tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/history-180/articlesHistory – The Conversation2024-03-29T08:28:33Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2260592024-03-29T08:28:33Z2024-03-29T08:28:33ZHow science and religion came together to build a ‘new Pompeii’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582522/original/file-20240318-28-if08k8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1661%2C1160&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Depiction of an eruption of Vesuvius seen from Portici, by Joseph Wright (c. 1774–6).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Wright_of_Derby_-_Vesuvius_from_Portici.jpg">Huntington Library, Pasadena</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The history of how a new city of Pompeii was built in the 19th century is little known, but a new exhibit reveals its story. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.santuario.it/news/743-mostra-fotografica-osservatorio.html">The exhibition</a>, held in the Catholic <a href="https://www.santuario.it/">shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii</a>, sheds new light on the relationship between science and religion in the late 19th century. The exhibition tells the story of the Meteorological-Geodynamic-Volcanological Observatory that was set up at the shrine in 1890 to monitor the activity of Mount Vesuvius. </p>
<p>This Pompeii isn’t the famous ancient Greco-Roman city, which was destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius in AD79, but rather the modern city down the road from the excavations. The city centres around the huge Catholic shrine, which was founded in the 1870s by an energetic lawyer called Bartolo Longo, on a plot of land next to the ancient Roman amphitheatre. </p>
<p>During his lifetime, Longo built a “new Pompeii” which attracted pilgrims and visitors from all over Italy and beyond. As well as the magnificent church with its treasured painting of <a href="https://www.santuario.it/home/icona-della-vergine24.html">Our Lady of Pompeii</a>, the city was home to several charitable institutions and pioneering urban projects, including an orphanage for girls, a residential home for the sons of prisoners, an industrial-scale printing press – and the observatory. </p>
<p>The new exhibition is displayed in a room with high ceilings in the shrine archives. A neat display of antique photographs, documents and original scientific instruments tells the story of this important but little-known episode in the history of science.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582523/original/file-20240318-30-mnqhac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Painting of Virgin Mary" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582523/original/file-20240318-30-mnqhac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582523/original/file-20240318-30-mnqhac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582523/original/file-20240318-30-mnqhac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582523/original/file-20240318-30-mnqhac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=829&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582523/original/file-20240318-30-mnqhac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582523/original/file-20240318-30-mnqhac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582523/original/file-20240318-30-mnqhac.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1042&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The painting of our Lady of the Rosary.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Matka_Boża_Pompejańska,_Beata_Vergine_del_Santo_Rosario_di_Pompei,_Blessed_Virgin_of_the_Rosary_of_Pompei.jpg">Publikacja</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The development of the new city all started with a miracle. In 1886, Francesco Denza (a Barnabite priest and eminent astronomer, who was the first director of the <a href="https://www.vaticanobservatory.org/">Vatican’s Observatory</a>) recovered from paralysis after praying to Our Lady of Pompeii. </p>
<p>Denza came to Pompeii to give thanks for this healing miracle, and asked what he could do for the shrine in return. Longo proposed setting up an observatory on site, with Denza as director. A tower was constructed above the girls’ orphanage, and filled with state-of-the-art modern instruments.</p>
<p>Longo then organised a grand festival of science to coincide with the observatory’s inauguration on the Feast of the Ascension on May 15 1890. Reports of the event suggest 20,000 people attended. They listened to speeches in praise of the observatory and the broader union of the science, faith and charity that it represented. </p>
<p>Longo’s own speech contrasted the new Christian Pompeii with the ancient Greco-Roman city next door. It pointed to the bloody slaughter that took place in its amphitheatre, where brutal gladiatorial combats and staged animal hunts had been the favourite forms of entertainment in the ancient city.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The shrine in 2024 taken from below." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582573/original/file-20240318-18-ezrohb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582573/original/file-20240318-18-ezrohb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582573/original/file-20240318-18-ezrohb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582573/original/file-20240318-18-ezrohb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582573/original/file-20240318-18-ezrohb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582573/original/file-20240318-18-ezrohb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582573/original/file-20240318-18-ezrohb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The shrine in 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided.</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The new observatory’s significance</h2>
<p>The new Pompeii observatory monitored the activity of Mount Vesuvius, keeping track of seismic movements and meteorological changes. Its regular data bulletins – which were dispatched to other observatories around Italy, as well as to individual scientists and shrine benefactors – now constitute a valuable record of geological events in this unique volcanic terrain. </p>
<p>For instance, the bulletin for September 1 1890 records how: “The lava at the base of the main channel of Vesuvius has formed into a horseshoe shape: on the south-south-eastern side the lava is flowing more abundantly … The crater is emitting occasional flares and a calm jet of projected materials.”</p>
<p>Longo saw the observatory as proof of how religion and science could exist in happy union – contrary to the widespread conviction that “science and faith must of necessity be in eternal disagreement” (to cite from his inaugural speech).</p>
<p>That is the driving message of the shrine’s current exhibition as well. I spoke with the curator, Salvatore Sorrentino (himself both a mathematician and member of the Pompeian clergy). He explained that the observatory itself was born from a scientist’s act of faith, that is, Denza’s prayers to God, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="(Left) Father Francesco Denza and (right) Bartolo Longo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582527/original/file-20240318-18-hl8700.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582527/original/file-20240318-18-hl8700.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582527/original/file-20240318-18-hl8700.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582527/original/file-20240318-18-hl8700.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=426&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582527/original/file-20240318-18-hl8700.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582527/original/file-20240318-18-hl8700.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582527/original/file-20240318-18-hl8700.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">(Left) Father Francesco Denza (1834-1894) and (right) Bartolo Longo (1841-1926).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wiki Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sorrentino also drew a comparison with the work of the great Pisan scientist <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/galileo/">Galileo Galilei</a> (1564-1642), who saw his own experimental methods as a means of asking questions of God, and of discovering the footprint of the creator in the physical world.</p>
<p>The observatory is a landmark in the history of science, that changed the way that the land around Pompeii was understood at the end of the 19th century. Yet at Pompeii, as elsewhere, there was still room for older religious understandings. </p>
<p>An inscription chiselled into the shrine façade commemorates how Pompeii was delivered from the <a href="https://www.italyonthisday.com/2022/04/the-1906-vesuvius-eruption.html">major eruption of April 1906</a>. The inscription records “for posterity” how the painting of Our Lady was taken out of the church during the eruption, and carried in a procession “in view of the fiery peak”. </p>
<p>The surrounding towns “were terrified by the darkness and ruins”, but at Pompeii “the sky became calm, and all souls were reassured”.</p>
<p>The news bulletin published by the shrine narrates how, by the end of this violent eruption, the new Pompeii had received only the gentlest sprinkling of ashes.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/226059/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Hughes is currently holder of a British Academy/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship.</span></em></p>The story of how a ‘new Pompeii’ was built is far less well known than that of the ancient city.Jessica Hughes, Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2247492024-03-27T19:07:18Z2024-03-27T19:07:18ZHow Spanish conquistadors, and a tiny cactus-dwelling insect, gave the world the colour red<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584655/original/file-20240327-20-rtqbex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=45%2C45%2C3021%2C1995&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When you think about a red object, you might picture a red carpet, or the massive ruby in the <a href="https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/the-crown-jewels/#gs.601fv7">Queen’s crown</a>. Indeed, Western monarchies and marketing from brands such as <a href="https://www.businessoffashion.com/podcasts/luxury/the-bof-podcast-how-christian-louboutin-turned-red-soles-into-a-status-symbol/">Christian Louboutin</a> have cemented our association of the colour red with power and wealth. </p>
<p>But what if I told you this connection has been pervasive across time and cultures? In fact, the red pigment has fascinated humans for millennia. </p>
<h2>Prickly pear blood</h2>
<p>The vibrant red we often see in cosmetics, food and drinks is actually derived from a tiny insect called the cochineal, which lives on prickly pear cacti and today is <a href="https://www.livescience.com/36292-red-food-dye-bugs-cochineal-carmine.html">harvested mainly</a> from Peru and the Canary Islands. The cochineal’s ubiquitous crimson dye is also known as Carmine, Natural Red or <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-7-2013-007471_EN.html">E120</a>.</p>
<p>The links between red and esteem and power can be traced back to the <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Inca_Civilization/">Inca civilisation</a> that flourished in the Andean region of South America from around 1400 to 1533.</p>
<p>Red carries profound symbolism in Inca mythology, intertwined with the legendary story of Mama Huaco – the inaugural warrior queen – who was often envisioned as emerging in a <a href="https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/mama-huaco-the-j-paul-getty-museum-collection--343469909087671035/">resplendent red dress</a>.</p>
<p>The historical journey of the cochineal mirrors the journeys of several other global staples – such as potatoes, chilli and tomatoes – <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/news/extension/history-tomatoes">that</a> <a href="https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=CH041#">originated</a> from pre-Columbian Mexico and South America. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584664/original/file-20240327-24-uoh2t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584664/original/file-20240327-24-uoh2t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584664/original/file-20240327-24-uoh2t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584664/original/file-20240327-24-uoh2t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584664/original/file-20240327-24-uoh2t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584664/original/file-20240327-24-uoh2t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584664/original/file-20240327-24-uoh2t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584664/original/file-20240327-24-uoh2t6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A close up view of cochineals (<em>Dactylopius coccus</em>) on a prickly pear cactus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The cochineal insect was brought to Europe by Spanish conquistadors in the 15th century, and held a worth akin to gold and silver. It strengthened Spain’s economic influence, provided support for the Spanish empire’s expansion, and stimulated <a href="https://hmsc.harvard.edu/online-exhibits/cochineal1/color-power/">global trade</a>. </p>
<p>Cultivation and harvest were carried out by the Indigenous Mesoamerican peoples living under Spanish rule, who had already been doing this <a href="https://www.loc.gov/ghe/cascade/index.html?appid=a4fb6d38afd64e3ebe4618c776b70e7f">for centuries</a>. They were <a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180202-the-insect-that-painted-europe-red">paid in pennies</a> while their labour allowed Spain to maintain its monopoly on the valuable red dye.</p>
<h2>The king’s shoes</h2>
<p>Before the conquistadors began the cochineal trade, achieving a rich red hue was a challenge, which meant European nobility had to use purple and blue instead. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Tyrian_Purple/">But by the 1460s</a>, the cochineal gained such popularity in Europe that it <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column/52831/the-color-purple">superseded Tyrian purple</a> as the traditional colour of the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church. This red was unmatched in vibrancy. Its depth and rarity eventually made it among the most expensive dyes of the time. </p>
<p>It became a prominent feature in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/Baroque-art-and-architecture">European Baroque art</a> – characterised by its intensity and drama. And its widespread uptake by European royalty further solidified its connection with power and wealth.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584668/original/file-20240327-16-ssozzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584668/original/file-20240327-16-ssozzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584668/original/file-20240327-16-ssozzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584668/original/file-20240327-16-ssozzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584668/original/file-20240327-16-ssozzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584668/original/file-20240327-16-ssozzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584668/original/file-20240327-16-ssozzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584668/original/file-20240327-16-ssozzz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Return of the Prodigal Son by Dutch Master Rembrandt is a famous example of a dramatic baroque work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son_(Rembrandt)#/media/File:Rembrandt_Harmensz_van_Rijn_-_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In France, King Louis XIV’s (1638-1715) penchant for red was evident in his lavish décor choices, which included 435 red beds in his palace at <a href="https://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/history/great-characters/louis-xiv">Versailles</a>. He displayed red in the <a href="https://www.thevoiceoffashion.com/intersections/famous-wardrobes-then-and-now/the-emperors-red-shoes-4155">soles of his shoes</a>. He even instituted a law in 1673 restricting the coveted red heels to aristocrats who were granted permission by the monarch himself, effectively making them a hallmark of royal favour. </p>
<h2>Spiritual significance</h2>
<p>The colour red holds significant spiritual symbolism across various religions. In Judeo-Christian traditions, an <a href="https://ornagrinman.com/2020/04/28/adom-dam-adama-adam/">intriguing connection exists</a> between the Hebrew word for “man” (Adam), “red” and “blood”, all stemming from a common etymological root. </p>
<p>According to Biblical accounts, Adam, the first man, was formed from the Earth – and the colour red could symbolise the richness of the soil or clay from which Adam was created. This interplay of language and symbolism underscores a profound interconnectedness between red and spiritual belief systems.</p>
<p>This spiritual significance reverberates across cultures. In <a href="https://www.ipl.org/essay/Hindu-Symbolism-Analysis-PKXBJ336JE8R">Hindu tradition</a>, red is imbued with sacred meaning symbolising fertility, purity and prosperity. In Chinese culture, it is considered auspicious, and signifies joy and prosperity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584667/original/file-20240327-28-fkv4gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584667/original/file-20240327-28-fkv4gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584667/original/file-20240327-28-fkv4gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584667/original/file-20240327-28-fkv4gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584667/original/file-20240327-28-fkv4gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584667/original/file-20240327-28-fkv4gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584667/original/file-20240327-28-fkv4gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584667/original/file-20240327-28-fkv4gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Hinduism, red represents love and prosperity, which is reflected in the bindi – a small red dot applied between the eyebrows.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Red hues have also been viewed as a symbol of vitality <a href="https://asia.si.edu/explore-art-culture/art-stories/colors/red/">across spiritual and cultural groups</a>, as they emulate blood, our life force. In <a href="https://www.terrasanctamuseum.org/en/green-white-red-black-how-to-understand-the-colours-of-the-catholic-christian-liturgy/">Roman Catholic tradition</a>, red is symbolic of martyrdom, the spirit and the blood of Christ. </p>
<h2>The colour of champions</h2>
<p>In terms of visibility, red has the <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/ems/09_visiblelight/">longest wavelength</a>. This might help explain our longstanding cross-cultural attraction to it: studies show it stimulates excitement and energy when viewed, which can cause physical effects such as an increased heart rate. It has even been shown to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7658407/">increase our appetite</a>. </p>
<p>Psychologically, red seems to have more influence on humans compared with other colours in the spectrum. In an experiment at the 2004 Athens Olympics, athletes across four contact sports were randomly clad in either red or blue. Those who wore red were <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/435293a">more often victorious</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18344128/#:%7E:text=No%20significant%20differences%20were%20found,over%20a%2055%2Dyear%20period.">Another study of</a> English football teams over a 55-year period found wearing red shirts was associated with greater success on the field. That’s because red is linked to a heightened sense of determination and endurance, which can translate to better focus. From this angle, red seems to be the colour of champions. </p>
<p>The “red carpet” tradition itself is thousands of years old. The <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/an-unexpected-history-of-the-red-carpet/index.html">first known reference</a> to it comes from the ancient Greek play Agamemnon, written in 458 BCE, in which a red path (said to be reserved for the gods) is laid out for King Agamemnon by his wife as he returns from the Trojan war. The twist is that Clytemnestra seeks to lead him to his death: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Let all the ground be red / Where those feet pass; and Justice, dark of yore, / Home light him to the hearth he looks not for.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This symbol has since morphed into the celebrity red carpet, graced by pop culture “royalty”.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, red also has also garnered some alarming associations in our everyday vernacular, with “red pills”, “red flags” and “seeing red” being just a few examples. </p>
<p>This potent symbol continues to have diverse interpretations, representing not only achievement, but also the power – and sometimes the dangers – that come with it.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584669/original/file-20240327-20-td6a7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584669/original/file-20240327-20-td6a7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/584669/original/file-20240327-20-td6a7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584669/original/file-20240327-20-td6a7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584669/original/file-20240327-20-td6a7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584669/original/file-20240327-20-td6a7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584669/original/file-20240327-20-td6a7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/584669/original/file-20240327-20-td6a7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Besides its links to spirituality and nobility, red is also used to convey more sinister meanings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224749/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Panizza Allmark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Purple was highly valued and associated with royalty, power, and prestige in various ancient cultures, including the Roman and Byzantine Empires. So how did red creep its way in?Panizza Allmark, Professor Visual & Cultural Studies, Edith Cowan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2212752024-03-25T13:05:18Z2024-03-25T13:05:18ZHow Henry VIII’s grandmother used a palace in Northamptonshire to build the mighty Tudor dynasty<p>Today, you would be hard-pressed to find any visible evidence that <a href="https://www.royalpalaces.com/palaces/collyweston-house/">Collyweston village in Northamptonshire</a> was once <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Elite_Female_Constructions_of_Power_and.html?id=w7_CvQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y">home to a palace</a> presided over by Henry VIII’s grandmother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. As a royal power base, the palace was an epicentre of Tudor power and propaganda in the 16th century and was a key stopping point for royal visits. This included two royal tours in 1503 and 1541, which were crucial to the making (and remaking) of the Tudor dynasty. </p>
<p>Margaret Beaufort acquired Collyweston manor after her son Henry VII ascended to the English throne following the battle of Bosworth in 1485. There, she set upon expanding the manor house into a palace befitting her status as king’s mother. </p>
<p>Beaufort’s presence at Collyweston formed part of a strategic plan, devised by mother and son, to exert royal influence both locally and nationally. Collyweston was in the heart of the country at a time when most of the royal palaces were clustered in and around London and the neighbouring county of Lincolnshire was the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/urban-history/article/vowesses-the-anchoresses-and-the-aldermens-wives-lady-margaret-beaufort-and-the-devout-society-of-late-medieval-stamford/7046EE13EA0E125BE58676150CAF34F3">epicentre of Beaufort’s influence</a>.</p>
<p>In the early years of the Tudor dynasty, Beaufort’s presence in the area was particularly important as Henry VII had spent much of his youth in exile in Brittany. His mother’s longstanding connections to the local area therefore helped proclaim his legitimacy. </p>
<p>The site was also close to the Great North Road (now partly occupied by the A1), making it an ideal stopping point for royal parties travelling between London and the north.</p>
<h2>Beaufort gets building</h2>
<p>While nothing remains above ground and no drawings of the palace survive, Beaufort’s <a href="https://thetudortravelguide.com/margaret-beaufort-and-the-palace-of-collyweston/">extensive works to the palace</a> over several years, are preserved in numerous volumes of <a href="https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/lady-margaret-beaufort-domina-fundatrix">household and building accounts</a>. </p>
<p>By the early 16th century, the palace was framed around three courtyards and boasted a chapel, great hall, rooms for Margaret and her household, a <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/jewel-tower/history/#:%7E:text=The%20Jewel%20Tower%20is%20a,much%20of%20the%20historic%20palace.">jewel tower</a> and library. Perched on the crest of a hill, the palace offered spectacular views over the Welland valley. The land falling westwards from the residence included a <a href="https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/history/gardens-landscapes/what-is-a-deer-park">deer park</a> of approximately 108 acres, along with ponds, gardens, orchards, summer houses and walkways.</p>
<p>Between 1502 and 1503, Beaufort commissioned significant building works, including repainting the chapel, new walkways through the grounds and a new accommodation block overlooking the deer park. This flurry of work anticipated the arrival of the first of two <a href="https://henryontour.uk/">Tudor tours</a>, known as progresses, which were to stop at Collyweston.</p>
<p>Progresses played a vital role in presenting the king (and his wider family) to his people, publicly displaying him as the people’s sovereign. They gave the king and his retinue an opportunity to hunt, engage with the localities and hear the grievances of the local elites and their people. </p>
<p>The 1503 progress notably celebrated the marriage of Beaufort’s granddaughter (Henry VIII’s sister, Margaret Tudor) to James IV of Scotland. For the fledgling Tudor dynasty, the event was a triumph, creating a political alliance in the form of a peace treaty between England and Scotland. </p>
<p>Beaufort recorded the event in a <a href="https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2011/08/the-beaufort-beauchamp-hours.html">prayer book</a> gifted to her by her mother, Margaret Beauchamp, along with other key dates relating to the dynasty’s successes. The wedding party stayed at Collyweston for two weeks, where they enjoyed feasting, hunting, entertainment and services in Beaufort’s repainted chapel.</p>
<h2>Fit for a king</h2>
<p>In 1541, approximately 32 years after his grandmother’s death, Henry VIII returned to Collyweston with his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, during their progress to York. </p>
<p>To travel as far as York was unusual. But Henry intended to secure the region after the Pilgrimage of Grace (a popular revolt that began in Yorkshire in October 1536) in much the same way his father had done in 1486, when he had taken a large force north to secure his reign after the wars of the roses. </p>
<p>Catherine also embarked on <a href="https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/catherine-howard-thomas-culpeper/">her ill-fated affair</a> with her husband’s friend, the courtier Thomas Culpeper, during the progress and met with him secretly throughout. </p>
<p>Henry VIII and Catherine stayed at Collyweston palace – the queen in rooms known to Margaret Beaufort and once occupied by Henry’s mother – on August 5, on the journey from London to York, and from October 15 to 17 on their return. They had departed from Westminster with their summer court of around 400 to 500 people and a group of 4,000 to 5,000 horsemen – a group larger than most Tudor towns. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570069/original/file-20240118-15-2p9jdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The Field of the Cloth of Gold by Hans Holbein the Younger (1545)." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570069/original/file-20240118-15-2p9jdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570069/original/file-20240118-15-2p9jdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570069/original/file-20240118-15-2p9jdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570069/original/file-20240118-15-2p9jdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570069/original/file-20240118-15-2p9jdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570069/original/file-20240118-15-2p9jdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570069/original/file-20240118-15-2p9jdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=365&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Field of the Cloth of Gold by Hans Holbein the Younger (1545) shows the scale of Henry VIII’s progresses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/collection/405794">Royal Collection</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The company was heavily armed, including at least 1,000 soldiers. The king and queen travelled in style, accompanied by an estimated 400 courtiers, officials, musicians and servants.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/sep/22/henry-viii-tent-field-of-cloth-of-gold-reconstruction">Elaborate tents</a> and <a href="https://henryontour.uk/blog/sovereign-2023-royal-progress-1541">the richest tapestries, plates and clothes</a> were brought from London to furnish the royal court on the move. Collyweston would once again have been a hub of activity during the progress, albeit with a different purpose and tone from 1503.</p>
<p>The sleepy appearance of Collyweston village today belies its significance as a stage on which key events relating to the Tudor dynasty were played out. While the site has fallen into relative obscurity, for the Tudors, it was very much on the map as a place of security in the face of uncertainty.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Delman has been researching Collyweston Palace for over a decade. Her doctoral research on the site was funded by a full Arts and Humanities Research Council award at the University of Oxford and she continues to investigate the significance of the palace as a site of female power in early Tudor England. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keely Hayes-Davies receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council for "Henry on Tour", a research project exploring the progresses of Henry VIII. The project is jointly led by the University of York and Historic Royal Palaces in partnership with Newcastle University (henryontour.uk).</span></em></p>Beaufort’s presence at Collyweston formed part of a strategic plan, devised by mother and son, to exert royal influence both locally and nationally.Rachel Delman, Heritage Partnerships Coordinator, University of OxfordKeely Hayes-Davies, PhD Candidate, Early Modern History, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2234222024-03-21T12:25:56Z2024-03-21T12:25:56ZWhy are Americans fighting over no-fault divorce? Maybe they can’t agree what marriage is for<p>“First comes love, then comes marriage” – so goes the classic children’s rhyme. But not everyone agrees. Increasingly, the idea that love is the most important reason to marry – or at least to stay married – is under attack. Republican pundits and lawmakers have been pushing back on the availability of no-fault divorce, challenging the idea that not being in love is a valid reason to end a marriage. </p>
<p>Speaking as a <a href="https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/law/faculty_and_staff/directory/yablonzug_marcia.php">professor of family law</a>, I know such views aren’t new. Zsa Zsa Gabor <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-10984784">once quipped</a>, “Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.” But while Gabor was probably joking, the Republican attack on divorce is serious.</p>
<h2>A history of American divorce</h2>
<p>For most of U.S. history, getting a divorce was difficult. Many states <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/07/03/south-dakota-divorce-capital/">banned it entirely</a>, while others permitted it only under limited circumstances – typically <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/the-lost-history-of-no-fault-divorces/">cruelty, desertion or adultery</a>. Unhappily married couples who couldn’t prove such “faults” were effectively stuck.</p>
<p>Then, in 1969, California became the first state to <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1057&context=callaw">allow no-fault divorce</a> – meaning that a spouse could get a divorce simply by asking for it, without having to prove that their partner had done something wrong first. </p>
<p>After California enacted no-fault divorce, the rest of the states quickly followed. By 1977, 47 states permitted no-fault divorce, and by 1985, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/No-fault-Divorce-What-Went-Wrong/Parkman/p/book/9780367154394">all 50 states permitted some form of no-fault divorce</a>.</p>
<p>But now, nearly 50 years later, no-fault divorce is under increasing attack.</p>
<p>The issue gained <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/stephen-crowder-divorce-1234727777/">renewed</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/18/opinions/crowder-right-wing-rhetoric-about-divorce-ignores-history-shanley/index.html">national</a> <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/voices/steven-crowder-and-no-fault-divorce.html">attention</a> in 2023, when Steven Crowder, a conservative commentator who prides himself on his “provocative” views, expressed outrage and disbelief that his wife could divorce him without his consent. </p>
<p>Crowder isn’t alone in such criticisms: Divorce has become a hot topic among many red-state Republican lawmakers. Most recently, in January 2024, Oklahoma lawmaker Dusty Deevers proposed a bill to <a href="https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/2024/01/26/no-fault-divorce-law-oklahoma-senator-wants-to-end/72354142007/">eliminate no-fault divorce</a> and suggested <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/dusty-deevers-public-shaming-people-who-divorce-republican-senate-1848878">“public shaming”</a> of spouses who commit marital fault and then divorce. Restricting no-fault divorce is also part of both the <a href="https://texasgop.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022-RPT-Platform.pdf">Texas</a> and <a href="https://ne.gop/issues/">Nebraska</a> Republican Party platforms, and was <a href="https://www.wwno.org/news/2023-01-12/louisiana-republican-party-considers-backing-elimination-of-no-fault-divorce">recently debated</a> by Louisiana lawmakers.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f_Gyv4VM6QY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Oklahoma’s KFOR reports on a proposal to end no-fault divorce in the state.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ability to divorce regardless of what the other party wants is the essence of no-fault divorce. I think it’s alarming that it’s under attack. Nevertheless, the idea that not being in love is a valid reason to divorce is an assumption that should be questioned. It’s based on the idea that love is the purpose of marriage, and that itself is debatable.</p>
<h2>What’s marriage for, anyway?</h2>
<p>Marriage is a legal status that confers important rights and benefits on the married, and these rights and benefits <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Public_Vows.html?id=Jnh7ylcLaB4C">have nothing to do with love</a>. In fact, the purpose of these advantages is to give couples non-love reasons to marry. The idea is that the social benefits of marriage are so significant that incentivizing marriage, or even flat-out <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/hotgun-weddings/">paying people to marry</a>, is justified.</p>
<p>For an example of this kind of cost-benefit analysis, consider the policy debate over whether children are better off being raised by two married parents. In her recent book “<a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo205550079.html">The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and started Falling Behind</a>,” economics professor Melissa Kearney argues that this advantage is significant and wide-ranging. Not surprisingly, Kearney’s work was <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/the-ultimate-privilege-two-parent">eagerly embraced by</a> <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriage-economist-kearney-two-parent-privilege-socioeconomic-mobility-equity-single-mother-divorce-4b499a5e">pro-marriage advocates</a> and has reinvigorated <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-two-parent-privilege-a-conversation-on-the-case-for-marriage">long-standing discussions</a> <a href="https://www.niskanencenter.org/discussion-on-marriage-economic-opportunity-and-family-flourishing-with-melissa-kearney">about how to</a> <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/06/marriage-political-expert-roundtable-00133856">further encourage marriage</a>. </p>
<p>If children do better when raised by married parents, it’s understandable that the government would enact laws and policies to promote marriage. It also explains why the government might seek to limit divorce. This is a purely instrumental view of marriage, and one that would have been <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674008755">very familiar to 18th- and 19th-century Americans</a>. </p>
<p>For most of U.S. history, marriage was unabashedly transactional. Laws <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674008755">essentially guaranteed</a> that most men and women would wed; love had nothing to do with it.</p>
<h2>Striking a ‘marital bargain’</h2>
<p>Historians refer to marrying for legal and economic benefits as the “<a href="https://casetext.com/case/perry-v-schwarzenegger-10">marital bargain</a>.” However, in the late 19th century, acceptance of the transactional nature of the marital bargain began to wane, and publicly, men and women began to declare that <a href="https://search.worldcat.org/title/marriage-a-history-how-love-conquered-marriage/oclc/64589809">love was the purpose of marriage</a>. As historian Nancy Cott writes in her book “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674008755">Public Vows</a>,” by the turn of the 20th century, American culture had “put love and money on opposite sides of the street.” </p>
<p>My book, “<a href="https://steerforth.com/product/youll-do-9781586423742/">You’ll Do: A History of Marrying for Reasons Other than Love</a>,” also explores this history and shows how Americans went from encouraging the marital bargain to viewing it as harmful, both to couples and to the institution of marriage as a whole. </p>
<p>Despite the public view that love is the only reason to marry, the law takes a more practical approach, recognizing that love alone may not be enough to get couples to the altar. That’s why it continues to encourage marriage for instrumental reasons, with <a href="https://steerforth.com/product/youll-do-9781586423742/">benefits ranging from tax breaks and immigration preferences to criminal law defenses</a>.</p>
<p>When marriage was a clear bargain for exchange, the benefits of the union were obvious. Like the 19th-century marital advertisement “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=700646">Man with farm seeks woman with tractor</a>,” each side knew exactly what they were getting. Now, the purpose of marriage is less clear. I believe the move to eliminate no-fault divorce is simply the latest symptom of this confusion regarding the goals of marriage.</p>
<p>If marriage is about love, then a lack of love should be the quintessential reason to divorce. However, if marriage is a contract for benefits, then it isn’t surprising that Crowder and other no-fault critics are outraged that it can be unilaterally broken. Although the push to eliminate no-fault divorce is presented as a fight over the purpose of divorce, it’s really a fight over the meaning of marriage.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marcia Zug does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A growing number of Republicans say that you shouldn’t be able to divorce simply because you’ve fallen out of love. It’s an idea with a long history.Marcia Zug, Professor of Family Law, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2255922024-03-19T14:07:40Z2024-03-19T14:07:40ZHow we discovered the wreck of a torpedoed British ship after a 109-year mystery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581637/original/file-20240313-18-d09lmt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1879%2C720&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The SS Hartdale is lying at a depth of 80 metres, 12 miles off the coast of Northern Ireland.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Roberts/Unpath’d Waters</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A British cargo ship which was torpedoed and sunk during the first world war has finally surrendered its 109-year-old secret. </p>
<p>The SS Hartdale was steaming from Glasgow to Alexandria in Egypt with its cargo of coal when it was targeted by a German U-boat in March 1915. The location of the ship had long been a mystery, but my colleagues and I have, at last, pinpointed its final resting place. </p>
<p>The old adage that we know more about the surface of the Moon and about Mars than we do about Earth’s deep sea may no longer hold entirely true. But the reality is that we still have a great deal more to learn. </p>
<p>Even our seemingly familiar shallow seafloors near the coast are relatively poorly mapped. Many people may think such areas are well explored, but there are still fundamental questions we can’t answer because detailed surveys haven’t been done.</p>
<p>The UK’s surrounding seas hold a vast underwater graveyard. Thousands of shipwrecks, from centuries of trade and conflict, litter the seabed like silent historical markers. </p>
<p>Surprisingly, even though we know where many wrecks lie, their true identities often remain a mystery. But the <a href="https://unpathdwaters.org.uk">Unpath’d Waters</a> project is now linking maritime archives with existing scientific data to help reveal some of these secrets. </p>
<h2>History meets science</h2>
<p>Scientists are using detailed sonar surveys from more than 100 shipwrecks west of the Isle of Man. Combining this underwater data with historical documents from around the world, researchers are piecing together a massive nautical jigsaw puzzle, finally revealing the true stories of these sunken vessels. </p>
<p>The first successful identification to be made as part of this work is that of the SS Hartdale. When the 105 metre long vessel was torpedoed at dawn on March 13 1915 by the <a href="https://uboat.net/wwi/boats/?boat=27">German submarine U-27</a>, two of its crew were lost and its final location remained unknown.</p>
<p>Researchers began by scanning known wrecks in the attack area, narrowing the possibilities down to less than a dozen. Then, they compared wreck details with official records and diver observations, eliminating candidates one by one until the SS Hartdale emerged as the perfect match. The vessel is lying at a depth of 80 metres, 12 miles off the coast of Northern Ireland.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An old longitudinal section drawing of a ship." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=269&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582797/original/file-20240319-18-d8akp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=339&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The original plans for the SS Hartdale from 1910, originally named Benbrook.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/archive-library/documents/lrf-pun-w864-0026-p">The Lloyd’s Register Foundation</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Important details about SS Hartdale are available online via the <a href="https://hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/archive-library/ships/benbrook-1910-hartdale/search/everywhere:benbrook/page/1">Lloyds Register Foundation</a>. This includes plans for the construction of the ship, formerly known as Benbrook, built for Joseph Hault & Co. Ltd in 1910. This information, together with eye-witness accounts reported in the national press at the time, have proved to be crucial in confirming the wreck’s identity. </p>
<p>The US historian Michael Lowrey also provided the project team with a translated copy of notes extracted from an official German account and scans of U-27’s official war diary made by its commanding officer, <a href="https://uboat.net/wwi/men/commanders/391.html">Kapitänleutnant Bernd Wegener</a>. These contained descriptions of the events leading up to the sinking, coordinates for the attack and the exact location on Hartdale where the torpedo struck its hull – a detail strikingly confirmed by the sonar scan data.</p>
<p>Armed with this compelling evidence, the research team reached a definitive conclusion. The only viable candidate for the SS Hartdale was a previously “unknown” 105 metre long wreck. It has been lying just a few hundred metres to the south of where U-27 launched its fatal attack.</p>
<h2>Unrestricted submarine warfare</h2>
<p>Following its attack on Hartdale, the U-27 went on to play a prominent role in how naval warfare developed during the rest of the first world war. This came during a period of escalating tension in 1915. </p>
<p>Following the sinking of the British ocean liners, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lusitania-British-ship">RMS Lusitania</a> in May, and the <a href="https://wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?11110">SS Arabic</a> in August of that year by U-boats, the way the war at sea was being conducted became increasingly heated and controversial. </p>
<p>Shortly after the SS Arabic was sunk by a different U-boat, the U-27 was itself attacked and destroyed by the Royal Navy Q-ship <a href="https://www.westernfrontassociation.com/world-war-i-articles/the-baralong-incident-29-january-1917/">HMS Baralong</a>. Q-ships were heavily armed merchant ships designed to lure submarines into making surface attacks. </p>
<p>The surviving German sailors, including U-27’s commanding officer, were then allegedly executed by British sailors in front of American witnesses. It has since become known as the “Baralong incident”.</p>
<p>German outcry over this event combined with other factors contributed to the start of <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-u-boat-campaign-that-almost-broke-britain">“unrestricted submarine warfare”</a> by Germany in February 1917. This meant that warnings were no longer issued to merchant vessels prior to U-boat attacks and loss of life was significantly increased.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Roberts receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council </span></em></p>The SS Hartdale was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 and its final resting place had long been unknown.Michael Roberts, SEACAMS R&D Project Manager, Centre for Applied Marine Sciences, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2253302024-03-18T20:34:22Z2024-03-18T20:34:22ZOperation Legacy: How Britain covered up its colonial crimes<p>In 2011, the world learned of the secret British policy called <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes">Operation Legacy</a> that was implemented in the 1950s. The goal of this policy was to remove incriminating documents from former colonies in the months before each one became politically independent. </p>
<p>Documents that might embarrass or damage the British government, police and military <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/29/revealed-bonfire-papers-empire">were either secretly removed or destroyed</a>. This policy had an impact far and wide, and was implemented in British colonies throughout the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. </p>
<p>In an age where <a href="https://www.pbs.org/video/the-misinformation-age-0xqnez/">misinformation</a> is everywhere, Operation Legacy provides us with an instructive example of the repercussions faced when people with power determine what information is available to interpret events of the past. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/oPGVGckn7kQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A TED-Ed explainer on Operation Legacy and how British officials destroyed embarrassing documents or sent them to the U.K.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Kenya: the unravelling of a British lie</h2>
<p>We know about Operation Legacy because of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/21/mau-mau-torture-kenyans-compensation">a case brought before the British High Court</a>. Five elderly Kenyans accused the British colonial government of imposing a policy of torture and human rights abuses during a state of emergency from 1952-1960 instituted in response to a rebellion against colonial rule.</p>
<p>The case revealed the price many Kenyans paid as they fought against colonialism. At the core of the conflict was access to land. From the beginning of colonial rule in 1895, the British were aggressive in their efforts to displace Africans from their lands. The goal was to reserve the most fertile land for white settlement and farms. </p>
<p>By the 1950s, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-12997138">African resistance became more organized and intense</a>. When the colonial government declared a state of emergency, Kenyans suspected of challenging British colonial rule faced even greater risks. The state of emergency gave colonial authorities a wide ranging set of powers — which included torture and other human rights abuses — to deal with the anti-colonialists. </p>
<p>The propaganda from the period is telling. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-vOLVyPSdwc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A 1955 British news report casting Kenyan anti-colonial rebels as fanatics and bandits.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Privileging the colonizer’s narrative</h2>
<p>Many historians of 20th century Kenya — but not all — overlooked or downplayed this colonial policy of violence. Some might argue they should be forgiven as there were no official colonial documents that revealed a British policy of human rights violations in Kenya. </p>
<p>But what happens when the absence of proof is really due to the deliberate removal of evidence?</p>
<p>Others might be inclined to think those historians did not look hard enough. They were only willing to believe the official colonial records even though there were Kenyans alive who could give oral testimony. </p>
<p>For the five elderly Kenyans, the irrefutable evidence was the scars they bore on their bodies. Make no mistake, the human rights violations were extreme. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2016/5/5/we-are-the-mau-mau-kenyans-share-stories-of-torture">They even included castration</a>. The Kenyans also had their memories. Yet, this mattered little for those historians who privileged official colonial documents above all else. </p>
<p>However, it was the work of historians David Anderson, Huw Bennett and Caroline Elkins that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2011.629082">helped turn the court case around</a>. Their research challenged the historical silence on colonial violence during this period. </p>
<p>In court, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbv027">evidence was presented</a> that colonial documents were deliberately removed and that the testimony of the elderly Kenyans was, in fact, credible. In December 2010, the presiding judge ruled that the British Foreign and Commonwealth office had to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/120/3/852/19858">release all documents related to the case</a>. </p>
<p>Once these documents were released and analyzed, the evidence was clear. The British colonial government sanctioned extreme abuses. We now know that over 80,000 people were imprisoned without trial and more than 1,000 people were convicted as “terrorists” and put to <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/Histories-of-the-Hanged">death by hanging</a>. </p>
<p>Only eight white officers were accused of extreme abuse, and they were all granted amnesty. This includes the officer accused of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/11/mau-mau-high-court-foreign-office-documents">“roasting alive” one Kenyan</a>. </p>
<p>Shortly after the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was required to release documents concerning the case, <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201011/ldhansrd/text/110405-wms0001.htm?_gl=1*1wvpzwq*_ga*ODkyMzY3MTQxLjE3MTAyODQ4NDI.*_ga_QQVTWCSLDS*MTcxMDI4NDg0Mi4xLjEuMTcxMDI4NTMwOS42MC4wLjA.#1104069000380">an announcement</a> was made in the House of Lords that files were also being held concerning 37 former British colonies. An <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43917577">independent audit</a> revealed there were more than 20,000 files taken from former colonies. </p>
<p>Some files were also slated for destruction, and there is no way to know how many were destroyed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581372/original/file-20240312-18-k34uug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Part of a document detailing" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581372/original/file-20240312-18-k34uug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581372/original/file-20240312-18-k34uug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=136&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581372/original/file-20240312-18-k34uug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=136&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581372/original/file-20240312-18-k34uug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=136&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581372/original/file-20240312-18-k34uug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=171&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581372/original/file-20240312-18-k34uug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=171&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581372/original/file-20240312-18-k34uug.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=171&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Instructions given to colonial officials for the destruction of documents found in the U.K.’s national archives.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The National Archives)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Guyana: destroyed documents and a coup</h2>
<p>The files that did survive were eventually transferred to The National Archives in London. They are now officially referred to as the “Migrated Archive,” a carefully chosen misnomer. Now that they are in the public domain, we have a better idea about the documents available for other former British colonies. </p>
<p>I am currently working on a project, <a href="https://www.chainedinparadise.com">Chained in Paradise</a>, that explores the impact of Operation Legacy on the Caribbean. When the public was informed about the specific documents in the Migrated Archive, historian Richard Drayton was <a href="https://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/empire-decolonisation/britains-secret-archive-of-decolonisation/">the first to point out</a> there were no documents for British Guiana, present-day Guyana.</p>
<p>In other words, unlike in Kenya where some documents were hidden, in British Guiana they were all destroyed. Did Britain have things to hide concerning its colonial policies in British Guiana? The short answer is yes. </p>
<h2>The Personal net</h2>
<p>Approximately one year after Britain declared a State of Emergency in Kenya, it declared another in British Guiana in October 1953; six months after the colony’s first democratic election.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/26/mi5-files-coup-british-guiana">British troops were deployed to remove the elected Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan</a>. The constitution of British Guiana was suspended and the British governor ruled for three more years. The area formerly known as British Guiana became the independent nation of Guyana in 1966.</p>
<p>Jagan was accused of being a communist and went to England to protest his removal. However, he and his allies were eventually placed under house arrest.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PHRtChiUH7Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A British news report on the deposition of Guyana’s Prime Minister Cheddi Jagan.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to one document I have reviewed from the Migrated Archives, less than one month after Prime Minister Jagan was elected, records in British Guiana were incorporated into a secret system for hiding official correspondence. It was called the “Personal” net.</p>
<p>There are three things we can learn from these records:</p>
<p>1) As soon as British Guiana had its democratically held elections, plans were put in place for high levels of British secrecy. Not only was there to be no transparency, there was also to be high levels of duplicity.</p>
<p>2) Before political independence — in other words, when Britain was on the cusp of losing its political control — documents were to be destroyed so the incoming government would be left in the dark about the tactics of its former British colonizers. </p>
<p>3) The document below suggests that certain colonial records could be destroyed because there were copies in England. To date, no such documents have been released as part of the Migrated Archives. This raises questions about where those documents currently are and if they still exist.</p>
<h2>History is about the future</h2>
<p>In his book, <a href="https://www.theportobellobookshop.com/9781846275852"><em>The History Thieves</em></a>, journalist Ian Cobain argues that Operation Legacy was implemented so that British colonialism would be remembered with “fondness and respect.” He is right, but there is more to history than what we remember. </p>
<p>The long-term objective of Operation Legacy was to undermine future criticism of colonialism by sanitizing the past. That would make the transition from colonialism to neocolonialism easier as future economic relations with their former colonies would be negotiated without a proper historical understanding of Britain’s motives.</p>
<p>History was a powerful tool of the British empire, and it has been used to maintain unequal relations with its former colonies long after they attained political independence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Audra Diptée receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. </span></em></p>Operation Legacy highlights the repercussions faced when people with power determine what information is available to interpret events of the past.Audra Diptée, Associate Professor, History, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2220942024-03-18T17:12:01Z2024-03-18T17:12:01ZThe hidden racist history of hair loss<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581618/original/file-20240313-24-vfq5r9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C28%2C4810%2C3168&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/image-bald-man-looking-half-head-1632693475">Chris Tefme/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Hair loss is common in men and women, particularly with age – for example, androgenetic alopecia (or pattern baldness) affects <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40265-016-0629-5">80% of men and 40% of women</a>. For the most part, it can be physically inconsequential. </p>
<p>Yet, modern society has a distaste for hair loss. Look at how news stories have speculated about whether ten-year-old Prince George and his younger brother, Louis, will inherit their father’s <a href="https://london-post.co.uk/princes-louis-and-george-will-probably-go-bald-like-their-dad-says-hair-expert/#:%7E:text=expert%20%2D%20London%20Post-,Princes%20Louis%20and%20George%20will%20probably%20go,their%20Dad%2C%20says%20hair%20expert&text=Royal%20Princes%20George%20and%20Louis,hair%2C%20an%20expert%20has%20claimed.">“baldness genes”</a>. </p>
<p>The market in hair restoration procedures is projected to be worth <a href="https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/4844574/hair-restoration-services-market-by-service-type">£10 billion</a> by 2026. You can even purchase wigs for babies that proclaim to make children up to three years old <a href="https://www.amazon.com/colorvay-Hairband-headband-Children-Accessories/dp/B0B7L5VRLF/ref=sr_1_2?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.2NMdjCSLMFiYV1bKK8VQ7UPVtimQ6dBnry119SE6YhVlke3oxZdNd5-rjnptPXm23JOsa_ih9-1CIBgktuzPM6BX7GNp6iY6o8U6n-rla4l1FJKGQvCRLBIqTZH6wHwNpwmqRkl5PLdftMjZ6_W1gdLWb9FFyDcjSwf5AbY48jQlIO-cYtOsMCX61pUyEUTHe8xB0X_6yo4PDi17omp29aeBGq44dfl5cxhZS2w4-mbDLFf9-fyBCJ4-wx_2UaHPBJRGnZdA2VIA9YBEFG2uwcMvHNAEBmTK9JeVwH9GQWk.3I-M2F8KvztAuSAV6b2O49GNG_m6yl6uBI8RTQGRY9Y&dib_tag=se&keywords=baby+wig&qid=1708942972&sr=8-2">“more attractive”</a>. </p>
<p>It wasn’t always this way. In many cultures and periods of history, baldness has been revered, from ancient Egypt to the 18th century people of Issini (modern-day Ghana). Shaved and bald heads could represent purity, a rejection of superficiality, and be ritualised through daily shaving. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Fresco painting of a balding Jesus with a halo." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581644/original/file-20240313-22-eoaj97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581644/original/file-20240313-22-eoaj97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581644/original/file-20240313-22-eoaj97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581644/original/file-20240313-22-eoaj97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=319&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581644/original/file-20240313-22-eoaj97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581644/original/file-20240313-22-eoaj97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581644/original/file-20240313-22-eoaj97.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The fresco of a young, bald-headed Jesus in Cave Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, Serbia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Celavi_isus.jpg">непознати/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bald heads have also been positively associated with divinity. Medieval and Christian art includes <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Celavi_isus.jpg">balding depictions of Jesus</a> and <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean_Fouquet_-_Virgin_and_Child_Surrounded_by_Angels_-_WGA8039.jpg">Madonna</a>. Today, Buddhist monks, nuns and <a href="https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0738081X11002082">other political and religious groups</a> routinely shave their heads. </p>
<p>In the west in the 19th century, baldness also came to be celebrated. But rather than for religious reasons, it was for pseudoscientific ones that were tied in with harmful ideas about intelligence and race. It set a precedent for a Eurocentric bias in hair-loss research that continues to this day.</p>
<h2>Eugenicists and hair loss</h2>
<p>Ten years after Charles Darwin published his famous evolutionary thesis “On The Origin of Species” in 1859, his cousin Francis Galton extended it to suggest that some groups of humans were <a href="https://galton.org/books/hereditary-genius/text/pdf/galton-1869-genius-v5.pdf">more evolved than others</a>. Galton and others used any observable differences in humans, including variation in skin colour and hair, as “proof” of distinct human races, some of which were supposedly superior to others. </p>
<p>Black people in particular were pseudoscientifically classified as being differently haired and evolutionarily inferior to white people. Victorian <a href="http://archive.org/de.tails/9604111.nlm.nih.gov">eugenicists</a> regarded black people’s hair as animal fur, arguing they had been the same “blackskinned, woolly-headed animal[s] for the last 2,000 years”.</p>
<p>Related to eugenics was the pseudoscience of phrenology, which attempted to predict traits like personality and morality from physical characteristics. These included a person’s head shape, complexion and head hair amount. Phrenology, which has been thoroughly discredited, was used to uphold <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/phrenology-the-pseudoscience-of-skull-shapes">scientific racism</a>, the idea that race is biological and that some races are superior to others.</p>
<p>The Victorian writer Henry Frith wrote in his 1891 book, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/How_to_Read_Character_in_Features_Forms/bHkAAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=physiognomy+and+baldness&pg=PA1&printsec=frontcover">How to Read Character in Features, Forms and Faces</a>: “The hairless men are the intellectual ones: their mental and bodily strength are both considerable … brain dominates matter in the bald”.</p>
<p>Such ideas were combined with the false belief in white men’s superiority and intelligence compared to other “hairier” races. Frith wrote: “White and, comparatively, hairless races hav[e] dominion in the world [over the] strong, wild, hairy races.” </p>
<p>American medical students <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9781582343945/Bald-Hairless-Heroes-Comic-Combovers-1582343942/plp">were taught</a> “that slaves, Indians, women and donkeys never go bald because of their small and undeveloped brains”. In 1902, medical doctor David Walsh <a href="https://archive.org/details/willan-72129">wrote</a> a book on hair diseases in which he stated: “Baldness is practically unknown among savages.”</p>
<p>Shockingly, such eugenicist logic remained unchallenged until the late 20th century. In 1966, the dermatologist <a href="https://cdn.bad.org.uk/uploads/2022/01/29200050/Dr-I-Martin-Scott.pdf">Ian Martin-Scott</a> concluded: “In coloured races baldness is a rarity and virtually unknown in many semi-civilised communities”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Illustration of Franz Joseph Gall, the founder of phrenology, measuring the head of a bald, elegantly dressed old lady; her pet poodle is entwined in her wig on a chair." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581629/original/file-20240313-28-xbar5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581629/original/file-20240313-28-xbar5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581629/original/file-20240313-28-xbar5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581629/original/file-20240313-28-xbar5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581629/original/file-20240313-28-xbar5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581629/original/file-20240313-28-xbar5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581629/original/file-20240313-28-xbar5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=670&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Phrenologists thought your skull shape determined your personality.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/vjrra36z/images?id=egmjuj96">Wellcome Collection</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Diversity in hair loss matters</h2>
<p>Today, such false beliefs are thankfully rare in science. However, as in many areas of medical research, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/12034754221099667">studies and clinical trials into hair loss</a> predominantly focus on white people, ignoring or excluding other racial groups.</p>
<p>Social psychologist Hannah Frith (no relation) and I <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2023.2242049">recently reviewed psychology studies</a> that collectively researched more than 10,000 balding men. We found almost all of the research participants were European or Asian, with just 1% from South America or Africa. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, dermatologists and other hair-loss practitioners continue to routinely study medical textbooks that only include images of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jdv.13028">white scalps and straight-textured hair</a>. </p>
<p>This is a problem because, as recent (and limited) research shows, hair loss is common in all racial and ethnic groups. A 2022 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaad.2022.03.016">study</a> reviewed data from almost 200,000 UK men (aged 38-73). The researchers found 68% of white men reported hair loss compared to 64% of South Asian men and 59% of black men. (The relatively small differences are partially explained by the fact the white men in the study were older).</p>
<p>There are also forms of hair loss that are known to be more common in people of colour. For example, Asian women are more likely to have <a href="https://www.niams.nih.gov/health-topics/alopecia-areata">alopecia areata</a>, an autoimmune condition that causes hair loss. </p>
<p>Black people are more likely to develop <a href="https://knowyourskin.britishskinfoundation.org.uk/condition/traction-alopecia/">traction alopecia</a>, a hair loss type related to constant pulling of the hair follicles including through tight hairstyles. This condition highlights the impact of a racist society on hair. </p>
<p>Specifically, black people may feel compelled to conceal their afro-textured hair (stereotyped as uncivilised) through weaves, braids and chemical relaxers. All of these practices can be physically damaging, including to the hair follicles. </p>
<p>Alopecia resources that are racially inclusive (by the <a href="https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/cebd/resources/skin-of-colour/hair-scalp-disorders.aspx">Centre of Evidenced-based Dermatology</a>) help dermatologists make more realistic recommendations that situate people’s hair concerns within their societal and cultural contexts.</p>
<p>A better understanding of the racism of hair loss research is important. It reminds us that neither the texture, colour nor amount of hair a person has conveys anything meaningful about them, evolutionarily or otherwise.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222094/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Glen Jankowski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Victorian eugenicists perpetuated the idea that only white men went bald because of their intelligence.Glen Jankowski, Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2253052024-03-14T17:19:19Z2024-03-14T17:19:19ZThe sunken treasure of the San José shipwreck is contested – but its real riches go beyond coins and jewels<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580446/original/file-20240307-24-bvn0iu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1882%2C1322&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wager's Action off Cartagena, 28 May 1708 by Samuel Scott (1772), a painting showing the moment the San José was blown up. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/11840.html">National Maritime Museum</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The San José was a galleon ship owned by King Philip V of Spain (1683–1746) in the 18th century. It sailed from Portobelo in present-day Panama to Cartagena in Colombia in 1708. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/9342/treasure-san-jose">The ship was sunk</a> – still laden with treasure including 11 million gold and silver coins, emeralds and other precious cargo – during the Battle of Barú (also known as Wager’s Action), part of the War of the Spanish Succession. This war was between Spain and France on one side, and Britain, the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic and other European allies on the other. </p>
<p>The search for the San José and its treasure, sunk 600 metres deep, has now become possible thanks to advances in remotely operated underwater vehicle technology. The ship is now in the process of being <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/colombia-san-jose-shipwreck-treasure-b2503667.html">pulled up from the sea floor</a>. But who is entitled to San José’s riches?</p>
<p>In 1979, the US salvage company Sea Search Armada made an exclusive agreement with Colombia to divide the proceeds of the San José 50:50. They had bought out the Glocca Morra Company which discovered what was thought to be the wreck of the San José in 1982. </p>
<p>In 2007, the US Supreme Court ruled that Colombia holds the rights to items deemed to be “national cultural patrimony”. Anything else will be halved between the US salvage company Sea Search Armada and Colombia. Ownership of each item would probably have to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jul/07/sibyllabrodzinsky.international">decided by independent experts</a>.</p>
<p>However, in 2015, Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, <a href="https://twitter.com/JuanManSantos/status/672925619278249984?lang=en-gb">challenged the location</a> Sea Search Armada’s suspected held the San José wreck. He confirmed that the San José’s true location had been found by the Colombian navy – with the help of British maritime archaeology consultants and the US Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution – in Colombian waters.</p>
<p>Spain and Peru have <a href="https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2023/11/08/spain-lays-claim-to-holy-grail-of-shipwrecks-galleon-which-sank-more-than-300-years-ago-contains-up-to-e18bn-in-treasure/">also claimed ownership</a>, since the San José was a Spanish ship carrying wealth created by enslaved indigenous Peruvian workers. The descendants of the indigenous Bolivian Qhara Qhara people and enslaved African workers in New Granada, who were forced to mine precious metals, have <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/colombia-san-jose-shipwreck-treasure-b2503667.html">also made a claim</a>.</p>
<p>Spain colonised Colombia, Peru and Bolivia after Christopher Columbus reached America in 1492. The 1494 <a href="https://en.unesco.org/memoryoftheworld/registry/613#:%7E:text=The%20Treaty%20of%20Tordesillas%20of,west%20of%20Cape%20Verde%20islands.">Treaty of Tordesillas</a> divided the new territory between Spain and Portugal. This resulted in the destruction of indigenous culture, seizure of natural assets and exploitation of inhabitants and enslaved African people. Part of San José’s wealth should therefore surely be reserved to create a cultural legacy that would beneficially balance that harmful past.</p>
<p>Research to discover how the San José was built by its Spanish shipbuilders and find out about the crew and the local communities in Colombia and Bolivia <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/9342/treasure-san-jose">is feasible</a>. Documents survive in the archives of the Casa de Contratación de las Indias (Trading House of the Indies), the National Archives of Spain and Lima and Spanish dockyard and shipbuilding archives. Oral history could reveal community folk stories and passed down memories.</p>
<p>The experience of recovering, conserving and interpreting the Tudor ship, the Mary Rose, which sunk in 1545 and was brought up from the seabed in 1982, is a superb example of what could be done with the San José. Scientific analysis of the wreck and remains could determine where the crew came from. <a href="https://maryrose.org/blog/fundraising/the-mary-rose/ccixr/">As with the Mary Rose</a>, new technology could be used to bring those stories to new audiences. </p>
<h2>San José’s loss and legacy</h2>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/reel/playlist/hidden-histories?vpid=p0gkkdhc">excellent film</a> analysing the context of the San José’s loss, and exploring its underwater remains, nautical archaeologist Professor Ricardo Borrero argues that the ship’s “real value is its historical value and its potential to deliver a lot of information if we ask the proper questions”.</p>
<p>Juan David Correa, Colombia’s minister of culture, also insists that the value of the wreck is patrimonial and not monetary, saying <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/shipwreck-colombia-san-jose-treasure-b2502029.html">“history is the treasure”</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4wmFeNrPilI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Underwater images of the San José.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2024 Colombian archaeologist <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/shipwreck-colombia-san-jose-treasure-b2502029.html">Carlos Reina Martínez</a> said the Colombian Institute of Archeology and History is seeking to discover what life was like for the 600 people on board the San José when it sank. They also wish to study daily life, the cargo, artillery and merchandise of the colonial era in America. Colombia will invest US$4.5 million (£3.5 million) to recover the ship and its contents and conserve them.</p>
<p>The proposed Colombian investigation is inspired by the University of Portsmouth Arts and Humanities Research Council Project <a href="https://historicengland.org.uk/research/current/discover-and-understand/coastal-and-marine/unpathd-waters/">Unpath’d Waters</a>, which I am a part of. Our research into the British HMS Looe, shipwrecked in 1705, has revealed that its twice-yearly Newfoundland convoys were vital to British global goals during the War of Spanish Succession. </p>
<p>Unpath’d Waters seeks to connect dispersed historical collections to bring new stories to new audiences. Inspired by our work, the recovery and restoration of the San José could also connect its many stories – the Spanish shipbuilders, the craftspeople, the 600 passengers and crew and their descendants. But will their voices be heard? It will take a concerted effort from teams around the world, not a power struggle, to ensure that they are.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225305/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann Coats is the University of Portsmouth Co-Investigator in Unpath'd Waters, the Historic England-led Arts and Humanities Research Council 'Towards the National Collection' Project..
The University of Portsmouth has received funding for Unpath'd Waters from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. </span></em></p>The boat was sunk while still laden with treasure including 11 million gold and silver coins, emeralds and other precious cargo.Ann Coats, Associate Professor in Maritime History, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2222982024-03-14T13:28:33Z2024-03-14T13:28:33ZHow the Tudors dealt with food waste<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579929/original/file-20240305-24-2ojthy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1690%2C1295&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Baron Cobham and family around the dinner table, 1567.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Brooke_10th_Baron_Cobham_and_Family_1567.jpg">Master of the Countess of Warwick </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than <a href="https://wrap.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-11/WRAP-Food-Surplus-and-Waste-in-the-UK-Key-Facts-Nov-2023.pdf">ten million tonnes</a> of food is wasted in the UK each year. Leftovers perish in their plastic Tupperware tombs, supermarket bins heave with damaged but perfectly edible produce and fields are littered with spoiled harvests. Preventing good food from ending up in the bin is an important part of the global fight against climate change. </p>
<p>But what about the past? How did our ancestors deal with food waste? Surprisingly, given the pertinence of the issue in modern discourse, very little has been written about the history of food waste. My <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/leftovers-9781803281575/">new book</a>, Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation, addresses the topic across the last half a millennium, from the Tudor kitchen right up until the present day. </p>
<p>Tudor society was intrinsically religious. Henry VIII’s well-known <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Henry-VIII/#:%7E:text=Henry%20took%20matters%20into%20his,was%20forced%20to%20leave%20court.">divorce issues</a> ignited the English Reformation, the tumultuous transformation from Catholicism to Protestantantism, heightening religious fervour and shaping attitudes towards food across the country. </p>
<p>In Tudor eyes, food was the ultimate gift from God that literally sustained life on earth. And in the form of the bread and wine, it was food that Christ had chosen to represent his body and blood at the Last Supper. No wonder that wasting food was seen as sinful and immoral. “The least crum, which can be saved, be not lost,” commanded the puritan writer <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A15695.0001.001?view=toc">Ezekias Woodward</a>, “no, not a crum”. </p>
<p>Familiar to many of us today, clergymen taught their parishioners about the feeding of the 5,000. In the Biblical tale, when Jesus went to mourn the passing of John the Baptist, the large crowd that followed him were miraculously fed on just five loaves and two fish. According to the <a href="https://biblehub.com/john/6-12.htm">Gospel of John</a>, at the end of the meal, Christ told his disciples to “gather the pieces that are left over,” so “nothing be wasted,” and they collected 12 full baskets of leftovers.</p>
<p>In another Biblical parable, the rich man Dives went to hell when he denied the scraps of his feast to the poor man <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2016%3A19-31&version=NIV">Lazarus</a>, who instead ascended to heaven. Like Lazarus, the Tudor poor waited at the gates of grand estates to receive the remains of lavish feasts. An almoner (a church official who was responsible for distributing money or food to the poor) collected leftovers but also the first slices of meat to be given in charity. </p>
<h2>Leftovers</h2>
<p>Even those from humbler backgrounds could donate surplus food. Instead of throwing it to the pigs, the whey left over from cheese making, for example, could become a nourishing summer drink for the labourers who toiled in the hot fields. </p>
<p>Charitable housewives who expressed their piety by distributing such leftovers to their poor neighbours would “find profit therefore in a divine place,” according to Gervase Markham in his popular <a href="http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/book%201615%20huswife.htm">1615 cookery book</a>. </p>
<p>As well as being distributed to the poor, the leftovers from large Tudor households went to employees rather than going to waste. In Queen Elizabeth I’s <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_Collection_of_Ordinances_and_Regulatio/yGxBAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">royal household</a>, workers who cooked meats in the “boiling house” received the “dripping of the roste” and even “the grease… in the kittles (kettles) and pannes” as a benefit for their labour. A waste product to those with plenty, these meat juices could be reimagined to add flavour and nutrition to sauces and gravies. </p>
<p>Still, those at the top of the social scale had access to far more than they could possibly eat. Elizabeth’s table overflowed with elaborate pies, roasted meats, sugar sculptures, imported wines and exotic fruits. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An old painting of a table filled with ornate looking food." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=334&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580382/original/file-20240307-20-o5bbbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Still life with turkey pie by Pieter Claesz.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pieter_Claesz._-_Stilleven_met_kalkoenpastei_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Rijksmuseum/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Waste and hunger</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, widespread hunger led to rioting across the country in the 1590s after years of devastating harvests. As wealthy landlords closed off their land to common pasture, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Worlds_Within_Worlds/A_odA1alLoYC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">flour prices tripled</a> over the span of just a few years. </p>
<p>In the Bible, Ruth gleaned from the field of a wealthy man named Boaz, in accordance with the <a href="https://biblehub.com/leviticus/23-22.htm">Old Testament law</a>: “when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field…thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger”. With this example, the poorest in Tudor England collected the scraps from the harvest to feed themselves and their families. </p>
<p>Squaring these disparate images of plenty and want is not too hard when we consider that in the UK <a href="https://foodfoundation.org.uk/initiatives/food-insecurity-tracking">9.7 million adults</a> experience food insecurity according to data from September 2022. Meanwhile the richest <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7484/">5% take home 37%</a> of the nation’s total disposable income. On a global scale, <a href="https://www.wfp.org/stories/5-facts-about-food-waste-and-hunger">a third of the food</a> we produce goes to waste while <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Waste_Free_Kitchen_Handbook/Y0IACgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">842 million people</a> are afflicted with chronic hunger. </p>
<p>Food waste today is a pressing environmental issue. But this foray into Tudor food waste reminds us that it is also a deeply moral issue that reflects the growing inequalities between the rich and the poor. In telling the so far untold history of food waste, my research reflects on our changing moral values, and our relationship with food, people and planet. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong><em>Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?</em></strong>
<br><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/imagine-57?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Imagine&utm_content=DontHaveTimeTop">Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead.</a> Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/imagine-57?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Imagine&utm_content=DontHaveTimeBottom">Join the 30,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.</a></em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222298/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eleanor Barnett is the author of Leftovers: A History of Food Waste and Preservation (Head of Zeus, 2024). She receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Cardiff University. </span></em></p>During the Tudor period, religious beliefs shaped people’s attitudes towards food and food waste.Eleanor Barnett, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of History, Archaeology and Religion, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2236462024-03-14T03:55:30Z2024-03-14T03:55:30ZWhy is the male body the scientific default when the female body drives the reproductive success of our species?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581526/original/file-20240313-20-9ueone.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C2038%2C1536&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Eve – Lucas Cranach the Elder (c.1510)</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cranach_Adam_and_Eve_(detail)_3.jpg">Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>American essayist Cat Bohannon loves a bit of pop culture to contextualise her ideas. <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/eve-9781529151244">Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution</a> – her ambitious, funny, intelligent history of female evolution – is threaded with it. </p>
<p>The book opens with a futuristic scene from <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/">Prometheus</a>, the 2012 prequel to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/">Alien</a>. Archaeologist Elizabeth Shaw is in an AI surgery pod, seeking a life-saving caesarean (she has been impregnated with an alien squid) when an affectless voice gives her an error message: “This medpod is calibrated for male patients only.” </p>
<p>Crash-test dummies, heart-attack symptoms, anti-depressant dosages, air-conditioning systems in large office buildings: we are all pretty aware by now that these are “calibrated for male bodies only”. Alien Prometheus is set in 2093; one can only hope the scientific technology of the late 21st-century turns out to have, at least, a “female-registering” option.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution – Cat Bohannon (Hutchinson Heinemann)</em> </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581482/original/file-20240313-30-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581482/original/file-20240313-30-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581482/original/file-20240313-30-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581482/original/file-20240313-30-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581482/original/file-20240313-30-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=923&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581482/original/file-20240313-30-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581482/original/file-20240313-30-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581482/original/file-20240313-30-i0czkw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1160&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While women’s hormonal cycles have made us messy in the arena of “clean science” – not good controls, not good at being controlled for – Bohannon reminds us that an understanding of the female body cannot be retrofitted to an understanding of the male body. Women are not just men with extra fleshy bits and confounding hormones. </p>
<p>Bohannon also reminds us those “fleshy bits” have a function beyond providing a curvaceous silhouette. </p>
<p>Female adipose tissue, 600 million years old, stored around our butts and thighs, is necessary to the development of babies’ brains. It is so necessary that girls begin storing it in childhood and when women liposuction it out of their lower bodies it returns in unexpected places: the armpits, for example. Bohannon points out that the possible repercussions of liposuction on the brain health of future offspring has not yet been studied.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/women-have-heart-attacks-too-but-their-symptoms-are-often-dismissed-as-something-else-76083">Women have heart attacks too, but their symptoms are often dismissed as something else</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Reproductive success</h2>
<p>The salient question here is: why is the male body the scientific default when it is the female body that crucially drives the evolution and reproductive success of our species? Eve is both a rectification of this immense blind spot and, in Bohannon’s own words, “a user’s manual for the female mammal”. </p>
<p>Yet how to collapse 200 million years of evolutionary history into 500 pages (let alone 1500 words)? </p>
<p>Bohannon does this by organising her book into a series of “Eves” from whom we inherited our current biological functions, creating an often diverging, often interlocking chronology. There is the Eve of milk, “the real Madonna”; placental Eve, “an HR Giger fever-dream meat factory” (Bohannon has fun with language); Donna, Eve of the uterus; and Pergi, the tree-dwelling Eve of perception. </p>
<p>This structure allows Bohannon to move from microbiology to paleoanthropology, evolutionary biology to gynaecology, anatomy to social history. I learnt much about my own body in her sprawling, illuminating discussions, but also about animal reproductive biology in general — from monotremal cloacas (platypuses and echidnas have them) to squamation hemipenises (snakes and lizards) and “notoriously foldy” anti-rape duck vaginas designed to circumvent corkscrew penises. </p>
<p>It was some small relief to learn the fairly straightforward design of the human penis is testament to a “not-particularly rapey” human evolutionary history. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581824/original/file-20240314-18-pjj64q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581824/original/file-20240314-18-pjj64q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581824/original/file-20240314-18-pjj64q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581824/original/file-20240314-18-pjj64q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581824/original/file-20240314-18-pjj64q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581824/original/file-20240314-18-pjj64q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581824/original/file-20240314-18-pjj64q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581824/original/file-20240314-18-pjj64q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Notoriously foldy.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Detailed_white_duck.jpg">Image: Roger Heslop, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bohannon writes with tender care of her “Eves”. She manages to both penetrate and animate deep time for the reader, a textual equivalent perhaps of Walking with Dinosaurs. She describes the Jurassic insect-eater <a href="https://museum.wales/blog/1895/Meet-Morgie/">Morgie</a> (my favourite), one of the earliest known mammals, skittering over the feet of dinosaurs to get home to her burrow, where she sweats milk through mammary patches to feed her hidden brood. Morgie comes vividly alive in her small precarious existence: “funny, warm, heart-fluttering Eve”, Bohannon writes. </p>
<p>For a female with a uterus, who has twice given birth and twice breastfed, Bohannon’s book demystified many of the mysterious goings-on of my reproductive system. I had no idea, for instance, that lactation was such an intensive co-production between mother and baby. </p>
<p>I knew it enabled a baby’s gut to be colonised with good maternal bacteria, and I knew the basic mechanics of the let-down reflex. But I didn’t know that the composition of the milk itself is informed by a baby’s needs. These needs, codified in a baby’s saliva, are registered by the mother’s body, which then customises its milk accordingly, so it is full of the particular bacteria- or virus-fighting agents required.</p>
<p>This recriprocity is also apparent in the biological wonder that is the placenta. Built out of both endometrial and embryonic tissue, the placenta is “one of the only organs in the animal world made out of two separate organisms”. </p>
<p>Did you know this? I certainly didn’t. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581827/original/file-20240314-30-yukxv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581827/original/file-20240314-30-yukxv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581827/original/file-20240314-30-yukxv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581827/original/file-20240314-30-yukxv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581827/original/file-20240314-30-yukxv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=293&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581827/original/file-20240314-30-yukxv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581827/original/file-20240314-30-yukxv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581827/original/file-20240314-30-yukxv4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Morgie’ – Morganucodon, one of the earliest known mammals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Morganucodon.jpg">FunkMonk (Michael B.H.), via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-raunchy-new-big-history-tells-the-story-of-sex-but-raises-some-unanswered-questions-213538">A raunchy new 'Big History' tells the story of sex, but raises some unanswered questions</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Life: a user’s manual</h2>
<p>In this sense, Eve really is a user’s manual. At the risk of sounding “miracle of life” about it, Bohannon’s book puts wonder into the commonplace by explaining not only how our reproductive systems work, but how they came to be.</p>
<p>Women’s bodies are not just about babies, of course. Bohannon charts new political territory, tracing her anatomical discoveries through to their social outcomes. Truisms of human and social evolution are turned on their heads and gynaecology gets its rightful place in the story. </p>
<p>Milk again: the population growth that enabled humans to become the ferocious planet-hogs we are today might be down to the humble wet-nurse of ancient civilisations. The prevalence of wet-nursing meant the natural contraceptive properties of breastfeeding were not in play for many women. This meant women had much shorter spaces between pregnancies and had more babies. Wet-nurses, those under-sung footnotes in history, might well have catalysed the growth of modern cities.</p>
<p>Bipedalism? It might just be that we stood up on two feet not so we could better carry spears, but so we had free arms to carry babies while hunting and still cart as much food home with us as possible.</p>
<p>Tool-making? The seminal moment here may not have been a Kubrick-style raising of a femur bone to crunch down on a challenger’s head, or beat an animal to death for dinner (fossil remains show we really didn’t eat a particularly intensive paleo diet). Instead, it might have been a woman, baby on back, chewing a sapling to a neat point to hunt “<a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/bushbabies">bush-babies</a>” asleep in tree hollows. </p>
<p>Bohannon makes a good argument that it was women, not men, who most needed tools to hunt. Our biologically stronger male counterparts often needed only the heft of their bodies to bring down an animal. Women were inventors, she says, because, being smaller, being weaker, they had more need.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581555/original/file-20240313-18-z1f8bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581555/original/file-20240313-18-z1f8bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581555/original/file-20240313-18-z1f8bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581555/original/file-20240313-18-z1f8bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581555/original/file-20240313-18-z1f8bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581555/original/file-20240313-18-z1f8bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581555/original/file-20240313-18-z1f8bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581555/original/file-20240313-18-z1f8bf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cave painting depicting a woman giving birth, Serra da Capivara national park, Brazil.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Serra_da_Capivara_-_Painting_8.JPG">Vitor 1234, via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-matrilineal-societies-exist-around-the-world-its-time-to-look-beyond-the-patriarchy-200825">Friday essay: matrilineal societies exist around the world – it's time to look beyond the patriarchy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Womb triumphalism</h2>
<p>Our most important invention, though – and this is the overarching thesis of Bohannan’s book – is gynaecology. “What got us here,” she writes, “is not tool triumphalism but womb triumphalism.” </p>
<p>Considering how hard it is for the human female body to get pregnant, stay pregnant, deliver a baby (without us or it dying), and then look after it through its protracted childhood, it is a miracle that humans populate – and over-populate — the planet in the way we have come to. Gynaecology, Bohannon writes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>is absolutely essential for our species’ evolutionary fitness. Without it, it’s doubtful we would have made it this far […] The arrival of midwifery is one of those moments when we can truly say, “Here is when we become human” […] No other mammals on the planet have been observed regularly helping one another give birth.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With gynaecology comes contraception, reproductive choice and birth-spacing. Knowledge about the properties of herbs and plants, about labour, about delivering a breech or posterior baby, or really <em>any</em> baby (they are all life and death situations) – all of these combine to enable the flourishing of humans, in spite of our large heads, narrow pelvises, complex gestation and birthing trajectories. </p>
<p>“Women had their hands on the actual machinery of evolution,” Bohannon writes. And while she notes that “[m]odern female coalitions are scattered, vulnerable, brittle”, her book celebrates the ancient collaboration between women and the spirit of cooperation over competition that got us here. </p>
<p>Bohannon repositions this as profound in its significance for the human race. A failure to fully apprehend the different workings of male and female bodies and not provide for these differences – or to provide comprehensively for one sex, and neglect the other – doesn’t just mean there will be no caesarean option in a future surgery-pod. </p>
<p>It means limiting human possibility and opportunity. It represents a failure to grasp the whole human story and its potential.</p>
<p>Bohannon ends her book with a practical feminist statement about the importance – and boon to society – of educating women, feeding them properly (not last), and putting financial means in their hands. </p>
<p>Smart humans of the future – who might want to flourish without destroying the means of their flourishing – will require women with adipose fat to feed the brains of their suckling babies, with reproductive choices to plan and space those babies, and with life choices which enable them to contribute their full potential to the world. </p>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223646/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edwina Preston has received funding from Creative Victoria and the Australia Council for the Arts. She works for the Australian Education Union</span></em></p>The story of human evolution is inextricable from the story of gynaecology.Edwina Preston, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2243342024-03-12T18:53:02Z2024-03-12T18:53:02ZAncient scrolls are being ‘read’ by machine learning – with human knowledge to detect language and make sense of them<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580263/original/file-20240306-30-3x4aw.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1040%2C0%2C1253%2C379&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Vesuvius Challenge incentivizes technological development by inviting researchers to figure out how to ‘read’ ancient papyri excavated from volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius in Italy. Columns of Greek text retrieved from a portion of a scroll. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Vesuvius Challenge)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A groundbreaking announcement for the recovery of lost ancient literature was recently made. Using a non-invasive method that harnesses <a href="https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/machine-learning-explained">machine learning</a>, an international trio of scholars retrieved 15 columns of ancient Greek text from within a carbonized papyrus from <a href="https://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/about-us/story-of-herculaneum">Herculaneum</a>, a seaside Roman town eight kilometres southeast of Naples, Italy.</p>
<p>Their achievement earned them a US$700,000 grand prize from the <a href="https://scrollprize.org/">Vesuvius Challenge</a>. The challenge sought to incentivize technological development by inviting public participation in the research. </p>
<p>It emerged from collaboration between computer scientist Brent Seales — who has <a href="https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2304.02084">a long-standing interest</a> in non-invasive <a href="https://www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/the-scroll-from-en-gedi">technologies for studying</a> manuscripts — and technology investors Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross. </p>
<p>While the developments are exciting, technology is only part of the progress of scholarship. The work of reading and analyzing the new Greek and Latin texts recovered from the papyri will fall to human beings.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Painting showing a mountain with a volcano erupting." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580261/original/file-20240306-28-umf4ff.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘An Eruption of Vesuvius,’ by Johan Christian Dahl (1824).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Metropolitan Museum of Art)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Buried in ash</h2>
<p>Like Pompeii, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5b8igA644o">Herculaneum</a> was buried by the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. </p>
<p>Much of the ancient town remains underground. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-will-let-us-read-lost-ancient-works-in-the-library-at-herculaneum-for-the-first-time-223583">in 1752</a>, excavation uncovered hundreds of papyrus scrolls in the library of an elaborate Roman villa. The Herculaneum papyri <a href="https://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/research-and-publications/papyri">are the largest surviving example of an</a> intact ancient library preserved in the archaeological record: the library was found as it actually existed in 79 CE. </p>
<p>The precise number of books is unknown, says Michael McOsker, a research fellow in papyrology at University College London, and different methods of estimating give different results. </p>
<h2>Carbonized papyri</h2>
<p>Starved of oxygen, the intense heat of Vesuvius’ <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/pyroclastic-flow/">pyroclastic flow</a> carbonized (but did not ignite) the papyri. Resembling lumps of coal to the eye, 18th-century excavators did not immediately recognize them as ancient books.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three dark grey rectangular objects seen in a box." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578769/original/file-20240228-16-sc89zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Three unopened papyri from Herculaneum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Bodleian Libraries/University of Oxford)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The papyri are so brittle that many were destroyed by early attempts to access their texts. Studying them has therefore always required ingenuity. In 1754, a <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/buried-ash-vesuvius-scrolls-are-being-read-new-xray-technique-180969358">conservator and priest at the Vatican library</a> devised a machine for slowly unrolling them. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A dark grey scroll." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7027%2C4995&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578666/original/file-20240228-7839-doqnyj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portion of an unrolled Herculaneum papyrus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/cac4db6a-8af5-4234-%20acb8-4b1ce819ef14">(Bodleian Libraries/University of Oxford)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More recently, <a href="https://www.imaging.org/common/uploaded%20files/pdfs/Papers/2001/PICS-0-251/4625.pdf">multispectral photography</a> has dramatically improved their legibility. But until now, a non-invasive method that would leave the scrolls intact remained out of reach. Its development marks a significant breakthrough.</p>
<p>McOsker notes there are 659 items in the catalogue listed as “not unrolled,” but some of these are parts of scrolls. </p>
<h2>Sparking innovation</h2>
<p>To kick-start the challenge, Seales <a href="https://scrollprize.org/data">made public</a> an array of high-resolution X-ray computed tomography (CT) scans of two scrolls as well as similar scans of detached fragments with visible ink. The latter are essential as a reference point (or “control”) for innovative approaches. </p>
<p>The competition’s design encouraged transparency and collaboration: data published in the pursuit <a href="https://scrollprize.org/winners">of smaller goals</a> benefited all competitors. Additionally, transparency enabled the independent verification of results. Teams coalesced around shared ideas and approaches to the problem.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-will-let-us-read-lost-ancient-works-in-the-library-at-herculaneum-for-the-first-time-223583">AI will let us read 'lost' ancient works in the library at Herculaneum for the first time</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Text mentions music, taste, sight</h2>
<p>The challenge made news in <a href="https://scrollprize.org/firstletters">October</a>, when the first letters were read: πορφυρας (a noun or adjective involving “purple”). </p>
<p>By the end of 2023, the criteria for awarding the grand prize were met: four passages of 140 characters, with 85 per cent of the letters recovered. <a href="https://scrollprize.org/grandprize">A PhD student studying machine learning, an engineer studying computer science and a robotics student</a> were declared
the victors.</p>
<p>According to McOsker, the text they retrieved mentions music twice, as well as the senses of taste and sight. He thinks it is likely a work about sensation and decision-making, in the tradition of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/epicurus/">the philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BCE)</a>. The challenge’s papyrological team is still analyzing it.</p>
<h2>Hundreds of rolls to be studied</h2>
<p>This year brings with it new goals: after five per cent of one scroll was read in 2023, the challenge set a <a href="https://scrollprize.org/2024_prizes#2024-grand-prize">2024 grand prize goal</a> of reading 90 per cent of four scrolls. With hundreds of rolls yet to be studied, the new method of recovering the contents of the Herculaneum papyri is only getting started.</p>
<p>But several obstacles remain. The production of scans at sufficiently high resolution can’t be done via ordinary equipment, but requires access to a facility with a particle accelerator. Access to the right equipment is limited and costly. To date, four scrolls and numerous detached fragments <a href="https://www.diamond.ac.uk">have been processed at a facility</a> near Oxford, England. </p>
<p>Most of the unopened scrolls are housed in Naples, and getting them safely to a facility will be complicated, as will reserving and paying for the beam time required to scan them.</p>
<p>Another limitation is that the technology for unrolling and flattening out a papyrus by virtual means — a process the challenge calls “segmentation” — is slow and expensive. Via current techniques, which involve a fair bit of manual manipulation, fully segmenting one scroll would cost US$1–5 million. Segmentation needs to become much more efficient to avoid a bottleneck.</p>
<h2>Critical minds needed</h2>
<p>Technology is only part of the equation. Essential to the challenge’s work is an international team of papyrologists. Their role is to analyze the model’s output of legible ancient Greek — and in so doing determine which approaches are most effective.</p>
<p>Papyrology is thrilling work, but also challenging and painstaking. It requires mastery of ancient languages and ideas as well as the puzzle-solver’s ability to fill in the inevitable gaps. Papyrology is a niche specialization: in the larger world of classics, papyrologists are rare birds. The number of Herculaneum specialists is even fewer. </p>
<p>For the challenge truly to succeed, we’re going to need critical minds as well as whizbang technology. There’s potentially a fair bit of new ancient philosophy headed our way, but it needs to be pieced together into a coherent text — letter by letter, word by word, sentence by sentence — before it can be studied more widely. That’s going to require scholars.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224334/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>C. Michael Sampson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for 'the Books of Karanis,' a project that studies fragmentary Greek literature from the Egyptian village Karanis. </span></em></p>However exciting the technological developments may be, the task of reading and analyzing the Greek and Latin texts recovered from the papyri will fall to human beings.C. Michael Sampson, Associate Professor of Classics, University of ManitobaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2234582024-03-12T13:52:34Z2024-03-12T13:52:34ZColonial statues in Africa have been removed, returned and torn down again – why it’s such a complex history<p>In 2020, the <a href="https://www.mprnews.org/crime-law-and-justice/killing-of-george-floyd">murder of George Floyd</a> in the US served as a catalyst for the global <a href="https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/BLM">Black Lives Matter movement</a>. It sparked widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism. It also ignited <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall">debates</a> about historical symbols of oppression, such as statues of figures associated with racial injustices. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-06-12/pulling-down-statues-of-racists-africas-done-it-for-years">These debates presented colonial statues</a> in Africa as having been contested and toppled for many years, ever since African states gained independence. Indeed, colonial statues were at the heart of the colonial world, symbolising its violence, white supremacy and the erasure of precolonial history. But colonial monuments in African public spaces have much more complex and often overlooked histories.</p>
<p>As a scholar of African heritage, I recently published a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13527258.2023.2294738">study</a> examining colonial statues and how they have been regarded in postcolonial Africa. My historical investigation highlights three major phases. </p>
<p>First, in the era of independence of African states, from the 1950s to 1980, some statues were removed from public spaces, but many remained. </p>
<p>Second, the 1990s and 2000s were marked by the “return of empires”: statues that had been removed were put back in public spaces and new neo-colonial monuments were constructed. </p>
<p>Third, the renewed challenges to colonial statues from the 2010s faced some strong resistance. Understanding this history is crucial, as it exposes the challenges of truly moving beyond the colonial world and order.</p>
<h2>Colonial statues at independence (1950s-1980)</h2>
<p>As African countries gained independence from the 1950s to the 1980s, colonial statues faced three main fates: recycling; defacement or toppling; and on-site preservation. </p>
<p>Recycling involved relocating statues from former colonies to former colonial metropolises. Most went from Algeria to France and from Kenya to England. The statues of <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/f3760af0-6545-11e4-91b1-00144feabdc0">Lord Kitchener</a> and <a href="https://equestrianstatue.org/gordon-charles-george/">General Gordon</a>, for example, were sent from Khartoum in Sudan to England in 1958. The reasons for these repatriations were multiple and included the desire to keep alive memory of colonial times and to feed colonial nostalgia. </p>
<p>Defacing or toppling was the second phenomenon, which occurred across the continent, from Algeria to Mozambique. One instance was the defacement and toppling of the <a href="https://www.academia.edu/51780170/The_Maid_of_Algiers_Deploying_and_dismantling_Joan_of_Arc_as_a_globe_trotting_icon">statue of Joan of Arc</a> in Algiers in 1962. These acts of violence were necessary responses to the violence of the colonial order and represented a break from the past. They also symbolised the cleansing of public spaces, to destroy symbolically the power imbalances, racism, inequalities and urban exclusions that defined the colonial world. Some of these toppled statues were then sent back and recycled in the former metropolis. </p>
<p>However, across Africa, many colonial monuments remained untouched, for various reasons. Some African leaders at independence were pro-Europe, having been educated there or having worked there during colonial times. And at independence, privileged links were forged between the former colonies and the metropolises. This was the case with some former French colonies. As a result, the leaders of former French colonies did not want to change the key symbols of the colonial world. </p>
<h2>The empires strike back (1990s-2000s)</h2>
<p>From the 1990s, many colonial statues dismantled and hidden during the independence era were reinstalled. Aid from former imperial powers to former colonial countries is one explanation. An example is the controversial <a href="https://contestedhistories.org/wp-content/uploads/Democratic-Republic-of-Congo_-Leopold-II-Statue-in-Kinshasa.pdf">re-erection of the statue of former Belgian king and Congo “owner” Leopold II</a> in front of the main train station in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 2005. It’s easy to see why: the millions of US dollars in aid that Belgium gives the DRC every year.</p>
<p>The turn of the millennium also saw (neo)colonial statues deliberately erected to celebrate 19th century explorers and missionaries. In countries that were once part of the British Empire, such statues were built to attract tourists. For example, a new <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13527258.2023.2294738">statue of David Livingstone was erected in 2005</a> for the 150th anniversary of his arrival at Mosi-oa-Tunya (Victoria Falls) in Zambia. It was paid for by airlines, travel agencies, luxury lodges, TotalEnergies and local authorities. </p>
<p>However, this statue of Livingstone can also be seen as an international event, linked to colonial monuments built with France’s cooperation. This is notably the case of the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/109/436/367/146718?redirectedFrom=fulltext">2006 Savorgnan de Brazza</a> memorial erected in Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo. This project of Algeria, Congo, France and Gabon <a href="https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article-abstract/109/436/367/146718?redirectedFrom=fulltext">reburied</a> the remains of the Italian-French explorer De Brazza, his wife and their children in the memorial. </p>
<p>The project mixed geopolitics and bilateral aid, cultural diplomacy and colonial violence. Echoing imperial rivalries, the memorial and its statue also served as distinct markers of France’s spheres of influence, and its attempt to counteract its decline in the region.</p>
<h2>Renewed contestations (from the 2010s)</h2>
<p>(Neo)colonial monuments were increasingly contested in the 2010s. Such protests have accelerated in recent years and have become more visible, thanks to social networks.</p>
<p>The most famous case is the <a href="https://twitter.com/RhodesMustFall">Rhodes Must Fall movement</a>. This led to the removal of the statue of the British colonialist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Cecil-Rhodes">Cecil John Rhodes</a> on the campus of the University of Cape Town in South Africa in April 2015. This movement opposed neoliberal economic systems which had failed to respond to fundamental change, especially in areas such as education.</p>
<p>The movement quickly spread to other countries, inspiring other protests such as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/14/racist-gandhi-statue-removed-from-university-of-ghana">#GandhiMustFall</a>” in Ghana, Malawi and England. Statues of the Indian leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mahatma-Gandhi">Gandhi</a>, considered a racist, were contested. Another movement is “<a href="https://faidherbedoittomber.org/a-propos/">Faidherbe must fall</a>”, aiming to remove the statue of the French colonial administrator Faidherbe in Saint-Louis/Ndar in Senegal and in Lille in France.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-background-story-to-a-statue-of-gandhi-and-the-university-of-ghana-117103">The background story to a statue of Gandhi and the University of Ghana</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Some of these movements have drawn attention to the link between colonial or racist statues and aid. For example, the #GandhiMustFall movement prevented the construction of a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46051184">Gandhi statue in Malawi in 2018</a>. This project was linked to a <a href="https://sikhsiyasat.net/india-offers-to-double-aid-for-malavi-as-malavian-government-agrees-to-install-gandhi-statue-despite-local-opposition/">US$10 million aid deal from India</a>.</p>
<h2>A complex issue</h2>
<p>While acknowledging successes in removing colonial statues, it is important not to overlook the substantial support for (neo)colonial monuments all over Africa. </p>
<p>Such support can be explained by pressure from former colonial powers and the links of elites with these countries. Financial constraints, international aid and the potential of tourism are also factors. Then there’s the conviction that all vestiges of the past, even the most painful, must be preserved.</p>
<p>The statue of the French military commander <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53148608">Philippe Leclerc</a> in Douala in Cameroon, for example, still stands, despite being attacked several times by Cameroonian <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/7/7/the-activist-purging-cameroon-of-french-colonial-monuments">activist</a> André Blaise Essama.</p>
<p>As a result, (neo)colonial statues still have a bright future ahead of them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223458/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sophia Labadi has received funding from the Humboldt Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.</span></em></p>The fate of several colonial statues in Africa continues to be a subject of controversy.Sophia Labadi, Professor of Heritage, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2252122024-03-12T11:38:46Z2024-03-12T11:38:46ZThe ‘Curse of Ham’: how people of faith used a story in Genesis to justify slavery<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580842/original/file-20240310-28-s4o2j8.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C4%2C1587%2C1034&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The Drunkenness of Noah' by Giovanni Bellini.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drunkenness_of_Noah_bellini.jpg">Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>According to a <a href="https://www.churchofengland.org/media/press-releases/church-commissioners-england-warmly-welcomes-oversight-groups-report">report by an independent oversight committee</a> released in March 2024, the Church of England should pay £1bn in reparations – 10 times the previously set amount – to the descendants of slavery.</p>
<p>The report was the start of a “multi-generational response to the appalling evil of transatlantic chattel enslavement”, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/04/church-of-england-told-to-boost-size-of-fund-to-address-legacy-of-slavery">said Justin Welby</a>, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion of about 85 million Christians.</p>
<p>His words summon the shocking spectacle of the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Church of England owned vast plantations in the Caribbean, chiefly in Barbados, employing thousands of slaves. Slavery was thought to be entirely consistent with the Christian message of bringing the Gospel to the “savages”. The Christian leaders even branded “their” slaves “SPG” – the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.</p>
<h2>“Cursed be Canaan”</h2>
<p>The Anglican Church is not alone: all mainstream Christian denominations were deeply involved in the slave trade, as were the main branches of Islam.</p>
<p>How could this be possible? How had religions supposedly dedicated to propagating the word of a compassionate and loving God become so intricately involved in this “appalling evil”? The answer is rooted in a grotesque misuse of the very words of the Bible. Of the many ways that Christians have invoked the Bible to justify their actions, none has exceeded in cruelty and wilful ignorance their appropriation of the “Curse of Ham” to justify slavery.</p>
<p>Ham (no relation!) was the youngest son of the Biblical patriarch Noah. When Ham saw his father drunk and naked, Noah felt so humiliated that he put a curse on Ham’s son, Canaan, condemning his descendants to perpetual slavery. Here is the moment, as told in Genesis 9:24-25 (New King James Version):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. Then he said: ‘Cursed be Canaan. A servant of servants he shall be to his brethren’.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The making of a ‘slave race’</h2>
<p>Since the 15th century, religious leaders have cited the passage as the justification for the enslavement of <em>all</em> African people. For almost 500 years, priests taught their flocks that a Hebrew prophet had condemned millions of Africans to slavery <em>because</em> they were descended from Ham’s son Canaan. The curse of Ham thus formed the core religious justification for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The curse of Ham entered Islamic thought in the 7th century, as a result of the influence of Christianity, and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Ham-Slavery-Christianity-Christians/dp/0691123705">medieval Muslim scholars drew on Noah’s curse in their work</a>, as the historian David M. Goldenberg has shown. The Koran, however, makes no mention of the curse and Muhummad’s Farewell Address <a href="https://theconversation.com/islams-anti-racist-message-from-the-7th-century-still-resonates-today-141575">rejects the superiority of white people over black people</a>.</p>
<p>According to this reading of Genesis, God had not only mandated slavery, he had also <em>predestined</em> black people as a “slave race”. In fact, some Christian leaders argued that it was in the Africans’ interests to be enslaved, because their captivity would hasten their conversion, purifying and redeeming their souls in readiness for Judgement Day.</p>
<p>By manacling and herding millions of Africans onto ships bound for the colonies, slave traders and their enabling church leaders and governments had persuaded themselves that they were guiding the “Negroes” out of darkness and into salvation.</p>
<p>The historian Katie Cannon <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20487919">described the process another way</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Drunk with power and driven by grand delusions, government officials and officers of slave-trading companies… succumbed to the lies and manipulations that their soul salvation depended on the ceaseless replication of systemic violence.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>The justification for African slavery in America</h2>
<p>The first written use of the Curse of Ham to justify slavery appeared in the 15th century, when <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2953315">Gomes Eanes de Zurara</a>, a Portuguese historian, wrote that the enchained Africans he’d seen were in such a wretched state “because of the curse which, after the Deluge, Noah laid upon [Ham]… that his race should be subject to all the other races of the world”.</p>
<p>In 1627, an English author and defender of the slave trade wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“This curse to be a servant was laid, first upon a disobedient sonne Cham [Ham], and wee see to this day, that the Moores, Chams posteritie, are sold like slaves yet.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the American colonies the Curse of Ham served as <em>the</em> ideological justification for African slavery. The Puritan colonisers of the New World bought slaves in large numbers to turn Providence, Rhode Island, into a Christian “city on a hill”. All were deemed the progeny of Canaan.</p>
<p>The moral obscenity of slavery was the root cause of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Both sides enrolled God’s authority in their cause. In the south this involved a literal reading of the Curse of Ham. Sulphuric southern preachers thundered that Noah’s condemnation of Canaan had condemned all Africans to slavery. An “almost universal opinion in the Christian world” held that “the sufferings and the slavery of the Negro race were the consequence of the curse of Noah”, asserted <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-Crummell">Alexander Crummell</a> (1819–1898), an African-American minister and Cambridge-educated academic, in 1862.</p>
<p>Benjamin M. Palmer (1818–1902), pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans and Mississippi’s pre-eminent clergyman during the Civil War, raged in sermon after sermon that Noah’s curse was a prophetic blueprint of the destinies of the “white”, “black” and “red” races. While the white descendants of Shem and Japhet (Noah’s elder sons) would flourish and succeed, Palmer asserted that “[u]pon Ham was pronounced the doom of perpetual servitude…”.</p>
<h2>An important reference in the Civil War</h2>
<p>In the opening months of the Civil War, bigotry and rank superstition blanketed the south with a Biblical defence of slavery. Southern Catholics also eagerly cited the curse as a validation of slavery. On 21 August 1861, Bishop Augustus Marie Martin of Natchitoches, Louisiana, declared in a pastoral letter, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/church-history/article/abs/though-their-skin-remains-brown-i-hope-their-souls-will-soon-be-white-slavery-french-missionaries-and-the-roman-catholic-priesthood-in-the-american-south-178918651/7E167009CBB9C2C2C41BAA756BA9D987">“On the occasion of the war of southern independence”</a>, that slavery was “the manifest will of God”, and that all Catholics must snatch “from the barbarity of their ferocious customs thousands of children of the race of Canaan”, the accursed progeny of Ham.</p>
<p>All this was Biblical balm to slave traders and owners who feared for the salvation of their souls. The religious justification of slavery erased those concerns.</p>
<p>Setting aside the theologians’ misuse of Genesis, even on its own terms the Curse of Ham made a vague and unpersuasive case for slavery. Nowhere in Genesis is there a curse on Africans or black-skinned people.</p>
<p>If slave traders needed an explicit Biblical endorsement of slavery, they might have turned to the New Testament, where we find Saint Peter telling slaves to “be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh”. Or Saint Paul, who urged slaves to “be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling”.</p>
<h2>Come abolitionism</h2>
<p>Abolitionists were not silent in the face of this grotesque rendering of Christendom’s most sacred text. In a <a href="https://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/teagle/texts/frederick-douglass-fifth-of-july-speech-1852/">5 July 1852 speech</a>, Frederick Douglass, the great anti-slavery activist and politician who had himself escaped his “owner”, delivered this response to those who peddled the Curse of Ham from their pulpits:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[The] church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters… They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God…”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And all based on a misinterpretation of Genesis 9:24-25 by the pro-slavery “Divines”, who thus transformed their religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty. It was a sham and a lie, and anything but what Christianity was held to stand for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225212/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Ham ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>For nearly 500 years, priests and imams justified slavery on the basis of a misunderstood passage of the Bible.Paul Ham, Lecturer in narrative history, Sciences Po Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2227092024-03-11T20:26:45Z2024-03-11T20:26:45ZArcheoastronomy uses the rare times and places of previous total solar eclipses to help us measure history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580911/original/file-20240311-28-ygi764.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1280%2C1280&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A photograph of the 2017 total solar eclipse, taken at the Oregon State Fair Grounds, Salem, Ore.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Dominic Hart/NASA)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 648 BCE, the Greek poet Archilochus wrote that, “nothing can be surprising any more or impossible or miraculous, now that Zeus, father of the Olympians has <a href="https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/2020JAHH...23...47S">made night out of noonday</a>, hiding the light of the gleaming Sun.”</p>
<p>Total solar eclipses have fascinated and terrified people for centuries. Today, we know that total solar eclipses — like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/on-april-8-2024-parts-of-ontario-quebec-the-maritimes-and-newfoundland-will-see-a-total-eclipse-of-the-sun-heres-how-to-get-ready-for-it-203382">upcoming eclipse on April 8</a> — are caused by a cosmic coincidence when the moon comes between the Earth and the sun, momentarily blocking the sun from view. But in ancient times, the cause was unknown.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the peoples of those eras took note. From all ends of the Earth, stories abound of day turning to night or <a href="https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/eclipse-history">the sun being consumed</a>, and these records are opening up a new branch of study.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20170165">Astroarcheology</a> — also called archeoastronomy — uses astronomical records to help date key moments or events in history. Of all astronomical phenomena, total solar eclipses are among the best measuring sticks because they are only visible at a certain time and place. </p>
<p>Total solar eclipses are rare enough that a given spot on Earth is only likely to see <a href="https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1982JBAA...92..124M">one every 375 years (on average)</a>. And when an eclipse does happen, it only appears as total to those who are <a href="https://eclipsewise.com/solar/SEatlas/SEatlas.html">along a narrow path on Earth</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580844/original/file-20240310-26-te2a9p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="(drawing of a solar eclipse represented by a black circle surrounded by a white aura on a black background)" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580844/original/file-20240310-26-te2a9p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580844/original/file-20240310-26-te2a9p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580844/original/file-20240310-26-te2a9p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580844/original/file-20240310-26-te2a9p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580844/original/file-20240310-26-te2a9p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580844/original/file-20240310-26-te2a9p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580844/original/file-20240310-26-te2a9p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An illustration of the solar eclipse that occurred on Jan. 22, 1898 in India.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_January_22,_1898">(Edward Walter Maunder/British Astronomical Association)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Identifying years</h2>
<p>This combination of rare time and place helps researchers narrow down the exact date ancient peoples viewed a recorded eclipse. Additional clues such as the time of day the eclipse occurred (morning, noon or evening), time of year (season) or the presence of bright planets can also help identify the exact eclipse.</p>
<p>For example, a record of total solar eclipse occurring near dawn in ancient Chinese texts pertaining to King Yi helped <a href="https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/2003JAHH....6...53L">identify the year his reign began</a>.</p>
<p>One of the oldest recorded eclipses is on a clay tablet from the city of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Ugarit">Ugarit, in modern-day Syria</a>. The city was overthrown after the eclipse, making the tablet one of the last things written down by someone from that city. The inscription on the tablet reads: “… day of the new moon in ḫiyaru the Sun went down, its gate-keeper was [Rashap].”</p>
<p>The word ḫiyaru refers to a time of year around February/March, and Rashap is likely a planet. Armed with this information and knowledge that the city disappeared in the Bronze Age, researchers dated the tablet and eclipse to March 5, 1222 BCE, over 3,000 years ago, with the planet Mars <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/338238a0">visible near to the eclipsed sun</a>. Thanks to this eclipse, we know that Ugarit fell after March 5, 1222 BCE. </p>
<p>Records like these help researchers identify precise dates in the ancient world.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580919/original/file-20240311-17800-m97ekg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="an illustration of text above a photograph of a grey clay tablet" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580919/original/file-20240311-17800-m97ekg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580919/original/file-20240311-17800-m97ekg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580919/original/file-20240311-17800-m97ekg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580919/original/file-20240311-17800-m97ekg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=689&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580919/original/file-20240311-17800-m97ekg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580919/original/file-20240311-17800-m97ekg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580919/original/file-20240311-17800-m97ekg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=866&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Photograph and illustration of the clay tablet KTU 1.78 from Ugarit, in modern-day Syria, which mentions a total solar eclipse.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Dietrich and Loretz/University of Chicago Library)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Changing predictions</h2>
<p>Precisely predicting future eclipses, or plotting the paths of historical eclipses, requires knowing the positions of the sun, moon and Earth. Computers can track the motions of each, but the challenge here is that these motions are not constant. As the moon causes tides in Earth’s oceans, the process also causes the moon to slowly drift away from the Earth and <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-rotation-summer-solstice/">the length of day on Earth to slowly increase</a>. </p>
<p>Essentially, the length of a day on Earth is getting longer by roughly 18 microseconds every year, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2016.0404">or one second every 55,000 years</a>. After hundreds or thousands of years, that fraction of a second per day adds up to several hours.</p>
<p>The change in Earth’s day also affects dating historical eclipses — if the difference in the length of day is not corrected for, calculations may be inaccurate by thousands of kilometers. As such, when using eclipses to date historical events a correction must be applied; uncertainties in the correction can make <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pasj/56.1.215">ancient eclipse identifications</a> harder to pin down in the absence of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/178278">additional information</a> to help <a href="https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/pdf/1995QJRAS..36..397Z">narrow down the possibilities</a>. </p>
<h2>Measuring changing day-lengths</h2>
<p>For those solar eclipses that are well established, they open a window into tracking Earth’s length-of-day across the centuries. By timing eclipses over the last 2,000 years, researchers have mapped out the length of Earth’s day over that same span. The value of 18 microseconds per year is an average, but sometimes the Earth slows down a bit more and sometimes a bit less. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580922/original/file-20240311-139405-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="a graph showing day lengths over time" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580922/original/file-20240311-139405-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580922/original/file-20240311-139405-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580922/original/file-20240311-139405-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580922/original/file-20240311-139405-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580922/original/file-20240311-139405-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580922/original/file-20240311-139405-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580922/original/file-20240311-139405-bs1pct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Change in length of day (lod) for Earth in milliseconds (0.001 s) as measured from eclipse records (black line). The red line shows the average change over 2,000 years, while the grey line shows what we would expect from tidal forces between the Earth and moon only. The green dashed line shows a model fit to the data in black.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2016.0404">(F.R. Stephenson, L.V. Morrison and C.Y. Hohenkerk)</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tides alone can’t explain this pattern — there is something more going on between the moon and the Earth, and the cause is still unknown. This mystery, however, can be explored thanks to solar eclipses. </p>
<p>We can measure a change in length of a day on Earth with instruments now, but we wouldn’t be able to capture that change hundreds or thousands of years back in time without a precise measuring stick and records of eclipses over millennia and across the world. Total solar eclipses allow us to peer into not only our own history, but the history of the Earth itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222709/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Sadavoy receives funding from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). </span></em></p>Mentions of total solar eclipses in ancient history help researchers pinpoint precise dates of notable events.Sarah Sadavoy, Assistant Professor, Physics, Engineering Physics & Astronomy, Queen's University, OntarioLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2253042024-03-11T20:05:54Z2024-03-11T20:05:54ZAs ‘Oppenheimer’ triumphs at the Oscars, we should ask how historical films frame our shared future<p><a href="https://variety.com/2024/film/news/christopher-nolan-oppenheimer-post-franchise-movie-era-1235894688/">Box office</a> receipts for Christopher Nolan’s <em>Oppenheimer</em> had already approached the billion-dollar mark worldwide before the 2024 Oscars ceremony.</p>
<p>To this financial success, along with film awards for Best Director, Cinematography, Editing, Sound, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor, <em>Oppenheimer</em> garnered Nolan his first Academy Award for Best Picture. </p>
<p>In larger Academy Award history, this raises the tally for historical film wins to 52 over 96 competitions, according to research by <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/historical-film-9781847884978">film scholar Jonathan Stubbs</a> and records at the <a href="https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies">Oscars website</a>. There is a reason why people call big-budget historical <a href="https://collider.com/oscar-bait-movies/">films “Oscar bait</a>.” </p>
<p>The glossy spectacle of this genre often brings attention to its makers. And yet, as I argue in my new book, <em><a href="https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/making-history-move/9781978829770">Making History Move: Five Principles of the Historical Film</a></em>,
because the genre has such an outsized effect on spectators and their sense of historical reality, it’s important to think about and understand how historical films are constructed.</p>
<p>With <em>Oppenheimer</em> having received so much commercial, critical and Academy success, we have an opportunity to think about critical criteria for viewing historical film — and what we are owed by historical filmmakers. </p>
<h2>Highly influential medium</h2>
<p>This genre of film represents much more than a bold quest to win the most sought-after prize at the most celebrated labour union awards in history. These films look to the past to offer us a story and argument in an effort to see ourselves in the present — and to make decisions toward the future. </p>
<p>The genre combines a bookish status, conveying data and the sense of learning about the real world. Facts are served up with a wallop of emotion, excitement, adventure, terror and tears, to large and diverse audiences. </p>
<p>Although far from the most trusted medium for history, a recent <a href="https://www.historians.org/history-culture-survey">large-scale survey</a> of Americans published by the American Historical Association found that historical documentaries and films are the top two sources for information about the past for the public.</p>
<p>Unlike with pure fiction, when we watch a historical film (such as other 2024 Best Picture nominees, <em>The Zone of Interest</em> and <em>Killers of the Flower Moon</em>) we have the sense that we are seeing and hearing the past as we learn details about historical people and events. </p>
<p>These films speak to shared intergenerational and foundational experiences and legacies. We interpret historical films in ways that feel personal. </p>
<h2>Partisan cultural bubbles</h2>
<p>We are well into the experiment of the internet age when social media platforms sort people into tribes. </p>
<p>In the words of Renée DiResta, a researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory, people are living in discrete spheres operating with distinct media, norms and frameworks of facts — their own <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/opinion/political-reality-algorithms.html">“bespoke realities</a>.”
These information silos spawn political convictions and perspectives that reinforce separate interpretations of present and past. </p>
<p>The result creates multiverses of meaning. We exist in partisan cultural bubbles, abandoning the tussle over an objective sense of the past in favour of
ever-expanding and contradictory subjective narratives. </p>
<p>As this happens, mass media platforms, like feature films, gain precedence. They cross boundaries impermeable to history books, museums, university lectures and social networks, speaking to a shared sense of identity at vast communal scales.</p>
<h2>Just a movie?</h2>
<p>Our ability to keep what we are watching at a critical distance is less robust than we may assume. Neuroscience illuminates a central aspect of film’s power to captivate, enchant and convince. </p>
<p>As professor of psychological and brain science Jeffrey Zacks writes in his book <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/flicker-9780199982875?q=jeff%20zacks&lang=en&cc=ca"><em>Flicker: Your Brain on the Movies</em></a>, our brains operate by building neural models to understand our direct experience: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“[W]hether we experience events in real life, watch them in a movie or hear about them in a story, we build perceptual and memory representations in the same format [in our brains].” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He further explains that “it does not take extra work to put together experiences from a film with experiences from our lives to draw inferences. On the contrary, what takes extra work is to keep these different event representations separate.”</p>
<p>Now consider what happens when we make models of the past that we code as historical and non-fiction.</p>
<h2>5 principles of historical films</h2>
<p>For these reasons it is critical that we engage these films as more than mere diversion and amusement. Drawing on philosophy of history, literary and film theory, I have isolated five key principles to grasp and understand their construction, including:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>narration, the stories they choose to tell and how they tell them;</p></li>
<li><p>evidence, the sources and use of data that represents the past;</p></li>
<li><p>reflexivity, the use of <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/engaging-the-past/9780231165754">rupture techniques</a> that pull the audience out of their immersion in the story, reminding them of the structuring process of history;</p></li>
<li><p><a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674008212">foreignness</a>, the extent to which a film shows the richness of differences in ideas, beliefs, and material realities of the past, rather than creating a pantomime of contemporary people in fancy dress;</p></li>
<li><p>plurality, whether a film presents us a range or new perspectives on the meaning of events through their selection of people as characters.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>These principles help us consider the creation, role and impact of historical films. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/visiting-the-trinity-site-featured-in-oppenheimer-is-a-sobering-reminder-of-the-horror-of-nuclear-weapons-210248">Visiting the Trinity Site featured in 'Oppenheimer' is a sobering reminder of the horror of nuclear weapons</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>About envisioning futures</h2>
<p>What makes historical films so compelling and so difficult is they have to fictionalize and imagine narratives around real people and events.</p>
<p>Filmmakers working with realities of the past are charged with making an interpretation of historical data — and a judgment about what it means to us today, in a way that engages and entertains us as spectators. </p>
<p>To be true to that contract, such films should not simply make things up. They need to strive for accuracy and objectivity, while performing a deft sleight of hand to enthrall and captivate. </p>
<p>On top of box office success and critical success, <em>Oppenheimer</em> does an impressive job of translating <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/shopping/oppenheimer-movie-book-read-american-prometheus-online-1235539040/">biographical source material</a> into an engaging and thought-provoking feature film. As such, this functions as a clarion call in the present, <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/annie-lennox-stars-sign-open-letter-warning-nuclear-threat-1235623118">sparking real questions about the meaning of the nuclear age today</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225304/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim Nelson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and Canadian Heritage under their Initiative for Digital Citizen Research.</span></em></p>The success of ‘Oppenheimer’ at the Academy Awards presents an opportunity to think about critical criteria for viewing historical film — and what we are owed by historical filmmakers.Kim Nelson, Associate Professor. Cinema Arts, School of Creative Arts, University of WindsorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2229672024-03-11T12:24:32Z2024-03-11T12:24:32ZAncient Rome successfully fought against voter intimidation − a political story told on a coin that resonates today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576049/original/file-20240215-17705-r7jti2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1920%2C1080&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Democracy was enshrined in Roman currency.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://numismatics.org/collection/1937.158.2?lang=en">American Numismatic Society</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>This silver denarius, minted <a href="https://numismatics.org/crro/id/rrc-292.1">over 2,000 years ago</a>, is hardly the most attractive Roman coin. And yet, the coin is vital evidence for the early stages of a political struggle that culminated in Caesar’s assassination and the fall of the Roman Republic.</p>
<p>I first encountered this coin while <a href="https://history.iastate.edu/directory/david-hollander/">studying Roman history</a> in graduate school. Its unusual design gave me pause – this one depicted figures walking across a narrow bridge and dropping something into a box. I moved on after learning it depicted voting, reasoning that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah06338">Roman mint officials</a> occasionally made idiosyncratic choices.</p>
<p>But as voting access evolves in the U.S., the political importance of this centuries-old coin seems more compelling. It turns out that efforts to regulate voting access go way back.</p>
<h2>Roman voting</h2>
<p>Voting was a core feature of the Roman Republic and a <a href="https://archive.org/details/worldofcitizenin0000nico">regular activity for politically active citizens</a>. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah18141">Men, and only men</a>, could vote in multiple elections and legislative assemblies each year. So why would P. Licinius Nerva, the official responsible for this coin, choose to depict such a banal activity? </p>
<p>The answer lies in voting procedures that sometimes heavily favored elites.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579986/original/file-20240305-18-i1uwnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Panoramic view of ancient Roman columns and buildings" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579986/original/file-20240305-18-i1uwnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579986/original/file-20240305-18-i1uwnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=218&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579986/original/file-20240305-18-i1uwnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=218&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579986/original/file-20240305-18-i1uwnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=218&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579986/original/file-20240305-18-i1uwnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579986/original/file-20240305-18-i1uwnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579986/original/file-20240305-18-i1uwnl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=275&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Roman Forum was a common site of political activities.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Forum_romanum_6k_(5760x2097).jpg">BeBo86/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah20037.pub2">comitia centuriata</a>, the assembly that elected Rome’s chief magistrates, each citizen was a member of a voting unit based on wealth. Unit members voted to decide which candidates they collectively supported, like U.S. presidential elections where it’s not the popular vote but the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-the-electoral-college-exist-and-how-does-it-work-5-essential-reads-149502">number of Electoral College votes</a> that determines the winner. </p>
<p>The wealthiest Romans controlled more than half of the voting units in this assembly. The poorest citizens had just one voting unit; since they voted last, and only during uncertain outcomes, they might not vote at all. </p>
<p>Furthermore, citizens voted orally and openly. Elites could directly observe and potentially intimidate poorer voters.</p>
<h2>Regulating Roman electioneering</h2>
<p>That all began to change in 139 BCE when the Roman politician <a href="http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0474.phi044.perseus-lat1:3.35">Aulus Gabinius passed a law</a> mandating written ballots for elections. Two further laws, <a href="https://archive.org/details/romanvotingassem0000tayl">both passed in the 130s</a>, extended the use of written ballots to legislative voting and most trial juries.</p>
<p>These written ballots made it more difficult for elites to influence voting but not impossible. Each unit formed its own line leading to a bridge where voters received ballots to mark and <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb01565.0001.001">place in a basket</a>. Elites could station themselves or their allies on the bridge to encourage people to vote the “right” way.</p>
<p>The reverse of Nerva’s coin depicts the reception and deposit of the ballot, the first and last moments of a voter’s time on the bridge. The absence of nonvoter figures on the coin, apart from a poll worker, is key to understanding its message.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576033/original/file-20240215-20-qncuxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2018%2C1951&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Bronzed silver coin with one figure receiving a ballot from another figure while another deposits a ballot in a box" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576033/original/file-20240215-20-qncuxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2018%2C1951&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576033/original/file-20240215-20-qncuxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576033/original/file-20240215-20-qncuxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576033/original/file-20240215-20-qncuxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576033/original/file-20240215-20-qncuxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576033/original/file-20240215-20-qncuxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576033/original/file-20240215-20-qncuxa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=730&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Reverse of a Roman silver coin minted by P. Nerva, circa 113 BCE.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://numismatics.org/collection/1937.158.2?lang=en">American Numismatic Society</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 119 BCE, a young politician named Gaius Marius <a href="http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0007.tlg031.perseus-eng1:4.2">passed a law</a> that <a href="https://www.loebclassics.com/view/marcus_tullius_cicero-de_legibus/1928/pb_LCL213.505.xml">narrowed voting bridge widths</a>, allowing voters to mark their ballots without elites looking over their shoulders. Nerva’s coin, minted six or seven years later, almost certainly <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511584015">refers back to this law</a>. By showing only voters on the bridge, Nerva was celebrating an important voting rights victory and announcing his allegiance to Marius.</p>
<p>The aristocrats never managed to repeal the voting laws and were <a href="http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:latinLit:phi0474.phi044.perseus-lat1:3.33">still grumbling about them</a> even as the Republic collapsed.</p>
<p>The long Roman struggle over voting procedures provides a useful and perhaps even comforting reminder. <a href="https://tracker.votingrightslab.org/">Changing state voting laws</a> and <a href="https://www.democracydocket.com/cases/">election lawsuits</a> are nothing new. The fight over voter access to the ballot is an inevitable side effect of democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David B. Hollander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fighting for voter access is an inevitable part of any democracy, from ancient Rome to the US today. Roman legislators were able to thwart elite political sway by introducing written ballots.David B. Hollander, Professor of History, Iowa State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2206612024-03-07T22:04:15Z2024-03-07T22:04:15ZFrom invisible segregation to the visible heart: what 100 years of kitchens can tell us about domestic labour<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576956/original/file-20240221-24-tzgvp2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1022%2C591&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/resource/PRG+280/1/15/993">State Library of South Australia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Long before COVID shone a spotlight on working from home, the realms of home and work have always been blurred – particularly for women as “housewives”, working mothers and caregivers, and those employed as servants or “home help”.</p>
<p>Historic Australian houses with conserved kitchens and associated service and servant rooms are an evocative source to turn to to experience places of domestic labour. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10331867.2023.2282292?src=exp-la">I recently visited</a> four historic houses in Victoria that are open to the public to get a better understanding of these women who worked from home.</p>
<p>Spanning the mid-19th century to the early 1950s, these houses tell us much about the history of paid and unpaid domestic work, overwhelmingly carried out by women. They vividly show how home work shifts from being totally segregated and seemingly invisible towards becoming the visible heart of the modern house.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dream-homes-of-the-future-still-stuck-in-the-past-21169">Dream homes of the future still stuck in the past</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Como House and Garden</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/places/como-house-and-garden/">Como House</a>, built from the 1840s onwards in the south-east suburbs of Melbourne, is a substantial home and garden, its longest residents being the Armytage family.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579091/original/file-20240301-20-k74ixi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Sepia photograph" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579091/original/file-20240301-20-k74ixi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579091/original/file-20240301-20-k74ixi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579091/original/file-20240301-20-k74ixi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579091/original/file-20240301-20-k74ixi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579091/original/file-20240301-20-k74ixi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579091/original/file-20240301-20-k74ixi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579091/original/file-20240301-20-k74ixi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Armytage family’s servants at Como House, around 1890.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://archives.library.unimelb.edu.au/nodes/view/213404">University of Melbourne Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The traditional English upstairs and downstairs segregation here occurs all on one level, with a separate outbuilding wing constructed sometime between 1846–1855. </p>
<p>This separation between servant and served spaces ensured the smells and noise of cooking and cleaning could be contained. There were less opportunities for chance interactions between staff and the family. </p>
<p>It certainly wasn’t designed for convenience.</p>
<p>Around the well-scrubbed wooden kitchen table, all sorts of domestic tasks were carried out, including the making of candles, the salting down of vegetables, the boiling up of soap, and the preserving of fruits. Walls were simply whitewashed for hygiene and high windows only modestly aided ventilation from the smoke of the ovens.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579093/original/file-20240301-22-56bf59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Sepia photograph, five women and two men." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579093/original/file-20240301-22-56bf59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579093/original/file-20240301-22-56bf59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579093/original/file-20240301-22-56bf59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579093/original/file-20240301-22-56bf59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579093/original/file-20240301-22-56bf59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579093/original/file-20240301-22-56bf59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579093/original/file-20240301-22-56bf59.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A group of servants featuring gardeners, cook, laundry woman and maids, taken by Ada Armytage in the Como gardens.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://archives.library.unimelb.edu.au/nodes/view/213405">University of Melbourne Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Historical records of servant labour in Australia are relatively scarce, but we can start to imagine their lives through the domestic technologies and spaces that remain intact. </p>
<p>Change was slow. Rudimentary fire boxes and bread ovens from the early colonial days were gradually replaced with cast iron ranges imported from England in the 19th century, depending on household wealth. The existing Pullinger range at Como dates from 1880. Gas was mistrusted by many house mistresses and cooks but became a necessity in the face of domestic labour shortages. </p>
<p>Como House didn’t have a gas stove until the early 20th century. And although Melbourne was an early adopter of electrification since 1867, electricity was only installed at Como in the 1890s. This was not typical of all households until as late as 1950. Visitors can appreciate the labour-saving innovation of plumbed-in enamelled sinks and brass taps that alleviated the burden of fetching water manually.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579094/original/file-20240301-20-81xqbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A period kitchen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579094/original/file-20240301-20-81xqbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579094/original/file-20240301-20-81xqbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579094/original/file-20240301-20-81xqbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579094/original/file-20240301-20-81xqbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579094/original/file-20240301-20-81xqbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579094/original/file-20240301-20-81xqbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579094/original/file-20240301-20-81xqbd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The kitchen at Como House today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hannah Lewi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Rippon Lea Estate</h2>
<p>Although the presence of employed home help feels very absent in empty heritage houses today, visitors can get glimpses into the evolving relationships between home labour and domestic technologies, and about the conditions of female servants whose employment <a href="https://www.vgls.vic.gov.au/client/en_AU/vgls/search/results?qu=Como+%28Historic+building+%3A+South+Yarra%2C+Vic.%29&ps=300">declined rapidly</a> in the early 20th century from 150,000 in 1911 to 42,000 in 1947. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ripponleaestate.com.au/">Rippon Lea</a>, also in south-east Melbourne, is one of Australia’s largest and most intact heritage homes, built from the 1860s. Here, domestic work goes back underground with extensive kitchen, pantry and cellar rooms in the basement. It was originally designed by Reed and Barnes for the Sargoods, and then sold to the Nathan family. Louisa Nathan extensively remodelled the kitchens and added a glamorous swimming pool in the 1930s.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576952/original/file-20240221-28-74hpvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Sepia photograph" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576952/original/file-20240221-28-74hpvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576952/original/file-20240221-28-74hpvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576952/original/file-20240221-28-74hpvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576952/original/file-20240221-28-74hpvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576952/original/file-20240221-28-74hpvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576952/original/file-20240221-28-74hpvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576952/original/file-20240221-28-74hpvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=618&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rippon Lea House, photographed in 1880.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE463971&mode=browse">State Library Victoria</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The now abandoned original service rooms are overwhelmingly dark: the slate floors and low levels of daylight maintained relatively constant temperatures. Servants were on call 24-hours-a-day until more regulation of working conditions in Australia was <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Putting_Your_House_in_Order.html?id=WsdjNAAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">gradually achieved</a>. </p>
<p>An intricate system of bells and, later, electrical alarms and a hydraulic powered dumbwaiter linked the downstairs with upstairs. They are all symbolic of servants’ lack of agency over their own time and bodies.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579095/original/file-20240301-18-d15hix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A new photograph of a historical kitchen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579095/original/file-20240301-18-d15hix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579095/original/file-20240301-18-d15hix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579095/original/file-20240301-18-d15hix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579095/original/file-20240301-18-d15hix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579095/original/file-20240301-18-d15hix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579095/original/file-20240301-18-d15hix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579095/original/file-20240301-18-d15hix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The basement kitchen space at Rippon Lea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hannah Lewi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The Heights</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/places/the-heights/">The Heights</a> in Geelong was built in 1854 as a prefabricated house of German origin for Charles Ibbotson. The kitchen was renovated in the 1930s into a modern, streamlined pale yellow and chrome “fitted” kitchen. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576953/original/file-20240221-18-cn5cux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photograph" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576953/original/file-20240221-18-cn5cux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576953/original/file-20240221-18-cn5cux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576953/original/file-20240221-18-cn5cux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576953/original/file-20240221-18-cn5cux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576953/original/file-20240221-18-cn5cux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576953/original/file-20240221-18-cn5cux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576953/original/file-20240221-18-cn5cux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Heights, Geelong, photographed in 1975.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://viewer.slv.vic.gov.au/?entity=IE5738442&mode=browse">John T Collins/State Library of Victoria</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>New electric appliances displayed on benchtops promised efficiency in the face of far less available home help. The kitchen also starts to include more habitable and informal spaces in which to prepare and eat simple meals by a much smaller staff, or wives and mothers. At the Heights there is a sunny eating nook with a large table and ample built-in cupboards.</p>
<p>Here the kitchen has become more central within the main house plan, but remains quite a discrete space with electric service bells still a feature.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579096/original/file-20240301-24-2kh2uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A mid-century kitchen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579096/original/file-20240301-24-2kh2uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579096/original/file-20240301-24-2kh2uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579096/original/file-20240301-24-2kh2uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579096/original/file-20240301-24-2kh2uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579096/original/file-20240301-24-2kh2uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579096/original/file-20240301-24-2kh2uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579096/original/file-20240301-24-2kh2uz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The yellow streamlined kitchen at The Heights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hannah Lewi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/great-time-to-try-cleaning-the-house-while-fitting-in-a-workout-135816">Great time to try: cleaning the house (while fitting in a workout)</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Boyd House II</h2>
<p>The innovative <a href="https://robinboyd.org.au/about-robin-boyd/walsh-street-history/">Boyd House</a> in South Yarra was designed by the architect Robin Boyd in the 1950s. It captures the huge changes in home design and ways of living post-World War II.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579100/original/file-20240301-18-x8a7i2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The kitchen and living room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579100/original/file-20240301-18-x8a7i2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579100/original/file-20240301-18-x8a7i2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579100/original/file-20240301-18-x8a7i2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579100/original/file-20240301-18-x8a7i2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579100/original/file-20240301-18-x8a7i2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579100/original/file-20240301-18-x8a7i2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579100/original/file-20240301-18-x8a7i2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The kitchen is at the centre of Boyd House.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hannah Lewi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kitchens had now become smaller, more open and central to the main living areas. Housewives took over much, or all, of the burden of housework. The promise of electric appliances well and truly replaced servants – here, hidden away in built-in cupboards.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579097/original/file-20240301-18-pd8yf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A mid-century kitchen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579097/original/file-20240301-18-pd8yf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/579097/original/file-20240301-18-pd8yf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579097/original/file-20240301-18-pd8yf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579097/original/file-20240301-18-pd8yf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579097/original/file-20240301-18-pd8yf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579097/original/file-20240301-18-pd8yf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/579097/original/file-20240301-18-pd8yf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At Boyd House appliances are hidden away.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Hannah Lewi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From a visit to these four houses, the contrasting antecedents of today’s “servantless” kitchens as places of domestic work can be traced. The traditional kitchen remains a discrete room displaying, perhaps, a porcelain “butler” sink, copper pans, white-washed timber and a free-standing stove. </p>
<p>By contrast, the contemporary minimalist kitchen is now located within the main living space, and is designed to conceal the multitude of appliances in an attempt to make domestic labour invisible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220661/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah Lewi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>I recently visited four historic houses in Victoria that are open to the public to get a better understanding of women who worked from home.Hannah Lewi, Professor, Architecture, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2250042024-03-06T17:15:06Z2024-03-06T17:15:06ZDick Turpin: five myths about the 18th-century highwayman debunked<p>As the title of the new TV series makes abundantly clear, it is offering viewers the <a href="https://youtu.be/kq5TmH7Np1M?si=zqm7O8AXjgrlRXu1">Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin</a>, and we are not supposed to consider Noel Fielding’s depiction of a charming but hapless villain as authentic. Dick Turpin was one of the many robbers on horseback in 18th-century England who stalked the roads and held up travellers with the command: “Stand and deliver!” </p>
<p>For a time, he was the most wanted criminal in the country and was eventually executed in York in 1739, aged 33. The latest retelling of the Dick Turpin story is just one in a long line of fictionalised accounts. All of these portrayals don’t truly reflect the real Dick Turpin.</p>
<p>Fielding’s new portrayal of Turpin is far removed from the Victorian romanticisation of the swashbuckling highwayman and instead turns the central character into a comedic figure. While this is a different take, it is still guilty of presenting the violent and treacherous robber and murderer as a romantic and appealing figure. </p>
<p>Here are five myths about him from popular culture.</p>
<h2>1. He was a knight of the road</h2>
<p>The characterisation of Turpin as an honourable “knight of the road” behaving chivalrously was the invention of Victorian authors and artists (like <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23564/23564-h/23564-h.htm">William Harrison Ainsworth</a>). At this time highway robberies were no longer a constant threat and these authors and artists recast these criminals as romantic heroes akin to Robin Hood. In Ainsworth’s Rookwood (1834), the character of Dick Turpin is a likeable figure living a glamorous and exciting life as a member of a criminal gang.</p>
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dick_Turpin_trial.djvu">Eighteenth-century criminal biographies</a>, however, portray the real Richard Turpin as a violent poacher, robber, murderer and horse thief who stole from rich and the poor. In the 1735 Earlsbury Farm Robbery, the Gregory Gang, including Turpin, tortured their elderly male victim, forcing him to sit, bare-buttocked on a lit fire while Samuel Gregory raped the female servant.</p>
<h2>2. He was handsome</h2>
<p>Far from being a handsome highwayman popular with ladies, contemporary accounts of Turpin from 1737 described him as “about five feet nine inches high, brown complexion, very much mark’d with the small pox, his cheek-bones broad, his face thinner towards the Bottom, his visage short, pretty upright, and broad about the Shoulders”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4B2a6l6wM2k?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The violent, pockmarked thug of the 1730s was nothing like the modern images of an attractive rogue embodied by actors and <a href="https://www.adam-ant.net/pcjapan.html">pop stars</a> like Adam Ant in his song Stand and Deliver.</p>
<h2>3. He was captured for his crimes as a highway robber</h2>
<p>Dick Turpin was living in York under the alias John Palmer when he was eventually captured – but not for highway robbing. He had got into a petty quarrel that resulted in him killing his neighbour’s rooster and threatening to shoot the neighbour.</p>
<p>While being held at Beverley House of Correction magistrates, he was investigated further and Palmer was charged with three counts of horse theft. </p>
<p>Turpin hoped to escape justice by securing a false alibi from his brother-in-law in Essex but, unlucky for him, his former school tutor recognised the handwriting on the letter he sent and then travelled to York to reveal that Palmer and Turpin were the same person and to claim a £200 reward.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kq5TmH7Np1M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>4. He had a noble steed</h2>
<p>Accounts from Victorian authors and artists that Turpin rode a loyal mare, <a href="https://victorianweb.org/art/illustration/cruikshank/r11.html">Black Bess</a>, between Essex and York overnight to escape capture are both fictitious and impossible (and highly sentimentalised). Ainsworth in <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/23564/23564-h/23564-h.htm">Rookwood</a> invented the journey to create a dramatic escape for Turpin, despite this having little relevance to the novel’s plot. And he ignores the fact that Turpin had been living as Palmer in York for over a year before his capture.</p>
<h2>5. He was a celebrity</h2>
<p>Richard Turpin was not a “celebrity” in the 18th century. Attention focused on his and the Gregory Gang’s crimes while he was at large due to the offer of rewards, but he was soon forgotten following his capture. Contemporary accounts demonstrate that he paid for mourners to be present at his execution to ensure an audience and the survival of only a couple of criminal biographies indicate that there was little public interest beyond the norm for violent criminals.</p>
<p>Without Harrison Ainsworth having written the largely fictional figure of Dick Turpin into his novel Rookwood and spurring the creation of a myth, the executed criminal Richard Turpin would have been overlooked other than by historians of crime.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225004/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julie Gammon is a member of the Labour party.</span></em></p>Not the dandy highwayman of popular imagination, Dick Turpin was a violent and, according to records, ugly criminal.Julie Gammon, Senior Lecturer in History in the School of Humanities, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2235222024-03-06T13:23:19Z2024-03-06T13:23:19ZMary & George: homosexual relationships in the time of King James I were forbidden – but not uncommon<p>The Sky TV series Mary & George tells the story of the Countess of Buckingham, Mary Villiers (Julianne Moore), who moulded her son George (Nicholas Galitzine) to seduce King James I. She believed that, as the king’s lover, her son could become wealthy and wield power and influence.</p>
<p>No one identified as a “homosexual” in King James’s time (1566-1625). The word was only <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/homosexuality-in-renaissance-england/9780231102896">coined in the Victorian period</a> and sexuality was not used to construct identities as it is today. </p>
<p>There was also a more <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674543553">fluid concept of gender</a>. Male and female bodies were seen as <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Gender-and-the-English-Revolution/Hughes/p/book/9780415214919">fundamentally the same</a>, with sexual differences determined by the way bodily humours (fluids) flowed through them. </p>
<p>A man who desired sex with other men was seen as having an imbalance in his humours – and was <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674543553">blamed</a> for failing to control it. </p>
<p>Sexual acts between men were forbidden by the church, citing passages from the the Bible. <a href="https://biblia.com/bible/esv/1-corinthians/6/9">Corinthians 6:9</a> classed the “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” among the “unrighteous” who would not inherit the kingdom of God. </p>
<p>The puritan theologian William Perkins, <a href="https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.12024/A09339/A09339.html?sequence=5&isAllowed=y">writing in 1591</a>, itemised “strange pleasures about generation, prohibited in the word of God”. This included sexual acts with beasts, devils and members of the same sex. </p>
<p>It was sometimes thought that men who had sex with men would give birth to monsters. Sodomites (people who engaged in anal sex) were said to be the offspring of witches having sex with devils.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b9qrcRGfXug?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Mary & George.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Sodomy on trial</h2>
<p>Originally under the jurisdiction of the church courts, in 1533 <a href="https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/131232/1/Revised_submission_to_Parliamentary_History_WRR_version.pdf">sodomy or “buggery”</a> became a secular crime subject to the death penalty. The offender “not having God before his eyes” was said to have “devilishly” and against “almighty god” and the “order of nature” committed the “destestible” sin of sodomy “not to be named amongst Christians”. </p>
<p>This sort of phrasing was usually reserved for the most heinous offences such as witchcraft, blasphemy and treason.</p>
<p>In early modern southern Europe, hundreds of men were tried and executed for sodomy. But in northern Europe, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/forbidden-desire-in-early-modern-europe-9780198886334?lang=3n&cc=pa">very few cases were prosecuted</a>. </p>
<p>Low rates of prosecution can indicate one of two things. Either an unwillingness to prosecute a crime, or that the crime occurred infrequently. </p>
<p>Historian <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/homosexuality-in-renaissance-england/9780231102896">Alan Bray argues</a> that, in this instance, it indicates a lack of interest in prosecuting homosexual acts and thereby a degree of tolerance – particularly for acts that did not involve penetration. </p>
<p>Early modern historian Noel Malcolm offers <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/forbidden-desire-in-early-modern-europe-9780198886334?lang=3n&cc=pa">a different explanation</a>. He suggests that the higher rates of prosecution in southern Europe reflect a greater prevalence of homosexual acts involving men who were otherwise heterosexual by preference there. </p>
<p>It is a bold thesis, but is it correct? The low rates of prosecution for sodomy in England follow a comparable pattern to those for rape – so infrequently prosecuted that it’s hard to believe that either represents their actual incidence. Both often involved accusations by a person of lower status against someone in authority.</p>
<p>Jurors were <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296174755_The_patriarch_at_home_The_trial_of_the_2nd_Earl_of_Castlehaven_for_rape_and_sodomy">reluctant to convict</a> sexual crimes which carried the death penalty. There was also an inclination to doubt the credibility of victims. This discouraged accusations. In a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Wanton-Wenches-and-Wayward-Wives-Peasants-and-Illicit-Sex-in-Early-Seventeenth-Century-England/Quaife/p/book/9780367174743">1622 case from Somerset</a>, sex crimes involving multiple unwilling partners had been going on for 14 years before victims came forward. </p>
<p>The rarity of sodomy cases, and the sparse detail given in most English legal records, makes it difficult to conclude much about queer sexual practices. </p>
<p>A Sussex clergyman and an Essex schoolmaster <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/homosexuality-in-renaissance-england/9780231102896">were accused</a> in the late Elizabethan period. A coxswain on an East India ship who <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/homosexuality-in-renaissance-england/9780231102896">“committed buggery”</a> with a ship’s boy in 1609 was tried at sea and hanged. </p>
<p>A steward who had sexual contact of a different sort with the same boy was merely whipped. In another naval case from 1638 the offender was imprisoned but <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/homosexuality-in-renaissance-england/9780231102896">eventually pardoned</a>. </p>
<p>Accusations of sodomy were also used to attack religious opponents. Protestant polemicist John Bale made a <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/176987/the-anatomy-of-melancholy-by-burton-robert/9780141192284">“catalogue of sodomites”</a> supposedly discovered in Henry VIII’s monasteries. </p>
<p>An <a href="https://archive.org/details/puritanismemothe0098bcca">anti-puritan publication</a> of 1633 claimed that theologian John Calvin fled to Geneva not on account of religious persecution, but because he had been charged with sodomy in France. In the 1630s, puritans in Sussex framed the traditionalist vicar of Arlington, <a href="https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/browse/details.xhtml?recordId=3203052&recordType=Journal">John Wilson</a>, for supposedly attempting to “commit buggery” with three men and a mare.</p>
<h2>King James’s relationships</h2>
<p>But it wasn’t all negative. Growing up in the all-male environments of school, university and inns of court, it was seen as normal for the most intense emotional relationships of elite males to be with other men. </p>
<p>In the late 1500s, the French essayist <a href="https://hyperessays.net/essays/on-friendship/">Michel de Montaigne wrote</a> of his friend Étienne de la Boétie: “If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.”</p>
<p>Philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon considered heterosexual love a “weak passion” compared to the <a href="https://rictornorton.co.uk/baconfra.htm">love between male friends</a>. Bacon apparently preferred the “Ganymedes” (<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ganymede-Greek-mythology#:%7E:text=Ganymede%2C%20in%20Greek%20legend%2C%20the,Minos%2C%20to%20serve%20as%20cupbearer.">Ganymede</a> was a mythological beautiful boy abducted by Zeus) among his servants to his sexually frustrated wife. But he was never prosecuted. </p>
<p>When it came to powerful man like Bacon, and perhaps with lesser mortals as well, it seems that while people didn’t approve of his sexual inclinations, they were willing to ignore them. </p>
<p>As to what King James I got up to sexually with his male favourites in his bedroom, historians can never be sure. The stories of his Ganymedes which abounded after his death could simply reflect prejudice against him as a Scottish foreigner, or distaste at his extravagance towards his favourites. They may be a misreading of his <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23265594">physical demonstrativeness</a> with friends, which shocked his wife Anne when she first met him.</p>
<p>Though we don’t know the truth about his sexual preferences, we do know that James had three intense and exclusive <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt20q1z4b">romantic affairs with men</a>. It’s possible that they had a sexual side, just as it’s possible that had he lived today, he wouldn’t have <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254157154_James_VI_and_I_Time_for_a_Reconsideration">defined himself as heterosexual</a>.</p>
<p>Instead, shaped by his time, in his book <a href="https://archive.org/stream/cu31924097402626/cu31924097402626_djvu.txt">Basilikon Doron</a> (1599), James classed sodomy with witchcraft and murder as unforgivable crimes. It must have required some degree of hypocrisy – or cognitive dissociation – for him to square this statement with his own desires. But he probably thought the rules did not apply to him: it was a maxim in law that the king could do no wrong. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223522/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fiona McCall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It was sometimes thought that men who had sex with men would give birth to monsters.Fiona McCall, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2210612024-03-05T14:00:11Z2024-03-05T14:00:11ZHispanic health disparities in the US trace back to the Spanish Inquisition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578113/original/file-20240226-18-qx2l6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=346%2C479%2C3693%2C2076&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Class, gender and religion influenced health care in early modern Spain and Latin America.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/diego-velazquez-christ-in-the-house-of-martha-and-mary">Diego Velázquez/The National Gallery</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many of the significant <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/06/14/hispanic-americans-experiences-with-health-care/">health disparities and inequities</a> Hispanic communities in the United States face are tied to a long history of health injustice in the Hispanic world.</p>
<p>The health landscape of early modern Hispanic societies, particularly from the late 15th to 18th centuries, was a <a href="https://history.wisc.edu/publications/The-Gray-Zones-of-Medicine-Healers-and-History-in-Latin-america/">complex interplay</a> between professional and nonprofessional providers shaping health care. The convergence of Indigenous, African and European practices, both in Spain and the Americas, affected how clinicians treated their patients.</p>
<p>This all played out against the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781139032698.009">backdrop of the Inquisition and colonization</a>, when the Catholic Church prosecuted heresy. Consolidating religious norms promoted health care through charitable activity, such as the creation of hospitals, but also created challenges between the authority of the Catholic Church and competing health care initiatives. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.bowdoin.edu/profiles/faculty/mboyle2/index.html">My research</a> focuses on how health and medical practices in early modern Latin America and Spain are represented through cultural artifacts, including literature, recipe books, the Inquisition and convent records. In our book, my colleague <a href="https://charleston.edu/spanish/faculty/owens-sarah.php">Sarah Owens</a> and I explore how <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487505189/health-and-healing-in-the-early-modern-iberian-world/">gender norms affected</a> medicine and health care. We also consider how popular representations of health and medicine in culture inform widely held beliefs and biases about these experiences.</p>
<p>Understanding the historical roots of health disparities in Hispanic communities can <a href="https://salud-america.org">help address them</a> both locally and globally today. </p>
<h2>Interplay of medical practices</h2>
<p>Latin America and Spain in the late 15th to 18th centuries were home to a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Medical-Cultures-of-the-Early-Modern-Spanish-Empire/Slater-Lopez-Terrada-Pardo-Tomas/p/book/9780367669225">number of medical practices</a>, including traditional medical knowledge and remedies and the professionalization of medicine through new universities and licensing systems. </p>
<p>Early modern <a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/aes.3633">medical humanists</a>, or Renaissance clinicians, took up medical treatises by the ancient Greek and Roman physicians, including those of Galen and Hippocrates, and revived them in the context of “learned” medical instruction through European universities. The study of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139027649.015">Paracelsianism</a>, or the theories of Swiss physician Paracelsus, though more contested among practitioners because of its connections to the supernatural and occult, also affected a variety of health practices across early modern Spain and colonial Latin America. With the publication of anatomical treatises at the start of the 16th century, including the work of Renaissance physician <a href="https://lccn.loc.gov/2021667096">Andreas Vesalius</a>, the study of anatomy slowly and dramatically changed medical practice.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578303/original/file-20240227-28-t93eef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white engraving of four people surrounding the bedside of a man lying prone, with one of the people tending to a wound on his back by candlelight" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578303/original/file-20240227-28-t93eef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578303/original/file-20240227-28-t93eef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578303/original/file-20240227-28-t93eef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578303/original/file-20240227-28-t93eef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578303/original/file-20240227-28-t93eef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578303/original/file-20240227-28-t93eef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578303/original/file-20240227-28-t93eef.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1002&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An 18th century engraving depicts a woman soothing a wound on Don Quixote’s back.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/yca32vbf/images?id=j557f5kw">William Hogarth/Wellcome Collection</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Traditional healing practices varied significantly but often provided accessible and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1089/heq.2021.0099">culturally compatible care</a>, including reduced language barriers. Many people in Hispanic communities still rely on these practices today. Discussions about the legitimacy and health effects of folk remedies in Latin America, such as varieties of herbal and holistic medicine and other <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-4269-7-9">animal-based remedies</a>, are ongoing.</p>
<h2>Gender and medicine</h2>
<p>As health care became more professionalized during the early modern period, some women found ways to practice medicine in more formalized contexts, while others continued to work as healers or herbalists. These practices alternated between <a href="https://iberian-connections.yale.edu/articles/healing-in-madrid/">success and suspicion</a> during the Spanish Inquisition. Accusations of sorcery and witchcraft along with sexualities outside heterosexual norms often collided with practices of health and medicine. </p>
<p>But just as pregnancy and child–rearing are not the only medical events that shaped early modern women’s lives, women medical providers <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487505189/health-and-healing-in-the-early-modern-iberian-world/">weren’t only witches</a>. Nuns in Arequipa prepared treatments in convents, and mothers and daughters made medicine within households in Madrid.</p>
<p>From Fernando de Rojas’ 1499 tragicomedy “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/1xhs-0330">La Celestina</a>,” about the go-between who crafts love potions and repairs hymens, to the 2019 Colombian TV series “<a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80205595">Siempre Bruja</a>,” about a 17th century Afro-Colombian witch who finds herself in present-day Cartagena, the cultural legacy of witchy women healers in the Hispanic world continues to be deeply felt.</p>
<h2>Class, race, geography and language</h2>
<p>The transfer of plants, animals and diseases across the Atlantic also profoundly affected health outcomes. </p>
<p>European diseases <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2020/08/07/the-history-of-epidemics-in-latin-america-has-much-to-tell-us-about-covid-19/">such as smallpox</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-smallpox-devastated-the-aztecs-and-helped-spain-conquer-an-american-civilization-500-years-ago-111579">devastated Indigenous populations</a>. Meanwhile, plants from the Americas offered <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/34839?language=en">novel treatments</a> for a number of illnesses globally. Peruvian <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-10-144">cinchona bark</a> is a natural source of quinine that proved effective against malaria, a disease prevalent in both Europe and the Americas. Other plants <a href="https://utorontopress.com/9781487527204/chocolate/">such as cacao seeds</a> found various medicinal and ritual uses, including relieving exhaustion or anxiety or improving weight gain.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5FpPpn086eI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Columbian Exchange was not mutually beneficial.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But access to this range of treatment methods was unequal, especially <a href="https://nursingclio.org/2018/02/22/health-care-in-colonial-peruvian-convents/">across social class and geography</a>. Wealthier nobility in urban centers often had much greater access to scarce resources across the Iberian empire. </p>
<p>Health outcomes were also often linked to <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469630878/the-experiential-caribbean/">racial and ethnic hierarchies</a>. Patients were classified as Spanish, mestizo – mixed European and Indigenous – or African slaves in treatment records. These documents show evidence of uneven access to care, while there is also evidence that some exchanges in care practices <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0424.12553">across these hierarchies</a> were possible.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578307/original/file-20240227-20-vpjsg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Yellowed manuscript with written text inscribed in ink down the page" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578307/original/file-20240227-20-vpjsg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578307/original/file-20240227-20-vpjsg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578307/original/file-20240227-20-vpjsg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578307/original/file-20240227-20-vpjsg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578307/original/file-20240227-20-vpjsg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578307/original/file-20240227-20-vpjsg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578307/original/file-20240227-20-vpjsg8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Grammar of the Castilian Language’ codified Spanish.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2021667003">Antonio De Nebrija/World Digital Library via Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Forced displacement as well as language discrimination also affected health access and outcomes. Spanish wasn’t <a href="https://www.publicbooks.org/whose-spanish-anyway/">standardized as a language</a> until the publication of Antonio de Nebrija’s “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44015843">Grammar of the Castilian Language</a>” in 1492, inscribed to Queen Isabel with the reminder that “language has always been the companion to empire.” </p>
<p>For example, while Arabic and Hebrew were widely spoken throughout the Iberian Peninsula before the forced expulsions of the Inquisition, politics around language resulted in centuries of stereotypes and discrimination against Muslim and Jewish medical providers, who had to navigate <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Medicine-Government-and-Public-Health-in-Philip-IIs-Spain-Shared-Interests/Clouse/p/book/9781138246379">alternative licensing methods</a> to practice medicine in Spain and its colonial territories. </p>
<h2>Understanding the story of medicine</h2>
<p>More than 400 years later, inequities in and commodification of Hispanic health and wellness continue. </p>
<p>Luxury travelers are sold wellness via <a href="https://oursoulfultravels.com/wellness-spas-in-mexico/">Mayan purification rituals</a>, among other assorted local remedies and practices that can be purchased, marketed and monetized. Wood from the Palo Santo tree, which healers have used for centuries for spiritual cleanings and pain relief, continues to be grown all over the Americas, including Mexico, Peru and Ecuador, and is now bought and sold globally to bring “<a href="https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a30793415/what-is-palo-santo/">good vibes</a>.”</p>
<p>Considering these early modern health practices and inequities allows for deeper engagement with health care systems today. Informed critical thinking about medicine and health care <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/16/2018-jefferson-lecture-focuses-contribution-humanities-medicine">across disciplines</a> is a powerful way to consider how these histories continue to shape current values and practices, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9781683402619.001.0001">ongoing disparities in health care</a>.</p>
<p>One such discipline is <a href="https://theconversation.com/literature-inspired-my-medical-career-why-the-humanities-are-needed-in-health-care-217357">narrative medicine</a>. Using the tools of the humanities, physicians can broaden their view of their patients from simple metrics to human beings with stories to tell. This process involves perceiving and incorporating patients’ personal experiences, valuing narration of the past and recognizing the significance of the encounter between doctor and patient. While much of this research focuses on English-language narratives, cross-cultural and bilingual research <a href="https://www.lclark.edu/live/news/48656-neh-grant-to-support-bilingual-materials-for">in Spanish</a> is expanding the field. </p>
<p>It is estimated that by 2060 there will be more than <a href="https://latino.ucla.edu/research/latino-population-2000-2020/">111 million Latinos</a> in the United States. Understanding the historical legacies that have shaped wellness and care practices, including the factors that determine care quality and access, can promote more equitable and culturally nuanced health outcomes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221061/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Margaret Boyle received funding from the Fulbright Program and the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Fellowship for this research.</span></em></p>Early modern societies in Latin America and Spain saw a convergence of traditional medical knowledge and the professionalization of medicine. The resulting differences in access to care endure today.Margaret Boyle, Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Director of Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies Program, Bowdoin CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2221892024-03-01T17:24:55Z2024-03-01T17:24:55ZAlopecia in art history: the many ways women’s hair loss has been interpreted<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575695/original/file-20240214-28-28jr2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C20%2C3344%2C1866&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Met Museum/National Portrait Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>At least 40% of women experience <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2684510/">hair loss or alopecia over their lifetimes</a>. This could be alopecia areata (patchy hair loss), traction alopecia (strained hair loss) or another form. The different ways that women’s hair loss has been depicted across art history demonstrates the many different ways it has been interpreted over the years. </p>
<p>In 16th and 17th century Britain, for example, women’s alopecia was sometimes interpreted as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/SCJ27867791">retribution for sins</a>, including adultery. </p>
<p>Some historical art, however, depicts a more neutral, or even positive, attitude towards women’s alopecia. In religious or mythical art, it was sometimes idealised as divine. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two paintings of Madonna and baby Jesus, in which Madonna has a receding hairline" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574083/original/file-20240207-33-ro1k4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574083/original/file-20240207-33-ro1k4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574083/original/file-20240207-33-ro1k4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574083/original/file-20240207-33-ro1k4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574083/original/file-20240207-33-ro1k4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574083/original/file-20240207-33-ro1k4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574083/original/file-20240207-33-ro1k4j.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Left: Madonna and Child by Carlo Crivelli (circa 1490). Right: Madonna and Child with St. Mary Magdelene and St. Jerome by Cosmè Tura (circa 1455).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.407.html">National Gallery of Art/Musée Fesch</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Madonna and Child, painted in the 15th century by Italian Rennaisance artist Carlo Crivelli, shows Jesus and Mary embracing in a gold, stylised setting. The pair sit behind a religious altar surrounded by ripe fruit and adorned with halos. Madonna has a high forehead and her blonde hair recedes, particularly on her right temple. </p>
<p>This association between alopecia and divinity is echoed in a work by another Renaissance Italian artist, Cosmè Tura. His <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cosm%C3%A8_Tura_-_The_Madonna_of_the_Zodiac_-_WGA23139.jpg">Madonna and Mary Magdalene</a> (circa 1490) depicts both mother and child with prominent foreheads. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Prudence depicted in stone as two headed, with balding woman one side." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571879/original/file-20240129-29-981pd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571879/original/file-20240129-29-981pd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571879/original/file-20240129-29-981pd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571879/original/file-20240129-29-981pd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571879/original/file-20240129-29-981pd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571879/original/file-20240129-29-981pd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571879/original/file-20240129-29-981pd9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prudence by Andrea della Robbia (circa 1475).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/194838">Met Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A glazed terracotta piece created by the Italian sculptor Andrea della Robbia in 1475 features Prudence, a human embodiment of Christian morality, as a balding two-headed person. </p>
<p>Baldness in women has been connected to the divine for various reasons. It took the emphasis off of personal appearance in favour of deeper, more spiritual, priorities. But intentional hair removal played a role too. For some religious people, such as Buddhist nuns and Haredi Jewish wives, a bald head is thought to be <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-007-9043-3">purer</a> and shaving can represent a <a href="https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67392">regular, sacrificial ritual</a>. </p>
<h2>Ancient depictions</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Egyptian painting of two princesses" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575688/original/file-20240214-30-dgx556.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575688/original/file-20240214-30-dgx556.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575688/original/file-20240214-30-dgx556.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575688/original/file-20240214-30-dgx556.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575688/original/file-20240214-30-dgx556.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575688/original/file-20240214-30-dgx556.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575688/original/file-20240214-30-dgx556.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two Princesses (circa 1353 to 1336BC).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/557782">Met Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Artwork on the walls of the tomb of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh, Akhenaten who ruled from 1351 to 1334BC, depicts two of his daughters, naked, with bald heads. Head shaving as well as natural baldness was common among the ancient Egyptians, including women.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575689/original/file-20240214-28-1bs0gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="statue of a bald headed princess" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575689/original/file-20240214-28-1bs0gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575689/original/file-20240214-28-1bs0gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575689/original/file-20240214-28-1bs0gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575689/original/file-20240214-28-1bs0gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575689/original/file-20240214-28-1bs0gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575689/original/file-20240214-28-1bs0gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575689/original/file-20240214-28-1bs0gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The bald head of an ancient Egyptian princess (circa BC 1352–1336).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/547692">Met Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In fact, ancient Egyptians had <a href="https://doi.org/10.21608/ijthm.2019.77625">distinct terms</a> for female and male alopecia. This attests to just how common baldness, head shaving and wig wearing were for both sexes in ancient Egypt.</p>
<p>And it isn’t just Egypt. Partial and full head shaving has historically been common among women across sub-Saharan Africa. As <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/3337689">one traveller observed</a> among the inhabitants of the 18th century Kingdom of Issini (modern-day Ghana): “Some only shave one half of the head … Others leave broad patches here and there unshaved.”</p>
<h2>Medieval and Renaissance alopecia</h2>
<p>The 15th century painting, Portrait Of A Woman With A Man At A Casement, by the Italian artist, Fra Filippo Lippi, features an aristocratic profile of a woman facing a man. She has a prominent forehead and high hairline.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575686/original/file-20240214-22-cy04ht.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Portrait of a balding woman in profile." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575686/original/file-20240214-22-cy04ht.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575686/original/file-20240214-22-cy04ht.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575686/original/file-20240214-22-cy04ht.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575686/original/file-20240214-22-cy04ht.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575686/original/file-20240214-22-cy04ht.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575686/original/file-20240214-22-cy04ht.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575686/original/file-20240214-22-cy04ht.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portrait Of A Woman With A Man At A Casement by Fra Filippo Lippi (circa 1440).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436896">Met Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The appearance of recessed frontal hairlines in Medieval and Renaissance Europe <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3679214">may have been fashionable</a> and even considered a sign of intelligence, encouraging customs of forehead shaving and eyebrow plucking.</p>
<p>The 16th century queen of England, Elizabeth I, was often painted in this way. <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitConservation/mw02076/Queen-Elizabeth-I">One undated oil portrait</a> of the British monarch depicts her in bejewelled robes, with a pearl emblazoned veil and a prominent forehead. </p>
<p>The removal of female bodily hair at this time, including on the forehead, wasn’t just a matter of fashion. It also arguably arose due to patriarchal ideas that women’s body hair was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/9781787442443.005">dirty and even dangerous to men</a>. </p>
<h2>Modern alopecia</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2013.777596">Adverts</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/13591053211024724">research</a> today tend to discuss hair loss exclusively through medical terms, as a kind of detrimental disease. A recent <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68367795">BBC article</a> refers to people with alopecia areata as “patients” and their experience of it as “profoundly challenging”. This certainly reflects some experiences, but not those who interpret their hair loss more neutrally, or even with <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CxJLSUtvf_j/?next=%2Femmina97%2F&hl=cs&img_index=1">pride</a>. </p>
<p>Pharmaceutical and cosmetic products are promoted as “necessary” treatments. A newly licensed drug, litfulo or ritlecitinib, has been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68367795">hailed this week</a> as the “first treatment” and “medicine” for alopecia. But as many forms of alopecia are not delimiting and as the “treatments” on offer have limited efficacy and potential safety issues, this should <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxwPZY3_sR4">not be the default response</a>. For example, the <a href="https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/overview/litfulo-epar-medicine-overview_en.pdf">European Medicine Agency</a> notes that ritlecitinib results in 80% hair regrowth but only for 36% of people taking it. About 10% are at risk of diarrhoea, acne and throat infections. </p>
<p>Another study <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2022.950450">noted that</a> similar alopecia drugs, that operate through immunosuppression, only seem to work if they are taken continuously, yet their long-term safety has not been established. </p>
<p>Depictions of alopecia throughout art history are a reminder of the many complicated ways women’s hair loss has been viewed. Sometimes weaponised as a way to shame women, sometimes venerated as a sign of the divine, the truth is that hair loss really indicates nothing about a woman’s worth, morality or status. </p>
<p>But historical depictions of women’s alopecia and baldness provide hope. They show that alopecia has been conceptualised differently at different times. This means the current framing of alopecia as an inevitably disadvantaging disease in need of certain “treatments” might be biased too. They suggest if our societal interpretation of alopecia improves (as something that shouldn’t be stigmatised), then so too may the individual experience (as something that shouldn’t be dreaded). </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222189/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Glen Jankowski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What changing artistic depictions of women’s alopecia tells us about hair loss today.Glen Jankowski, Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2243292024-02-29T13:41:06Z2024-02-29T13:41:06ZCaitlin Clark’s historic scoring record shines a spotlight on the history of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578745/original/file-20240228-20-s0zoch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C126%2C3091%2C1622&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">University of Iowa guard Caitlin Clark celebrates after making the game-winning shot against Michigan State on Jan. 2, 2024.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/iowaguard-caitlin-clark-of-the-iowa-hawkeyes-celebrates-news-photo/1895743985?adppopup=true">Matthew Holst/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When University of Iowa women’s basketball star Caitlin Clark <a href="https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/recap/_/gameId/401601593">drained a 3-pointer</a> against the University of Michigan on Feb. 15, 2024, she secured the NCAA women’s scoring record.</p>
<p>Announcers noted that Clark had surpassed <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/uw-husky-basketball/remembering-kelsey-plums-historic-husky-career-as-caitlin-clark-closes-in-on-her-scoring-record/">Kelsey Plum’s 3,527 points</a>. But few added that there was still one more Division I women’s scoring title remaining.</p>
<p>That one belonged to guard <a href="https://www.lynettewoodard.com/">Lynette Woodard</a>, who scored 3,649 points while playing for the University of Kansas from 1978 to 1981. Her record was set before the NCAA offered women’s championships, when the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, or AIAW, was in charge.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/recap/_/gameId/401601613">When Clark surpassed Woodard’s AIAW milestone</a> on Feb. 28, 2024, in the fourth quarter of a game against the University of Minnesota, it opened up another chance to revisit this buried piece of sport history.</p>
<p><a href="https://researchworks.oclc.org/archivegrid/collection/data/36723004">The AIAW</a> launched in 1972. Within a decade it was bigger than the NCAA, with nearly 1,000 member colleges and universities. It sponsored 19 sports in three divisions, was the sole organization for women’s intercollegiate athletics and the only one led by women. And the NCAA destroyed it through what SUNY Cortland sports management professor Lindsey Darvin described as a “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/women-college-sports-ncaa-aiaw-11617422325">hostile takeover</a>.”</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://iro.uiowa.edu/esploro/outputs/doctoral/Inside-the-AIAW-the-philosophy-people/9983949592502771">scholar of sport, gender and American culture</a>, I study the AIAW as a key moment in sports history that has been buried, and I’m currently writing a book exploring its philosophy, impact and legacy.</p>
<p>In any history of women’s sports in the U.S., you’ll hear a lot about <a href="https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/advocacy/what-is-title-ix/">Title IX</a>, the federal law dictating that female college athletes must receive equal opportunities in sports.</p>
<p>But you’ll rarely hear about the AIAW, a sporting body led by women that fundamentally changed intercollegiate sports. Its student-centered governance model continues to resonate as college athletes chip away at the power of the NCAA, whether it’s through the <a href="https://www.cincinnati.com/story/sports/2023/12/04/what-is-ncaa-transfer-portal-what-to-know/71799335007/">transfer portal</a> or <a href="https://www.on3.com/nil/deals/">name, image and likeness deals</a>.</p>
<h2>Designed for women, by women</h2>
<p>Throughout the early part of the 20th century, female college students participated in physical education classes <a href="https://www.academia.edu/36681888/_Gendering_the_Gym_A_History_of_Women_in_Physical_Education">focused on health and wellness</a>. There were few opportunities for organized team sports.</p>
<p>By the 1960s, however, women students demanded school-sponsored intercollegiate teams and championships like the men had. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/women-college-sports-ncaa-aiaw-11617422325">Women professors of physical education agreed.</a>. But they had watched the NCAA commercial model of sport descend into exploitation and scandal under what historians have called the “<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-512/171481/20210310124813181_20-512%20tsac%20Historian%20Amicus%20Br-final2-PDFA.pdf">cynical fiction</a>” of amateurism. As the NCAA remained exclusively male, there was an opportunity to create something different for women’s athletics. </p>
<p>The AIAW emerged from that momentum – an intercollegiate athletic governance organization designed for and by women, dedicated to creating high-level competition while maintaining focus on the well-being and education of student-athletes.</p>
<p>Under the AIAW, all teams and athletes were supported equally, not singled out for their ability to generate revenue. They had a right to due process, an appeals system and student representatives on local and national committees. The organization ran on dues from member schools and eventually some advertising and media contracts.</p>
<p>Women’s athletic programs were led by physical educators turned coaches and administrators. Some of the most famous coaches in women’s basketball got their start under the AIAW, including <a href="https://scarletknights.com/sports/womens-basketball/roster/coaches/c-vivian-stringer/2805">C. Vivian Stringer</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/sports/ncaabasketball/pat-summitt-obituary.html">Pat Summit</a> and <a href="https://gostanford.com/sports/womens-basketball/roster/coaches/tara-vanderveer/4516">Tara VanDerveer</a>, who recently broke <a href="https://www.si.com/college/2024/01/22/tara-vanderveer-stanford-all-time-winningest-coach-idaho-career">the all-time record for college basketball wins</a>. </p>
<p>In addition to Woodard, other notable AIAW players include <a href="https://wbhof.com/famers/ann-meyers-drysdale/">Ann Meyers-Drysdale</a>, <a href="https://www.hoophall.com/hall-of-famers/nancy-lieberman/">Nancy Lieberman</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/sports/basketball/lusia-harris-dead.html">Lusia Harris</a>, who was recently the subject of an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPFkcoTfr7g">Oscar-winning documentary</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Young woman with short hair poses while dribbling a basketball and wearing a red, white and blue Team USA jersey." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578090/original/file-20240226-24-tb725t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">After starring at the University of Kansas, Lynette Woodard went on to play for the Harlem Globetrotters, Team USA and the WNBA.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/lynette-woodard-point-guard-for-the-united-states-womens-news-photo/1224415230?adppopup=true">Tony Duffy/Allsport/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Title IX backlash</h2>
<p>There is no doubt that Title IX, which was <a href="https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-ix">signed into law in 1972</a>, had a big influence on the growth of women’s college sports, mandating that educational activities, including athletics, should be the same for men and women.</p>
<p>Congress passed Title IX just before the AIAW’s first championship season, and the law spurred calls for more equitable resources for women’s sports. </p>
<p>There was immediate backlash from male-dominated sporting organizations, including the NCAA, which saw the addition of women’s sports as a loss for men’s sports. Walter Byers, then the NCAA’s executive director, said, “<a href="https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2019-10-02/college-athletics-reform-ncaa-doomsday-title-ix">The possible doom of college sports is near</a>.” One college football official <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/22/title-ix-anniversary-legacy/">told reporter Sally Jenkins</a> that women’s sports advocates were trying “to tear the shirts off our backs.” </p>
<p>Despite the fearmongering, college sports continued to thrive. Nonetheless, over the past 50 years, even though nearly all schools have been <a href="https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/advocacy/what-is-title-ix/">out of athletic compliance with Title IX</a>, none has lost federal funding for violations. As Title IX scholar Sarah Fields <a href="https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1851&context=sportslaw">has written</a>, “Without punitive damages, the law is limited: it is toothless.”</p>
<p>All along, change has come not from the law’s mere existence but from students filing complaints and lawsuits, and the determination of administrators to use the law to carve out and protect athletic opportunities for women. During the 1970s, those administrators were almost all in the AIAW.</p>
<h2>The NCAA elbows its way in</h2>
<p>By the late 1970s, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare had laid out clearer standards for athletic compliance with Title IX.</p>
<p>While the NCAA and AIAW were not subject to the law, their member institutions were, and the two organizations’ efforts to collaborate failed. Instead, the NCAA, which had long fought Title IX’s application in athletics, changed course and set its sights on taking control of women’s sports. </p>
<p>The NCAA offered women’s championships in all three divisions for the first time during the 1981-82 school year. Leveraging all of its presumed legitimacy and financial resources, the 75-year-old men’s athletic organization <a href="https://www.si.com/college/2022/06/14/aiaw-ncaa-womens-college-basketball-league-title-ix-daily-cover">offered all-expenses-paid women’s championships on the same weekends as the unpaid AIAW championships</a>.</p>
<p>The strategy worked. The AIAW lost significant members and ceased operations in mid-1982, despite the fact that women athletes, coaches and administrators <a href="https://andscape.com/features/forty-years-later-the-ncaas-takeover-from-the-aiaw-still-isnt-perfect/">preferred its educational model and leadership structure</a>. </p>
<p>The NCAA made vague promises to support women’s athletics but refused to give women more than token representation on its governance boards. Women student-athletes were, for the first time, led by a male-dominated governance organization.</p>
<p>To this day, <a href="https://ncaagenderequityreview.com/">institutional sexism remains entrenched in the NCAA</a>.</p>
<p>Women hold only <a href="https://www.ncaa.org/news/2022/6/23/media-center-title-ix-report-shows-gains-in-female-participation-though-rates-lag-increases-by-men.aspx">41.3% of head coaching positions for women’s teams and 23.9% of athletic director positions</a> – roles that were largely held by women under the AIAW. A recent gender equity review found that the organization <a href="https://kaplanhecker.app.box.com/s/y17pvxpap8lotzqajjan9vyye6zx8tmz">under-resourced nearly all of its women’s championships</a>, a result of <a href="https://kaplanhecker.app.box.com/s/xc1v5gjnmk4ndku1s2n2n1net4fwczeh">gender bias and its focus on making money</a>.</p>
<p>The NCAA and its corporate partners would like you to believe that their organization is the be-all and end-all of college sports. </p>
<p>But the story of the AIAW – created by and for women, rejecting the crass commercialism of the NCAA and empowering student-athletes to speak up – offers ideas for a more equitable future for college sports.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224329/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diane Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Before being pushed aside by the NCAA, the AIAW, which was designed for and by women, governed women’s college athletics.Diane Williams, Assistant Professor of Kinesiology, McDaniel CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2232542024-02-29T13:30:41Z2024-02-29T13:30:41ZWhy Wales has no national memorial to its independent past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574673/original/file-20240209-16-eku1yh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7227%2C4836&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/welsh-flag-dragon-symbol-flying-front-2353418585">Thomas Holt/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Amid the rush to erect historical and national memorials in late 19th century Europe, huge commemorations in honour of figures and events in the past were built. In England, public commemoration went through something of a <a href="https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/dlsg-commemorative-structures/heag110-commemorative-structures-lsg/">golden age</a>. A love of anything medieval and the cult of heroism, where great historical figures were revered for their achievements, created the perfect opportunity for a nationalistic commemorative boom.</p>
<p>Parks filled up with statues of the great men of history, and the death of Prince Albert and the jubilee of Queen Victoria kept sculptors busy. Scotland gained the <a href="https://www.nationalwallacemonument.com">National Wallace Memorial</a> in 1869, and a statue of Robert the Bruce ten years later, both commemorating Scotland’s history as an independent nation. In Wales, memorials for churchmen and industrialists sprang up, but the one thing Wales lacked was a national memorial to its history as an independent country.</p>
<p>In the 1890s, there was a sudden wave of interest in commemorating <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Llywelyn-ap-Gruffudd">Llywelyn ap Gruffudd</a> (1223-1282,) the last independent Welsh prince before the conquest of Wales by England’s Edward I. At the start of 1895, a group of the great and good met to organise their new Llywelyn memorial committee. It planned to raise funds and organise the commemoration of the prince. They decided on a public appeal, confident that the growth of <a href="https://newspapers.library.wales/view/4332170/4332174/29/%22much%20to%20learn%20from%20continental%20nations%22">nationalism</a> seen across Europe had something to teach Wales.</p>
<p>By spring, enthusiasm was growing. The committee members commissioned Welsh poet Sir Lewis Morris to compose a poem and distributed 5,000 free copies to drum up interest. But just as it looked like plans for commemoration would work out, things started to go wrong. </p>
<p><a href="https://newspapers.library.wales/view/4332170/4332174/29/national%20disgrace%20memorial">The Western Mail</a>, the largest daily newspaper in Wales, attacked the “memorial movement” for achieving little, and claimed that people were already going lukewarm on the idea. It was “nothing short of a national disgrace”, they claimed, and greater efforts needed to be made. </p>
<h2>Ask the public</h2>
<p>The committee decided to organise visits to large groups of potential donors like the quarry-men of Ffestiniog and townspeople of Aberystwyth. “Llywelyn Saturday” was proposed as a special fundraising day to raise awareness of the committee’s aims.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574676/original/file-20240209-22-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Knight on horse stabs Llywelyn" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574676/original/file-20240209-22-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574676/original/file-20240209-22-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574676/original/file-20240209-22-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574676/original/file-20240209-22-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=816&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574676/original/file-20240209-22-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574676/original/file-20240209-22-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574676/original/file-20240209-22-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1026&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Illustration of the death of Llywelyn, unknown artist (1905).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Death_of_Llywelyn.jpg">National Library of Wales</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They also asked the public where to build the memorial, and gave them the <a href="https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3431006/3431010/62/%22llywelyn%20memorial%22">power to decide</a> how and where their donation should be spent. The idea of asking for thousands of small donations was aimed at giving Welshmen a voice, but it was also considered the best way to raise funds from the masses in a country where those interested in the memorial had very little cash. </p>
<p>After months of confusion, subscribers were asked to choose one of three sites for the memorial with their donation going to their preferred place: where Llywelyn was buried at Abbey Cwmhir, where he was killed outside Builth Wells, or an unspecified place in north Wales because he had been the ruler of Gwynedd.</p>
<p>Giving people a choice was admirable but completely impractical. Aside from the fact that the funds raised would be split across at least three sites, the committee had put no thought into the feasibility of their plans. Where in north Wales would be suitable? Was Llywelyn actually buried at Abbey Cwmhir? And if he was, had they <a href="https://newspapers.library.wales/view/4332170/4332174/29/the%20proposed%20llywelyn%20memorial">asked the landowner</a> if they could build on his land? (No, they had not). </p>
<p>Another popular idea among the committee was <a href="https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3249154/3249155/14/%22prince%20Llywelyn%22">Cardiff</a>, though this was not put to subscribers. Cardiff was not yet the Welsh capital but it was the largest urban area in the country. The memorial would be seen by a lot of people there, and visitors from England were considered more likely to know about it.</p>
<p>Even if a site could be chosen, the form of the memorial could not. The Marquis of Bute opposed a statue on the basis that no one knew what Llywelyn had <a href="https://newspapers.library.wales/view/4332197/4332203/87/%22llywelyn%20memorial%22">looked like</a>. That hardly stopped sculptors of other historical figures. Other options proposed were an <a href="https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3370557/3370561/98/%22llywelyn%20memorial%22">obelisk</a> or pillar, a “colossal cross”, or a simple tomb. As with the location, no one could decide.</p>
<h2>Abandoned plans</h2>
<p>In 1898, the closure of the committee was announced. No national memorial had been built. But the idea wasn’t quite dead.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574675/original/file-20240209-26-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The statue of Llywelyn in Cardiff City Hall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574675/original/file-20240209-26-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/574675/original/file-20240209-26-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574675/original/file-20240209-26-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574675/original/file-20240209-26-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1000&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574675/original/file-20240209-26-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1256&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574675/original/file-20240209-26-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1256&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/574675/original/file-20240209-26-tt1xg3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1256&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The statue of Llywelyn in Cardiff City Hall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Llewelyn_Ein_Llyw_Olaf.jpg">Wiki Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That year, a colourful statue of Llywelyn was erected atop a drinking fountain in Conwy. Though this was not to commemorate Wales’ era of independence, but the arrival of the town’s municipal water supply. </p>
<p>In 1902, local landowner Stanley Bligh paid for an obelisk to be built at the place of Llywelyn’s death (which was replaced in 1956). And during the first world war, Llywelyn was memorialised in the Cardiff City Hall alongside other Welsh figures in its Marble Hall, the “<a href="https://journals.library.wales/view/1386666/1425397/132#?xywh=-2016%2C-208%2C6445%2C4136">Valhalla for Wales</a>”. None of these though was a national and public memorial.</p>
<p>Being unable to agree on a united national memorial shows just how disunited Wales had been, and still was. After all, Llywelyn had been briefly recognised as Prince of Wales, but never actually ruled a united country. The failure of a truly national memorial to the prince as a symbol of Wales’ independent past was perhaps the most fitting memorial of all.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223254/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Hurlock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Being unable to agree on a united national memorial shows just how disunited Wales had been.Kathryn Hurlock, Reader in Medieval History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2230932024-02-28T19:15:48Z2024-02-28T19:15:48ZPope Gregory XIII gave us the leap year – but his legacy goes much further<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578180/original/file-20240227-22-e28jpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C32%2C5363%2C3548&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On this day, February 29, conversations the world over may conjure the name of Pope Gregory XIII – widely known for his reform of the calendar that bears his name. </p>
<p>The need for <a href="https://palazzoboncompagni.it/en/podcast/the-gregorian-calendar/">calendar reform</a> was driven by the inaccuracy of the Julian calendar. Introduced in 46 BC, the Julian calendar fell short of the solar year – the time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun – by about 12 minutes each year. </p>
<p>To correct this, Gregory convened a commission of experts who fine-tuned the leap-year system, giving us the one we have today.</p>
<p>But the Gregorian calendar isn’t the only legacy Pope Gregory left. His papacy encompassed a broad spectrum of achievements that have left a lasting mark on the world. </p>
<h2>Rise to papacy</h2>
<p>Born in 1502 as Ugo Boncompagni, Gregory made many contributions to the life of the Catholic Church, the city of Rome, education, arts and diplomacy.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.unibo.it/en/university/who-we-are/our-history/famous-people-and-students/gregory-xiii">Before ascending</a> to the papacy, Boncompagni had a distinguished career in law in Bologna where he received his doctorate in both civil and canon law. He also taught jurisprudence, which is the theory and philosophy of law.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A painting of Pope Gregory XIII by Lavinia Fontana" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=720&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575809/original/file-20240215-26-rm5ni5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=904&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An oil portrait of Pope Gregory XIII painted by Lavinia Fontana (1552-1614).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lavinia_Fontana_-_Portrait_of_Pope_Gregory_XIII.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>His intellectual influence positioned him as a trusted figure in legal and diplomatic circles even before his election as pope in the 1572 conclave. Upon being elected he adopted the name Gregory, in honour of Pope Gregory the Great who lived in the sixth century.</p>
<h2>Movement in the Church</h2>
<p>One of Gregory’s major undertakings was reforming the Catholic Church in response to the Reformation, a movement which established a distinct new branch of Christianity, Protestantism, <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/protestant-reformation/">separated</a> from the Catholic Church. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/revisiting-the-reformation-how-passions-sparked-a-religious-revolution-500-years-ago-86048">Revisiting the Reformation: how passions sparked a religious revolution 500 years ago</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Gregory aimed to implement the decisions of the Council of Trent, which met between 1545 and 1563, and defined key Christian doctrines and practices, including scripture, original sin, justification, the sacraments and saint veneration. Its outcomes directed the church’s future for centuries.</p>
<p>Gregory’s administrative reforms were aimed at <a href="https://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam033/2002038836.pdf">centralising church governance</a> and its operations. As pope, he relished the practice of law, personally engaging in judicial deliberations and surprising his contemporaries with his legal acumen. </p>
<p>His papacy also marked a revision of Gratian’s Decretals, a collection of 12th-century church laws that served as a textbook for lawyers. Gregory aimed to correct numerous errors and unify the various versions of this foundational text of canon law. This culminated in the publication of an amended edition in 1582. </p>
<h2>Gregory’s dragon</h2>
<p>Pope Gregory lived at a time when emblematic and symbolic interpretations were central to the political and cultural discourse. In particular, <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-91869-3_6">monsters</a> were interpreted as omens or divine signs and played a significant role in religious and political debate. </p>
<p>Gregory’s coat of arms, the heraldic emblem of the Boncompagni family, featured a dragon. As such, it <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25750536">drew criticism</a> from Protestant propaganda. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575810/original/file-20240215-30-fdl88e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The coat of arms of Pope Gregory XIII has a dragon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Coat_of_arms_of_Pope_Gregorius_XIII_-_Ceiling_of_Santa_Maria_in_Aracoeli_-_Rome_2016.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Anti-Catholic publications featured the Boncompagni dragon as an emblem of the Antichrist, drawing on the seven-headed monster in the Book of Revelation.</p>
<p>Rooted in biblical and mythological references, the negative imagery of Gregory’s dragon became a focal point for debates over the nature of papal authority, the legitimacy of Protestant criticisms, and the broader struggle to define truth and meaning in a rapidly changing world. </p>
<h2>A legacy enshrined in art</h2>
<p>Gregory’s legal legacy is celebrated in art, particularly in the <a href="https://factumfoundation.org/our-projects/digital-restorations/the-sala-bologna-the-vatican-palace/">Sala Bologna of the Vatican Palace</a>, which commemorates his and other popes’ contributions to the study and codification of law.</p>
<p>Gregory XIII’s pontificate (term of office) was marked by a comprehensive effort to renew and beautify Rome, improving both the city’s functionality and aesthetics. He had a particular focus on the <a href="https://www.turismoroma.it/en/places/campidoglio-capitoline-hill">Capitoline Hill</a>, the political and religious heart of Rome since the Antiquity.</p>
<p>Gregory’s initiatives – which included restoring essential infrastructure such as gates, bridges and fountains – were part of a broader vision to emphasise the centrality of law in Rome’s history and culture. </p>
<p>This is demonstrated by him being honoured by a statue in the Aula Consiliare of the <a href="https://www.turismoroma.it/en/places/senatorio-palace">Senator’s Palace</a>. This hall was designed to showcase the importance of judicial proceedings.</p>
<p>Alongside his urban planning initiatives, Gregory’s commissioning of <a href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/76012/9781000865509.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">artworks and architectural projects</a> showcased his commitment to fostering a city that was not only the spiritual centre of Catholicism, but also a beacon of Renaissance culture.</p>
<p>In the Sala Regia hall in Vatican City, he commissioned a series of mural frescoes showcasing the triumph of Christianity over its enemies. He also commissioned an entire map gallery for the Apostolic Palace, to demonstrate the extent of Christianity’s spread over the world.</p>
<h2>Reforming the calendar</h2>
<p>Because the Julian calendar fell short by about 12 minutes each year, it was increasingly out-of-sync with the solar year. By the time Gregory’s reign began, this discrepancy had accumulated to more than 10 days.</p>
<p>To correct this, Gregory convened a commission of experts. Their work led to the publication of a formal papal decree in the form of the bull <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/calendar/The-Gregorian-calendar#ref793372"><em>Inter Gravissimas</em></a> on February 24 1582.</p>
<p>This decree not only fine-tuned the leap-year system, but also mandated the elimination of ten days to realign the calendar with the solar year.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575813/original/file-20240215-32-4r21bq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first page of the bull <em>Inter Gravissimas</em>.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter_gravissimas#/media/File:Inter-grav.jpg">Wikimeia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Gregorian calendar reform signified a monumental shift in timekeeping. In 1582, October 4 was followed directly by October 15, correcting the calendar’s alignment with astronomical reality. </p>
<p>This adjustment, slowly adopted by Protestant nations, has had a lasting impact on how the world measures time.</p>
<h2>Faith, intellect and reform</h2>
<p>In St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, you will find a remarkable funerary monument to Pope Gregory XIII. Completed in 1723 by Milanese sculptor Camillo Rusconi, it incorporates representations of both Religion and Wisdom, personified by two statues flanking the pope.</p>
<p>Wisdom is shown drawing attention to a relief beneath the enthroned pope which illustrates the promulgation of the new calendar – the pope’s most significant achievement. At the base of the monument, a dragon crouches unapologetically.</p>
<p>It’s a fitting tribute to a pope whose tenure was characterised by the interaction of faith, intellect and reform – and which can now be marked as a cornerstone in European history.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/578181/original/file-20240227-30-vjoxk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A dragon, the heraldic emblem of the Boncompagni family, is carved into the base of the monument.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/The Conversation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223093/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darius von Guttner Sporzynski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pope Gregory XIII was patron of Rome’s renaissance, and a legal luminary whose influence transcends the ages.Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Historian, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2239722024-02-26T18:59:32Z2024-02-26T18:59:32ZFrom a ‘magic mineral’ to the stuff of nightmares: a 6,700-year history of asbestos<p>Asbestos is making national news once again after being found in contaminated mulch used in hundreds of locations, including <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/24/sydney-asbestos-crisis-epa-following-up-on-whether-second-mulch-supplier-is-involved">schools and hospitals</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/19/asbestos-mulch-locations-sydney-sites-near-me-nsw-map-full-list-when-where-found-schools-parks-epa-news">across Sydney</a> and regional New South Wales. </p>
<p>With headlines featuring terms such as “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sydney-school-supermarket-tainted-with-asbestos-crisis-widens-2024-02-18/">crisis</a>”, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6ewhMFXf08">nightmare</a>” and “<a href="https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/childrens-hospital-at-westmead-among-54-locations-contaminated-with-asbestos/news-story/97aa31383db6f492718d82f099f89d14">deadly</a>”, it’s hard to believe the toxic mineral was once hailed for its supposedly “magical” properties.</p>
<p>In fact, the history of asbestos goes back at least 6,700 years. Its prevalence in our built environment means it’s (unfortunately) here to stay for a long time.</p>
<h2>Before it became a ‘killer dust’</h2>
<p>Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral found in rock formations across the globe, including in <a href="https://www.australianasbestosnetwork.org.au/asbestos-history/asbestos-wittenoom">some national parks</a> in Australia.</p>
<p>It gets its name from the Greek word for inextinguishable (<em>ásvestos</em>), alluding to its resistance to fire and corrosion. It was these characteristics, along with its insulating properties, that made asbestos seem like a “<a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Mineral-Killer-Turner-Newall-Asbestos/dp/0199243999">magic mineral</a>” in centuries prior.</p>
<p>Researchers have found ancient clay pottery from East Finland, dated to 2500 BC, with asbestos fibres mixed into it – <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291349782_Early_Asbestos_Ware">likely added for</a> extra strength and resilience. Some of the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357560672_Asbestos_Ceramics_from_Archaeological_Sites_of_Southern_Fennoscandia_Karelia_Mineralogical_and_Geochemical_Aspects">earliest asbestos</a> pottery, also found in Finland, has been dated to 4700 BC. Asbestos use has also been recorded at other neolithic sites, including in Central Russia and Norway.</p>
<p>In (Western) literature, the first known reference to what might have been asbestos comes from Theophrastus (circa 372-287 BC), a student of Greek philosopher Aristotle and his successor at the Lyceum. In his book <a href="https://www.xtal.iqfr.csic.es/Cristalografia/archivos_01/THEOPHRASTUS_CALEY.pdf">On Stones</a>, Theophrastus writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the mines at Scapte Hyle a stone was once found which was like rotten wood in appearance. Whenever oil was poured on it, it burnt, but when the oil had been used up, the stone stopped burning, as if it were itself unaffected.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the 10th century, Christian pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem were <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305440314000399">sold</a> pieces of asbestos as fragments of the True Cross – their divinity supposedly evidenced by their incombustibility. By the medieval ages, trading asbestos-containing items had become common. This fascination continued for millennia.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577818/original/file-20240226-24-3mlrqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577818/original/file-20240226-24-3mlrqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/577818/original/file-20240226-24-3mlrqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577818/original/file-20240226-24-3mlrqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577818/original/file-20240226-24-3mlrqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577818/original/file-20240226-24-3mlrqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577818/original/file-20240226-24-3mlrqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/577818/original/file-20240226-24-3mlrqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This earthenware pilgrim flask (circa 1585-1600) has an impresa with burning asbestos and the words ‘ardet aeternum’, meaning ‘burn forever’. It’s painted with a medallion showing a nude male (Bacchus) holding two bunches of grapes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Museum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1725, a young Benjamin Franklin found himself broke and living in London. In need of cash to pay his bills, he sold a <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsnr.1952.0018">purse</a> made of fibrous mineral asbestos that he’d brought from North America. The recipient was <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/sir-hans-sloane">Hans Sloane</a>, whose collections would later be used to <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/british-museum-was-wonder-its-time-also-product-slavery-180966997/">establish the British Museum</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"691226191462809600"}"></div></p>
<h2>A class I carcinogen</h2>
<p>The carcinogenic effect of asbestos – even at brief, transient and “low” doses (such as bystander exposure) – has been <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1069377/">recognised since</a> at least 1965. Today, it is classified as a class I carcinogen and considered a deadly threat to humans.</p>
<p>Asbestos is the main <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13782506/">cause of mesothelioma</a>, a cancer of the surface of the lung. It can also cause lung cancer and is implicated in other cancers, including throat and stomach cancers. </p>
<p>In Australia, there are more than <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/about-our-data/our-data-collections/australian-mesothelioma-registry-database-amr">700 cases</a> of mesothelioma each year. We don’t know how many of the roughly 6,000 yearly cases of lung cancer are caused, wholly or partially, by asbestos. </p>
<p>Although asbestos use has been banned in Australia <a href="https://www.asbestossafety.gov.au/countries-asbestos-bans#:%7E:text=Asbestos%20has%20been%20banned%20in,on%20all%20types%20of%20asbestos.">since 2003</a>, people the world over continue to deal with its harmful effects.</p>
<h2>The spread of ‘fibro houses’</h2>
<p>Australia started using asbestos goods from around the 1880s, largely for steam-driven machines that benefited from its insulating properties. Only small local mines operated at the time. </p>
<p>Eventually, the world wars increased demand and active exploration led to larger-scale mining, <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-2-000-people-from-wittenoom-died-of-asbestos-related-diseases-a-powerful-and-compelling-requiem-brings-their-story-to-the-stage-198779">especially at Wittenoom</a> in Western Australia. Even then, local production wasn’t meeting demand.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/more-than-2-000-people-from-wittenoom-died-of-asbestos-related-diseases-a-powerful-and-compelling-requiem-brings-their-story-to-the-stage-198779">More than 2,000 people from Wittenoom died of asbestos-related diseases. A powerful and compelling requiem brings their story to the stage</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>It was initially miners who presented with the disease, followed by workers in industries manufacturing asbestos-containing products, as well as builders, plumbers and fitters. The Wittenoom miners and their families are still being <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/bjc201223">followed by researchers</a> to determine the effects of exposure.</p>
<p>The economic boom that followed WWII further drove demand for asbestos. In addition to local production, more than <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285994368_Asbestos">50,000 tons of asbestos</a> were imported to Australia each year throughout the 1950s and into the late 1970s.</p>
<p>Asbestos afforded many Australians a home. Timber-framed houses clad in flat asbestos cement sheeting (called “fibro houses”) were favoured by people who built or legally supervised the building of their own home.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.booktopia.com.au/asbestos-in-australia-lenore-layman/book/9781925835618.html?msclkid=3d5f43a20ad011798598267e19af1c3d&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Booktopia%20-%20AU%20-%20Shopping&utm_term=4585169650599087&utm_content=All%20Custom%20Label">the mid-1960s</a>, nearly 20% of Australia’s housing stock was made up of fibro houses – with the highest uptake (more than 50%) in the Northern Territory. It’s impossible to say exactly what percentage of existing buildings contain asbestos.</p>
<p>When cyclone Tracy swept through Darwin in 1974, the <a href="https://www.miragenews.com/ken-s-journey-with-asbestos-disease-ends/">death and disease</a> that resulted from the uncoordinated cleanup served as a warning of the possible dangers of asbestos removal.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/asbestos-still-haunts-those-exposed-as-kids-in-mining-towns-9487">Asbestos still haunts those exposed as kids in mining towns</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Asbestos is here to stay</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292053877_Dail_and_Hammar's_Pulmonary_Pathology">Asbestos-related cancers</a> have a long lag time between exposure and detectable disease. Although this lag is typically about 30 years, it can range anywhere between 10 and 70 years. As such, it can be difficult to trace exposure retrospectively.</p>
<p>Many buildings constructed before the mid-1980s contain asbestos. It’s often inseparably bound to other materials, such as tiles, vinyl and cement. </p>
<p>Regulations demand <a href="https://www.asbestossafety.gov.au/find-out-about-asbestos/asbestos-safety-information/brochures/asbestos-safety-householders-and-home-renovators">specialist removal</a> for asbestos-affected areas of more than 10 square metres. In reality, whether this happens comes down to how effectively it can be detected, and whether the people affected can afford removals. Without specialised assessment and analysis, asbestos can be difficult to recognise.</p>
<p>Since there is no recognised “safe” dose – a dose below which there’s no risk of developing asbestos-related cancer – <a href="https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-09/guidance_material_-_asbestos_registers_guide_-_august_2023.pdf">workplace standards</a> can only minimise risk, not eliminate it.</p>
<p>Only time will tell what the long-term outcomes are from the latest exposure in NSW. The risk from asbestos depends on several factors, including the overall amount inhaled, the type of asbestos and the number of years since exposure.</p>
<p>Among the most heavily exposed Wittenoom miners, about 20% have developed mesothelioma so far.</p>
<h2>Documenting cases</h2>
<p>Since July 2010, the <a href="https://www.aihw.gov.au/about-our-data/our-data-collections/australian-mesothelioma-registry-database-amr">Australian Mesothelioma Registry</a> has collected information on new mesothelioma cases diagnosed in Australia. The national <a href="https://www.asbestossafety.gov.au/national-asbestos-exposure-register/online">Asbestos Exposure Register</a> also allows any person to register a documented or suspected case of exposure. </p>
<p>If you’re worried about your neighbourhood, the Asbestos and Silica Eradication Agency has produced a national heat map showing the <a href="https://www.asbestossafety.gov.au/what-we-do/news-and-announcements/national-residential-asbestos-heatmap-2023-update">probability of asbestos</a> presence in buildings by geographic area.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sonja Klebe works for SA Pathology and gets called as a paid expert to court. She has received funding from NHMRC, MRFF, AstraZeneca, Roche and Ventana.
</span></em></p>One of the earliest known references to asbestos may come from Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle and his successor at the Lyceum in Athens.Sonja Klebe, Associare Professor, College of Medicine and Public Health, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.