Word: archaeologist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Roland Besenval is a magician. With a few words and expansive hand gestures, the French archaeologist conjures a magnificent city from the millenniums-old ruins that crown a windswept plateau in Afghanistan's far north. Stabbing a finger in the direction of misshapen hillocks made of eroded mud brick, he describes massive battlements built to repel barbarian raiders from the north. Balkh, as the city was known, would have needed them. More than 1,000 years before Marco Polo visited its ruins, Balkh was renowned throughout the ancient world for its fabulous wealth and advanced culture. It was the birthplace...
...Greek styles had an impact on local art. Excavation of the earth around Masjid-i-No Gumbad, a 9th century brick mosque thought to be the oldest still standing in the world, could illuminate many of the mysteries regarding Islam's spread to Central Asia. In 1978, a Russian archaeologist uncovered a vast trove of gold ornaments in a 2nd century nomad necropolis. The find, which included a collapsible crown, golden daggers and thousands of jeweled buttons, "speaks to the riches of the trade routes across Afghanistan," says Brendan Cassar, UNESCO's culture specialist in Afghanistan. "If nomads had this...
...consciousness between creatures. He believed that his greatest discovery was that all animals were kin, and wondered whether an awareness of the continuity of related species could assuage the pain of death. Humanities Center Director and Professor Homi K. Bhabha called the literary critic a “magnificent archaeologist of the soul of the scientist.” Beer said that in Darwin’s writings he used imaginative language to achieve a “reverse anthropomorphism” that nurtured empathy between humans and other living beings. For example, he once observed a plant recoiling...
...following rivers, he would find what others had missed. At stake was not just a material fortune but an intellectual victory. Conventional wisdom said that despite all its lush abundance, the Amazon region could never support an evolved, sophisticated human society--it was, in the phrase of one archaeologist, a "counterfeit paradise." Fawcett believed otherwise...
...strangest twist in the story may be yet to come. Grann doesn't find Fawcett, but he does meet an American archaeologist who lives, Kurtz-like, with a tribe of Indians deep in the jungle. His work suggests that Z may actually have been more than a figment, and that once upon a time the counterfeit paradise was a real one. Fawcett may have been right after all. But he was too late for that...