'reason is valuable only when it performs against the wordless physical background of the universe...'

“To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours...”

—Rilke

modernity in a nutshell

Anglo-Saxons would sometimes call the people of their time 𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘯 or ‘end-men’, which meant people living near the end of the world.

Thread: Today I stumbled across this super cool Bactrian bronze stamp, dated to 2400BC-1600BC...

It depicts a motif, found in Eastern Mediterranean, Levant, Mesopotamia, Iran, Central Asia, of two rampant male ibex goats flanking the tree (of life)...

Paolo & Francesca!

Not learning Latin and Greek is cutting yourself off from most of the Western canon.

MOST books were still published in Latin until the middle of the 17th century, at which point publication tipped in favour of the local language.

This is a huge fault in the education system.

timeless

Gold plated shield of Hari Singh Nalwa from the Kapany Art collection.

That archaeologist may be shocked to discover how 17th and 18th century aristocrats dressed and how much they loved war

Man and woman of the Iranic Sintashta culture.

With men carrying Y-Hapogroup R1a-Z2124, this descent is most often seen among Tatars, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Jats, Kyrgyz, and Ashkenazi Levites.

It also was seen in the Hungarian Arpad and Turkic Ottoman dynasties.

Artistic reconstructions of the earliest sampled Sredny Stog kurgan IE elites.

The man in Vynohardne kurgan, Zaporizhzhia region, who was Yamnaya-like and carried I2-L699.
The man in Krivyanskiy kurgan, Lower Don, who was Yamnaya-like with additional CHG and carried J2-M319.

In 1940 the ruins of an ancient Chinese palace were discovered in Siberia
Some believe this site was residence of Li Ling, a Han Dynasty general who was captured by the Xiongnu & made governor of Siberia
I examine the history of this mysterious palace
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In Albanian mythology, it is said that Prizren and Tetovë, high in the sky, used to be one city. But as they fell to the ground, the Sharr Mountains split them in two.

Interestingly enough, this is exactly what a view from the sky reflects

What could be done do engineer a second Renaissance in our times? What wheels of fate need to be turned for such cultural upheaval? This I ponder…

I wish we had more surviving Balkans myths. I've been hunting for gusle epic poems. Don't know if you have any good leads.

Next one will be based on Tolkein's ancestral lineage and focus on the history of one branch of the schlatza nobility of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. They have surprising origins which speak to the similarities between Baltic & Indo-Iranian culture.