Record price for Dinky truck

A toy truck from the 1950s has fetched £12,000 at auction following a worldwide bidding war. . .

The maroon-coloured Foden miniature cost just 19 shillings when it was made in 1952, but proved unpopular with children who preferred Dinky's more glamorous sports car models.

From the BBC.

Irish preservation law fight

As a city so old that construction crews regularly unearth medieval, and even Viking, artifacts, Dublin has surprisingly few examples of significant architecture. For many years, the Irish only made things worse by allowing the ruthless demolition of buildings that were perceived to be leftovers of British rule.

Now, an effort at preservation has pitted one of Ireland's most powerful businessmen against both the Dublin government and the national planning authority, in a legal battle over the interior of a house practically on the steps of the prime minister's offices. . .

Most people here agree there was a need for the laws. But critics say the legislation threatens to halt the typical evolution of buildings by freezing significant structures in the past rather than letting them be used.

Read the rest in the NY Times.

Medieval garbage pit found in Aberdeen

News from Scotland:

Archaeologists have uncovered the biggest medieval pit ever found in the city on a university building site. . .

It is thought the pit - at least 1.8 metres deep and four metres wide - was used from the 13th Century onwards to dispose of rubbish produced by people living in the area.

Mosul Archeological Museum looted

Not clear yet how bad the situation is in Baghdad, but in Mosul it looks like the museum has been pretty well cleaned out:

By the time Asif Mohammed turned up for work yesterday morning, the ancient contents of Mosul's museum had vanished. The looters knew what they were looking for, and in less than 10 minutes had walked off with several million dollars worth of Parthian sculpture.
The 2,000-year-old statue of King Saqnatroq II - one of Iraq's forgotten monarchs - had disappeared from its cabinet. Lying on the glass-strewn floor were the remains of several mythical birds and an Athenian goddess, apparently broken by the looters as they made their escape.

From the Guardian.

Titanic crewman's hat ribbon sells for £34,000

A sailor's hat ribbon rescued from the sinking Titanic by a young boy has fetched £34,000 at auction. The embroidered hatband, which bears the name RMS Titanic in gold thread, was sold to an anonymous American bidder. It was auctioned at Southampton's Hilton Hotel, with a reserve price of £20,000 to £25,000.

Also at the auction, a carved oak section, believed to be from the grand staircase of the Titanic, fetched £20,000, while a postcard purchased on the ship went for £12,000.

The hatband is thought to be the only such souvenir from the fated liner. On April 15, 1912, eight-year-old Marshall Brines Drew took the ribbon with him as he was lowered from the Titanic on to lifeboat number 10 with his aunt. His uncle, who purchased the ribbon for Marshall in the ship's souvenir shop, was left on board and died.

I recall reading within the past week that there are now only three survivors from the Titanic. From Ananova.

Baghdad Archeological Museum sacked

A Baghdad mob looted Iraq's largest archeological museum amid a breakdown in civil authority following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, an AFP reporter said.

A dozen looters helped themselves in ground floor rooms at the National Museum of Iraq, where pottery artefacts and statues were seen broken or overturned, while administrative offices were wrecked.

Two men were seen hauling an ancient portal out of the building, and empty wooden crates were scattered over the floor.

Upstairs rooms seemed to have been spared for the time being.

Read more here.

MORE grim details.

AND YET MORE in the Sunday NY Times.

Giant Stone Age sculptures found?

Tentative report from Consenza via La Repubblica (in Italian): A local amateur archeologist appears to have uncovered two gigantic monolithic figures, one representing an elephant.

Wars and surrenders

Interesting discussion over at Geitner Simmons's place regarding the end of the American Civil War, another conflict that ended without a comprehensive formal surrender, just piecemeal surrenders by individual military leaders.

Evidence for Siena's Roman foundation

Archaeologists at Siena cathedral have uncovered evidence to support the legend that the Tuscan city was founded by the Romans. . .

Archaeologists said yesterday that they had evidence of a ritual sacrifice, dating to early Roman times, in a well beneath the transept of the Duomo, near the Campo, the piazza where the Palio is run every summer.

Riccardo Francovich, professor of archaeology at Siena University, said his team had found the bones of three slaughtered dogs and a horse, with each animal cut up into three pieces. Professor Francovich said the slaughter of animals was a “votive ritual” used by the Romans to bring good fortune when founding a new city. . .

Marie Ange Causarano, one of the archaeologists involved in the dig at the Duomo, said that the Roman well in which the ritual bones had come to light had been dug deep into the tufa, or rock, and was square in shape rather than round. It still bore the holes for corner poles to support a wooden lid, and had probably been lined with wooden planks at first. It had been filled in and lain undiscovered for centuries.

From the Times of London.

Saddam on eBay

This didn't take long:

More than a thousand items pertaining to Saddam Hussein are for sale on the auction website, eBay, including banknotes and even a fork supposedly from one of his many palaces.

At one point, even chunks of the president's statue torn down in Baghdad's Fardus Square were up for sale. But eBay labelled it as hoax and removed the item.

From the BBC.

Historical Japanese maps online

From today's NY Times, a profile of www.davidrumsey.com/japan:

So far, 210 maps - some dating back almost 400 years - from the 2,300-piece collection are online. The collection, which will be available for viewing in its entirety within two years, includes 252 maps of the city of Edo (now Tokyo), 79 maps of Kyoto and 40 maps of Osaka spanning the years 1600 to 1867. Many are woodblock prints on handmade paper. The collection also includes a map from 1710 depicting the center of the world as the source of four great rivers of India, and a 40-foot scroll map of the roads of Japan in 1687.

Steal an egg, go to jail

A man has been jailed for stealing hundreds of eggs from the nests of some of Scotland's rarest birds. Anthony Higham, from Runcorn in Cheshire, was jailed for four months at Northwich Magistrates Court, after he admitted owning a collection of more than 800 rare birds' eggs.

The court heard that Higham climbed and abseiled into nesting sites in what the prosecution called a military-style operation. Eggs belonging to ospreys, choughs, golden eagles, peregrine falcons and a goshawk were taken from nests by Higham and were later found in a collection stored in a house in Widnes.

Read all about it here.

Bayeux Tapestry on CD-ROM

This sounds quite nifty:

This CD-Rom presents full images of the tapestry itself, magnifiable so that individual stitches can be seen, with images of three facsimiles, and of many related artifacts. They are accompanied by authoritative translations of seventeen historical sources concerning the events of 1066, maps, genealogies, bibliography, and full commentary, in an attractive interface.

See more here.

Roman hydraulic engineering

Meant to post this a while ago, spotted thanks to Mirabilis.ca:

Computer modelling is lifting the lid on the secrets of Roman hydraulic engineering. Hitherto mysterious hurdles and holes, it hints, may have smoothed the flow of water.

In the third century AD, Roman engineers built a system of tunnels and tanks to bring water to the city of Aspendos, today in Turkey. Aspendos was a crucial hub of Roman trade in Asia Minor, sitting at the crossroads of important routes with river access to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Roman writer Vitruvius described the now-ruined system for delivering water to a major settlement. But aspects of his account remain obscure to modern readers because the meaning of some of his Latin terms has been lost and because there were probably other features of Roman civil engineering of which no record survives.

Read the rest here in Nature.

UC Berkeley's Plato not a fake?

A portrait herm of the Greek philosopher Plato is emerging from a century of obscurity and disrespect to assume its rightful place in ancient history, thanks to the sleuthing of a University of California, Berkeley, classics professor.

Stephen G. Miller today (Wednesday, April 9) publicly outlined his research and scientific test results that he said shows the sculpture purchased for UC Berkeley and brought to its anthropology museum in 1902 is not a contemporary fake.

Additionally, Berkeley's Plato turns out to be a rare depiction of Plato not as a famous philosopher, but as a just and virtuous citizen, said Miller, a specialist in Greek and Roman archaeology and art who leads a UC Berkeley excavation project in Ancient Nemea, Greece.

Will see if this ends up being generally accepted, but the full press release is here.

Straightening out Avebury

Archaeologists began the delicate job yesterday of straightening two huge prehistoric standing stones in Wiltshire that had started to lean at a precarious angle. The stones at Avebury have been fenced off for the past six years after the movement was revealed by comparisons of a 3D computer-generated graphic of the stones in their present state with engravings by William Stukeley, an 18th-century Lincolnshire antiquary.

The comparisons showed that the 16ft coffin-shaped stones, each weighing an estimated 50 tonnes, had developed a list of 15 degrees since Stukeley drew them and were in danger of toppling. Scaffolding was put up around them in preparation for giant jacks to be lowered into place.

Read more in the Times.

Leon Levy obit

Although the obituaries in the NY Times, Newsday, and Forbes are chiefly devoted to Levy's brilliant career as an investor, it is as a collector and patron that he was best known to art historians and archeologists. The obituaries do not mention, however, that Levy's collecting was not free from controversy: many felt he was not sufficiently scrupulous about avoiding ancient artworks likely to have been illegally excavated or exported.

Old time office equipment

While trying to figure out the identity of what turned out to be a check writing machine, I stumbled across www.officemuseum.com -- worth bookmarking for anyone interested in old technology.

Pompeiian frescoes stolen, then found

Italian police have recovered two famous frescoes that were stolen last weekend from a house in the Roman city of Pompeii, near Naples. The 1st Century frescoes were found at a construction site close to the historic city, after roadblocks were set up across the whole of Naples province.

The authorities said they had already been packed, and that the aim may have been to smuggle them abroad. Both panels were damaged during the theft. Archaeological officials say they are not sure they will succeed in fully reconstructing them.

From the BBC.

Huge Iron Age hoard from Leicestershire

The British Museum unveiled the largest hoard of Iron Age gold and silver coins - more than 3,000 - found in the country yesterday. The coins, amounting to 10 per cent of the total number previously recovered, were found in shallow pits, where it is thought that they had been placed as offerings to pagan gods, on farmland in east Leicestershire.

Also dug up from the site was the first gilded silver Roman helmet found in Britain. Archaeologists said that it provided the first evidence that ancient Britons joined the Roman army before it invaded. Although it has shattered into hundreds of pieces, conservators at the museum hope to rebuild it over several years.

Experts from Leicestershire's Community Archaeology Project, whose members made the find, believe the site was a religious meeting place in the decades before the conquest of Britain in AD43.

Wren's staircase to be restored

It could have come from a Harry Potter film, and it did feature in The Madness of King George. Sir Christopher Wren's geometric staircase is one of the hidden treasures of St Paul's Cathedral which are being restored in readiness for a public debut.

The hanging stairs, which appear to defy gravity, are being cleaned and repaired as part of a £40 million facelift to mark the cathedral's 300th anniversary in 2008.

Wren, who was a mathematician and astronomer as well as an architect, designed the staircase to give the Dean of St Paul's a private route from the south-west corner of the cathedral to his library. . .

Each step of the cantilevered staircase is supported primarily by the step below, and damage to one could undermine the integrity of the whole.

From the Telegraph.

Big wave surfing. . . in France?

Just spotted this in today's NY Times:

Extreme big-wave surfing, a fairly new twist on an ancient sport, is possible wherever monstrous storm swells and lunatic surfers converge. This generally happens in only two places on earth: Hawaii and California.

That is why jaws dropped from Maui to Monterey last month when the sponsors of a contest promising $60,000 for the rider of the surfing season's tallest wave received a late challenge from out of left field.

Way left field. That is, France.

Early last month, a French surfer, Fred Basse, and a handful of his countrymen tracked an immense low-pressure system as it swung east from Newfoundland and out over the Atlantic. This storm sent a 25-foot-plus swell marching ahead of it at 35 miles an hour toward the coast of Europe.

It caught up with Mr. Basse and five fellow surfers on the sunny morning of March 10, as they waited with surfboards and personal watercraft at a relatively unknown reef two miles off the coast of St. Jean-de-Luz, in France's Basque country. Towed in by the watercraft, the Frenchmen successfully rode waves that towered from 60 to 80 feet.

More coverage here and here from the California papers.

Petroglyphs vs GPS

With exact GPS coordinates displayed across the Internet, are too many people now walking in those footsteps? Most of the ancient artwork carved and painted into the rock walls and boulders of the American West have survived for thousands of years in quiet obscurity. But technology has changed that. These days, art that once took years for a person to stumble upon can be quickly pinpointed with a GPS, and discoverers can post the coordinates on the Internet. That leaves the ancient, priceless art vulnerable to what the Bureau of Land Management calls "digital vandalism."

"It certainly has changed how we think about our jobs. There's a breathless feeling that the public is ahead of us now," said Dale Davidson, a BLM archaeologist based in Monticello, Utah. A quick peek at the Internet auction site eBay confirms the ancient art is being plundered and sold piecemeal, said Kevin Jones, Utah's state archaeologist. It's not just the treasure hunters who concern the rock-art aficionados. Some of the sites simply can't withstand public adoration. The use of GPS "hasn't changed the nature, but the scale" of those who are finding the sites, Jones said. . .

Sometimes, by the time archaeologists can get to a previously unknown site posted on the Web, it's already been damaged and information has been lost. "Not only are we playing catch-up, but we're trying to record something that's already been impacted," Davidson said. There is a lot of talk about how to deal with this clash between archaeology and technology, but no answers.

Sounds as if there needs to be more of an outreach effort by BLM and other archeologists to the petroglyph-spotter hobbyist world; those bent on plunder won't be deterred, of course, but the benign majority would likely be happy to notify archeologists of new finds before posting them to public websites. Read more here.

Art, drugs, and money-laundering

From the Art Newspaper:

A Connecticut art broker is awaiting sentence after pleading guilty to involvement in a money-laundering scheme intended to exchange illegal drug proceeds for art. Two New York art dealers charged in the case have not been scheduled for trial.

The federal indictment charges Shirley D. Sack, 74, and Arnold K. Katzen, 63, with conspiring and attempting to sell two paintings for $4.1 million in cash to an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer. According to the defendants, the paintings in question are Amedeo Modigliani’s “Jeune femme aux yeux bleus” valued at around $2.5 million and a pastel by Edgar Degas, “La Coiffure,” valued at around $1.6 million. These were seized by the US.

“Katzen and Sack indicated to the undercover agent that they could resell the paintings overseas as part of the money laundering scheme,” said the US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Michael J. Sullivan. The undercover sting investigation, apparently prompted by an informant’s tip, was conducted by the US Customs Service and the FBI. The US alleged that the Connecticut art broker, Alan M. Stewart, who pleaded guilty in December 2001, acted in the money-laundering transaction. The defendants face maximum sentences of 20 years in prison and $250,000 fines.

The article also mentions what prosecutors say was a $20m cocaine deal:

Four people, including a Saudi prince, were recently indicted on narcotics charges in Miami. The indictment cites one of the defendants with money-laundering and seeks forfeiture of two works of art in connection with the deal. The oil paintings, seized by the US in New York, are “Bandits attacking a coach” attributed to Francisco de Goya and “Buste de jeune” attributed to Tsuguharu Foujita.

Unpublished Woolf manuscripts to British Library

A series of previously unpublished manuscripts hand-written by Virginia Woolf are among a collection that has been bought by The British Library. The manuscripts form part of two mock newspapers composed by Woolf's nephews, Julian and Quentin Bell, as children.

Some 188 editions of the partly hand-written, partly-typed newspapers - The Charleston Bulletin and The New Bulletin - were found in an old tin trunk.

Woolf's contributions, many of which are written in her favourite purple ink, offer a revealing insight into the Bloomsbury set - a group of artists and and intellectuals that included Woolf and her husband Leonard.

The collection, owned by Quentin Bell's widow, Mrs Olivier Bell, has remained in family hands until now.

From the BBC.

More bad history out of Hollywood

This time it's Catherine the Great:

Long before women’s liberation and girl power, Catherine the Great not only conspired in the murder of her husband and took over the job of ruling Russia, she also reputedly had hundreds of lovers. . .

Now the woman dubbed by history the Scarlet Empress is to be given one more lover, a young Scotsman, courtesy of Walt Disney and Randall Wallace, the American writer who horrified Scottish historians by suggesting an illicit romance between William Wallace and the English king’s daughter-in-law in Braveheart.

Wallace subsequently scripted Pearl Harbor, one of the most expensive films ever made, and wrote and directed We Were Soldiers, with Braveheart star Mel Gibson as a US commander in Vietnam. He returns to history with Love and Honour, which is set during the war of American independence of 1775-1781.

Dark chocolate better than light

I like my chocolate dark, anyway, but now the Sunday Times reports:

Scientists in Dundee have discovered that, in moderation and as part of a nutritionally balanced diet, our leading comfort food can reduce the risk of blood clots and strokes. Sadly, the good news does not extend to white and milk chocoholics — the milkier varieties produced no benefits.

In the first study of its kind, 30 volunteers were randomly given 100 grams of either white, milk or dark chocolate. Blood samples were taken before and after to see what affect the various types of chocolate had on blood platelets, which in turn affect the way the blood clots.

The results of the study showed that white and milk chocolate had little or no effect on blood platelet function, compared with a significant change noted in those who ate the dark chocolate, which had a 75% cocoa content. Stickiness of platelets, which can lead to blood clots, was reduced by up to 50% in some cases and 24% in others.

Pretty small sample here, though, and not clear how well the subjects were controlled. Which will likely go unmentioned as other papers pick up this story, however. . . .

Tracking Franklin, "unluckiest explorer"

A British woman is setting off into the Arctic to try to solve the mystery behind the greatest disaster ever to befall a polar expedition. For more than 150 years historians have argued over the fate of Sir John Franklin, who disappeared in 1845 along with 128 men and two large sailing ships after leaving Britain to plot a route via the elusive Northwest Passage through north Canada.

Next week Rebecca Harris will leave for the Canadian Arctic at the head of a team of eight that will retrace Franklin’s footsteps to try to find how and where he died.

“What inspired me was not Franklin so much as the love of Jane, his wife, and her determination to bring him back,” said Harris, 35. “She mounted more than 30 expeditions to find him. She failed, but they resulted in the charting of much of the Arctic and launched polar exploration as we know it” . . .

Harris’s team, sponsored by American Express, will try to cover the 200 miles from Victory Point on King William Island, where the men abandoned their ships, to Starvation Cove, where bones, boots and an upturned boat were found.

Ironically, it was Franklin’s widow who was remembered by history for her exploration work. Her bust still sits in the hallway of the Royal Geographical Society.

As I recall, much of Franklin's "bad luck" was of his own making -- the Arctic is not forgiving of the unprepared. From the Sunday Times.

No-explosive bombs?

According to the Sunday Times:

The RAF has come up with a new weapon to crack Saddam Hussein’s defences: the concrete bomb.
The weapon, which is designed to cut collateral damage in built-up areas, looks the same as an ordinary bomb but is filled with 1,000lb of concrete instead of explosive.

British Harriers and Tornados are preparing to drop the weapons on military targets in Baghdad. Pilots will use laser and satellite devices to steer the bombs onto Iraqi positions.

The problem with conventional bombs is that they have such huge blast areas they cannot be used safely in street-to-street fighting for risk of killing civilians or allied troops.

It's quite something when guidance systems are so advanced that the explosive power of bombs becomes something to be reduced, and even eliminated.

UPDATE: O ye of little faith! The Sunday Times article appeared on the 4th, not the 1st -- and there are more references to concrete bombs here, here, and here.

Mona Lisa incinta?

Will reserve judgement on this:

. . . an academic has suggested that the secret of the Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile is that she is just about to have a baby. Evidence for the theory is drawn partly from newly discovered documents in Italy and partly from the woman’s physical appearance.

The papers unearthed in Milan and Florence also appear to confirm the identity of the woman in the world’s most famous painting. Despite doubts raised by many modern scholars, she is shown almost certainly to be Lisa del Gioconda, wife of a rich silk merchant.

The documents are intriguing, but the following gives pause:

The theory will be aired in a three-part series on the BBC this month to be presented by Alan Yentob, the corporation’s director of drama and entertainment. The evidence has been gathered by Sherwin Nuland, professor of clinical anatomy at Yale University in America.

Neither Yentob nor Nuland are art historians; nor does the article in the Sunday Times cite a single art historian who supports the thesis. Though nonspecialists have on occasional made important contributions to the history of art, howling mistakes have been far more common. Sigmund Freud himself attempted to analyze some of the greatest figures in Renaissance art; alas, he did so through the prism of 19th-century bourgeois Vienna, completely failing to place them in the context of their own era (and conveniently overlooking a bit of homosexuality here and there). Looking at the past through present-day eyes continues to be the main stumbling block for non-historians trying to second-guess the specialists.

In fact, one could well imagine Leonardo, with his deep interest in anatomy and the processes of nature, painting a closely-observed portrait of a pregnant sitter. Yet the case is hardly closed by arguments such as these:

“Look at her swollen limbs. Her fingers, for example. She is not wearing rings. Yet a woman of that wealth would wear rings,” says Nuland. He concludes Lisa has removed the rings because her fingers had got rather fat.

Since the sitter's identity is still unproven, speculations based upon her purported wealth merely stack one hypothesis on another.

“Her face, too, is a little round while her hands are folded over her abdomen as pregnant women do,” he said.

My face is a little round, too, and since my paunch has expanded over this winter, I sometimes catch myself folding my hands over it as well. If this theory doesn't end up published in a serious scholarly publication, it won't be because of its unconventionality, I assure you.

On a clear day, a brick can expand forever

Researchers studying clay bricks dating as far back as Roman times have found out just how long the basic building block can be counted on. The aging of clay bricks is governed by how quickly the minerals within absorb water from the atmosphere after they are fired. As they absorb water, the bricks expand. But until now it was thought that most of this expansion happened within hours or days of bricks being cooled from the kiln. Not so, said researchers in the U.K. "The expansion is a continuing process," said brick researcher Moira Wilson. "It will continue forever."

Lest you be left with nightmares of The Brick That Ate The World, while expansion appears to continue indefinitely, the rate of expansion slows rapidly and exponentially. However, the article points out that this can still have serious implications, for while "before about 1950 masons used soft lime mortar between bricks, which can absorb the squeezing by expanding bricks. . . in the latter half of the 20th century. . . less-forgiving stiff cement mortar became all the rage." Read the full article here.

17th-century Dutch cemetery in India

From Ahmedabad, via the Indian Express:

For centuries, a witness to trade relations between India and Holland, this Dutch cemetery, dating back to 1600 AD standing on the banks of Kankaria Lake, today lies in a neglected state covered with all kinds of graffiti and susceptible to vandalism.

Tombstones, some broken, some upturned lie scattered over the cemetery bearing testimony to the state of affairs in this place. Even inscriptions giving names of those buried here are effaced — courtesy vandalism and neglect.

Iraqi antiquities: dealers & collectors watch and wait

It has emerged that a coalition of antiquities collectors and arts lawyers, calling itself the American Council for Cultural Policy (ACCP), met with US defence and state department officials prior to the start of military action to offer its assistance in preserving the country's invaluable archaeological collections.

The group is known to consist of a number of influential dealers who favour a relaxation of Iraq's tight restrictions on the ownership and export of antiquities. Its treasurer, William Pearlstein, has described Iraq's laws as 'retentionist' and has said he would support a post-war government that would make it easier to have antiquities dispersed to the US.

Before the Gulf war, a main strand of the ACCP's campaigning has been to persuade its government to revise the Cultural Property Implementation Act in order to minimise efforts by foreign nations to block the import into the US of objects, particularly antiques.

News of the group's meeting with the government has alarmed scientists and archaeologists who fear the ACCP is working to a hidden agenda that will see the US authorities ease restrictions on the movement of Iraqi artefacts after a coalition victory in Iraq.

Read more here.

Warfare then and now

Some useful historical perspective on US combat deaths in conflicts over the past 200-odd years at HowardOwens.com:

Revolutionary War: 4,435
War of 1812: 2,260
Mexican War: 1,733
Civil War: 184,594
Spanish-American War: 385
World War I: 53,513
World War II: 292,131
Korean War: 33,651
Vietnam War: 47,369
Gulf War: 148

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

Those balmy Middle Ages

From the Telegraph:

Last year, scientists working for the UK Climate Impacts Programme said that global temperatures were "the hottest since records began" and added: "We are pretty sure that climate change due to human activity is here and it's accelerating."

This announcement followed research published in 1998, when scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia declared that the 1990s had been hotter than any other period for 1,000 years.

Such claims have now been sharply contradicted by the most comprehensive study yet of global temperature over the past 1,000 years. A review of more than 240 scientific studies has shown that today's temperatures are neither the warmest over the past millennium, nor are they producing the most extreme weather - in stark contrast to the claims of the environmentalists.

The review, carried out by a team from Harvard University, examined the findings of studies of so-called "temperature proxies" such as tree rings, ice cores and historical accounts which allow scientists to estimate temperatures prevailing at sites around the world.

The findings prove that the world experienced a Medieval Warm Period between the ninth and 14th centuries with global temperatures significantly higher even than today.

They also confirm claims that a Little Ice Age set in around 1300, during which the world cooled dramatically. Since 1900, the world has begun to warm up again - but has still to reach the balmy temperatures of the Middle Ages.

Not all of the Middle Ages, however:

. . . severe famines and economic collapse followed the onset of the Little Ice Age around 1300. . . "When the temperature started to drop, harvests failed and England's vine industry died. It makes one wonder why there is so much fear of warmth."

UPDATE: Some further thoughts on this over at Ideofact; while there, check out the current progress of his recent pensées on the continuing impact of World War I, especially as regards the Middle East.