Tea at Trianon: Genghis Khan’s Winter Base Camp

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 12, 2020

Genghis Khan’s Winter Base Camp

From Sci-News:

“Genghis Khan had at least four ordū,” said Dr. Li Narangoa, a historian at the Australian National University.

“The historical documentation appears to indicate the one at Avraga was his main camp, probably for both spring and winter, so this research is significant because it provides the natural science based proof for the findings of historians.”

“This was the camp where Genghis Khan started his campaign against his southern neighbors and this work supports this; it’s a great contribution to historical research.”

“Our research supports Avraga as Genghis Khan’s ordū, and while we still have no conclusive link to him, in my view, Avraga is more likely than not to have been his base camp,” said Dr. Jack Fenner, an archaeologist at the Australian National University.

“We also see evidence of religious or ceremonial functions at Avraga that we see extending into the Yuan Empire in China, which was part of the Mongol Empire’s southern expansion.”

In the study, Dr. Fenner and colleagues took a series of radiocarbon dating samples from what little remains of the main part of Avraga. (Read more.)