Tea at Trianon: Prehistoric Evidence of Social Empathy in Humans

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, July 5, 2025

Prehistoric Evidence of Social Empathy in Humans

From Earth:

Benjamina’s small cranium lay hidden in Spain’s Atapuerca Mountains for more than half a million years. Today her story challenges long‑held ideas about when human empathy first appeared.
Juan Luis Arsuaga of the Complutense University of Madrid, who directs the Sima de los Huesos excavations, says the child’s remains force scientists to rethink social life in the Middle Pleistocene.
Excavators cataloged Benjamina as Cranium 14, an almost complete neurocranium from a Homo heidelbergensis girl aged about ten to twelve.
Computed‑tomography measurements place her brain volume near 1,200 cm³, slightly smaller than that of many modern pre‑teens.
Early restoration revealed that the left limb of the back‑of‑head suture had fused before birth, a condition called lambdoid synostosis.
True fusion of this suture occurs in only two percent of craniosynostosis cases, making it the rarest form of the disorder.
Modern epidemiology puts overall craniosynostosis prevalence at roughly one in 2,000 births.
Because the fused bone cannot expand, pressure diverts growth toward the forehead and opposite side, creating the asymmetrical dome seen on Benjamina’s right parietal plate.(Read more.)