mostly reblogs: nature photography, natural history, plants, insects (heavy focus on moths), spiders, birds, fantasy art, Discworld quotes, occasional gif post from Star Trek and Marvel Cinematic Universe.
33 YEARS AGO, THE DISCWORLD WAS BORN. On the 24th of November 1983, The Colour of Magic was published in the UK. A journey began and the face of literature was changed forever. 33 years later and still The Turtle Moves.
are you kidding me I am the same age as Discworld??? <3
[image description: Model Domestic figure, Middle Kingdom. via Met Museum, the overlaying texts says “A Study of Hair Texture in Ancient Egypt”]
It is generally accepted now that ancient Egyptians were indigenous Africans. Seeing them with black African ancestry, however, seems to be tougher for people to acknowledge by both scholars and the general public alike. Even Egyptologist Stuart Tyson Smith argues that “Egyptologists have been strangely reluctant to admit that the ancient Egyptians were rather dark-skinned Africans…” (191). Through a closer observation of ancient Egyptian art we can find that many ancient Egyptians shared physical traits to black Africans, not just in skin colors but in hair texture as well.
Black Africans do not have a homogeneous appearance in anyway, so instead I use the term “black African” as a way to describe a generality of resemblances across multiple ethnic groups.
When studied as individuals, not all ancient Egyptians would be perceived as black Africans in the way expected in contemporary Western society, the same goes for many modern North Africans. Although not every ancient Egyptian would be considered black, the civilization did have visible black Africans throughout their entire history.
Discoveries from Pre-dynastic Egypt
Long-teeth vertical combs, resembling afro combs, have been found [Gallery]
A toupee made out of sheep’s or goat’s wool (Tassie 1066).
Palettes depicting men with tight curls and round hairstyles. [Gallery]
Long corkscrew curls are worn, sometimes with the ends made into miniature dreadlocks [Gallery]
Woolly Hair in Achaemenid Egypt
[image description: an artistic depiction of Herodotus, known as the “father of history and travel writing.” Photo via The Telegraph)
The ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, described the hair of the ancient Egyptians, as woolly using the term (οὐλότριχες), ulotrichous which means woolly or crisp hair. The root word, οὐλό, also has been used by Greeks to also describe the hair of Ethiopians, or black Africans (Snowden 6).
In Later Periods
Depictions of ancient Egyptians with crisp hair can still be seen even after the Ptolemaic dynasty. [Gallery]
[image description: Alabaster cameo portrait bust of an Egyptian woman from the Roman period, wearing a stola. via British Museum]
The Cultural Norm for Hair
Ancient Egyptians with straight hair did exist, as shown in their art.
[image description: A Fresco Scene of two grape farmers, from the tomb of Nakht via post]
According to Egyptologist Joan Fletcher, during wig constructions, the type of hair they used for the wigs in every case was “Caucasian” hair rather than afro-textured hair except that of Maiherpri’s (495). The use of the term Caucasian hair is vague, Fletcher might have meant that the hair did not resembled afro-textured hair. It is suggested by another Egyptologist, Geoffrey Tassie, that the hair could have been gathered from foreign captives, or through trading (1066). If Fletcher is correct about the type of hair used for almost all wigs, then the texture of the “Caucasian” hair seemed to have been frequently altered to contemporary fashions, such as curly wigs.
[image description: (from left to right) lady Istemkhebs’ short curly wig, duplex wig, Ahmose-Hentempet’s short curly wig. Located in the Cairo Musuem. via Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-western Cultures]
These alterations to the hair actually bear resemblance to afro-textured hair and aesthetics found in other black African cultures. We can even see many of these similar alterations and styles in modern-day black Africans that inhabit Northeast Africa, such the Afar.
[image description: A comparison I made of hairstyles between ancient Egyptians and Afar men. via post]
Throughout their history, ancient Egyptians made tools and hairstyles that would have unlikely to come into existence if they did not anything in common with black Africans. Even to this day black Northeast Africans wear similar hairstyles to the Egyptians of long ago.
Bridge, Sarah. “The Ethiopian Tribes Who Use BUTTER to Style Their Hair: Incredible Photos Reveal the Elaborate Curled Creations of the Afar People, and the Hamer Who Mix Ghee with Red Ochre to Spectacular Effect.” Mail Online. Associated Newspapers, 13 Feb. 2014. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
Fletcher, Joann. “Hair.” Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology. By Ian Shaw. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. 495-96. Print.
knowledgeequalsblackpower.”Maiherpri, Buried at Thebes, Valley of the Kings, New Kingdom 18th Dynasty, 1427-1392 BC” Tumblr. 10 Jan. 2012. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
Martin, Frank. “The Egyptian Ethnicity Controversy and the Sociology of Knowledge”.Journal of Black Studies 14.3 (1984) 296+300-306. Print.
Redford, Donald B. From Slave to Pharaoh: The Black Experience of Ancient Egypt. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 2004. Print.
Snowden, Frank M. Blacks in Antiquity; Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience. Cambridge, MA: Belknap of Harvard UP, 1970. Print.
Tassie, G. J. “Hair in Egypt.”, “Hair in Egypt: People and Technology Used in Creating Egyptian Hairstyles and Wigs”,”Hairstyling Technology and Techniques Used in Ancient Egypt”. Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-western Cultures: With 107 Tables. ed. Helaine Selin. Berlin: Springer, 2008. 1060-1076. Print.
Why would anyone consider the Ancient Egyptians as anything other than black? 0.o They were in Africa, a people of African descent, and all the Egyptian portrayals are of black people?? Like?
if any of you are bored you could try taking this color oracle assessment. it’s interesting
this shit dragged my ass within the first two lines of text, I’m done!
me as well
How did it know I have been maticulously watching my finances? How did it know that I hate my roommate and am in a stressful situation because she is the dirtiest person I’ve ever met? How did it know that I’m a year into a long distance relationship/ have constant feelings of loneliness??
it’s no secret that i’m depressed but it was still scary how accurately it nailed the feelings
this is far too accurate to be dismissed as coincidence. I want to know who Johannes Schneider was and how he did his research.
If cats rule the web, then Venus the “Chimera Cat” might be queen of the Internet. The Internet sensation’s half-black, half-orange face appears to be split straight down the middle, and her eyes are striking, too: one is green, the other blue.
Venus and her owner, an animal adoption activist, have appeared as guests on Fox and “The Today Show,” and Venus can hold her own on social media: She has over 200,000 “likes” on Facebook and 165,000 followers on Instagram. She even has her own line of merchandise, including a calendar and a stuffed animal.
Her tag line is “0% photoshopped, 100% born this way!” But why was she born this way? Columbia University Professor of Genetics and Development Virginia Papaioannou explains.
Alice Robb: Is Venus really a chimera?
Virginia Papaioannou: This isn’t what I would call a chimera; it’s a striking example of a calico cat. It’s a fairly straightforward example of X-inactivation mosaicism, with the addition of a white spotting gene. All female mammals have two X-chromosomes. (Males have an X and a Y.) But both X chromosomes aren’t active: In every cell of the body, one of the two X chromosomes is inactivated. (That balances out the effect of the X chromosomes in males and females; since females have twice as many, it makes sense that half of theirs would be inactive.)
In a cat, one gene for fur color is located on the X chromosome. And in any female, expression of all the genes that are on the X chromosome will be “mosaic”—that is, half of them will express one version of the gene (e.g., black fur) and half will express the other version of the gene (e.g., orange fur). The inactivation is random. Here we are talking about the orange/black mosaicism, which is highly visible, but the same pattern will hold true for other genes on the X that have two different versions—or alleles.
A chimera, on the other hand, is a composite individual that was made up of cells from at least two different original embryos. If they fuse together early enough, they will become a single organism whose genetic input is from two completely different individuals. In a mosaic, there’s only one individual and it just happens to have different genetic components active in its cells. A chimera would be a much more unusual and unlikely event.
AR: How often do chimeras occur?
VP: Experimentally, they’re very easy to make. With mice, for example, we make chimeras in my lab all the time. It’s a very standard procedure: You recover embryos before they’ve implanted, when they are just a few cells. That’s a period when the embryo is free-floating in the reproductive tract—it hasn’t attached to anything yet. You then remove the outer coating, which is just a non-living protective layer, and physically combine the embryos. They tend to stick together when they’ve lost the protective outer coating, and they quickly join together in one double-sized embryo. At this stage, it can be returned to a receptive uterus. It then becomes a normal-sized organism—a chimera—and can survive to a normal life span.
In nature, it’s presumably quite rare. It’s not something that happens in the normal course of reproduction.
AR: Why are Venus’s eyes different colors?
VP: It must be the white spotting gene that’s affecting her eyes, because the blue eye has a lack of melanin. This cat has white spots on the chest, and it has white paws. The white spotting gene, the piebald gene, is probably affecting the two eyes differently. One has a sort of normal color and one is blue, which is basically a lack of pigment.
hmmmm a thing that really kinda bugs me though: the position that “thinking animals can communicate in complex ways/care about [thing]/etc = anthropomorphising”?
it really feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy: “only humans do Thing. animals are not like humans. therefore don’t say animals do Thing because that’s like saying they’re just like humans when in fact they’re like themselves, i.e. Not Capable Of Thing”
idk it feels like it’s defining humanity by being able to Do All The Stuff and defining a realistic interpretation of non-human animals as Not Smart Enough To Stuff, because if animals could do a humanlike thing it would be supernatural or something? instead of maybe humans just Aren’t That Special
Oh gosh, this reply got a bit longer than I intended, even with a few paragraphs trimmed, so I’m placing it under a cut. Sorry in advance about my rambling, I’m not great at being succinct. Or making any sense.
Everybody go read what’s behind the cut because it is basically exactly what I was going to write in response. @mushroomxlord, you qualify your response with that you don’t study the topic but damn you hit it spot on.
A couple of things I’ll add (once you’ve read above the cut, no really, go read it): we’re getting to points in behavioral science where purposeful (and rationalized) anthropomorphism is becoming accepted as potentially necessary. It’s very iffy and not well accepted, but it’s the difference between a scientist observing elephants for years describing all the different trunk motions and calls and the streaming of temple glands at an interaction or just saying, with lots of data and background knowledge, that the elephants ‘greeted each other excitedly’. Can we quantify the excitement as being analogous to human experience? No, but we can imagine is as probably being pretty close and that’s probably more useful for understanding what is going on.
Frans deWaal - who is an amazing ethologist and primatologist and generally one of the formative influences in my life - wrote an amazing essay about exactly this. I keep looking for quotes I want to embed and finding I just want to quote the entire essay. Here’s the part that’s pertinent to the discussions of where anthropomorphism can be harmful and when it could be appropriate:
“Naturally, we must always be on guard. To avoid making silly interpretations based on anthropomorphism, one must always interpret animal behavior in the wider context of a species’ habits and natural history. Without experience with primates, one could imagine that a grinning rhesus monkey must be delighted, or that a chimpanzee running toward another with loud grunts must be in an aggressive mood. But primatologists know from many hours of observation that rhesus monkeys bare their teeth when intimidated, and that chimpanzees often grunt when they meet and embrace. In other words, a grinning rhesus monkey signals submission, and a chimpanzee’s grunting often serves as a greeting. A careful observer may thus arrive at an informed anthropomorphism that is at odds with extrapolations from human behavior.”
deWaal also coined a term in that essay that I really like and want to use more often in discussions of anthropomorphism: anthropodenial. He describes the need for it as thus:
“Behaviorists are not the only scientists who have avoided thinking about the inner life of animals. Some sociobiologists-researchers who look for the roots of behavior in evolution-depict animals as “survival machines” and “preprogrammed robots” put on Earth to serve their “selfish” genes. There is a certain metaphorical value to these concepts, but it has been negated by the misunderstanding they’ve created. (…)
Logically, these agnostic attitudes toward a mental life in animals can be valid only if they’re applied to our own species as well. Yet it’s uncommon to find researchers who try to study human behavior as purely a matter of reward and punishment. (…)
Given these discoveries, we must be very careful not to exaggerate the uniqueness of our species. The ancients apparently never gave much thought to this practice, the opposite of anthropomorphism, and so we lack a word for it. I will call it anthropodenial: a blindness to the humanlike characteristics of other animals, or the animal-like characteristics of ourselves. (…) Those who are in anthropodenial try to build a brick wall to separate humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. They carry on the tradition of Rene Descartes, who declared that while humans possessed souls, animals were mere automatons. This produced a serious dilemma when Charles Darwin came along: If we descended from such automatons, were we not automatons ourselves? If not, how did we get to be so different?”
He then goes on from there to talk about how when leaving anthropodenial, anthropomorphism becomes inevitable and must be accepted to a degree - but, as mentioned in the first quote, only informed anthropormorphism. That’s why, with this blog, I will continue to discourage generalized and highly anthrocentric interpretations of behavior - because it’s so common, and because so many people think they’re knowledgeable enough to make informed anthropomorphic extrapolations. To be able to make those sorts of inferences, you have to start with science and unbiased behavioral observation skills before you have tools or the background to form correct informed anthropomorphic opinions. My goal is to teach that science and those critial thinking skills, and to teach people how to identify and move past their own inherent biophilic tendencies that lead towards uninformed anthropomorphism.
(Go read deWaal’s essay from the link above if you like this topic. Seriously).
The longest natural erosion arch in the Alps (at 32 metres, and a double one at that) was only discovered in 2005, in the Chartreuse mountain chain above Grenoble, at the southern tip of the Jura mountains (part of the Pre-Alps), long famed for the bittersweet herby alcohol produced by the Carthusian monks (reputedly some of the most austere, meditating in their isolated eyrie, where they have been based since 1084). The find was made by a hiker who was researching a book on the hidden unknown treasures of the range, later published as Chartreuse inédite : Itinéraires insolites.
For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that an organism devoid
of a nervous system is capable of learning. A team from the Centre de
Recherches sur la Cognition Animale (CNRS/Université Toulouse III –
Paul Sabatier) has succeeded in showing that a single-celled organism,
the protist Physarum polycephalum, is capable of a type of
learning called habituation. This discovery throws light on the origins
of learning ability during evolution, even before the appearance of a
nervous system and brain. It may also raise questions as to the learning
capacities of other extremely simple organisms such as viruses and
bacteria. These findings are published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on 27 April 2016.
During a nine-day experiment, the scientists challenged different
groups of this mold with bitter but harmless substances that they needed
to pass through in order to reach a food source. Two groups were
confronted either by a “bridge” impregnated with quinine, or with
caffeine, while the control group only needed to cross a non-impregnated
bridge. Initially reluctant to travel through the bitter substances,
the molds gradually realized that they were harmless, and crossed them
increasingly rapidly – behaving after six days in the same way as the
control group. The cell thus learned not to fear a harmless substance
after being confronted with it on several occasions, a phenomenon that
the scientists refer to as habituation. After two days without contact
with the bitter substance, the mold returned to its initial behavior of
distrust. Furthermore, a protist habituated to caffeine displayed
distrustful behavior towards quinine, and vice versa. Habituation was
therefore clearly specific to a given substance.
Romain P. Boisseau, David Vogel, Audrey Dussutour. Habituation in non-neural organisms: evidence from slime moulds. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2016; 283 (1829): 20160446 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2016.0446
The slime mold Physarum polycephalum
(diameter: around 10 centimeters), made up of a single cell, was here
cultivated in the laboratory on agar gel.
Credit: Audrey Dussutour (CNRS)
This is the egg of a horn shark. This shape enables a mother horn shark to wedge her eggs (which are usually laid two at a time) into crevices. This helps to prevent removal by most would-be predators.
Pussypaws! I found this plant by the roadside at Tuolumne Meadows, growing flat on the ground. I believe it’s either Cistanthe monospermum or C. umbellata.
Power resides only where men believe it resides. […] A shadow on the wall, yet shadows can kill. And ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.
