| Indiana Jones Back in Action in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [News] Fans of the Indiana Jones trilogy have long awaited the fourth installment in the series about the part-time professor and full-time adventurer. In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which premiered this week, the swashbuckling archaeologist journeys to southern Mexico to track down a mysterious artifact of the vanished Mayan Empire. Scientists have attributed the decline of this mighty civilization to solar cycles and drought, though the demise of this society that existed for thousands of years perplexes archeologists to this day.Check out some of Scientific American's coverage of how scientists are digging up the past, from the bizarre remnants of a lost Caribbean civilization to a real-life Indiana Jones who hunts for dinosaurs. Learn about the techniques of archaeology, like using sound to see underground, and how ancient shell beads may reveal when human beings decorated themselves for the first time. [More] rss.sciam.com |
Texas Archaeological Dig Challenges Assumptions about First Americans FLORENCE, TEX.--"Look at that--isn't it gorgeous?" Sandy Peck asks as she rinses dirt from a flaked stone about the length and width of a pinky finger. Peck runs a hose over soil on a fine-mesh screen, prodding at stubborn clods of clay with a muddy glove. "Look, there's another one."View Slide Show of the Dig [More] feeds.feedburner.com |
Mailbag: Yes, Earth's Crust Moves 25 Centimeters with Every High Tide Tidal Terra FirmaIs Graham P. Collins correct in stating in “The Discovery Machine” [Special Report: The Future of Physics] that the land near Geneva rises 25 centimeters when the moon is full? A shift that large should damage considerable infrastructure. [More] feeds.feedburner.com |
American Red Cross founded In Washington, D.C., humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons found the American National Red Cross, an organization established to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters in congruence with the International Red Cross.Barton, born in Massachusetts in 1821, worked with the sick and wounded during the American Civil War and became known as the "Angel of the Battlefield" for her tireless dedication. In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln commissioned her to search for lost prisoners of war, and with the extensive records she had compiled during the war she succeeded in identifying thousands of the Union dead at the Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp.She was in Europe in 1870 when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and she went behind the German lines to work for the International Red Cross. In 1873, she returned to the United States, and four years later she organized an American branch of the International Red Cross. The American Red Cross received its first U.S. federal charter in 1900. Barton headed the organization into her 80s and died in 1912. history.com |
Pablo Picasso born Pablo Picasso, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, is born in Malaga, Spain.Picasso's father was a professor of drawing, and he bred his son for a career in academic art. Picasso had his first exhibit at age 13 and later quit art school so he could experiment full-time with modern art styles. He went to Paris for the first time in 1900, and in 1901 was given an exhibition at a gallery on Paris' rue Lafitte, a street known for its prestigious art galleries. The precocious 19-year-old Spaniard was at the time a relative unknown outside Barcelona, but he had already produced hundreds of paintings. Winning favorable reviews, he stayed in Paris for the rest of the year and later returned to the city to settle permanently.The work of Picasso, which comprises more than 50,000 paintings, drawings, engravings, sculptures, and ceramics produced over 80 years, is described in a series of overlapping periods. His first notable period--the "blue period"—began shortly after his first Paris exhibit. In works such as The Old Guitarist (1903), Picasso painted in blue tones to evoke the melancholy world of the poor. The blue period was followed by the "rose period," in which he often depicted circus scenes, and then by Picasso's early work in sculpture. In 1907, Picasso painted the groundbreaking work Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which, with its fragmented and distorted representation of the human form, broke from previous European art. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon demonstrated the influence on Picasso of both African mask art and Paul Cezanne and is seen as a forerunner of the Cubist movement, founded by Picasso and the French painter Georges Braque in 1909.In Cubism, which is divided into two phases, analytical and synthetic, Picasso and Braque established the modern principle that artwork need not represent reality to have artistic value. Major Cubist works by Picasso included his costumes and sets for Sergey Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (1917) and The Three Musicians (1921). Picasso and Braque's Cubist experiments also resulted in the invention of several new artistic techniques, including collage.After Cubism, Picasso explored classical and Mediterranean themes, and images of violence and anguish increasingly appeared in his work. In 1937, this trend culminated in the masterpiece Guernica, a monumental work that evoked the horror and suffering endured by the Basque town of Guernica when it was destroyed by German war planes during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso remained in Paris during the Nazi occupation but was fervently opposed to fascism and after the war joined the French Communist Party.Picasso's work after World War II is less studied than his earlier creations, but he continued to work feverishly and enjoyed commercial and critical success. He produced fantastical works, experimented with ceramics, and painted variations on the works of other masters in the history of art. Known for his intense gaze and domineering personality, he had a series of intense and overlapping love affairs in his lifetime. He continued to produce art with undiminished force until his death in 1973 at the age of 91. history.com |