M.J. Rose

We love it when they find the really ancient stuff…

Archaeologists uncover human settlement dated to the dawn of civilization
from Popular Archaeology

In Turkey, the excavation of a small ancient community dated to Neolithic times has informed our image of the beginnings of civilization.

“A??kl? Höyük, a mound near the banks of the Melendiz River in southern Turkey, lies not far from the site of Çatalhöyük. Dated to about 7500 B.C., Çatalhöyük is famous for being one of the oldest and largest Neolithic sites ever found.

But A??kl? Höyük dates back even earlier, to about 8000 B.C. Though less known and considerably smaller than Çatalhöyük, archaeological excavations at A??kl? Höyük have revealed a richly informative window on small-town life about 10,000 years ago, long before the pyramids, ziggurats, palaces, and other monumental features of the emerging, more expansive ancient cities of Mesopotamia and Egypt emerged on the landscape.

First investigated by Professor Ian A. Todd in 1964, full-scale excavations of the site didn’t take place until 1989 under Ufuk Esin of the University of Istanbul. It became one of the largest excavations of the region, and is still the subject of archaeological investigations and research. The site finds included simple adobe house structures for a total of at least 400 rooms and as many as 70 burials beneath the house floors. The 1-to-2-room houses typically featured hearths, some houses with built-in earthen benches. Curiously, the houses were relatively dark inside, built essentially without doors and windows”…

For the rest, click here.

Oddly beautiful, beautifully odd, and just plain ODD.

Photographing the Real Bodies of Incorrupt Saints

(from Atlas Obscura)

“The Italian nun grimaced at my camera, reviewing the photo that she had just snapped of me. We had to take another, she explained. The shriveled corpse to my left was beautiful. My face had room for improvement.

So it goes in the world of the incorrupt, a group of saints whose bodies supposedly won’t decompose. This particular corpse belonged to St. Paula Frassinetti, displayed at the Convent of St. Dorotea in Rome. In the popular imagination, they’re like sleeping beauties, but Paula, who’s been dead for 133 years, is shriveled and brown inside her crystal casket. This paradox is what makes the incorrupt fascinating…”

For much more, click here. Lots of photos.

Here’s the irresistible story of the most mysterious pirate to ever sail the seven seas, “The Terror of the South China Sea” — a female pirate named Chang Shih, plucked from a brothel…

The Incredible Story of the Baddest Female Pirate to Ever Sail the Seas

by Ben Roffee for RYOT

“When people talk about the most successful pirate that ever lived, it better be about one particular badass that commanded a fleet of as many as 80,000 sailors aboard 1,500 ships during the early 1800s.

This pirate’s name was Chang Shih, who didn’t exactly look the part by our Disneyfied standards for one fairly obvious reason: she was a lady.

Plucked from a brothel in Canton by invading pirates, she was married off to a notorious pirate named Zheng Yi in 1801. But she didn’t resign to the idle life of a house ship wife, opting instead to help her husband be even better at piracy than he already was.

Together, they patched together a coalition of competing pirates groups into the the Red Flag Fleet, which became an incontestable naval force in the South China Sea at its height. When Zheng Yi died in 1807, there was no other choice but for Chang Shih to take the reins…”

Click here for the rest from RYOT.