Tea at Trianon: 45,000-Year-Old Crimean Neanderthal

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

Monday, November 24, 2025

45,000-Year-Old Crimean Neanderthal

From SciNews:

The Crimean Peninsula contains numerous well-preserved, stratified Paleolithic sites, with many spanning within the transitional period in terms of bioculture and hominin occupations of approximately 47,000 to 42,000 years ago.

Based on previous radiocarbon dates, the peninsula has been described as a refugium for late surviving Neanderthals just before their disappearance.

Starosele, a rock-shelter that is positioned within a steep canyon that comprises four distinct cultural layers, has been studied since 1952.

“The site’s archaeological layers contain rich cultural material,” said Emily Pigott, a doctoral student at the University of Vienna, and her colleagues.

“Levels 1, 2, and 4 are associated with stone tools from an archaeological industry called the Crimean Micoquian stone tool industry, which is linked to Neanderthals.”

In the study, the authors aimed to screen for potential human remains among thousands of fragmented bones from the Starosele site.

Of the 150 bone fragments they analyzed, 97.3% had sufficient collagen preservation for taxonomic identification.

Around 93% belonged to horses and deer, with smaller numbers of mammoth and wolf remains, suggesting that Paleolithic humans in Crimea relied heavily on horse hunting. (Read more.)