Tea at Trianon: Did Ancient Humans Know About Dinosaurs?

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

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Did Ancient Humans Know About Dinosaurs?

From Good:

In 1987, some gemstone prospectors unearthed lapidaries of fascinating turquoise tourmaline crystals in the hilly mines of Paraiba, an agricultural state on the eastern tip of Brazil. And now, the city has taken researchers further back in time, by revealing an intriguing collection of dinosaur footprints juxtaposed with rock art dating more than 9000 years ago. The collection has been discovered in Serrote do Letreiro in the Sousa Basin of the state, and the corresponding research is published in Scientific Reports journal.
Transporting the time machine to the Jurassic era, the study has revealed that prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Brazil created tons of enigmatic rock art designs, called petroglyphs, next to the fossilized footprints of dinosaurs. The findings promise to provide some marvelous insights into the marriage of paleontology and archaeology offered by the uncloaking of this stunning assemblage on the outcrops of Serrote. (Read more.)