Quatre-vingts or four score

Why do the French use quatre-vingts instead of huitante, and soixante-dix instead of septante? The subject came up recently with a friend visiting from Switzerland, where septante, huitante, and nonante remain in use to varying extents. It seems that Francophone Switzerland isn't the only place that retains these older forms, and though I found some useful links that noted the rise to dominance of soixante-dix, quatre-vingts, and quatre-vingts-dix from the 15th/16th centuries, I was unable to find a good explanation why.

Not that English doesn't have its own peculiarities, to be sure. King James helped ensure that "three score and ten" would remain part of the language, and Abraham Lincoln gave the usage another boost with his "four score and seven".

Kalamazoo, deconstructed

Who would have expected to see a dissection of the mammoth Kalamazoo Medieval Studies conference in the Weekly Standard? Titled "A Dark Age for Medievalists", it starts out as a sally against political correctness and fashionable postmodernism, but soon moves into a more broad description of the whole wacky event. OK, read and discuss.

Stonehenge: royal burial ground

The secret of Stonehenge has been solved: The mysterious circle of large stones in southern England was a burial ground for almost five centuries, and probably holds the remains of a family that long ruled the area, new research concludes.

Based on radiocarbon dating of cremated bones up to 5,000 years old, researchers with the Stonehenge Riverside Project said they are convinced the area was built and then grew as a "domain of the ancestors". . .

The finding marks a major re-thinking of Stonehenge, which in the past was believed to be a burial site for only a century. A combination of the radiocarbon dating; excavations nearby that have revealed a once-thriving "domain of the living;" and the fact that the number of cremated remains appeared to grow over a 500-year period convinced researchers that the site was used for a long time and most likely was a burial ground for one ruling family.

Full article here. The BBC's writeup here has more detail and more nuance, noting:

Two other Stonehenge experts, Professor Tim Darvill, from the University of Bournemouth, and Professor Geoff Wainwright, from the Society of Antiquaries, have a different theory about the monument.

They are convinced that the dominating feature on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire was akin to a "Neolithic Lourdes" - a place where people went on a pilgrimage to get cured.

Forensics and a Civil War skull collection

How do bones heal -- and how fast?

Prior to this study, forensic anthropologists could only say that cranial injuries happened either around the time of death or sometime before it. Now they can trace a particular injury to one week, six weeks, or immediately prior to death. . .

The skeletal remains that Barbian and Sledzik studied are part of a collection of about 2,000 such specimens stored at NMHM. William Hammond, the Surgeon General of the US Army from 1862-1864, had Union doctors collect and carefully catalog skeletal remains from soldiers felled at battlefields from Antietam to Bull Run. Veterans' families sent bones to the museum for decades.

Full article here.

Meteoric iron pistols?

Apparently not, despite traditional claims:

Given pride of place in an unassuming museum on the East Coast of America is a pair of 200-year-old duelling pistols shrouded in mystery.

The intricately decorated guns were said to have been forged from the iron of a fallen meteorite.

They were a unique gift from the commander of a South American region, which would later become Argentina, to the fourth US president, James Madison.

From the picture, they appear rather awkwardly proportioned, and not a perfect pair. Whether they deserve the label, "duelling pistols", is doubtful.

Welcome to Japan!

An unwitting passenger arriving at Japan's Narita airport has received 142g of cannabis after a customs test went awry, officials say.

A customs officer hid a package of the banned substance in a side pocket of a randomly chosen suitcase in order to test airport security.

Sniffer dogs failed to detect the cannabis and the officer could not remember which bag he had put it in.

From the BBC.