Current events Archives - Page 11 of 12 - Tales of Times Forgotten

No, Researchers Didn’t Really Reconstruct the Voice of a 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Mummy

In case you haven’t heard, on 23 January 2020, a group of British researchers published a paper in the British scientific journal Scientific Reports claiming that they had reconstructed the voice of an ancient Egyptian man named Nesyamun, who worked as a priest, scribe, and incense-bearer at the temple complex at the site of Karnak in Upper Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Ramesses XI (most likely ruled c. 1107– c. 1077 BC). Nesyamun was probably of Nubian descent. He died in around his mid-fifties and, at the time of his death, suffered from severe gum disease.

The researchers used a CT scanner, a 3D printer, a loudspeaker, and computer software to reconstruct what they claim is what it would sound like if Nesyamun were to speak the vowel sound “eh.” Unfortunately, the claim of the researchers that they have reconstructed Nesyamun’s actual voice is highly dubious.

What Merit Is There Really to the Strauss-Howe Generational Hypothesis?

The Strauss-Howe generational hypothesis is a non-scientific hypothesis that was first set forth in 1991 by the American authors William Strauss and Neil Howe in their book Generations. It was later expanded in their 1997 book The Fourth Turning. Although William Strauss died in 2007 of pancreatic cancer, Neil Howe has continued expanding and revising the hypothesis while giving lectures on it across the country.

Essentially, in its most basic form, the hypothesis holds that there is a recurring cycle of four generations that recurs roughly every eighty to ninety years, a period which Strauss and Howe call a “saeculum.” The cycle always begins with a period of crisis. Then there is a period of prosperity, known as a “high.” Then there is an “awakening.” Finally, there is an “unraveling,” leading to another crisis.

According to the hypothesis, as part of this cycle, there are four generations. Each generation is supposedly shaped by the events that were happening when members of that generation were growing up and, supposedly, these events result in each generation belonging to a certain recurring “archetype.”

All in all, I find the hypothesis amusing and kind of fun to read about in a crackpot sort of way, but it has virtually no credible evidence whatsoever to support it and it is mostly pseudoscience. Indeed, the kinds of predictions it makes are actually strongly reminiscent of astrology in a lot of ways, since they are vague enough that they sound meaningful without actually being meaningful.

The So-Called “Vatican Secret Archive” Isn’t Very Secret

There are all kinds of conspiracy theories floating around about what the Roman Catholic Church might be hiding in the notorious Vatican Secret Archive. Many people believe that the Secret Archive may hide secret, incriminating information about the origins of Christianity—or certainly at least shocking revelations about the history of the Catholic Church.

As it turns out, though, there’s not really anything “secret” about the so-called “Vatican Secret Archive”; its location is shown on every map of the Vatican and it is actually surprisingly easy to gain access to it. Indeed, thousands of scholars and journalists are allowed to access it every year. To gain access, you just have to prove your qualifications and provide a decent explanation for why you want access.

Is Stoicism a Useful Philosophy for the Modern World?

In case you haven’t heard, the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism seems to be having a bit of a cultural moment right now. It is the philosophy of choice for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, football stars, and ordinary people. There is a whole plethora of websites promoting Stoicism as a philosophy for the modern world, including “Daily Stoic,” “How to Be a Stoic,” “Modern Stoicism,” and “Traditional Stoicism.”

There are also countless other resources for aspiring Stoics, including YouTube channels and bestselling books like The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, The Beginner’s Guide to Stoicism: Tools for Emotional Resilience and Positivity, Stoicism: A Stoic Approach To Modern Life, and countless others. There are even events for aspiring Stoics to gather and talk about Stoicism like Stoicon.

All this enthusiasm over Stoicism has left some people wondering what Stoicism is, how modern Stoicism differs from ancient Stoicism, and whether either ancient or modern Stoicism is useful for modern life. I am neither a Stoic nor an ardent critic of Stoicism, but rather an outsider who happens to know a bit about Stoicism. In my view, there are quite a few things we can learn from Stoicism, but Stoicism also has some serious pitfalls that are worth taking into account.

For the Last Time, Donald Trump Isn’t the Modern-Day Julius Caesar

One thing I have discovered is that people really love to directly equate Donald Trump with various historical figures from the ancient world. As I discuss in this article from December 2019, Trump’s evangelical supporters are constantly comparing him to Cyrus the Great, claiming that he is God’s vessel appointed to fulfill God’s will by enacting conservative policies. Meanwhile, people who do not like Trump seem to habitually joke about Donald Trump being Caligula or Nero.

Both Trump’s supporters and his fiercest enemies, though, love to compare him to one man in particular: Julius Caesar. This obsession with equating Trump with figures from ancient history annoys me because it inevitably leads to the distortion of history to suit the needs of the present.

Here Are a Few of the Major Cultural Sites in Iran that Donald Trump May Be Threatening to Destroy

On Saturday, 4 January 2020, Donald J. Trump, the current president of the United States of America, announced on Twitter that the United States has targeted fifty-two Iranian cultural sites and that, if Iran makes any move against any American or against any American asset, the United States will destroy those sites. Trump declared, over the course of two tweets, the following words:

“Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have….”
“….targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!”

Donald Trump is literally holding Iran’s cultural sites hostage, threatening to destroy them if Iran does not comply with his demands. This sounds more like the kind of threat you’d expect to hear from the Joker than from the president of the United States.

Destroying Iranian cultural sites would certainly constitute a war crime under international law. The United Nations made this very clear in 2017 when they adopted a resolution for the protection of heritage in response to the deliberate destruction of cultural sites in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). You know you live in a messed-up world when the president of the United States is literally threatening to do what ISIS did.

Here Are Some of the Most Ancient Christmas Carols

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is singing carols with my family. Nowadays, we tend to think of many of our carols as being extremely old and traditional. After all, as I discuss in this article I wrote about the history of Santa Claus, even the song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”—arguably one of the least traditional Christmas songs—is over seventy years old. Nonetheless, most of the songs we know today are actually relatively young compared to some of the other songs that have been sung historically. Few of the songs we know today were composed before the nineteenth century.

Here I have collected a few of my favorite extremely old Christmas songs, some of which date all the way back to the Middle Ages. I have gathered songs from places as diverse as the Byzantine Empire, late medieval Spain, Renaissance Finland and Sweden, and Early Modern England. All of these songs were composed before the nineteenth century and nearly all of them were originally composed in languages other than English. Enjoy!

Is Krampus Really Pagan?

I recently wrote a very long, detailed article debunking the idea that many modern Christmas traditions have ancient pagan origins. In that article, I talked about how Christmas traditions such as gift-giving, decorating Christmas trees, and decorating with mistletoe have actually all originated in modern times and are not nearly old enough to have pre-Christian pagan origins.

With all of those traditions, there are at least some other debunkers out there pointing out that these traditions are not really old enough to have their origins in pre-Christian paganism. There is, however, one Christmas tradition that people routinely describe as having pagan origin that no one else seems to be debunking that I think really needs to be debunked.

The Christmas tradition I am talking about is Krampus. In case you haven’t heard of Krampus, he is a monstrous demonic figure with horns who, according to Bavarian and Austrian folklore, is said to accompany Saint Nicholas. While Saint Nicholas is said to reward the children who have behaved well with presents, Krampus is said to punish the children who have misbehaved, either by dragging them away to Hell where they must burn for eternity for their sins, by shoving them in a bag and dumping them in the woods to find their way home, or by beating them with the bundle of birch sticks he carries.

Is Donald Trump the Second Coming of Cyrus the Great?

As strange as it may sound, Donald J. Trump, the current president of the United States of America, has been repeatedly likened to Cyrus the Great (lived c. 600 – c. 530 BC), the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. The comparison between Trump and Cyrus the Great is especially popular among evangelical Christian Trump-supporters in the United States, but it also has some prominence among Israeli Jews. Let’s take a look at who Cyrus the Great was, why Donald Trump is being compared to him, and why these comparisons don’t hold up to scrutiny.

Good and Bad Reasons to Learn Latin

You often hear people talk about the “practical benefits” of learning Latin, such as being able to understand legal, medical, and scientific terminology, expanding your vocabulary, and gaining a better understanding of English grammar. These certainly are real benefits to learning Latin, but, to be honest, at least on their own, they aren’t really very good reasons to learn the whole language, for reasons I will explain in a moment.

There are plenty of apologists for Latin out there who often try to justify learning Latin by listing these supposed “practical benefits” to learning Latin that apply to most people. The problem is that, if these benefits are the only reasons you are studying Latin, and you have no real interest in the Latin language or in reading Latin literature, then learning a whole new language may not really be worth it. There are, however, still very good reasons for learning Latin; they just don’t necessarily apply to everyone.