Kosmo

The best route Rome-Londinium directly by ship. Did I won? I know the topic is actually another one, but I still believe that in most cases one would prefer to go by ship from Ostia to southern Gaul rather then climb the Alps.

Latin only survived in the church, Greek was spoken in much of asia minor untill 1920, and is still spoken in Greece and Cyprus. Modern greek is very much a different language from the various dialects spoken in Antiquity.

The Latin language in the West survived better then Greek and Latin in the East.

Happy birthday and lots of fun!

In your honor the entire Earth is throwing a party tonight. Happy B-Day Doc!

I tried to read the article but it took me a lot of time to go past the first photo. I had no idea archeology is that hot...

Gladius was a straight, short, wide weapon with two sharp edges that allowed both thrusting and cutting. I can't tell if romans had a doctrine about the proper use of the weapon but I can bet that any soldier would have cut the enemy if he had the chance, that's why they gave edges to the sword. Pure thrusting swords tend to be longer and narrower and sometimes have no sharpened sides at all. Some even have a round or triangular section to make them more resistant to bending/breaking. Fighting in tight formation does not mean that one cannot use a cutting movement like a descending blow to the head or one aimed at the hand of the opponent. When fighting against an enemy equipped with a shield and eventually a spear a thrusting short sword is not very useful and contrary to the widespread image the roman infantry fought usually against other heavy infantry not celtic irregulars waving swords and axes.

Gladius is too wide to be considered a stabbing weapon and it was also used for cutting. Gladius is not a very special weapon, swords of different lengths were common all around Europe. Straight swords are common in the area of Dacia since the Bronze Age when micenian weapons are produced here. Dacia had close ties with greek cities, macdonians and later with romans. Iron Age dacian metallurgy was influenced by La Tene (celtic) culture but by the time of the wars against the romans that was an already distant past.

There was no garrison in Rome during the Republic. The consuls had lictors that acted as bodyguards. I don't think they closed the gates in peace time. The citizens could act as soldiers in case of need and did not liked being policed by someone else. The citizens guarded the city from all dangers.

"avoid romans" lol

Actually genetically modified glowing fish are widely available for sometime. They are even trade mark protected http://www.glofish.com/ The EU is vehemently opposed to any genetically modified food (like Monsanto seeds) so Ursus you're not alone. I don't see what the big deal is about, our food and our pets were all created by humans after a lot of controlled selection, genetic manipulation only takes this a step further. Of course, there is potential for a lot of things to go wrong but that's science.

This works. Thanks!

The links were created by New York Times in the original article, I copied them because it would have been weird to edit them out. I got to see the abstract that you mentioned then the PNAS website stopped responding.

Deep in a cave in the forests of northern Spain are the remains of a gruesome massacre. The first clues came to light in 1994, when explorers came across a pair of what they thought were human jawbones in the cave, called El Sidr

This is so funny! Imagine the surprise of the thieves after reading this news "The scrap junk in the truck is worth 5 millions!"

Merry Saturnalia. I'm up for some drinking.

"This past year will always be remembered as the year we found out that the Neanderthals survived and they are us." This one takes the cake for me. The discovery of paleolithic stone tools in Crete opens intriguing possibilities.

MARIEHAMN, Finland

Is Pompeii crumbling? So it would seem, judging from the media maelstrom about several recent collapses at the ancient ruins here, including that of the Schola Armaturarum, a spacious hall used by a military association before it was engulfed with the rest of the city by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. A long tract on the north side of the Via dell

Noah story was originally a Mesopotamian one so it makes sense. The idea that agriculture and what eventually became summerian culture was brought in Lower Mesopotamia by immigrants is pretty old but it was speculated that they came from the Indus Valley

This finds are not really a surprise. The XIII century was the apex of the Western Middle Ages as proven by rapid urbanization and the power of free cities, the apparition of universities, the building of large cathedrals and castles, large scale and long distance trade, parliaments and charters, etc. The great thing about this type of studies is that they don't rely on narratives, but on statistical data bringing hard evidence into debate. Unfortunately this methods are much harder to apply for areas and periods that don't have enough data, including Roman history. Of course, data must be analyzed with care and correlated with the narrative. For example the great increase of GDP per capita they mention in the mid XIV century is provoked by the Black Death killing a third of population and making the survivors richer, but is hard to see that devastating pandemic as a positive development.

Nice! Not only this book is free on the web but also other books of economic history by the same professor. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/academic/broadberry/wp

I find it hard to believe that she had the same power like her husband and that they co-ruled.

AIDONE, Italy

And more: Stacy Schiff herself writes about Cleo in a NYT op-ed Cleopatra