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Tag: history

WARREN ELLIS LTD Articles.

Incaprettamento

Warren Ellismarks

A team of archaeologists affiliated with several institutions in France and one in Germany has found that ritualized human sacrifice was common across Europe during the Neolithic.

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As they report in the journal Science Advances, the group studied the remains of three women found in a tomb in France who appeared to have been ritually brutalized sometime between 4000 and 3500 BCE and compared the remains with others like them found at sites in Europe.

The work began with the study of the remains of three women found in a tomb in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux—two of the bodies showed the women were buried in unusual positions, one on her back with her legs bent upward, the other in a prone position with her neck on the torso of the other woman—characteristics associated with incaprettamento, a murder technique used by organized criminals as a means of intimidation in modern times.

Random assemblage 8apr24

Warren Ellismorning computer

Because of its size and location, the henge would have been a prominent place in the region and provided a major site for ceremonial activity. At this time, Crowland would have been a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water and marshes, and the henge was situated on a distinctive and highly visible point projecting out into the Fens.

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The henge seems then to have been deserted, perhaps for many centuries, but the significance already given to the site by the substantial prehistoric earthworks—which would have still been visible into the medieval period—meant it was probably seen by hermits like Guthlac as a unique landscape with a long and sacred past.

Scribbled numbers, wiped-away letters, word-like scrawls: all of these recur in Kikuo Saito’s paintings of the early 1990s, a selection of which form a wonderfully mystifying solo show on view now at James Fuentes gallery in New York.

Messages From The Past

Warren Ellismorning computer

NASA is sending a message plate to Europa:

At the heart of the artifact is an engraving of U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s handwritten “In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” along with a silicon microchip stenciled with more than 2.6 million names submitted by the public. The microchip will be the centerpiece of an illustration of a bottle amid the Jovian system—a reference to NASA’s “Message in a Bottle” campaign, which invited the public to send their names with the spacecraft.

Cliodynamics and The Seshat:

Since 2011, my colleagues and I have been compiling an enormous amount of information about the past and storing it a unique collection called the Seshat: Global History Databank. Seshat involves the contribution of over 100 researchers from around the world.

PROUT – the Progressive Utilization Theory – found in this interview here.

The Progressive Utilization Theory (PROUT) is the basis for an economic system which is an alternative to both capitalism and communism. PROUT was conceived by P.R. Sarkar in 1959 who in the article below outlines some of the basic features of a decentralised, cooperative economic system built upon the principles of PROUT. Guaranteed Minimum Requirements and Purchasing Power  PROUT stands to guarantee the minimum requirements of life, that is, food, clothing, accommodation, medical treatment and education, to each and every person. After the minimum requirements have been guaranteed, the surplus wealth is to be distributed amongst people with special qualities and skills, such as physicians, engineers, scientists, etc., because these people play a crucial role in the collective development of society. The quantum of these minimum requirements should be progressively increased so that the standard of living of ordinary people is ever increasing

Burned Books And Bad Robots

Warren Ellismorning computer

When Vesuvius erupted in AD79—the same eruption that buried Pompeii—the papyrus rolls in the villa were carbonized. Without enough oxygen to combust and turn to ash, they became charcoal instead.

This meant the scrolls were fused solid and to get at the writing inside, they had to be opened. This process has been ongoing since the 1750s and researchers have just entered a new stage, thanks to AI. The lumps of carbonized scroll have been digitally scanned and, using 3D mapping and AI, researchers have been unable to “virtually unroll” the papyri and detect letters. This process has, for example, allowed them to read a previously unknown philosophical work discussing the senses and pleasure by the Epicurean philosopher and poet, Philodemus.

Matt Webb takes his first ride in a robotaxi:

It wasn’t a great first ride, on the way up.

We approached a school bus and blocked the road. The Waymo didn’t leave room. While we were waiting, the school bus drive waved at me to get out of the way. I sat in the front passenger seat. I gesticulated at the empty driver’s seat –

It’s empty! (I tried to say by waving my arms.) I’m in a haunted car! I can’t tell the ghost what to do!

Nicolás Kisic Aguirre builds rolling, gyrating, unruly machines that have been exhibited all over the world. Sometimes, however, they escape gallery spaces and take to the streets of Valparaíso or Boston where they amplify the voice of citizens protesting against racist deportations, inequality or the presence of a war criminal in town. Whether they are deployed in artistic performances or used as a tool to broadcast political messages, Kisic Aguirre’s works challenge the boundaries of our common understanding of the city and the spaces we share in it.

bits February 14, 2024 at 12:39PM

Warren Ellismarks

Traces of Stone Age hunter-gatherers discovered in the Baltic Sea

“In autumn 2021, geologists discovered an unusual row of stones, almost 1 km long, at the bottom of Mecklenburg Bight. The site is located around 10 kilometers off Rerik at a 21-meter water depth. The approximately 1,500 stones are aligned so regularly that a natural origin seems unlikely.

“A team of researchers from different disciplines has now concluded that Stone Age hunter-gatherers likely built this structure around 11,000 years ago to hunt reindeer. The finding represents the first discovery of a Stone Age hunting structure in the Baltic Sea region.”

lost and found morning computer 30jan24

Warren Ellismorning computer

A painting by the iconic Austrian artist believed lost for approximately 100 years will be auctioned at Vienna’s Auction House im Kinsky on April 24, 2024.

Vienna, 25.01.2024: The auction house im Kinsky will present a rediscovered masterpiece of Austrian Modernism: the Portrait of Fräulein Lieser, one of the last works created by Gustav Klimt. The painting was previously considered lost. For many decades, this important work of art has been privately owned by an Austrian citizen, unknown to the public.

A valley of lost cities has been discovered in the Ecuadorian Amazon. When you hear of such a discovery you might think of archaeologists with chisels and brushes or explorers in pith helmets stumbling across sites deep in the forest. Instead, without needing to brave the hazards of the forest, Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) has revealed networks of buried roads and earthen mounds.

China Daiy offers a comprehensive essay on the painter Wen Zhengming (1470-1559) titled “Paradise Found.” Wen Zhengming was noted for “the public perception of him as a man of high moral standards who disavowed the seedy side of politics in favor of a secluded existence in the garden abode he built for himself.” In the tradition of reclusion, however, “Wen Zhengming’s self-imposed exile, as those orbiting around him might wish to call it, was lived out not in sheer harshness, but amid the many enjoyable things that Jiangnan had to offer, including its spring.” Jiangnan was a region of the southern Yangtze River Delta.

bits January 29, 2024 at 01:07PM

Warren Ellismarks

A Silk Dress from 1888 Contained a Hidden Pocket with Coded Messages. After a Decade, Someone Finally Solved the Mystery — Colossal

As reported this week in The New York Times, data analyst Wayne S. Chan from the University of Manitoba finally uncovered their meaning after several years of study. He reveals in a report that the mysterious phrases were telegraph messages describing weather observations often used by the Army and later the weather bureau, sent to stations around the U.S. and Canada throughout 1888.

Although Chan doesn’t have a hypothesis for why such messages were tucked inside the dress, he was able to use old maps to miraculously pinpoint the day of May 27, 1888, and entirely break the codes.

On Very Early Cinema In Spain

Warren Ellisquotes

In addition to the traditional piano player, each (film) theatre in Saragossa was equipped with its explicador, or narrator, who stood next to the screen and “explained” the action to the audience. “Count Hugo sees his wife go by on the arm of another man,” he would declaim. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, you will see how he opens the drawer of his desk and takes out a revolver to assassinate his unfaithful wife!” It’s hard to imagine today, but when the cinema was in its infancy, it was such a new and unusual narrative form that most spectators had difficulty understanding what was happening. Now we’re so used to film language, to the elements of montage, to both simultaneous and successive action, to flashbacks, that our comprehension is automatic; but in the early years, the public had a hard time deciphering this new pictorial grammar. They needed an explicador to guide them from scene to scene.

MY LAST BREATH, Luis Bunuel

Annuals

Warren Ellismorning computer

70s Sci-Fi art shows off a small collection of what are probably now curiosities. Here in Britain, weekly comics (which they mostly were) did both a Summer Special issue and a big hardback Annual at Christmas. One of the things I looked forward to at Xmas as a kid was getting one or two Annuals. It was really nice to see some again. That’s a Brian Bolland cover. I was lucky enough to hit a bucket list item very early in my career – Brian Bolland did the cover for the first issue of my first monthly comics job, HELLSTORM for Marvel.

American comics sometimes did annuals – I think they went out of fashion at some point there. But British comics were anthologies, and so the summer specials annuals had really wide ranges of material. often by new or obscure artists, and were stuffed with articles. Garth Ennis and I both learned out to write comics from the printing of one page of John Wagner/Alan Grant script in a 2000AD Summer Special.

Cultus Arborum

Warren Ellislinks and bookmarks

Speaking of organ adoration, and despite the book’s title, there is very little explicitly sexual here. Describing the lingam worship of Hindu Shivaism, which takes place under “an umbrageous Bael” or “fine Ficus” — and, if both are lacking, “the poor god is often reduced to the stump of a tree” — the author cautions a potentially salacious audience: “My readers must not fancy that this worship is indecent, or even productive of licentiousness. It is conducted by men, women and children of modest mien, and pure and spotless lives.” He proceeds to admit that, at certain seasons, “the passions are roused and the people proceed to excesses” — but these are, he thinks, significantly less common than in the rites of Eastern Christianity.

Although published anonymously, the Phallic Series is undoubtedly the work of Hargrave Jennings (1817–1890), whom Paschal Beverly Randolph heralded as “the chief Rosicrucian of all England”.

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