History

Stranger churches in early modern London had ‘eyes everywhere’ to hear, spread and dispel gossip in multiple languages, according to new research.

The Elizabethan era saw large numbers of migrants coming to England, many of whom were Protestants fleeing religious persecution and violence from countries that spoke French, Dutch, Flemish, Italian and Spanish.

Dr John Gallagher, Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leeds, has uncovered evidence that the state was monitoring gossip about them in multiple languages.

His findings are revealed in a new paper, Migrant Voices in Multilingual London, 1560-1600, which is published in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.

Dr Gallagher, who recently won the Philip Leverhulme Prize for his work in this area, said:

“England’s history is much more multilingual than we might imagine, and even the state had to learn multiple languages in the Elizabethan area to have ‘eyes everywhere’ and maintain control…. The average person would have come across multiple languages every day, and we can hear the voices of regular people because of the extensive records kept by churches at the time.’

“Languages other than English could be heard in the streets and in the public spaces of the city, through the walls of homes and the doors of shops.”

The Dutch Church, Austin Friars, London. (John Salmon/CC BY-SA 2.0)

Stranger Churches

Known at the time as ‘strangers’, migrants joined a mostly illiterate but multilingual community that valued the spoken word highly.

‘Stranger churches’ for migrant communities were formed with the first Dutch church in London in 1550. They provided services in French, Dutch and Italian, but church elders recognized that this privilege was precarious, and began to monitor scandal across languages to avoid bringing their communities into disrepute.

The archives of consistories – the stranger churches’ all-male governing bodies — show that churches aimed to ‘have eyes everywhere’, as a minister of the French church in London wrote in 1561.

When suspicions arose over a child’s parentage in the Dutch church, records showed the elders consulted a woman ‘from overseas’, an ‘Englishman’ and a woman present at the birth of the child to understand the extent of the rumors.

Consistories also made it their mission to do background checks on migrants at church who could have left behind a secret spouse and family at home.

England’s ‘third universitie’

But London’s multilingual exchange wasn’t just for the church, or the literate elites, as everyone would have encountered languages other than English in the street, or even at home.

Dr Gallagher’s findings include the story of one bookseller, Thomas Harris, who stopped his French neighbor Jehan de Savoye in the street to ask him what had been said in a French-language row he’d overheard.

London’s Royal Exchange, finished in 1568, was an important space where linguistic diversity helped news, gossip and slander spread through the city. The space was used for international and multilingual trade, but it was also a space where people had a ready audience for arrests, arguments and accusations in multiple languages.

A commentator described London at the time as England’s ‘third universitie’, where you could learn Chaldean, Syriac and Arabic, as well as Polish, Persian and Russian.

Dr Gallagher added:

“It wasn’t necessary to speak or understand another language to be part of this multilingual urban culture: your rowing neighbors might switch languages to ensure the cause of the trouble was made clear, or the offender might show up on your doorstep in the presence of an elder of their church to explain and apologize.”

These findings will form part of Dr Gallagher’s upcoming book ‘Strangers: Migration and Multilingualism in Early Modern London’, supported by the Leverhulme Trust’s Philip Leverhulme Prize.

Top image: The Procession Picture, c. 1600, showing Elizabeth I borne along by her courtiers Source: George Vertue/Public domain

The article ‘Multilingual gossip in Elizabethan London’ was originally published on Science Daily. Source: University of Leeds. “Multilingual gossip in Elizabethan London.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 24 September 2024.

When Antony Penrose was a young boy in postwar England, he knew his mother, Lee Miller, was a photographer. She taught him how to use her boxy Rolleiflex camera, and he accompanied her when she visited and photographed other artists in her circle, including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Man Ray.

But there were gaps in Penrose’s knowledge. He never knew, for instance, that Miller was a legendary war correspondent for Vogue who was embedded in the front lines during World War II and took some of the most defining images of the conflict. She simply never talked about that period in her life.

Shortly after his mother died in 1977, Penrose and his wife, Suzanna, welcomed a daughter, Ami. They climbed up to Miller’s attic and popped open long-shut boxes to track down baby photos of Penrose to compare with their newborn. Instead, they stumbled onto a pile of thin pages containing a manuscript titled “The Siege of St. Malo.”

“It was this incredibly up-close and personal account of a hideous battle,” Penrose says. “She’d watched guys that she was joking with a few hours before being mowed down by machine gun fire.”

He asked his father, the artist and art collector Roland Penrose, if the author was indeed Miller. Roland chuckled and gave his son a copy of the article in a back issue of Vogue. Penrose had much to learn about his mother’s many lives.

The lives of Lee Miller

Since the day he found the draft of “The Siege of St. Malo” in his childhood attic, Penrose has dedicated most of his adult life to stewarding his mother’s remarkable legacy. He’s the author of a 1985 biography about her, The Lives of Lee Miller, and the co-director (with his daughter, Ami Bouhassane) of the Lee Miller Archives, based at the photographer’s former farm and house in East Sussex, England.

The latest effort to preserve Miller’s legacy is Lee, a biopic directed by Ellen Kuras. Starring Kate Winslet in the title role, the film is based on Penrose’s book. It draws on material housed at the Lee Miller Archives, which gave Kuras unprecedented access to its namesake’s papers.

LEE | Official Trailer | In Theaters September 27

In Lee, Penrose, played by Josh O’Connor of “The Crown,” sits down with his aging, curmudgeonly mother to record flashbacks of Miller’s life, focusing mainly on the years surrounding the war. The memories stand in stark contrast to each other: In one, she’s lounging with artist types in the prewar south of France. In another, she’s taking photographs under siege in the broken cities of Europe.

In real life, Miller never spoke about these years with Penrose. It’s easier to understand her silence in retrospect. “There was a natural modesty, natural humility,” Penrose says. “But also, I think that what none of us understood at the time was that she was suffering acutely from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Beset by funding and production difficulties, Lee was more than eight years in the making. At one point, Winslet, who championed the story and co-produced the film, personally paid the entire cast and crew’s wages for two weeks when funding stalled.

Lee—now playing in theaters across the United States—confronts Miller’s legacy, not just as a model and muse, but as an active participant in the 20th century’s most defining moments; a courageous artist; and an imperfect, shattered human. Miller’s many lives need little embellishment.

Model, muse and artist

In 1927, magazine magnate Condé Montrose Nast pulled a drifting, 19-year-old girl from Poughkeepsie, New York, out of incoming Manhattan traffic and into the world of high fashion and modeling.

Things moved quickly from there. A drawing of Miller appeared on the March 15, 1927, cover of one of Nast’s flagship magazines, Vogue. Clad in a purple cloche hat, with a dark urban background obstructed by her long blue eyes and a bauble of pearls around her neck, Miller was officially a New York City model.

But she left for Paris just two years later, not content with being a static image on magazine covers and in Kotex ads. She sought out Man Ray, the Dadaist and Surrealist photographer, to act as her mentor, and they worked together to develop the technique of solarization, in which the tone of a snapshot is reversed.

Blood of a Poet(Mirror Scene)

The pair became lovers, too, and together, they flitted around the Surrealist circles of interwar Europe and New York. Miller played the female lead—a marble statue with no arms—in The Blood of a Poet, an avant-garde film by Jean Cocteau. Her lips and eyes became iconic pieces of Surrealist art.

In 1934, Miller married an Egyptian businessman named Aziz Eloui Bey and moved to Cairo, where she kept up her photography without the financial pressures of her earlier career. But the elegant, domestic life left her restless, so she bounced back around Europe—Paris, the Balkans, rural England—this time with Penrose’s father, Roland.

Lee Miller’s surreal war

After ending her first marriage on amicable terms, Miller settled with Roland in England, arriving around the time of the outbreak of World War II.

Despite the gap in her resume, Miller again applied to Vogue, which took her on as a photographer to replace the men now fighting in the war. The normal fashion work resumed, supposedly a happy distraction from wartime grimness, but it left Miller unsatisfied as German bombs fell in the city around her.

Ever headstrong, she took matters into her own hands, processing her own striking photos of war-torn London in Vogue’s offices and contributing 22 images to Grim Glory, a book about the Blitz.

Miller was accredited as a photographer by the U.S. Army in 1942, but she mostly covered women’s work, not combat. Until the siege of St. Malo, a coastal town in France, in 1944, she stuck to scenes like nurses at a base in Oxford, England. Still, she managed to reinvent these photographs through a Surrealist lens: In one snapshot, for instance, she captured a nurse cleaning rubber gloves, which jut out from drying racks like dozens of disembodied hands.

“I’ve often said that I feel the only meaningful training for being a war correspondent is first of all to be a Surrealist, because then nothing is too unusual,” Penrose says.

When Vogue’s editors assigned Miller to cover the liberation of St. Malo, they assumed the town had already been freed by the Allies. But the fighting had only begun. Though she wasn’t accredited to cover combat, Miller was the only reporter embedded with the troops. She refused to let the story pass.

The article Miller subsequently wrote for Vogue (the same one discovered by Penrose in his mother’s attic some three decades later) is a vivid, frank and subjective account of the siege, from the belches of gunfire to the long waits on the backlines.

“Stricken lonely cats prowled. A swollen horse had not provided adequate shelter for the dead American behind it. … Flower pots stood in roomless windows,” Miller wrote in fragmentary prose as she gazed at the fragments of the town and the armies.

She continued:

My heel ground into a dead detached hand … and I cursed the Germans for the sordid, ugly destruction they had conjured up in this once-beautiful town. I wondered where my friends were … that I’d known here before the war … how many had been forced into disloyalty and degradation … how many had been shot, starved or what. I picked up the hand and hurled it across the street and ran back the way I’d come, bruising my feet and crashing in the unsteady piles of stone and slipping in blood. Christ, it was awful.

The legacies of Lee Miller

The horrors of the war in Europe continued, and so did Miller’s work to document them for posterity.

She and her close companion David E. Scherman, a correspondent at Life magazine, were among the first members of the press to enter the newly liberated Dachau concentration camp on April 30, 1945. The scenes they saw there defied reality. Along with her photos and article, Miller sent her editor back in London a cable: “I IMPLORE YOU TO BELIEVE THIS IS TRUE.” Vogue published her photos of the camp, juxtaposed with the banality of German life in nearby villages, and titled the spread “Believe It.”

Later on April 30, Miller and Scherman went to Munich and camped in Adolf Hitler’s old apartment, which had been converted into a U.S. Army post. They went through his things—which appeared to be frighteningly normal—and she posed in Hitler’s bathtub on the same day that he died by suicide across the country in Berlin.

“It’s tempting to cast the photograph of Miller’s bath as a talisman of triumph, a middle finger, a cleansing ritual,” writes artist Chris Wiley for the New Yorker. “With the monster vanquished, the stink of evil can begin to be scrubbed away. But, of course, it doesn’t really work that way.”

After the war, Miller struggled to find her place in the peacetime world of magazines and art. She tried to be a staff photographer for Vogue but chafed against the editors. In 1956, she gave up journalism for good, instead deciding to train as a gourmet cook and publish recipes.

But Miller continued to struggle with her mental health. Penrose, who was born in 1947, describes his mother during this period as an “alcoholic” and “depressive.” They had a “pretty dire” relationship. A nanny mostly raised him.

Then, sometime in the early 1970s, Penrose hatched a scheme to drive around the world in a Land Rover with his cousin and a friend from the nearby village. As they prepared, he recalls, his mother “became a different person,” buoyed by the prospect of adventure, and she offered the boys practical wisdom.

When Penrose returned to England some 72,000 miles later, he and his mother became as close as “two old pals” for the final years of her life.

But Miller still didn’t tell Penrose about the war. Those stories were still a bundle of trauma, photographs and manuscript pages that she carried by herself and left in untouched boxes in her attic. It was only after Miller’s death that Penrose discovered and began to share her remarkable story with the world. Without his work, Miller might have been remembered only as a muse and model. Her many other lives might never have inspired others.

“There’s not many weeks that go by without me meeting someone, usually a young woman, who says that Lee has inspired them to change their career and go off and often become a photographer, sometimes even a combat photographer; to dump toxic relationships; to really just be themselves in their lives and be what they want to be instead of following other people’s expectations,” Penrose says. “And I find that intensely rewarding.”

When examining the mysteries of the 8th century BC, all one has to do is look in the Bible or an ancient history book to realize that Assyria had no outside threats. The Hittites and Egyptians were a shell of their former glory and imposed no threat to the Assyrian borders. The once mighty United Kingdom of Israel, under the reign of King David, and later his son Solomon, divided into two separate kingdoms after Solomon’s death. The kings of Israel were too busy fighting amongst themselves. Syria, to the northwest of Assyria, was not a threat to Assyrian expansion either. As for Phoenicia, they were unstable on land and had no real standing army other than those they relied on to volunteer. The rest of the smaller tribal groups were mere principalities or city-states similar to Phoenicia. From the view that the ancient biblical historical texts 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles gives us, one could say the reason the Middle East was so easy to take was because it was so fragmented and thus no single nation surrounding Assyria—whether it be a city-state or a community of tribes—posed any real threat to Assyria.

So how did Assyria and the Northern Kingdom of Israel come to blows? And what happened to the ten tribes of ancient Israel that were said to be lost in time after being conquered by the Assyrian Empire?

Collecting from Israel’s Kings

In 738 BC, King Tiglath-pileser made his way west to collect tribute and to expand the ever-growing Assyrian Empire. He began his regional tour starting with what was left of the fractured kingdoms of the former Hittite empire. Turning back south to Syria and then heading west to the city-states of Phoenicia, he subdued the citizens without a fight, collecting just about anything and everything the individual kingdoms could offer. This kept Assyria out of their lands by turning them into Assyria’s vassals.

Tiglath-Pileser III: Detail from a stela from the walls of his palace. (Public Domain)

Next on the list for Assyria was the kingdom of Israel. Menahem was the king of Israel at the time when Tiglath-pileser III arrived at their border. For a long time before the Assyrian threat, the Hebrew prophets Hosea, Amos, and Joel foretold the coming destruction of Israel if they did not repent of their sins and come back to the god Yahweh:

And Pul the king of Assyria came against the land: and Menahem gave Pul a thousand talents of silver, that his hand might be with him to confirm the kingdom in his hand. And Menahem exacted the money of Israel, even of all the mighty men of wealth, of each man fifty shekels of silver, to give to the king of Assyria. So, the king of Assyria turned back, and stayed not there in the land.

Illustration of King Menahem, of the northern Israelite Kingdom of Israel. (Public Domain)

The storm was on the horizon, and it was time to pay financially, for King Menahem gave a thousand talents of silver to Tiglath-pileser by extracting 50 shekels from each wealthy man. An enormous 60,000 citizens of wealth gave up their money to the Assyrian coffers. After getting his tribute, Tiglath-pileser left the outskirts of Israel, leaving the kingdom intact and still in the hands of Menahem. One can only speculate if this was a one-time tribute deal, or multiple times year after year. In either case, Menahem had just made his kingdom look impotent before the king of Assyria. Nevertheless, what could King Menahem have done? All one has to do is read II Kings 15:16 and realize that most of his people would not fight for him anyway.

King Menahem remained on the throne six more years before he died. His son Pekahiah took the throne and reigned for only two years before he was murdered inside the palace by Pekah and 50 Gileadites in Samaria (II Kings 15:23-26). It seems Pekah murdered Pekahiah because Pekahiah continued to let Assyria dominate Israel. This made the people of Israel mad, and the result was a murdered king by a man of the military.

King Pekah made an alliance with King Rezin of Damascus. This indicated that Pekah was cutting the Assyrian yoke off Israel’s neck. Pekah would also go to the Edomites and the Philistines for their support of a joint coalition or alliance to stop the Assyrian war machine from expanding farther west or south. This alliance was really an attempt to counterbalance the Assyrian power to the east, and once Assyria got word of what was going on, their king, Tiglath-pileser III, took action.

The First Captivity

When the Assyrians marched down the coast, it is most likely that the second wave of invasion was held back for some time before the force continued its march from the north, advancing inland as described in II Kings 15:29. This second wave of attack that Tiglath-pileser sent was the tip of the sword. While the coastal invasion was pushing South, one can speculate that parts of the army turned inland from the coast, pushing towards the east and flanking the population therein, while the larger northern army began its descent south into the tribal lands of Dan and Naphtali and beyond.

Map showing Tiglath’s conquests (green) and deportation of Israelites. Tiglath-Pileser III discouraged revolts against Assyrian rule with the use of forced deportations of thousands of people all over the empire. (Joelholdsworth/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Tiglath-pileser mentions conquering Naphtali and his conquest of the coast in his inscription:

on the border of the Land of Omri [viz. Israel] …the wide land of Naphtali in its entirety, I brought within the border of Assyria. My official (tartan) I set over them as governor. Hanno of Gaza fled before my weapons.

This inscription shows two different events at the same time. Notice that Tiglath-pileser III mentions taking “Naphtali in its entirety” and that he brought them into Assyria. Notice what he has to say at the end. “Hanno of Gaza fled before my weapons.” This inscription may show that at the same time as Tiglath-pileser’s army had just completed the takeover of Naphtali, it may have also completed the final phase of conquering Gaza, which had been a Philistine city. This inscription seems to show us that before taking Naphtali, Tiglath-pileser’s army had been conquering the coastal regions of the Levant until it reached the border of Egypt.

Illustration of Assyrian relief of Tiglath-Pileser III besieging a town. (Dan Fefferman /CC BY-SA 3.0)

While Tiglath-pileser took many people into captivity, he did not take them all. However, of those taken into captivity, he also mentions taking Israelite forces in his military annuals:

“Carried off [to] Assyria the land of Bit-Humria (Israel). […its] ‘auxiliary [army,’] […] all of its people.”

From this small fragment, Tiglath-pileser III not only tells us that he deported a large amount of Israel’s people, but that he also took the Israelite army and incorporated them into the Assyrian army as auxiliaries.

The Second Captivity

This was the beginning of a nine-year rule for King Hoshea in II Kings 17:1.

Hoshea had to pay tribute to Tiglath-pileser for putting him on the throne and making the kingdom of Israel vassals to Assyria again. When Tiglath-pileser died around 727 BC, we can speculate that Hoshea probably stopped paying the annual tribute. This would have meant that the new king, Shalmaneser V, tried to extract tribute from Hoshea as well (II Kings 17:3). From the evidence in II Kings 17:3, it can be said that either King Shalmaneser V or an Assyrian official had started paying visits at this time, not only to Israel, but to all the vassals of Assyria. By showing up with his army, he was making sure that those who had sworn allegiance to him in the past would continue honoring that allegiance to Assyria. It might also be possible to say that he was simply making his rounds, collecting gifts, as he was the new king in town. However, this did not last long, for we read in II Kings 17:4 that Hoshea stopped paying tribute and pulled his support from mighty Assyria.

Illustration of Hoshea, the last king of the Israelite Kingdom of Israel. (Public Domain)

King Shalmaneser invaded what was left of Israel. He sacked and destroyed the city of Shechem and the old Israelite capital of Tirzah. He also hit Hazor, tearing down the walls of the city before he besieged Samaria, the capital of Israel, for three years. Some say he died shortly before or after the fall of Samaria, though Shalmaneser is recorded to have taken Samaria  “On the 27th of Tebet Shalmaneser ascended the throne in Assyria and Babylonia. He shattered Samaria. ”

The first inscription is more about his military campaigns throughout his rule, found on a prism known as MS 2368, in which Sargon mentions conquering Israel, and thus refers to them as “Bit-Humriya” (House of Omri). The second inscription is the one most are familiar with when dealing with the fall of Samaria:

I besieged and conquered Samerina.
27,290 people, who lived in its midst, I carried away.
50 chariots I gathered from their midst.
The bereaved I taught proper behavior.
I appointed my commissioner over them.
The levy of the former king
I laid upon them.

When reading the inscription mentioned above, many fail to notice, or maybe understand, that it took three years to capture the city. That suggests that Samaria was either heavily defended with large numbers of forces or that Assyria only brought a small to medium sized force to besiege the city.

After many years, the men inside Samaria grew tired, hungry, and most of all insane to a degree. The psychological impact on these men, living with the dead, decaying for three years, and having to smell it over a cold meal, made them prefer to die than give in. Finally, after three years and a new Assyrian king, the city fell to the besiegers. Instead of slaughtering the defenders, King Sargon II had something better for them.

Sargon II [right] and dignitary. Low-relief from the wall of the palace of Sargon II at Dur Sharrukin in Assyria (now Khorsabad in Iraq), c. 716–713 BC. (Public Domain)

It is interesting to note that Sargon used the people he captured from Samaria to drive the captured chariots. One-hundred men were the requirement for the 50 chariots. The remaining 27,190 most likely became an auxiliary unit for the Assyrian army. In addition, the same inscription found on the Nimrud Prism says that Sargon captured 200 chariots and equipped them with the captured men:

[The inhabitants of Sa]merina, who agreed [and plotted] with a king [hostile to] me, not to do service and not to bring tribute [to Ashshur] and who did battle, I fought against them with the power of the great gods, my lords. I counted as spoil 27,280 people, together with their chariots, and gods, in which they trusted. I formed a unit with 200 of [their] chariots for my royal force. I settled the rest of them in the midst of Assyria. I repopulated Samerina more than before. I brought into it people from countries conquered by my hands. I appointed my eunuch as governor over them. And I counted them as Assyrians.

Nevertheless, what is interesting, (and something Stephanie Dalley points out in her article regarding the Assyrian tablets,  “Foreign Chariotry and Cavalry in the Armies of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II”) is that Sargon seemed to have allowed the Israelite charioteers to retain their identity! This Israelite charioteer unit was possibly the only foreign unit to keep its national name in Assyria’s main royal army, and it seems that this unit either was at Calah or stationed just outside Calah. Sargon must have respected them very much to give them such a position. Below is the chariot list that bears the names of the Israelites that Sargon II captured and incorporated into his royal army.

16 Ib-ba-da-la-a Da-la-PAP
17 ja-u-ga-a                       A-tam-ru
18 PAP? -id-ri                      Ab-di-mil-ku
19 EN-BAD                          Na-ar-me-na-a
20 Gab-bi-e                        Sa-ma? -a
21 PAPid-ri                          Ba-hi-e
22 PAP-i-u                           AP (gimir)13 uru SA-miri-ni
23                                       SU pdPA.U.GIN-in

The author Bob Becking suggests, “The Samaritan cohorts according to line 23 are under the control of “Nebu-belu-ukin,” and can be seen as the remnant of the chariot brigades captured by Sargon. According to the editors, all personal names in this fragment are West Semitic. This view must be modified.” The interesting part in this list is the name Sama. Sama is speculated to be a form of the word or name for “Samaria,” who happened to be an Israelite who was the commander of teams for the royal Assyrian army. He had significant influence with the Sargonid family for his name appears on administrative and economic inscriptions. Stephanie Dalley has this to say about Sama:

“From this evidence it is reasonable to suggest that Sama’ the Samarian commander of teams who served Sargon as a reliable, professional soldier in the royal army of Assyria, was a close friend of the king and had access to and perhaps influence over members of the royal family. As such he would have had opportunities to become closely acquainted with Sargon’s vizier Nabu-belu-ukin who probably acted as the first commander of the Samarian unit. Whether or not Sama’ actually played a part in negotiating preferential treatment for Samaria, the evidence for his career is an indication of the important role played by Samarians in Nimrud and Nineveh in the late eighth and early seventh centuries.”

Scene from Ashurbanipal (668-627 BC) campaign against the Elamite city Hamaru, shows an Assyrian chariot with charioteer and archer protected from enemy attack by shield bearers. Assyrian relief from Nineveh. Alabaster relief, made about 650 BC.  (Ealdgyth/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Nevertheless, the names of the men who occupied the chariots for the Samaritan cohort are in question, but not entirely. In the Samaritan cohort list, we find the name Ja-u-ga-a. This is Hebrew and means “YHWH (or Yahweh) is exalted.” In addition, we came across the name Ad-di-mil-ku, which seems to be of Canaanite background. The name also seems to have a Hebrew element. The rest of the names in the list fall in two categories, some are West Semitic, while others appear to be Assyrian or Babylonian.

The mystery of the lost ten tribes of Israel endures in legend today, but the provided evidence does show that those who had a military occupation and served the Assyrian army as auxiliary units seemed to have retained their identity. As for the overall Israelite population, they too can be found, but by an individual basis, based on who held different jobs of a non-military nature.

It appears that the so-called “Lost Ten Tribes of Israel” were never lost. Instead, they served, and over a generation or two, integrated within the local Assyrian populations, eventually losing their identity. 

Top image: Assyrian attack on a town with archers and a wheeled battering ram, 865–860 BC. Source: Public Domain

By Cam Rea

Stanton Harcourt is a village situated in the very center of Oxfordshire, in the heartland of the ancient Brythonic lands. At first glance, it looks like an ordinary civil parish in England. But once you take a stroll through its streets and across the fields nearby, you can spot some very visible remnants from the distant past. One such remnant is known locally as the Devil’s Quoits. A major henge and a stone circle, dated to the Late Neolithic period, it is a remarkable fragment of the British past, often overlooked. But one look at these weathered stones is a glimpse enough into the dim corridors of Neolithic Britain.

The Legend of the Devil’s Quoits

This impressive stone circle is a classic example of the ritual construction of the ancient inhabitants of Britain. When first built, some 4000 to 5000 years before present, it likely appeared monumental and awe-inspiring. But as centuries passed, turning into millennia, the stones got weathered. They were dislodged, they fell, crumbled, and lost their splendor. And for a casual observer in the 17th century, these strewn about stones resembled a game of quoits.

The Devils Quoits ditch and its inhabitants. (Chris Brown /CC BY-SA 2.0)

This was a traditional game in England, involving throwing rocks close to a pin or a set goal. And thus emerged the name of Devil’s Quoits, as villagers believed in an old legend that said that the Devil himself once played quoits here with a beggar. The stakes in the game were high and involved nothing less than the beggar’s soul. A trickster, the devil won by flinging these great stones, the legend goes.

The Formal Explanation

Luckily, modern archaeology is here to tell us that these stones were not, in fact, thrown there by the Devil. They are the result of the hard work of Britain’s ancient people.

Dated to the Late Neolithic period, the stone circle is surrounded by a great ditch, which measures roughly 120 meters (400 ft) across. Two entrances, at the east and west ends, allow entrance to the great stone circle. Originally, there were 36 standing stones here, but many were lost or removed over time. Another great stone slab was placed at the center of the circle, likely during the Bronze Age period, and could have had a ritual significance.

Devil’s Quoits location is within Oxfordshire, England. (Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right/CC BY-SA 3.0)

Archaeological excavations were conducted in 1972 and in 1988. During this time the field work revealed the circular ditch, which was by that time largely filled in. However, any other significant finds were sparse. Several flint blades were uncovered, and remnants of bonfires all around the circle’s perimeter. These fires were likely lit during ceremonies conducted at the circle. Some animal bones were also found.

A Hard Fate for an Ancient Monument

The stone circle of Devil’s Quoits endured a hard existence over the centuries. With the eras of history rolling over Britain, the stone circle lost its significance and use. First came the Romans, by whose time the circle was an ancient relic. Then came the Anglo-Saxons, and all the subsequent peoples after them. None of them regarded Devil’s Quoits as much more than a fragment of some hazy past. This resulted in many of the stones falling down or being taken away for use in construction.

By the time Second World War came, all that remained was slight earthwork visible at the site, and several stones. In 1940 there was only a single stone remaining at the site. At this time the site was extensively damaged for use in the war effort, when a large area was leveled for the construction of a landing strip. After the war, the destruction continued, as the site was used for gravel extraction.

Luckily, the importance of this circle was recognized in modern times, and extensive restoration works were conducted between 2002 and 2008. The ditch was uncovered once more, and many of the original stones were found at the site and re-erected. Those that were missing were replaced with modern conglomerate blocks sourced from a nearby quarry at Ducklington. The earthworks upon which the stones stood were also re-made, with much of the eroded soil refilled. Now, the stones stand at an earth bank that is 2 meters (6 ft) high, which is roughly half of the original height. But even so, the site looks as monumental as it once was.

The Heritage of Ancient Britain

Those visiting Stanton Harcourt will have no great difficulty finding this marvelous stone circle. A quick stroll around the idyllic Oxfordshire countryside can end in the visit to this major Class II circle henge monument from the Neolithic.

Without a doubt, it will leave a lasting impression on every visitor. Touching the weathered stones and observing the horizon from the elavated henge can transport you to a time in Britain in which everything was different. Different, and ancient.

Top image: The Devils Quoits major late Neolithic henge and stone circle prehistoric site. Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire.    Source: David Matthew Lyons/Adobe Stock

By Aleksa Vučković

The world’s oldest preserved cheese…arranged like jewelry…in the form of a dairy necklace grave good? A new discovery ticks all these boxes and is from Tarim Basin in northwestern China. For at least three people buried 3,600 years ago in Xinjiang, the question of what they want to carry into their afterlife seems clear: they chose cheese! These ancient individuals were buried with small lumps of fermented dairy, arranged around their necks.

An Unusual Grave Good, A Preservation Exquisite

These lumps are now recognized as the world’s oldest preserved cheese. Not only has the cheese been remarkably well-preserved, but new research is revealing its secrets, offering insights into ancient human culture and the spread of dairying practices across Asia. A new study published in the journal Cell provides fresh genetic analysis of these cheese chunks, along with other interesting information from the ancient world.

The information primarily emerges from the burial of a young woman, whose preservation was enabled by the dry desert climate and her sealed coffin. When archaeologists unearthed her grave in 2003, they found her remains: she was still dressed in a felt hat, a tasseled wool coat, and fur-lined leather boots, and unusually, pieces of cheese arranged like a necklace around her neck.

The mummified Tarim Basin girl, with the position of the cheese lumps marked.  (Liu, Yichen et al./Cell)

Cheesing it Up: A Storied History

This cheese is now considered the oldest in the world, according to Qiaomei Fu, a paleogeneticist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Fu led the study which analyzed the genetic material from the cheese and the microbes within it, providing new insights into ancient cheese-making techniques.

“This is the oldest known cheese sample ever discovered in the world. Food items like cheese are extremely difficult to preserve over thousands of years, making this a rare and valuable opportunity. Studying the ancient cheese in great detail can help us better understand our ancestors’ diet and culture,” explained Dr. Fu in a press release.

While older traces of dairy have been found, such as residues on pottery, these lumps are unique as they are solid, curd-like pieces you can physically hold.

Humanity’s relationship with cheese stretches back millennia. Scientists have previously identified fatty residues from around 7,000 years ago on pottery that likely held cheese, and 4,000-year-old Sumerian texts reference the dairy product. But the Tarim Basin samples represent the oldest confirmed examples of actual cheese.

Dr. Fu and her team collected samples of the cheese found around the necks of three mummies from the Tarim Basin. By isolating fragments of ancient DNA, they compared these with genomes from modern animals and cheese-making microbes. Their analysis revealed traces of cow and goat DNA, suggesting that milk from both animals was used in the production of the ancient cheese. They also identified the DNA of the microbes responsible for fermenting the milk.

Two of the kefir cheese samples. (Liu, Yichen et al./Cell)

Kefir Cheese: Traversing Through Nomadic Groups

The researchers discovered species of bacteria and yeast that form kefir grains—tiny clumps used to ferment milk into yogurt-like kefir and soft, sour kefir cheese, reports The New York Times. Kefir cheese is a fermented dairy product made using bacteria, yeast, and fungal complexes, much like modern kefir. This type of cheese is created with kefir grains, which ferment milk without the rennet typically used in European cheese-making.

The study also revealed that the cheese around the mummies’ necks came from both cow and goat milk, the latter from a type of goat common across Eurasia during the Bronze Age. Additionally, the DNA analysis showed that the microbes used in the cheese-making process were genetically similar to those found in modern Tibetan dairy products and strains of kefir from East Asia.

This suggests that kefir-making may have had two distinct geographic origins: one in Xinjiang and another in the Caucasus. In fact, it was likely that the spread of kefir microbes likely followed the movements of nomadic groups across the Eurasian steppe. As these people migrated, they traded goods, including milk products and the containers that stored them, leaving a trail of dairy fermentation practices that continues in modern times. In Xinjiang, for instance, dairy foods and beverages are still a dietary staple.

The Xiaohe cemetery, where the mummies and cheese were found, has a fascinating geographic and environmental history. Once a fertile area by a river, the changing course of the water forced the community to move, leaving the surrounding desert to encroach on the land. The rapid shift in climate helped naturally mummify the bodies, preserving their hair, skin, clothing, and, of course, their ancient cheese, reports The New Scientist.

For Dr. Fu, identifying the microbes used in the cheese-making process was “really, really exciting” because these practices can reveal important information about the lives and interactions of ancient peoples. The presence of cheese in burial sites suggests it was highly valued, while the use of multiple milk sources and specific bacteria hints at potential cultural exchanges between the people of the Tarim Basin, the Xiaohe culture, and others from the Eurasian steppe.

Though it may have been treasured, tasting the ancient cheese might not have been a pleasant experience. In the 1930s, archaeologists sampled cheese found in an Egyptian tomb, and a 1942 paper noted that it had “no smell and only a dusty taste.” Nevertheless, Dr. Fu and her team are excited to attempt a recreation of the ancient cheese based on their findings. “I think next step, we should make it,” she concluded.

Top image: A photo of one of the mummies from the Xiaohe cemetery, with the kefir samples (highlighted with red triangles) scattered around the neck of the mummy. Source: Liu, Yichen et al./Cell

By Sahir Pandey

In the aftermath of the partial destruction of Notre-Dame cathedral in the fire of 2019, an intriguing discovery was made in the form of two lead-lined sarcophagi 65 feet below the cathedral’s floor.

The decision was made to open the sarcophagi, and, perhaps not surprisingly, both contained skeletal remains. One of these was soon identified from the epitaph on the coffin as Canon Antoine de La Porte, a member of the clergy from the 17th century, but the other was difficult to assign, and remained described as a ‘unknown nobleman’.

After further investigations by University of Toulouse III/CNRS and Professor Eric Crubézy in a multidisciplinary approach, this person has now been identified. All the evidence points to it being the body of Joachim du Bellay, a celebrated French Renaissance poet born in Liré, western France in 1522.

The INRAP report discloses how this conclusion was reached:

“The anonymous individual died of chronic tuberculous meningitis in the 16th century in his fourth decade, an age that is rarely represented among the burials of important people in the cathedral. This unknown person, autopsied and embalmed, is intriguing because he lies in a specific area where, apart from Antoine de La Porte, no other intact tomb has been discovered. Research suggests that he may have reoccupied a tomb that had hosted two well-known people in their time, but without somewhat exceptional religious titles. Our attention was focused on Joachim du Bellay, a distinguished horseman and tubercular poet who died in 1560, whose autopsy revealed signs of chronic meningitis.”

A Somewhat Surprising Find in Paris

Finding the remains of a priest buried at the most sacred spot in Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, and all of medieval France, seems a predictable discovery. And a nobleman is also unremarkable, but one with a seemingly elongated skull adds to the intrigue. That will soon be explained.

The foundation stone of Notre Dame Cathedral was laid by Pope Alexander III in 1163 AD, but in 2019 a fire almost entirely destroyed it. After having spent the last two years securing its foundations, work began on repairing the oak spire that was first unveiled on August 18, 1859. This 19th century spire reached a height of 315 feet (96 meters), which was 59 feet (18 meters) higher than the original 12th century spire, but it came crashing down in the aftermath of the 2019 blaze.

It was directly beneath the spire that researchers identified several tombs containing hundreds of fragmented hands, feet, faces, and plants from stone statues. It was among these shattered artifacts that two well-preserved lead sarcophagi were also discovered, buried at what represents the holiest site in all of medieval and Renaissance France.

The 2019 fire that engulfed the cathedral indirectly led to the discovery of these Notre Dame sarcophagi (Wandrille de Préville / CC BY SA 4.0)

Unearthing the Canon and the Knight

In April 2022, Professor Christophe Besnier, the leader of the scientific team, told The Guardian that this discovery was both “extraordinary and emotional.” Ancient Origins reported at the time that Dominique Garcia, the head of the National Institute of Archaeological Research, speculated that one of the lead sarcophagi “probably belonged to a dignitary from the early 14th century.” With the evidence to hand, this was a good guess, although it now seems it was two centuries too early.

Buried at the Heart of the Cathedral

The fragmented statues and two lead coffins were discovered beneath the floor of the transept crossing. The transept of a church separates the nave from the chevet (choir), belonging equally to the main nave axis and to the transept.

Dr Eric Crubézy, professor of biological anthropology at the University of Toulouse III, said the two men were “clearly important in their respective eras to have been buried in such prestigious tombs at the heart of the cathedral”.

Described as of “remarkable scientific quality,” both burials were found during a speculative subterranean dig before the installation of the 98 foot (30 meter) high, 600-ton scaffold that was being used to replace the cathedral’s fire-damaged spire.

A report in The Guardian stated that one of the bodies belonged to a priest who, after leading a sedentary life, died in 1710 AD. The second lead coffin contained “a young, wealthy, and privileged noble.”

Joachim du Bellay. (Public Domain)

Buried one meter deep, the holy man was found with a brass plaque confirming he was Antoine de la Porte, the canon of Notre Dame Cathedral, who died on Christmas Eve 1710 at the age of 83. De la Porte was a clever, influential, and rich old priest who commissioned several works of art that are now in the Louvre.

The second coffin was found to contain the remains of a man ‘between 25 and 40’ (Du Bellay was 38 when he died).

Dr Crubézy notes, as reported by the Daily Mail:

‘[This] age is rarely represented among the burials of important people in the cathedral.’

The researchers say his pelvic bones suggest he was an experienced horseman; hence he was thought to be a knight. Although known more for his poetry than chivalry, Joachim Du Bellay was a keen horseman.

The forensic examination matched other physical evidence from the remains to the life of Joachin du Bellay, found in his own writing and historic literature. Evidence of bone tuberculosis and chronic meningitis were found, both afflictions he speaks of in his poetry.

Du Bellay was interred at the foot of a large cross that was once displayed on the now-destroyed rood screen that separated the chancel and nave (clergy and choir) from the congregation (poor people with diseases). Cloths and organic plant materials discovered in this burial suggest he was embalmed, which the archaeologists say was “a rare practice in the Middle Ages.” Moreover, he was buried with a crown of flowers.

Du Bellay was from the upper echelons of the 16th century French elite, and from this we come to the explanation for his “skull deformation,” better known as an elongated skull.

Headbanding for Power, All Over the World

The nobleman had a “deliberately deformed skull,” resulting from having had a tight cloth band tied around his head during his first three months of life, inducing the shape change.

In the 1920s, Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello, the “father of Peruvian archaeology,” uncovered hundreds of elongated Paracas civilization skulls dated to between 750 BC and 100 AD, and they have since been unearthed across the Middle East and Asia, and even Scandinavia.

Elongated skulls, like the one discovered in the Notre Dame sarcophagus, were characteristic of the Paracas Culture, Peru. (Didier Descouens / CC BY SA 4.0)

It is generally agreed that cranial banding and the resulting elongated skulls were symbols of power practiced among controlling families in different countries. However, long after the practice died out in Peru, it continued up to the early 20th century in the region of Deux-Sèvres in western France. Here, too, the practice was a symbol of power among social elites, but it was also practiced among poorer families who tried to align their children with higher social classes.

As well as these two burials, in the last two years of excavation, more than 100 other burials have been uncovered in other locations, all withing the cathedral, and 80 have been excavated.

Top Image: The elongated skull of a nobleman found in one of two lead-line sarcophagi interred in Notre Dame Cathedral. Source: Denis Glicksman / INRAP

By Ashley Cowie

A man living in the Paris suburb of Corbeil-Essonnes was working on a renovation of his basement when he unearthed something chilling. It was the remains of what was clearly an ancient human skeleton, which had apparently been buried directly below the site where his home had been constructed many centuries following this individual’s death.

The French homeowner contacted the authorities to report what he had discovered, and it was quickly concluded that his find was archaeologically significant. Researchers from the Regional Archaeology Service of Île-de-France were soon dispatched to the site to launch an official exploration, and what they ultimately recovered exceeded their wildest expectations.

During a series of excavations carried out by Archeodunum in four separate sections of the basement, covering 560 square feet (52 square meters) of floor space, the archaeologists unearthed 38 skeletons, 10 of which were encased in plaster sarcophagi typical of early medieval burials. The remainder were buried in less elaborate wooden coffins placed inside pits, indicating that they’d lived and died in an earlier period.

Plan of the remains in the cellar by Archeodunum. (Archeodunum)

Incredibly, the archaeologists have determined that the various skeletons were buried in this one location over the course of seven centuries, specifically from the third through the 10th centuries AD. All were well preserved, as the residence built above them had protected them from being disturbed by human beings or the elements.

A Medieval Cemetery with Much More Ancient Roots

While the scale of the discovery was impressive, this was not an unprecedented find in the Montconseil neighborhood in Corbeil-Essonnes. Since the 19th century several other sarcophagi with bodies inside have been found during excavations carried out not far from the newly discovered skeletons. So archaeologists already knew there was a medieval cemetery in the area, which they had assumed was connected to the Notre-Dame-des-Champs chapel that was constructed on nearby land over the top of an ancient pagan temple in the seventh century AD.

But what has just been discovered shows the site was first used as a cemetery several centuries before this chapel was built. Its earliest skeletons date back to before the medieval period into late antiquity, meaning the chapel was constructed near the burial ground rather than the other way around. 

Most of the graves were arranged in parallel rows. But the plaster sarcophagi were aligned in a fan-like shape. This indicates some notable changes in local burial practices over time. It was during the early Middle Ages, around the end of the fifth century, that plaster sarcophagi first came into usage. Since there were only 10 of these in the basement space, it means most of the burials came from the earlier part of the period when the cemetery was in use.

Most sarcophagi were parallel like this. (Archeodunum)

The sarcophagi possessed some interesting characteristics. For one thing, they were not decorated with religious symbology the way most others made during this period were. For another, each only contained one body, which varied from the normal practice of constructing them to hold multiple deceased individuals.

One of the sarcophagi was covered with a stone block, some of which had been broken off. While this curious addition is incomplete, the archaeologists have been able to identify some images engraved on it, including a Latin cross, a rosette, and a cross inside a circle. Such motifs were common on plaster sarcophagi in the medieval period, and researchers can only guess why they were added to a stone block covering in this instance instead of being put directly on the coffins.

The tombs are the subject of a detailed drawing. (Archeodunum)

Studying a Cultural Crossroads Where Burial Practices Evolved

The newly recovered skeletons date back to the time when the territory of modern-day France was occupied first by the Gauls, a continental Celtic people, the Roman conquerors who supplanted them, and the Franks who arose to power in the medieval period. The different cultures that lived in France and the surrounding regions of western Europe all had an influence on developments in the region, and this may be reflected in the changes in burial practices observed in the ancient cemetery in Corbeil-Essonnes.

Moving forward, the archaeologists responsible for finding the skeletons in the suburban basement space will be analyzing their discoveries more closely in a laboratory setting. They will be performing a series of tests on these ancient human remains, to determine the genders, ages, and health and living conditions of the deceased. They will be further studying the characteristics of the burials to see if they can link changes in funerary practices to the specific peoples that were living in the Paris area between 1,700 and 1,000 years ago. They may also seek to expand their excavations into new areas around the residence where the 38 burials were found, since it is likely that the cemetery extended for quite some distance from this point.

Top image: Skeletons in the cellar in Corbeil-Essonnes.    Source: Archeodunum

By Nathan Falde

At Ancient Origins, we believe that one of the most important fields of knowledge we can pursue as human beings is our beginnings. And while some people may seem content with the story as it stands, our view is that there exist countless mysteries, scientific anomalies and surprising artifacts that have yet to be discovered and explained.

The goal of Ancient Origins is to highlight recent archaeological discoveries, peer-reviewed academic research and evidence, as well as offering alternative viewpoints and explanations of science, archaeology, mythology, religion and history around the globe.

We’re the only Pop Archaeology site combining scientific research with out-of-the-box perspectives.

By bringing together top experts and authors, this archaeology website explores lost civilizations, examines sacred writings, tours ancient places, investigates ancient discoveries and questions mysterious happenings. Our open community is dedicated to digging into the origins of our species on planet earth, and question wherever the discoveries might take us. We seek to retell the story of our beginnings. 

The prospect of a second Donald Trump victory in November’s US election has widely been seen – at least by liberal commentators –as an apocalyptic threat to democracy. Indeed, the coming election is sometimes framed as a binary clash between democracy and autocracy. Some have even cast Trump as a new Julius Caesar, whose re-election would strike a fatal blow to America’s republican institutions just as Caesar’s dictatorship paved the way for the autocracy of the emperors. As the Financial Times put it back in June: ‘Trump would resume office as an American Caesar with a ready-made toolkit of executive actions.’

Plenty of ink has been spilled on whether Trump is best described as Caesarist, populist, nationalist, fascist or something else. Yet this is often disconnected from American democracy’s own longue durée. The threat of the Caesarist leader has loomed in the American political imagination from the republic’s revolutionary beginnings, and only deepened as the US entered the age of industrial capitalism around the middle of the 19th century. A historical perspective can inform our grasp of contemporary political realities. While many Americans may be relieved at the nomination of Kamala Harris as Democratic candidate, a longer vantage suggests that American democracy will continue to wrestle with the problem that was once called Caesarism, at least until it goes further in resolving its staggering economic and social contradictions.

Original Caesar

George Washington – arguably the prototype of the American political leader – was never seen as a potential Caesar. Washington was instead a modern Cincinnatus, a war hero and patriot who surrendered his war commission (and refused a third presidential term) just as the Roman leader Cincinnatus had surrendered the office of dictatorship and returned to his plough in the fifth century BC. But despite Washington’s legendary example, anxieties about the prospect of an American Caesar soon crept into discussions about the future of America’s constitutional experiment.  For a revolutionary generation reared on the Greek and Roman classics, Julius Caesar’s supposed subversion of the Roman republic served as a kind of political barometer for the pressures facing the American system. For the Boston-based Federalist Fisher Ames, writing in 1805, the danger lay principally in an ill-advised expansion of democracy at the state level, which might forge a base for an American Caesar or a Virginian Bonaparte to dismantle the finely tuned constitutional system. Others located the problem in the sweeping executive powers vested in the presidency itself by the 1787 Constitutional Convention. As the Jeffersonian Republican John Taylor of Caroline announced in 1814:

Patronage, negociation, a negative upon laws, a paper system, render some of those talents which Caesar possessed, unnecessary to enable a president to perform what Caesar effected.

Had the Founding Fathers inadvertently left an opening to a new Caesar within the constitutional structure itself?

The clamour about an American Caesar hit a kind of crescendo during the Jacksonian era of the 1830s. The heirs of the Federalists saw the military hero-turned-president Andrew Jackson as an American Bonaparte, whose claim to represent the true voice of the American people illustrated the worst excesses of democratic politics. At the same time, though, Jackson’s onslaught against financial privilege and especially his ‘war’ upon the Second Bank of the United States won him genuine popularity among the population of white working men and migrant settlers who constituted Jackson’s principal support. It is this wielding of a claim to popular legitimacy against the ‘rich and powerful’ – especially the monied interest – that remains a core feature of Caesarist rhetoric, and it was this – along with Jackson’s tight personal grip on the emerging party machinery – that led one 19th-century historian to describe Jackson’s politics as a species of ‘constitutional Caesarism’. His contemporary critics made much the same point when they claimed that democracy was being used as camouflage for Jackson’s true purpose, a return to one-man rule or even monarchy. One such critic, Calvin Cotton, wrote in 1844:

They have justified and sustained the President of the United States in the use of monarchical powers, we might say absolute powers, which would have cost the Sovereign of Great Britain a throne and a crown, and which would have revolutionized almost any kingdom in Europe – all under the name of ‘Democracy’! 

Jackson’s harnessing of the language of democracy to the so-called ‘One-Man Power’ cast a long shadow over American political life throughout the 1840s and 1850s.

Et tu, Polk?

This was an era of increasingly fractious disputes over slavery, republican expansion and new theories of popular sovereignty. Some identified president James Polk, one of Jackson’s Democratic heirs during the 1840s, as another potential Caesar. The charge this time, however, stemmed less from Polk’s abuse of democracy than from his pursuit of a republican empire across Texas and Mexico (and potentially Cuba) that would transform the presidency into an instrument of military dictatorship. (The claim that distant wars and conquests fuelled executive tyranny resounded through many later periods of US history, most notably during the Spanish-American and Philippine-American wars of the late 1890s.)

Another development in the argument came during the presidency of James Buchanan during the late 1850s, a time of intense debate over states’ rights and slavery. In this period the newly minted term Caesarism came, remarkably, to be applied to the expansion of the powers of federal government itself. As the Catholic publicist Orestes Brownson wrote in the late 1850s, the federal government’s violation of the Union’s states’ rights amounted to ‘an attempt to destroy our Republican system, and to introduce the old Caesarism of pagan Rome’. Such conservative onslaughts against expansive federal power continue to reverberate through the rhetoric of the libertarian right.

It is tempting to see the American Civil War (1861-65) as changing the terms of this American preoccupation. Lincoln’s assumption of emergency powers meant that he was accused – mainly by figures from the South – of both dictatorship and Caesarism. But his assassination did not end the debate. The charge of Caesarism was levelled at the war hero and later Republican president Ulysses S. Grant, whose second term (1873-77) witnessed a vicious and divisive controversy about Grant’s supposed abuse of presidential powers and desire for a third term of office. The respected Republican and abolitionist Charles Sumner led the charge against Grant’s ‘Caesarism or personalism’, accusing him of using the presidency ‘to advance his own family on a scale of nepotism dwarfing everything of the kind in our history and hardly equalled in the corrupt governments where this abuse has most prevailed’. Grant’s defenders accused Sumner of hyperbole. But there were deeper issues at play. As one of Grant’s critics alleged in the early 1880s, his presidency represented a new alliance between politics and ‘money power’ – a new type of Caesarism was on the horizon.

Money talks

As this reference to ‘money power’ suggests, what really transformed perceptions of the American Caesar in the second half of the century was not the Civil War, but the deeper structural changes in America’s political economy. The driving force was the country’s transformation from an agricultural to an industrial society, a move that made the US begin to look a lot like the old states of Europe, with their overcrowded cities, unemployed labourers, limited land and notorious ‘social questions’. It seemed as if the new Caesar would emerge from the uneasy combination of democratic politics and the new forces that characterised an industrial and capitalist economy. With the expansion of the franchise after the Civil War, many conservatives argued that America was now embarking on the path that had repeatedly destroyed republics in the Old World (most notably the Second French Republic after 1848), where demagogues had exploited the economic hardships and social resentments of the debt-laden urban and rural poor. By contrast, radical, socialist and populist critics of capitalism began to argue that the new Caesar would emerge from the circles of the rich, not the poor: from the concentrations of financial power and plutocratic privilege that were now the salient features of America’s society and economy.

By any other name

The language of American political debate has, of course, changed radically since the late 19th century. But the story of American democracy’s entanglements with Caesarism can help us recalibrate our sense of our own political moment. In the first place, it ought to warn us that our sense of apocalyptic crisis is not new. Framing the current election in terms of a fateful conflict between the forces of democracy and autocracy may be a useful rhetorical ploy, but it obscures the extent to which something like Caesarism – or whatever we choose to call it today – has been entangled with American democratic politics throughout long periods of the republic’s history. Furthermore, the late-19th-century debate about democracy’s future in an age of capitalism, imperialism, plutocracy and class conflict still seems eerily relevant. History tells us that the appeal of the modern Caesar is bound to increase as democratic societies fail to resolve the inequalities, tensions and resentments that seem inseparable from a capitalist economy. We may be closer to the 19th century than we like to think.

Iain McDaniel is Senior Lecturer in Intellectual History at the University of Sussex.

By Corey J. A. Bradshaw et al./The Conversation

Imagine growing up beside the eastern Mediterranean Sea 14,000 years ago. You’re an accomplished sailor of the small watercraft you and your fellow villagers make, and you live off both the sea and the land.

But times have been difficult — there just isn’t the same amount of game or fish around as when you were a child. Maybe it’s time to look elsewhere for food.

Now imagine going farther than ever before in your little boat, accompanied maybe by a few others, when suddenly you spot something on the horizon. Is that an island?

The western coast of Cyprus. (CJA Bradshaw / Flinders University)

An island of tiny elephants and hippos

Welcome to Cyprus as the world emerges from the last ice age. You are the first human to set your eyes on this huge, heavily forested island teeming with food.

When you beach your boat to have a look around, you can’t believe what you’re seeing — tiny boar-sized hippos and horse-sized elephants that look like babies to your eyes. There are so many of them, and you’re hungry after the long journey.

The diminutive beasts don’t seem to show any fear. You easily kill a few and preserve the meat as best you can for the long journey back.

When you get home, you are excited to let everyone in the village know what you’ve found. Soon enough, you organize a major expedition back to the island.

Of course, we’ll never know if this kind of scenario took place, but it’s a plausible story of how and when the first humans managed to get to Cyprus. It also illustrates how they might have quickly brought about the demise of the tiny hippopotamus Phanourios minor, as well as the dwarf elephant Palaeoloxodon cypriotes.

Dwarf ‘giants’

Cyprus wasn’t the only Mediterranean island with dwarf wildlife. In fact, Crete, Malta, Sicily, Sardinia and many other islands had their own dwarf elephants and hippos.

Island dwarfism — the process in which a once large, mainland species evolves to become smaller in response to fewer resources and predators — is in fact quite common. Unfortunately, the process also makes such species more vulnerable to rapid environmental change, including the arrival of new predators such as humans.

Skeleton of a dwarf hippo (Phanourios minor) and artist’s reconstruction of the animal displayed at the Akamas Geology and Paleontology Information Centre in Pano Arodes, western Cyprus. (CJA Bradshaw / Flinders University)

The Cypriot dwarf hippopotamus was the smallest dwarf hippo in the Mediterranean region. Genetic data suggest it diverged from the common hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius) roughly 1.5 million years ago.

The Cypriot dwarf elephant was less than 10% of the size of its mainland ancestor, the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) that inhabited Europe and Western Asia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene.

An extinction controversy

For a long time, many archaeologists and paleontologists didn’t believe humans had anything to do with the extinction of these two “megafauna” species on Cyprus.

The doubters assumed that either people arrived well after the extinctions, or the earliest humans were too few to be able to kill off entire species.

Teeth and bones of dwarf elephants (Paleoloxodon cypriotes) displayed at the Akamas Geology and Paleontology Information Centre in Cyprus. (CJA Bradshaw/Flinders University)

Earlier this year we showed that people came to Cyprus between 14,000 and 13,000 years ago, well before hippos and elephants went extinct. We also showed that the human population likely grew to several thousand within a few hundred years of arrival. But we didn’t know whether this human population was large enough to drive the dwarf hippos and elephants to extinction.

Our new research published today answers this question with a combination of several different types of mathematical models.

Could a small human population cause extinction?

Even though these animals are long extinct, we can draw some conclusions about their likely population because we can estimate their weights from paleontological information. The dwarf hippo weighed around 130kg, and the dwarf elephant came in at just over 500kg.

We also know how to translate weights to estimates of population size, longevity, survival and fertility. We can even use data collected from related species still living today, such as the pygmy hippo and the African elephant, to estimate how fast they would have grown.

Map of Cyprus showing the approximate position of fossil sites where dwarf elephants and hippos have been retrieved. (Map created by CJA Bradshaw/Flinders University)

With this information, we built computer models of what would have happened to the two mini-megafauna species on Cyprus when human hunters arrived. We estimated how efficient human hunters would be, how long it would take them to process each carcass, and how much energy hunter-gatherers need to survive.

We also estimated how much of the human diet included these species, and how this proportion might have changed as the dwarf hippo and elephant numbers dwindled.

We found that even a small human population, numbering between 3,000 and 7,000, could have easily driven first dwarf hippos, and then dwarf elephants, to extinction. Our model showed the process would have taken less than 1,000 years. This prediction matches the sequence of extinction inferred from the paleontological record.

Our results provide strong evidence that Paleolithic peoples in Cyprus were at least partially, if not entirely, responsible for megafauna extinctions during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene.

Limestone caves like the ones here are often where megafauna fossil remains are found in Cyprus. (CJA Bradshaw / Flinders University)

Cyprus was the perfect place to test our models because the island offers an ideal set of conditions to examine whether the arrival of humans ultimately led to the extinction of its megafauna. This is because Cyprus was a relatively simple test case – a small island of around 11,000 square kilometres at the time, with only two species of megafauna.

Our research therefore improves our understanding of how even small human populations can disrupt ecosystems and cause major extinctions, particularly in times of rapid environmental change.

Top image: Muzzle of a dwarf Liberian hippo.  Source: Mikhail Semenov/Adobe Stock

This article was originally published unde the title ‘Small populations of Stone Age people drove dwarf hippos and elephants to extinction on Cyprus’ by Corey J. A. Bradshaw et al. on The Conversation, and has been republished under a Creative Commons License.