Tea at Trianon: Ancient Villages in Amazonia

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

Friday, December 18, 2020

Ancient Villages in Amazonia

From Sci News:

“Lidar provides a new opportunity to locate and document earthen sites in forested parts of Amazonia characterized by dense vegetation,” said Professor Jose Iriarte, an archaeologist and archaeobotanist at the University of Exeter.

“It can also document the smallest surficial earthen features in the recently opened pasture areas.”

Professor Iriarte and his colleagues used a lidar sensor integrated into an MD 500 helicopter to document architectural features below the forest canopy, revealing a more complex and spatially organised landscape than previously thought. They documented over 35 ancient mound villages and dozens of roads, with many more predicted to still be hidden below the unexplored jungle. The villages were composed of 3 to 32 mounds arranged in a circle, the diameter of which ranged from 40 m to 153 m with the area enclosed by the central plaza ranging from 0.12 to 1.8 ha.

“The circular mound villages are connected across the wider landscape through paired sunken roads with high banks that radiate from the village circle like the marks of a clock or the rays of the Sun,” the researchers explained. “The villages have both minor roads and principal roads, which were deeper and wider with higher banks.”
“Most villages have paired cardinally orientated principal roads, two leaving in a northward direction and two leaving in a southward direction.”

“The straight roads often connect one village to another, creating a network of communities over many kilometers.” (Read more.)