An interesting stone marker on the side of the old bridle road SE of Pont Scethin in Dyffryn Ardudwy. It lies close to the junction with the more modern Taith Ardudwy bridleway. Unless you look very closely you miss a lot of graffiti, some of it perhaps as early as the mid 19th c. Not on maps.

Fallen Statue at the Ramesseum, Thebes https://clevelandart.org/art/1992.236

There’s a new episode of Fall of Civilizations! And man, it’s such a specific delight when @paulmmcooper.com starts telling the story of a society by saying “Earth’s surface is a thin crust of solid rock…” Tectonic plates are destiny.

21. Majapahit - Empire of the Islands

YouTube video by Fall of Civilizations

youtu.be

✨ Sunday Read from the latest Digest: "Again and again, these older strongholds appeared along my route, giving me a sense of a landscape shaped by people who built on an epic scale and throughout generations - long before Offa made his mark." 👉 www.digest.andymarsh...

Thrilled to share the cover art for "From An Antique Land," a new short story @reactorsff.bsky.social will publish on November 18! Art by Jon Juarez, editor @annvandermeer.bsky.social

The AI spambots are getting quite confused that my first book was translated into Italian.

Octobre Le Palais du Louvre, Paris In a field by the Seine, a man sows seed, raked into earth by a stone-weighted harrow behind a horse; magpies & crows ignore scarecrow archer & peck stray seeds. Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry 1412-16 Musée Condé Château de Chantilly

HJM on Old Sarum for #HillfortsWednesday: "they chose a low, featureless hill perking up from the valley of the Avon, and breathed upon it, and lo, the turf sank and swelled and vast green billows of earth curled round their crests into oval cirques that even the brutal heel of war could not deface…

Jonathan Last@johnnythin.bsky.social · 2w ago

Reading HJ Massingham's 'Downland Man', 100 years old this month, and coming to see it's not really a narrative of British prehistory but an attempt to process the trauma of World War I — then realising that all prehistory from the 1920s to 40s in some way reflects the reality or threat of war…

Advance of History by Mark Tobey, 1964 https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137544

This is the plot of The Old Man and the Sea

Velour Shirt@object.works · 2w ago

This is a metaphor for so many things these days that I couldn't choose

From Toi Derricotte's book, Captivity: bookshop.org/a/862/9780822954224 #poem #booksky #writing

22 Jan, 26 Sept: St Colmán moccu Béognae (d. 611), founder of Lann Elo/ #Lynally, Co. #Offaly. Author of 'Alphabet of Piety'? St Columba saved him from drowning. St Columba's nephew? Described as "beautiful" in MartG. 📷and 🖇️link: Standing Stone IE #medievalsky www.thestandingstone.ie/2009/12/lyna...

The video for Episode 21 is now available for everyone!

21. Majapahit - Empire of the Islands

YouTube video by Fall of Civilizations

youtu.be

I love coming across this way out into the woods

After two hundred days of battle, they groaned and ate barley bread upon the strange sickle of the south, then drank holy water. Urshanabi wailed, 'It has been a thousand days since I last drank water with Humbaba'

This video was filmed in Palestine. My heart struggles to comprehend such cruelty and the heartbreaking disregard for human life. No human being should have to endure this.

we've never had much reason to articulate this before a.i., but a reason we enjoy literature, art, music, etc. is that we know it is one human mind trying to express something fundamentally human and otherwise inexpressible to another human mind

If you want immortality, make a big pile of earth. History loves big piles of earth.

Andy Marshall@fotofacade.bsky.social · 4w ago

I still find it remarkable how much of Offa’s Dyke survives here on the approach to Montgomery - an earthwork more than 1,200 years old, still threading through the landscape. Have walked 50 miles of Offa’s Dyke path so far this week.

Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible

Hans Memling’s astonishing compression of 23 sequential scenes into one aerial composite image, from Christ’s entry into Jerusalem & Last Supper / carrying the cross / to his crucifixion & resurrection (1471). Details at eclecticlight.co/2022/02/04/a...

The video version of Episode 21 is coming for Patreon subscribers on Saturday! This part of the world really has to be seen to be believed. With original reenactments and some of the best drone photography I've ever seen, find out how the Majapahit Empire of Indonesia rose and fell...

Episode 21 is coming soon to video! | Fall of Civilizations Podcast

I'm really excited to announce the release of the video version for Episode 21 on the Majapahit Empire and the history of Java. This has bee

patreon.com

Definitely not a British hillfort. Yamchun Fortress, overlooking the mountains of Afghanistan in the Wakhan Valley, Tajikistan. Still Iron Age! Originally built in 300 BCE to guard the ancient Silk Road, expanded in the 10th Century. 📸 by intrepid daughter a couple of weeks ago #HillfortsWednesday

The remains of the south transept wall and crossing at Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire. 📸 My own. #WallsOnWednesday #MalmesburyAbbey

JRR Tolkien made beautiful languages because he was a oddball who loved words and doing the work and did far more of it than ever got onto a page and some people would say why would he do that and other people would say I would not like the Lord of the Rings if that guy didn’t love naming Elves

It’s worth reading the entire account here. I understand why its nice to type in a few words and have a fantasy language created for you but if you’re asking me to invest in a creative act, whether that is buying it or having an emotional connection to it, I’m going to need you to do the actual work

Cute Monster Props@cutemonster.bsky.social · 4w ago

A week ago at Dragoncon I met Richard Garriott at a panel about his new Ultima game. Long story short he wants to use AI. He already has for concept art and ChatGPT generated fantasy language. I wrote an account with the hope that this could spread to the right people. Please pass this along.

Not usually one for the annoying desire to put historical events into a pile labelled either "good" or "bad", but it would be undeniably better if we were all still called Egbert, Æthelred, Wulfstan etc

YouGov@yougov.co.uk · last mo.

As the Bayeux Tapestry opens to the public at the British Museum, what impact do Britons think the Norman Conquest had on British history? Positive: 25% Neither: 25% Negative: 6% Don't know: 44% yougov.com/en-gb/daily-...

We used to be a country

History and Heritage Yorkshire@handhyorkshire.bsky.social · last mo.

Gauxholme Bridge, spanning the Rochdale Canal at Todmorden, forms part of the No. 2 Gauxholme Viaduct. Built around 1840 by Joseph Butler and Company of Stanningley, it was designed by engineer George Stephenson. Its imposing stone towers, crenellated parapets and elegant

Caspar David Friedrich - "Dreamer, Ruins of the Oybin"

It's so cool we have this depiction from just after 1066, and then this photograph 920 years later in 1986.

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · last mo.

Halley’s Comet is sighted - a bad omen