- We could see the glint off giant cities on alien worlds, suggests paper. That’s a fun idea.
- Taylor Sheridan interview. Some interesting process and commercial-art thinking buried in here. As someone who wrote four seasons of a show on his own – and who comes from a British tv culture of one writer, one show – I can appreciate his stance on these things. Not convinced a writer’s room would have made EDGE OF DARKNESS better. Or FLEABAG.
- Discovery of up to 25 Mesolithic pits in Bedfordshire astounds archaeologists
WARREN ELLIS LTD Articles.
The largest bronze mirror and largest dakō iron sword in Japan were discovered at a late-fourth century tomb mound in the city of Nara, its board of education and an archeological institute that supported the excavation said Wednesday.

Mirror and shields are considered to be tools to protect the dead from evil spirits. The sword is thought to have been enlarged to increase its power…

Norwegian archaeologists believe they have found the world’s oldest runestone inscribed almost 2,000 years ago, making it several centuries older than previous discoveries, they announced on Tuesday.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2’); });The square brown sandstone rock, measuring about 30 by 30 centimeters (12 by 12 inches), was found during the excavation of an ancient burial ground in late 2021, at Tyrifjorden northwest of Oslo, ahead of construction on a railway line.
Carbon dating of bones and wood found in a grave beside the rune suggest that it was inscribed sometime between year one and 250 AD, Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History said.
Headline: The Oldest Art In The World Wasn’t Made By Humans:
One of the most hotly debated questions in the history of Neanderthal research has been whether they created art. In the past few years, the consensus has become that they did, sometimes. But, like their relations at either end of the hominoid evolutionary tree, chimpanzees and Homo sapiens, Neanderthals’ behavior varied culturally from group to group and over time.
googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2’); });Their art was perhaps more abstract than the stereotypical figure and animal cave paintings Homo Sapiens made, after the Neanderthals disappeared about 30,000 years ago. But archaeologists are beginning to appreciate how creative Neanderthal art was in its own right.

A primitive writing system used by ice age hunter-gatherers appears to have been uncovered by an amateur archaeologist, who concluded that the 20,000-year-old markings were a form of lunar calendar.
The research suggests cave drawings were not only a form of artistic expression but also used to record sophisticated information about the timing of animals’ reproductive cycles.
Ben Bacon spent countless hours trying to decode the “proto-writing” system, which is believed to predate other equivalent record-keeping systems by at least 10,000 years.
So much to unpack here. “Proto-writing.” European Ice Age informational markings.
I glanced at the title of a book the other day: something about a history of magic from the Ice Age to the present day. I wonder how this folds in with that.
While similar art has been found at other ancient settlements in the region, the Sayburç images are unique in that they appear to be related to one another. The two panels are horizontally adjacent, creating a progressing scene. Each features similar images—someone facing off against dangerous animals—also indicating a coherent narrative.
“These figures, engraved together to depict a narrative, are the first known examples of such a holistic scene,” said archaeologist Dr. Eylem Özdoğan, from Istanbul University, “This was a picture of the stories that formed the ideology of the people of that period.”
