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Archaeology
Dear Tucker Carlson: Iraqis Invented Civilization and, like, Literacy when “White Men” were Painting themselves Blue
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tucker Carlson has been playing David Duke with a northeast accent and bow tie for some years, but in radio interviews with Bubba the Love Sponge from a decade ago released by Media Matters, he gave up the dog whistle for butchering and barbecuing the dog. Mediamatters4america: “Tucker Carlson makes […]
For Int’l Women’s Day: An Arabian Woman of Late Antiquity Prays to Goddesses for Peace
For Int’l Women’s Day, via OCIANA a Safaitic Arabic inscription [c. 1-400 AD], by a wealthy woman calling on two goddesses for peace: “By Shamat daughter of Sar is the mule [owned] and O {Shahqam} —-m—- [and] Allat, [grant] {security} [for] the people of al-Ḍaf.” This inscription from the first centuries after Christ in Arabia […]
How Horse-Riding in Eurasia advantaged Huns, Mongols over Farmers
Migrations brought Pastoralists and Plague
A mid-6th Century (Christian?) proto-Arabic Inscription from N. Arabia Mentioning Al-Ilah
(Politically oriented readers of IC please excuse this reprint of a path-breaking but extremely technical discussion in Arabian religious and linguistic history. It is highly important for the study of the beginnings of Islam, since it discusses an inscription from al-Jawf, Saudi Arabia dated to 548 CE, i.e. some sixty years before the beginning of […]
Volcano-driven Climate Change Defeated Egypt’s Ptolemies
By Steven Young | ( The Watchers) | – – Around 245 BCE Ptolemy III, ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Egypt, made a decision that still puzzles many historians: After pursuing a successful military campaign against the kingdom’s nemesis, the Seleucid Empire, centered mainly in present-day Syria and Iraq, Ptolemy III suddenly decided to […]
Yes, White Supremacists, some Vikings were Muslims & Thor was Brown
By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The archeological identification of stylized Arabic text for God (Allah) and Ali (the prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law) in burial garments of the Vikings in Sweden has thrown white supremacists into a tizzy. While the garments could just be the result of trade with the Middle […]
Syria’s Heritage, and the World’s, that the War Destroyed–From Palmyra to Castles
Written by Alreem Kamal | ( GlobalVoices.org) | – – Syria's story is one that has been weaved through families from one millennium to the next. Subjugated as a Roman province under the command of Pompey the Great in 64 BC, and brought under Ottoman rule 16 centuries later by Sultan Selim I in 1516, […]
No, supremacists, the Vikings wouldn’t have put up with “Teuton” Donald Trump
By Keith Ruiter | (The Conversation) | – – It has been suggested that Donald Trump “may get his assertive rather than passive manner from his alleged Viking ancestors”. Or so says Russian genealogist Aleksey Nilogov, who has been finding some traction for his beliefs on nationalistic eastern European news sites such as the Estonian […]