Tea at Trianon: Europe’s Last Neanderthals

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, September 22, 2026

Europe’s Last Neanderthals

From EcoNews:

Ancient DNA from Belgium and France challenges the idea that Neanderthals faded away as isolated, increasingly inbred groups. Researchers found signs of connected populations in northwestern Europe, without evidence of an increasing burden of harmful genetic variants.

Neanderthals disappeared roughly 40,000 years ago, but the findings do not explain why. Instead, they challenge a simple story of biological decline, suggesting that the final chapter of Neanderthal life differed across regions rather than following one inevitable genetic downward spiral.
The research examined ancient remains from present-day Belgium and France dating to less than about 52,500 years ago. Nature’s press summary describes 27 remains representing at least 11 distinct individuals, an important distinction because several bone fragments can belong to the same person. (Read more.)