Tea at Trianon: Neanderthal Fingerprint

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

Saturday, June 14, 2025

Neanderthal Fingerprint

From Science News:

In a rugged landscape in central Spain, archaeologists have discovered a unique granite cobblestone marked with a red ochre dot that preserves the mark of a Neanderthal fingerprint. Dating back approximately 43,000 years, it could be the oldest and most complete Neanderthal fingerprint ever identified.

Roughly 20 centimeters long, the rock bears a resemblance to a human face, with the ochre dot where a nose might be, researchers report May 24 in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. This arrangement, the scientists say, suggests it’s a case of pareidolia — the tendency to perceive familiar shapes, such as faces, in random objects. It’s possible the likeness inspired the Neanderthal who placed the pigment there. (Read more.)