My Science School

The Etruscans were a very religious people. Their chief gods were Tinia, Uni, Minrva, the trio worshipped by the ancient Romans later under the names of Jove, Juno and Minerva. Only some of the Etruscan gods had the power to launch thunderbolts. Tinia was one of the more powerful of the divinities.

Religious ceremonies were conducted by priests who formed a very powerful class in Etruscan society. These priests were the only persons permitted to divine or guess the will of the gods and to tell the future. They did this in various ways: by bird watching; by observing lightening and other weather phenomena; and the ebbing and flowing of streams.

Of all the entrails the liver was studied with the greatest care. A bronze model of a liver found at the city of Piacenza is divided into forty-five areas, each with the name of a presiding deity written in it. The priests who studied birds traced the will of the gods from the way birds flew, cried and ate. The signs seen by these priests were known as auguries which could be either good or bad.

The Etruscan religion comprised a complicated set of beliefs and ceremonies for every act in public life. The laws relating to the foundation of a city were particularly strict.

The Etruscan believed, especially in their early days, that when they died they passed on to another life similar to the one in this world. They provided the dead with many objects of everyday life and the statues on their tombs depict people sitting at table with guests or playing music, singing or even hunting.

 

Picture Credit : Google

The Middle Ages were a period of European history which occurred approximately between the fall of the western Roman Empire in A.D. 476 and the discovery of America in 1942.

During the first three centuries of the Middle Ages, the way people dressed underwent many changes. In the early stages they dressed in the Byzantine fashion: the emperor and the empress wore long tunics in brocade covered with a pallium, a sort of heavy square mantle that had a religious significance. Men let their beards grow and woman never out their hair.

When knights prepared for battle they put on a thick woollen tunic over which they donned their coat of armour or chain mail. They had a broad belt or buckler round their waist from which hung a broad sword. The bandolier went on the right shoulder. On the head was worn an iron helmet, usually with a nose guard, and at the end of the twelfth century the great cylindrical helmet was introduced.

The soldier’s dress was completed with a large convex shield on which the knight had his coat-of-arms painted or carved. These arms also decorated the linen surcoat which after about 1200 was worn over the mail shirt.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Knighthood began as a military rank. After A.D. 1000 it become a more complicated institution and one of the glorious features of the middle Ages, the standards of which were both military and religious. One became a knight through birth into the nobility or through bravery in battle. Knights had the right to fight on horseback and this right was bestowed on them in a ceremony by the king. In this ceremony the recipient of the honour would kneel before his sovereign who would touch him on the shoulder with a sword.

The younger children of a feudal lord became knights but first they had to serve a period of service when they were known as squires. The training for knighthood began at twelve years of age. The young squire was taught to ride, to fence and to handle the bow; he also learned to hunt with falcons and dogs. In his teens, the squire had to act as an assistant to a knight, and this was his true apprenticeship. His duties included swerving his master at table, looking after his master’s horse and weapons, carrying his shield and helping him in battle.

At the age of about twenty the squire became a knight. He spent the whole night before the ceremony awake and in prayer, guarding his arms. This was known as the vigil. Today knighthood is bestowed on persons by the monarch for outstanding contributions in all spheres of life such as industry, science and the arts. The ceremony of touching the shoulder with the sword is still the same. Knights have the title ‘Sir’ before their Christian names.

 

Picture Credit : Google

The word ‘mummy’ comes from an ancient Egyptian word meaning ‘tar’ or ‘bitumen’. Egyptian embalmers used many products in their craft such as bees-wax, cassia (a type of cinnamon), juniper oil, onions, palm wine, resin salt, sawdust, pitch, soda and bitumen to keep the corpses of the rich and the mighty from rotting.

The bodies were wrapped in linen bandages, clothed in funerary garments and adorned with necklaces and amulets. On the face of the deceased there was placed a mask made of rough canvas and chalk, but for dead pharaohs and high dignitaries this mask was made of gold. Poor people were mummified in any haphazard way and paupers were simply thrown without ceremony into a common grave.

The embalmed body of the deceased was buried together with objects which that person had used during his earthly life and which he might need in the next. Naturally, the graves of the dead reflected their social status during life. He tombs of the pharaohs were magnificent structures full of precious treasures and costly objects.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Excavations have made it possible for us to know how the Vikings built their ships. The fighting ships or longships were shallow, narrow in the beam and pointed at both ends. They had a single large, square sail, although they used oars as well, a high prow and a projecting stern. The figurehead of the ship of about A.D.800, understand at Oseberg, was a coiled snake with its head upreared. Another Viking ship, found at Gokstad, dates from about A.D.900.

Longships had about ten oars a side and seem to have carried twice as many men for fighting as for rowing, that would be a total of some sixty men.

The most famous of the longships was the ‘big dragon’ of King Canute, Built in A.D. 1004. It looked like a huge sea serpent, with a dragon’s head at the prow and a high-coiled tail at the stern.

The Viking hafskip had fewer rowers than the longship and was sometimes more than 21 metres long and 6 metres wide. On voyages of colonization it would carry wives, children, livestock, stores and as many as thirty men.

The naval power of the Vikings was greatly helped by their levy system which allowed them to call up men to form one of the greatest war fleets of their day.

 

Picture Credit : Google

In man’s first attempts to write every mark represented a word: to write ‘bird’ the writer drew a bird and for ‘man’ the figure of a man was drawn. Actions also had to be represented in writing: to describe the action of fighting in writing the figure of a man wielding a club was drawn; to express the idea of freshness, a jar of sparkling water was drawn. The ancient Egyptians made further progress in writing but they never created a true alphabet.

Nobody really knows who drew up the first alphabet. It could have been the Semites who first saw Egyptian hieroglyphics in about 1500 B.C. The Semites probably borrowed some of these signs to represent certain sounds made in their own language. These signs were later modified by the Phoenicians and spread throughout the ancient world. The alphabet was an invention which proved to have enormous practical value. With only about twenty simple signs man could write any sort of message. With hieroglyphics and cuneiform (the wedge-shaped writing used by the Babylonianns and Assyrians), which still used images and symbols, hundreds of signs were needed.

The function of the alphabet is to convert into signs the various sounds we utter in speech. These sounds are few. Before any alphabet came into existence written signs tried to express whole words, which were many.

The alphabet passed from the Phoenicians to the Greeks who added various letters. The Etruscans then took it over, then the Romans until it came down to us. The word ‘alphabet’ itself comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Ever since man first began to use the letters of the alphabet he has tried to make writing as rapid an act as possible, to keep up with human speech at its normal speed.

The first stenographer, or shorthand writer, was Tiro, the Greek secretary of the famous ancient Roman orator, Cicero, Modern shorthand, however, began in England when Dr. Timothy Bright published his book on the subject in 1588. Many systems using symbols instead of letters and words were later invented.

People normally say 180 words a minute, when they speak. Most shorthand writers can write down 120 words a minute, and the highest speeds are about 350 words but these can only be kept up for short periods. Pitman and Gregg, named after their inventors, are also machines that write shorthand: they resemble adding machines and are operated by keys.

 

Picture Credit : Google

No ancient Greek or Roman book has ever come down to us. Many were lost among the papyruses and the parchments that perished in the fires and destruction in which the once mighty Roman Empire fell. Others were destroyed by the slower but still sure action of time. But before these books vanished from the world many were copied by ancient scribes and scholars.

Much of this work was done by monks during the Middle Ages, especially the Benedictines. During the fourth century St. Jerome had exhorted monks to perfect their art of writing. In the centuries that followed every monastery has its scriptorium or writing room. This room was usually next to the library and only the senior monks, the librarian and copyist monks were allowed into it.

Absolute silence reigned in the room as the monks copied out the manuscripts carefully. The silence was broken only when one monk would dictate the contents of a manuscript for the other monks to write down.

 

Picture Credit : Google

Beer is an alcoholic drink which has been made since ancient times. Man probably learned how to make beer much earlier than he discovered that the juice of the grape could be made into wine.

Beer-making was once a simple household task and families brewed their own supply. Today brewing is a major industry catering for millions of people throughout the world. The industry uses the most up-to-date and complex equipment and must follow strict rules of hygiene. But the basis of brewing remains the same as it did 5,000 years ago: beer is obtained by fermenting the mash obtained by mixing water with barley which has malted or sprouted after being kept in dark, warm, moist atmosphere. It is from this thick cloudy mash that the clear, sparking and refreshing drink finally comes.

 

Picture Credit : Google

The Pueblo Indians lived in a matriarchal society which meant that the woman was honoured and was the true ruler. The clans, or family groups, were based on descent through them other and not through the father. Property therefore belonged to the women and when they died they left it to their daughters. The farmland was also the undisputed property of the women.

When a man married he went to live in his wife’s house. If structure of society, however, did not mean that men were the victims of the whims of the woman and that they had rights of their own. They were respected for their working skills and also for their contribution to the wealth of the whole Pueblo community.

 

Picture Credit : Google

The Yuma, Pima and Papago were tribes of American Indians who lived mainly by farming, growing maize, beans and a kind of gourd called squash. They were so skillful at their work that they had learned to irrigate their fields during the dry season and since A.D. I had used flood water for this purpose. Their society was based on the clan system.

One of their main feasts was the annual ceremony celebrating the ripening of the giant cactus (saguaro) and the coming of the summer rains. During this feast the people drank a beverage made from the fermented juice of cactus fruit. The beverage was very potent and those who drank it soon became intoxicated.

The saguaro ceremony had a magical significance, the beverage representing rain soaked in the soil.

 

Picture Credit : Google