in the Americas came some 13,000 years ago, after the Ice Age glaciers melted. The White Sands footprints, whose age scholars estimated again, in a paper published this past October, by analyzing tree pollen and quartz grains in the sedimentary layers, provide the most conclusive evidence to date that humans were actually here much earlier, toward the end of the last ice age. It’s possible that they reached North America more than 32,000 years ago.

Now, “we need lots more sites to make sense of where they came from and by what route,” says Matthew Bennett, a professor of environmental and geographical sciences at Bournemouth University in England and lead author of two scientific papers about the footprints. “The lasting legacy of White Sands is to point the way to a new archive of evidence.”

The footprints were made by people walking on damp ground at the edge of a lake. Some are visible to the eye; others can only be found by ground-penetrating radar. Bennett knows of older human tracks in Africa and other parts of the world, but none, he says, “tell such a vivid, relatable story.” His first paper dating these tracks detailed a perilous journey undertaken by what appears to be a small woman or adolescent female, carrying a child on her hip, walking fast across the muddy lakeshore.

“There were hungry predators around, including dire wolves and saber-toothed cats,” says Bennett. “We can see where she slipped in the mud at certain points. … We can also see the child’s footprints where she set it down, presumably because she was tired and needed a rest.”

Based on the size of the footprints, it appears the child was less than 3 years old and did not accompany the older female on the return journey. Did she drop the kid off in a camp? Why were they traveling among dangerous animals on the slippery lakeshore?

“There’s no way of knowing,” says Bennett. “But if you’ve ever rushed to get somewhere important while carrying a tired toddler, you’ve experienced a very similar emotion”—even if you weren’t looking over your shoulder for saber-toothed cats.

The Ancient Greeks are often hailed as the founders of Western civilization. Celebrated for their advancements in philosophy, democracy, science, and the arts, we tend to view the ancient Greeks through rose-tinted glasses. Under this polished veneer of civilization lies a trove of lesser-known, surprising, and sometimes disturbing facts that reveal the truth about ancient Greek life. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows in ancient Greece; life could be tough, and Greek society was deeply divided. Here are some interesting facts about Ancient Greece.

1.The Spartans Were Baby Killers

Few aspects of ancient Greek society have captured our collective imagination like the Spartans. Famed for their military prowess and disciplined way of life, the Spartans have gone down in history as some of the greatest warriors the world has ever seen.

But what some people don’t realize is that the Spartans practiced infanticide. Upon birth Spartan newborns were subject to rigorous inspection by the elders. The examination determined the child’s physical fitness and general health. If the child was deemed to be weak, sickly, deformed, or otherwise undesirable, they were taken to a palace called the Apothetae. This was a chasm in the Taygetus Mountains range where the babies were left to die.

All Spartan infants were brought before a council of inspectors and examined for physical defects, and those who weren’t up to standards were left to die. (Public Domain)

Sparta was a warrior society that prioritized collective strength and resilience over individual lives. This ensured that only the fittest would survive to become future soldiers or bearers of Spartan offspring. While abhorrent by modern standards, to them, state-run infanticide was a small price to pay to ensure Sparta’s continued glory.

2.Athens Legal System Was Very Different To Ours

It’s common knowledge that Athens was the cradle of democracy, but most people are much less familiar with its rather intricate, and different, legal system. While most courts today are attended by judges and lawyers, in Athens, legal proceedings were driven by ordinary citizens.

One of the most shocking aspects was the concept of public prosecution. In what could amount to a legal free-for-all at times, any citizen could start a lawsuit, even on behalf of someone else. Unsurprisingly, this sometimes led to an environment ripe for frivolous and malicious lawsuits that would make the most determined ambulance chaser blush. 

The ancient court system in Ancient Greece. (Public Domain)

Athenian courts were large, with juries consisting of hundreds of citizens that had been chosen by lot. The idea behind having such a substantial number was that it reduced the chances of bribery, bias, and other forms of corruption. Unlike modern juries, deliberation wasn’t private but happened straight after hearing the arguments. On the bright side, jurors voted via a secret ballot to avoid reprisals.

Athens was also home to some peculiar laws, not all of them fair. For example, citizens could be ostracized (exiled for ten years) if they were deemed to be a threat to the state. They didn’t have to have done anything wrong or broken any laws; just being considered a threat was enough. Pretty much the opposite of innocent until proven guilty.

3.Greek Women Got The Short Straw

We often have a somewhat romanticized view of ancient Greece, but it was far from as liberal as modern media sometimes portrays it. Ancient Greece was a patriarchal society through and through, and women’s lives were starkly different from those of their male counterparts. Particularly in terms of rights and freedoms.

In most Greek city-states women were confined to domestic roles and had a limited public presence. They weren’t allowed to take part in politics (some democracy) and couldn’t vote or participate in the Assembly. Property rights for women were also restrictive. In Athens, women could not own property independently; any inheritance they received was managed by their male relatives. 

They also had little say about who they married. That was arranged by their male guardians. It was normal for female teens to be married off to much older men. Once married, they were supposed to stay at home, oversee the slaves, manage the household, and, of course, produce babies. Leaving the house without a male escort was even frowned upon.

A depiction of Greek women washing clothes, on a classical Greek vase. (Public Domain)

Furthermore, women drew the short straw when it came to education. While boys attended schools to learn philosophy, rhetoric, and physical education, girls received little formal education, focusing instead on domestic skills like weaving and cooking. 

Surprisingly, the only place it didn’t stink to be a woman was Sparta. Rather than being treated like glorified slaves, Spartan women enjoyed slightly more freedom and education. They were trained in physical fitness to bear strong children and were encouraged to speak their minds more than their Athenian counterparts.

4.The Ancient Greeks Invented the First Analog Computer

Time for something a bit more positive. It might sound like something out of a Dan Brown novel, but the ancient Greeks invented the first analog computer. Kind of.

Known as the Antikythera, it was discovered in 1901 in a shipwreck off the coast of the Greek Island Antikythera. It’s believed to date back to around 100 BC, and the strange device is so complex and sophisticated that similar technology wasn’t seen again until the invention of mechanical clocks in the 14th century. 

The Antikythera Mechanism, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece. (Tilemahos Efthimiadis from Athens, Greece/CC BY 2.0)

The Antikythera is believed to have been used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses for calendrical and astrological purposes. The machine is made up of a complex system of interlocking gears housed in a wooden box with bronze dials and pointers. The front of the device featured two dials that represented the solar and lunar cycles, while the back had a series of inscriptions and scales indicating the cycles of other celestial bodies.

The Antikythera is so shockingly advanced that it completely altered our understanding of ancient Greek technology. It revealed a level of engineering and astronomical knowledge far beyond what anyone dreamed they had possessed. Modern studies using advanced imaging techniques have allowed scientists to reconstruct its operation, shedding light on the incredible ingenuity of its creators.

5.Athletes Competed In The Buff

It’s no secret that the Greeks loved sports, but it’s less well-known that Greek athletes competed in the buff. The practice even had its own name, gymnos (naked in Greek), and was commonplace, especially during the Olympics and other big Panhellenic festivals. 

This wasn’t an attempt to spice things up for those uninterested in sports, however. The nudity actually served several purposes. For a start, it symbolized equality among competitors as it stripped away distinctions like wealth and status. It also served as a tribute to the gods by highlighting the ideal form of the human body. Practically speaking, nudity also allowed for greater freedom of movement and reduced the chances of athletes overheating. 

The Discobolus, or discus thrower, of Myron, is an ancient Greek sculpture of a nude male athlete throwing a discus. While the original, made in bronze, is lost, there are numerous Roman copies in existence. The Townley Discobolus is housed at the British Museum. (British Museum / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

What the nudity wasn’t, though, was fan service for the female spectators. The spectators were usually made up of male citizens who viewed the events as not just entertainment but a form of cultural and religious celebration. Sadly, women were normally banned from attending all athletic competitions. There were some events, like the Heraean games, however, in which women were allowed to compete.

6.Ancient Greek Dentistry Was Grim

It’s often talked about how the ancient Greeks made great strides in the field of medicine but their attempts at dentistry could be rather grisly. Ancient Greek dentists, like their modern counterparts, dealt with common dental issues such as tooth decay and gum disease, but their methods were often rudimentary and painful by today’s standards.

No one likes having their teeth pulled, but in ancient Greece, it was a common procedure, performed by using forceps to yank the decayed tooth out. The forceps were a basic metal instrument that looked like pliers. The extraction was done without anesthesia, making the whole procedure more than a little unpleasant. 

Obviously, toothpaste wasn’t an option when it came to dental hygiene. Instead, the Greeks mixed substances like honey, vinegar, and alum to clean their teeth and ease any pain. These treatments were documented by renowned physicians such as Hippocrates and Galen, who provided detailed descriptions of dental ailments and their remedies.

7.Greek Drinking Parties Revolved Around Getting Drunk And Arguing

The ancient Greeks liked to party just as much as we do today; they just did it a little differently. Symposia were a type of drinking party where men would gather to drink, eat, and chat while enjoying music and other forms of entertainment. They were usually hosted by the elite and held in private homes, where participants reclined on couches arranged in a circle or semicircle. Very lavish.

Plato´s Symposium painting by Anselm Feuerbach, 1869. (Public Domain)

The drink of choice was wine, which was downed in copious quantities but was mixed with water. Despite being diluted, the wine was still plenty strong, and guests often drank to excess. Drinking games, such as kottabos, where participants flung wine lees at targets, were common and added to the fun.

Once the drink was flowing, the guests would take part in intellectual debates (or at least debates they thought were intellectual) that covered a wide range of topics, from philosophy and politics to poetry and love. Unsurprisingly, these debates had a tendency to get a little heated, and inebriation led to both profound insights and arguments. Famous works, like Plato’s “Symposium,” depict these gatherings as settings for serious philosophical discourse interspersed with bouts of drunkenness.

8.Public Slavery Was a Common Practice

While more commonly associated with ancient Rome, the Greeks weren’t strangers to slavery, and ancient Greece even had its own unique form of slavery called “public slavery. Public slaves, known as “dēmosioi,” were owned by the state rather than citizens. They played an important role in society and were used to do things like maintain infrastructure and perform administrative functions. 

Public slaves were often clerks, scribes, and secretaries who handled important official documents. Others acted as a form of police called Scythian archers. These slaves were used to keep order during public gatherings and enforce the laws. Others worked in public works, maintaining roads, buildings, and other essential infrastructure.

Public slaves had a certain degree of autonomy and often received a wage, allowing them to save money. Once they had earned enough, they could sometimes buy their freedom. Being a public slave was usually a much better proposition than being privately owned.

However, they were still slaves. They were seen as property and lacked the majority of personal freedoms and rights that citizens held. Their lives were strictly controlled by the state and could change in an instant depending on what their owners decided. 

Slavery in Ancient Greece. (Public Domain)

9.Philosophers Were Like Outlandish and Eccentric Rockstars

Greek philosophers were the rockstars of ancient Greece. They might be celebrated for their profound contributions to Western thought, but some were also known for their eccentric and often shocking behaviors. 

Take Diogenes of Sinope, for example. The founder of the Cynic Schools, he famously lived in a large ceramic jar in Athens, rejecting social conventions and materialism. He would carry a lantern during the day, claiming to be searching for an honest man but never finding one. Diogenes also publicly mocked powerful figures, including Plato, whom he derided by presenting a plucked chicken as a “featherless biped” to challenge Plato’s definition of man.

Diogenes, depicted here by the French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, was a philosopher of the cynic school of Greek philosophy and many thought he was crazy, but he was super popular with the people of Athens. (Jean-Léon Gérôme / Public Domain)

Heraclitus, known as “The Obscure,” was another eccentric philosopher. He believed that change was the fundamental essence of the universe, famously stating, “You cannot step into the same river twice.” Heraclitus preferred solitude and often retreated to the mountains for contemplation, shunning social interactions.

Even the mathematicians were out there. Pythagoras, best known for the Pythagorean theorem, founded a religious movement combining philosophy, science, and mysticism. He imposed strict rules on his followers, including banning them from eating beans. Why? Because they contain the souls of the dead, of course. His community operated like a secretive cult, requiring rigorous adherence to esoteric beliefs.

10.Greek Democracy Wasn’t as Inclusive as You Might Think

People like to talk about Athenian democracy, but it was a far cry from what most Western countries employ today. It was often far less inclusive than the modern version. In Athens, only free male citizens could participate in the political process, which excluded women, slaves, and metics (foreigners living in Athens). 

As we’ve already mentioned, thanks to the patriarchy, women were completely excluded from all aspects of politics. Women couldn’t vote or hold political office. Then there were slaves, who made up a massive portion of the population, but were considered property and were barred from voting. They might have performed essential tasks, but they were voiceless in political matters.

Metics, despite contributing to Athens’ economy and culture, were also denied citizenship and political participation. Even within the citizen class, wealth played a crucial role. The political system favored the affluent, who could afford the time and resources to engage in public service (maybe that part hasn’t changed much). Ordinary citizens could attend the Assembly and serve on juries, but influential positions were typically held by the wealthy elite.

Put simply, Athenian democracy was a step in the right direction, but it was severely limited. Democracy ignored a huge section of the population and ignored the contributions these people made to society. For the most part it was a rich man’s game, rigged to ensure the continued dominance of a wealthy elite.

Conclusion

The ancient Greeks left an undeniable mark on history with their contributions to philosophy, democracy, and the arts. However, their society was also marked by practices and beliefs that can shock modern sensibilities. From the brutal reality of Spartan infanticide to the exclusionary nature of Athenian democracy, these surprising facts reveal a complex civilization with both admirable and unsettling aspects. 

By exploring these lesser-known facets of Greek life, we gain a deeper, more nuanced understanding of their culture. These shocking truths remind us that even the most celebrated societies have their dark and surprising sides.

Top image: Medusa by Caravaggio, 1597, shocked ancient Greece.            Source: Uffizi Gallery/CC BY-SA 2.0 

By Robbie Mitchell

In 1776, Abigail Adams famously implored her husband, John, who was formulating a “new code of laws” during the American Revolution, to “remember the ladies.” He did not.

Nearly 150 years later, the National American Woman Suffrage Association and its leader, Carrie Chapman Catt, asked for a specific law: suffrage. But the country was once again at war, the domain of men, and if women didn’t want their husbands, sons, brothers and fathers to die, they’d stop distracting the men in Washington, D.C. with such nonsense. No matter that Catt had been hearing iterations of that excuse for decades. She could wait.

Alice Paul, a young upstart, would not.

And so begins Suffs, a Broadway musical about the final act in American suffragists’ long campaign to win the vote for women. Shaina Taub, who also wrote the show, plays the leading role of Alice Paul. She’s a militant with a crew: ride-or-die college friend Lucy Burns (Ally Bonino); compelling legal renegade Inez Milholland (Hannah Cruz); writer-on-the-make Doris Stevens (Nadia Dandashi); revolutionary Ruza Wenclawska (Kim Blanck).

Now on Broadway | Suffs The Musical

Taub came to the subject matter when a producer friend gave her a copy of Stevens’ memoir Jailed for Freedom. In that book, Stevens writes of being arrested, militant protest, being forced-fed, and going on hunger strikes. She comes to Broadway with a background as a singer-songwriter who had garnered acclaim for a musical adaptation Twelfth Night put on by the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park series. Working on Suffs between other theater gigs, she faced numerous real-world challenges beyond the usual creative process ups-and-downs. Taub began writing the show in 2014 with an eye toward a world with President Hillary Clinton, and that, of course, did not happen. (Now, Clinton is a producer of the show along with Malala Yousafzai, the famed youth activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.)

Plans to open Off Broadway in 2020 were thwarted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the nationwide racial reckoning of that year in the wake of the murder of George Floyd pushed Taub once again to retool the show. Suffs first opened at the Public Theater in 2022 and faced mixed reviews; the New York Times wrote at the time that it was “bloated with information.”

With that, Taub once again reworked the book in advance of its Broadway debut last month, when it landed amid a dizzying final week of Tonys eligibility. In a short span of nine days, 12 new shows—seven of them musicals—opened, cramming the theater schedule.

The show, too, crams a lot in. There’s the entire history of the American women’s suffrage movement. Protests. Tension between Paul and Catt. The women’s march in Washington. Fleeting glimpses of the women’s lives: love, marriage, children, disease, death. More protests. Plotting, planning, producing. Another round of protests. Woodrow Wilson’s dismissive apathy. Yet more protests. A hunger strike. It’s exhausting and all-consuming—like the fight itself.

At first blush, Suffs has much in common with the blockbuster Hamilton, the musical about the $10 founding father without a father that will likely remain on Broadway for years to come. Both musicals got their start at the Public, feature a fast-paced soundtrack that doubles as a history lesson, are the work of an acclaimed songwriter who stars in a leading role, and challenge the ubiquity of the oppressor through unconventional casting.

But Suffs is not Hamilton. Women cast as men don’t play the role straight and, as such, appear to be caricatures that get cheap laughs but offer little reflection. Hamilton, for better or worse, ignited a national conversation about the founders, hagiography and how Americans think about their country’s beginning, and about themselves. Suffs is unlikely to spark such a discourse. Many babies start gnawing on this history in the Little Feminist board books within the first year of their lives, and wear shirts featuring bedazzled pioneering women, who also appear in their textbooks and, of course, are paraded out every March, when Women’s History Month recycles the same old stories. And maybe that’s OK.

Even as a historian, I expect entertainment to entertain and inspire further learning, not to be a didactic tool itself. That said, Suffs is full of “good” history; the tension between Paul’s upstarts and Catt’s old guard is real and rife with drama. Jenn Colella, who plays Catt, is perfectly cast as Paul’s foil; she’s the platonic ideal of a Broadway star of today and a polite activist of yore. She spends much of the musical kindly asking for “Votes for Mother.”

Other cast members shine as well. Ida B. Wells’ (Nikki M. James) important voice of dissent is given full volume, though one could not fault a theatergoer for thinking her only contribution to the movement was to RSVP “yes” to playing the role of “difficult Black woman” at pivotal moments. The audience similarly doesn’t have time to invest in Inez Milholland, who is reduced to a kind of fun suffragist party girl who gives good speeches before getting sick and dying. Present but comparatively minor and one-dimensional: Mary Church Terrell (Anastaćia McCleskey) is Catt’s Black counterpart—older, polite, though a bit less patient than she appears in Taub’s conception.

For all the good history in Suffs, some omissions that felt like minor tragedies: “Lifting as We Climb,” the official slogan of Black women’s groups, has always appealed to white women studying the movement, but Taub fails to properly cite it.

Taub does well to end the show on a somewhat somber—though in song and dance!—note: A hundred years later, the Equal Rights Amendment, Paul’s follow-up to the 19th Amendment of 1920, has yet to be codified.

Watch Four Songs from Suffs

Suffs may not have a decade-long run on Broadway, but it’s begging to be shown in classrooms, aired on PBS and cited as paving the way for other musicals on women’s history. And the paying customers appeared more than satisfied: Despite the disheartening reality of the Equal Rights Amendment’s failure, the audience left as happy to have seen a show of substance. For two-and-a-half hours, they laughed, they learned and then they left, spilling out onto the streets of Times Square, where clipboard-wielding volunteers asked them if they were registered to vote.

The Persian Empire, also known as the Achaemenid Empire, was a dominant force from 559 BC to 331 BC, spanning modern-day Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Several factors contributed to its immense power and extensive control over such a vast territory.

One key factor was the military strength of the Persians. Their army, modeled after the Medians, included elite units like the Immortals, an infantry force that appeared invincible due to their constant replenishment. The military comprised diverse recruits from conquered nations, enhancing its size and adaptability.

Administrative efficiency also played a crucial role. The empire was divided into provinces, each governed by a satrap, or governor, who handled local affairs. This decentralized approach allowed effective management while maintaining central oversight for military matters. The central authority-controlled military forces, preventing provincial rebellions.

The Persians’ lenient policies toward conquered peoples were another significant factor. They allowed the continuation of local customs, religions, and social structures, fostering loyalty among the subjugated populations. This approach contrasted sharply with the harsh tactics of their predecessors and minimized large-scale uprisings.

Infrastructure development further cemented the empire’s strength. The Royal Road, an extensive network of roads and communication routes, facilitated rapid movement of troops and information. This network supported trade, boosted economic prosperity, and enhanced administrative efficiency across the empire.

Top image: Immortals, Persian warriors bas relief in Darius palace, Persepolis, Iran.  Source: grigvovan

 By Robbie Mitchell

Three hundred years ago, a cultural revolution exploded out of East London. The narrow lane of Paternoster Row, today lined with trendy cafés and sushi shops, feels like an unlikely spot for the birth of the pirates of the Caribbean. But this was once the heart of the English capital’s publishing industry—and a place of justice for the most dreaded brigands.

Paternoster Row stands a few blocks away from the Old Bailey courts and Newgate Prison, where so many sea dogs were dragged in chains, tried and sentenced to death. So it was fitting that A General History of the Pirates—a comprehensive biography that shaped perceptions of pirates both then and now—was first sold here in May 1724.

The book’s author, one Captain Charles Johnson, had a best seller on his hands. An expanded version appeared later that year, followed by a third edition in 1725 and a fourth in 1726. Translations into Dutch, German and French also arrived in quick succession. Three centuries later, the blockbuster is still in print. Chapter by chapter, the book introduces readers to pirates who are now household names, from Henry Avery to Blackbeard to Anne Bonny—figures who inspired television hits like “Black Sails” and “One Piece” and fed the $4.5 billion Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

Much of what we think we know about the golden age of piracy, though, is not what it seems. Johnson never existed (he was a pseudonym for an author alternatively identified as Daniel Defoe or Nathaniel Mist), and most of the clichés of the era—walking the plank, buried treasure and drunk pirates in the lovable rogue mold of Captain Jack Sparrow—are make-believe, invented by Robert Louis Stevenson for his 1883 novel, Treasure Island.

“The first proper novel written about pirates,” Stevenson’s tale cemented a specific image of buccaneers in the popular imagination, says Rebecca Simon, author of The Pirates’ Code: Laws and Life Aboard Ship. “Virtually everything about pirates in pop culture comes from Treasure Island.”

So, what were the real pirates of the Caribbean like? Were they revolutionaries who founded pirate republics where everyone was free and equal? Or were they terrorists and rapists, enemies of all mankind out to pad their pockets, the world be damned?

Under the black flag

Overall, around 4,000 sea dogs plagued the world’s sea lanes during the golden age of piracy. In the 1690s, early pirates sailed between western India and the Red Sea coasts of modern-day Yemen and Saudi Arabia. A few decades later, in the 1710s and 1720s, they turned their attention to Spanish and European shipping routes in the Caribbean and slave traders off West Africa.

At the peak of the mayhem, around 1720, up to 32 pirate ships crewed by 2,400 multiethnic sailors disrupted the Caribbean at any given time. Pirates ranged in age from about 14 to 50, though most were in their mid- to late 20s. Around half were English: A quarter of these English pirates came from the port cities of Bristol, Liverpool and Plymouth, while another third hailed from Greater London. One-quarter of all pirates were Americans from the West Indies and North America. Many sailed out of Boston, Rhode Island, New York and Charleston.

“Pirates were men of the sea, not wronged aristocrats avenging their lost honor, as Hollywood would have us believe,” says Marcus Rediker, author of Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. “A few had been enslaved waterfront workers, some fishermen [and] more privateersmen. The vast majority had been sailors in the Royal Navy and especially the merchant shipping industry, where they had experienced death-defying labor, poor food (biscuit so full of vermin, they said it could walk around by itself) and the captain’s back-scarring cat-o’-nine-tails.”

As the English writer Samuel Johnson put it, “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail, for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.”

One in five pirates got their start after mutinies at sea, but the majority volunteered after pirates seized their merchant vessels. Highly skilled carpenters and doctors might be forcibly enlisted, but most captains, like Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy, “forced nobody to go with them, and said they would take nobody against their wills,” as one sailor later testified.

Pirate crews were made up of men from all walks of life. Walter Kennedy, a native of Wapping in London, was a poor pickpocket, while Stede Bonnet was “master of a plentiful fortune” amassed through his sugarcane plantation in Barbados, according to A General History. Welshman Bartholomew Roberts bucked the hard reputation of the scowling pirate by dressing in scarlet breeches and tucking a red feather in his hat; he also drank tea rather than rum.

What united these disparate pirates was the dream of making a fortune. Pirates could rake in 100 to 1,000 times the salary of an Anglo-American sailor. And a few diehards hit the jackpot: In July 1693, for example, Thomas Tew of Rhode Island plundered £100,000 of gold and silver, gems, pearls, elephant tusks, spices, silk, and gunpowder from a ship bound for what is now Saudi Arabia.

Then, in September 1695, Avery disarmed the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb’s treasure ship and helped himself to £600,000 in gold, silver and jewels (about $130 million today)—the largest single haul in pirate history. Despite today’s emphasis on pirates of the Caribbean, the richest ships sailed between the Red Sea ports of Jeddah in modern Saudi Arabia, Mocha in Yemen and Surat in India.

But pirates didn’t always spend their windfalls wisely. In the late 17th century, the Dutch surgeon Alexandre Exquemelin wrote that pirates used their money “according to their custom, wasted in a few days in taverns … by giving themselves to all manner of debauchery with strumpets and wine.”

During the War of the Spanish Succession, which spanned 1701 to 1714, privateers contracted by European governments to seize enemy ships got to keep about 80 percent of their loot. As soon as the peace was signed, this lucrative source of income vanished. The British Royal Navy demobilized its warships, decreasing its number of sailors from 49,860 in 1712 to 13,475 just two years later. Jobs dried up, and families went hungry.

“By the time the golden age of piracy was brought to a bloody end [in the 1720s], after royal governors had hanged hundreds of pirates,” says Rediker, “the ‘gentlemen of fortune’ had captured and plundered more than 2,400 vessels, 400 by Roberts and his crew alone. During their peak years, 1716 to 1726, pirates had done more damage to British Atlantic trade than France and Spain in the recent War of the Spanish Succession.”

Liberty, equality, fraternity

The pirate ship was a world turned upside down. Crews called no country home but came instead “from the seas.” As floating Towers of Babel crewed by poor men of mixed religions and nations, pirate ships welcomed everyone into the brotherhood—except for women, who were considered bad luck. (Bonny and Mary Read’s adventures with Calico Jack Rackham lasted just two months.) On pirate decks, there was no social ranking. Everyone got to vote on decisions and take a fair cut of the spoils.

Far from the Hollywood image of anarchy, pirate crews signed articles to strictly control life at sea. Edward Low, the meanest pirate of the golden age, banned drunkenness at times of attack. Roberts forbade the lighting of candles after 8 p.m. George Lowther’s articles included compensation for the loss of a limb in an assault.

Pirate lords could certainly be quirky. After Low’s wife died, he blocked married men from his fleet in a rare act of sentimentality. Bonnet sought solace at sea due to “some discomforts he found in a married state” that brought about “a disorder of the mind,” notes A General History.

Bonnet, who had no sailing experience, didn’t just run away from his wife. “There is a suggestion that he had a strong preference to surround himself with other men,” says historian Katherine Howe, editor of The Penguin Book of Pirates and the descendant of a Massachusetts merchant who was hanged from a ship’s yardarm by pirates who wanted him to give up his valuables.

Male friendships on pirate vessels could be extremely close, to such an extent that matelotage, “a kind of civil union [performed] in front of witnesses and the captain,” was allowed, says Simon. “Two sailors would join into a bond to enable their property, in the event of their death, to be sent back to their families or willed to each other.”

Simon notes that some scholars have speculated that matelotage was akin to “legalized gay marriage on pirate ships,” but the written documents are ambiguous. “Sexual relationships were banned on most ships, pirate ships as well, and this included sodomy, which was against the law,” she explains. “Some civil unions would have been out of very deep friendships, but it is very possible” that men who shared close quarters for long stretches of time engaged in sexual activity.

Not even the captain’s power was sacrosanct. If he showed just one sign of weakness or dishonesty, he could be marooned on a desert island or killed outright. Authority was governed by majority rule, and the crew “only permit him to be captain on condition that they may be captain over him,” according to A General History.

Skulls and crossbones

While violence was sometimes inevitable, pirates’ main goal was to persuade victims to give up their cargoes without a fight. “It was a bit of a spectrum, but pirates weren’t as deadly as we think,” says Simon. “If you’re going to engage in a massive battle, that means you’re going to be losing massive numbers of your own crew as well, and pirates don’t want to do that. They want to get in and get out as fast as they can.”

Though most pirates avoided violence when possible, some relished it. Blackbeard supposedly lit fuses in his beard when approaching enemy prizes, looking like a demon straight out of hell. But no sea dog rivaled Low’s cruelty. When the pirate found out that the captain of a seized Portuguese ship had dropped a bag of 11,000 gold coins into the sea rather than hand it over, he had the man’s lips cut off, broiled and fed to the ship’s mate. Low and his men then murdered the captain and his crew of 31.

Terror was a common tactic to persuade victims to reveal hidden treasures, and it often involved dramatic theatrics. Crews led by Bellamy and Paulsgrave Williams took the St. Marie by charging the French ship while stripped completely naked. Read was said to fight bare-breasted for the same reason, providing a diversion that stunned onlookers while her fellow pirates swung into action.

The ultimate prop was the pirate flag, which could be decorated with a skull and crossbones (as in the classic Jolly Roger design), bleeding hearts, hourglasses, spears, cutlasses and skeletons. A black flag told terrified crews that the pirates were willing to give quarter if they surrendered. When all else failed, a blood-red flag signaled that no mercy would be shown.

Pirate raids were “much less about torture for its own sake than about active persuasion,” says Howe. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t a terrifying thing. It could still be a very ugly business.”

The end of the rope

The legends who lived to enjoy their ill-gotten gains were a tiny minority. Avery vanished into thin air before buying a royal pardon and joining the writer Defoe as a spy to protect England’s crown from the threat of Catholic France, a new theory suggests. Christopher Condent, more commonly known as Billy One-Hand, arranged a royal pardon and retired to the old pirate haunt of St. Malo in northern France.

As for the rest of the big guns, William Kidd, Charles Vane, Bonnet, Rackham and Olivier Levasseur were all executed by hanging. Tew died in the Red Sea in September 1695, when he was disemboweled by a cannonball. Blackbeard was decapitated in a skirmish with the Royal Navy off North Carolina in 1718. Bellamy and all but two of his crew drowned off Cape Cod in 1717, while Roberts was shot dead by a Royal Navy frigate off Sierra Leone in 1722.

Around 25 to 30 percent of pirate crews were Black, research conducted by historian Kenneth J. Kinkor suggests. Though much has been made of African pirates fighting and dying alongside their white brethren, these men’s fates were very different. Colonial officials rarely gave Black pirates the right to a trial. “Many were sold back into slavery,” says Simon. “It was more egalitarian [on pirate decks] than you might expect for the time period, but it’s not as perfect as we’d like to think.” Howe adds, “Pirates were interested in money. They weren’t interested in people.”

Ultimately, piracy was not a way of life, but rather a brief act of defiance. Most sea dogs dreamed of one large prize and melting into polite society. Reality rarely worked out so well. Almost all pirates failed and went on to meet an unhappy end. So why have they stuck so firmly in the popular imagination?

“Pirates have remained popular because of their ‘it’ factor—a strange magnetism that attracts both sexes,” writes Simon in The Pirates’ Code.

Howe, meanwhile, says:

They’re beloved for what they represent: the romance and the glamour, the idea of freedom, of overthrowing authority. … My more cynical side also says that it is a way for us to be romantic about maritime life in the age of sail and not to have to think about slavery, a way of creating a glamorous overlay over some of the harsher realities of life, not just for enslaved people but for working people in general [at the time].

When all was said and done, many pirates were criminals, terrorists and rapists. “There was no altruism behind the motives of those pirates,” says Simon. “There was nothing they wanted to give back. They were operating against the law, attacking people, kidnapping [them].”

What cannot be denied is that the pirates of the Caribbean lived and died in their own way. They partied hard, swore, took God’s name in vain and joked heartily. When Philip Lyne captured official documents of the Lords of the Admiralty in 1721, his men “wiped their backsides” with them, proclaiming “that they were 1720259406 the lords of the sea.” The crews of both Bellamy and Roberts were stinking drunk or hungover when they were caught or killed.

Most men sailing under the black flag did so for just a year or two before the law or a hurricane caught up with them. The way of the pirates, then, was less “dead men tell no tales” than “live fast, die young.” Or, as Roberts put it, “In an honest service, there is thin commons, low wages and hard labor. In this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power. … No, a merry life and a short one shall be my motto.”

The face of Ramesses II, or Ramesses the Great, one of ancient Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs, has been meticulously reconstructed by scientists using advanced 3D modeling techniques. This recreation, showing the king’s appearance moments before his death, portrays him as a frail yet wise elderly man, revealing a visage that aligns with some of the features depicted in his colossal statues that still stand in Egypt.

Ramesses II reigned from 1279 to 1213 BC, making significant contributions to Egypt’s architectural and military achievements. His reign, known for its grandeur, included the construction of impressive monuments and statues, which solidified his legacy as one of Egypt’s greatest rulers.

Reconstructing the Face of Ramesses II

The Daily Mail reports that Cicero Moraes, a Brazilian graphics expert, led the reconstruction team, which used a 3D model of the king’s mummified skull. By layering soft tissue and skin over the digital skull model, they recreated what Ramesses II likely looked like at around 90 years old, the age he is believed to have been at his death.

Mummified skull of Ramesses II. (G. Elliot Smith/Public domain)

The reconstruction revealed a frail, elderly man with a weathered face. Despite the king’s advanced age, his face still bore a striking resemblance to the giant statues of him, though some differences were noted. The statues, often idealized, showed a more delicate forehead, pronounced lips, and a well-defined chin, features that Moraes’ reconstruction found to be “insufficiently reliable” for an accurate representation.

Younger Memnon Statue of Ramesses II from Thebes portrays him with pronounced lips and defined chin. (Nate Loper/CC BY 2.0)

Scientific and Historical Validation

The team’s approach included analyzing anthropometric and DNA data from ancient Egyptian populations. They aimed to create a realistic depiction, considering the various elements that made up the Egyptian populace. The skin color palette used in the reconstruction was chosen based on ancient Egyptian art, as the true hue of the pharaoh’s skin remains unknown. A grayscale version of the image was also produced to avoid making definitive judgments about his complexion.

Moraes explained:

“We carried out a broad analysis, comparing the reconstructed face with statues of Ramesses II. The objective was to understand the extent to which the statues are reliable. We saw that while there is good compatibility with the shape of the nose and, in some situations, the shape of the face, there are also significant differences.”

Ramesses II reconstruction in traditional dress. (© Cicero Moraes)

Comparing with Previous Reconstructions

This recent reconstruction is not the first attempt to visualize Ramesses II. A 2022 reconstruction by Sahar Saleem of Cairo University and Caroline Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University presented a younger version of the pharaoh. Using different methods, their project also relied on a 3D model of the skull but reversed the aging process to reveal his appearance at the height of his power. Saleem described the younger Ramesses as a “very handsome Egyptian person with facial features characteristic of Ramesses II – the pronounced nose, and strong jaw.”

2022 reconstruction by Sahar Saleem of Cairo University and Caroline Wilkinson of Liverpool John Moores University of a younger Ramesses. (Face Lab LJMU)

Revealing the Wisdom in Old Age

The latest reconstruction aimed to depict the king’s aging features accurately. It highlighted the pronounced veins on his forehead, signs of memory loss, and poor dental and bone health, including a pronounced overbite and significant tooth wear. These details were corroborated by a 1976 study of Ramesses’ mummified remains, which had restored tissues and created new bandages.

The team also used anatomical deformation, matching the mummy’s dimensions to a living donor with a similar overbite, to interpolate the final image. This technique helped produce a life-like representation that captured the king’s wisdom and age.

Public Reaction and Future Implications

While the reconstruction has garnered significant attention, it has also sparked debates and criticisms, especially regarding the portrayal of Ramesses II’s skin color and facial features. Moraes welcomes the discussion, emphasizing the importance of freedom of expression and the scientific process.

“I am in favor of freedom of expression. I generally use it to clarify points and refute what is incoherent,” he stated.

This reconstruction adds a new dimension to our understanding of Ramesses II, providing a more personal and human connection to the ancient ruler. It bridges the gap between the grandiosity of his reign and the reality of his mortality, offering a poignant reminder of the wisdom and frailty that come with age.

The face of Ramesses II, moments before his death, is not just a scientific achievement but a powerful symbol of the enduring legacy of one of history’s greatest leaders.

Top image: Left; Mummified skull of Ramesses II, Right; Reconstructed face of Ramesses by Cicero Moraes           .              Source: Left; G. Elliot Smith/Public domain, Right; © Cicero Moraes

By Gary Manners