Tea at Trianon: Ancient Landmass Emerged and Disappeared 70,000 Years Ago

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

Sunday, December 31, 2023

Ancient Landmass Emerged and Disappeared 70,000 Years Ago

The world has changed. From The Greek Reporter:

New archaeological research reveals that the sea off northwestern Australia once had islands and a massive landmass. This area was so large it could support around half a million people, as reported in a study published in Quaternary Science Review.

The study maps a world that appeared and then disappeared as sea levels changed over the past seventy thousand years. People are believed to have migrated to this part of the world between forty-five thousand to sixty-five thousand years ago.

The area was part of a paleocontinent called Sahul, connecting Australia to New Guinea. The submersion of this land might have led to significant cultural and population changes in northern Australia. (Read more.)