WSJ Historically Speaking: A History of Colors and Their Owners

ILLUSTRATION: THOMAS FUCHS

In 2009, a graduate student working in a chemistry lab at Oregon State University accidentally created a new, brilliantly blue pigment while experimenting with manganese oxide and other materials. Dubbed “YInMn blue” after its chemical makeup, the pigment quickly spurred a research paper and a patent application. And soon the gorgeous new color will be available to all of us: Crayola recently announced that it would introduce a blue crayon “inspired” by YInMn and kicked off a contest to name it. Continue reading…

WSJ Historically Speaking: Baseball, From a Pharaoh to Hoboken, N.J.

PHOTO: THOMAS FUCHS

Say goodbye to the winter blues. On April 2 the sport of kings is set to resume: no, not horse racing but baseball, the oldest ball game on record.

At the dawn of civilization, our ancient ancestors learned how to write, build temples, sail the seas—and play ball. It will probably come as no surprise to baseball fans that the Egyptians placed the game (or their proto-variation of it) on a par with life and sex. According to Prof. Peter Piccione at Charleston College, the term “seker-hemat,” often translated as “batting the ball,” began as a fertility ritual performed in spring festivals. It’s believed that the ball represented the head of Osiris, god of the underworld. Continue reading…

Daily Express: Lifting the veil on our past

Here’s a snippet to make the jaw drop. The women of Ancient Greece (you know, the place that created democracy) were so restricted in what they could do that they were no better off than the poor women of Afghanistan under the Taliban.

Meanwhile just down the road in Ancient Egypt women were treated almost as equals of men, so much so there were six lady pharaohs… who would have thought it?  All this and more came to light during the brilliantly inter- THE ASCENT OF WOMAN (BBC2) which took as its eminently reasonable thesis the fact that although women have always comprised half the human race we don’t seem to have  featured very prevalently in the history of mankind.

The noted historian Amanda Foreman set out to find out why. Unfortunately, as scholarly and thought- provoking as this new four- part documentary series was, I’m not sure she ever really answered the question.  In the earliest known societies, as far as anyone can tell, men and women really did live equally, sharing all manner of But this all changed pretty sharpish when society became more prosperous, resources  were not shared equally and some people started to have greater status than others.

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WSJ Historically Speaking: The Glory Days of Frankincense and Myrrh

Photo: PRINT COLLECTOR/GETTY IMAGES

Photo: PRINT COLLECTOR/GETTY IMAGES

The Magi, the three wise men, famously offered the baby Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. We can still understand why they brought gold, but what Mary and Joseph were meant to do with the frankincense and myrrh—resins derived from the Boswellia and Commiphora trees—has become less obvious.

The usual explanation for the Magi’s gifts is that they symbolized the trajectory of Jesus’ life: gold to announce his divine origins and kingship, frankincense (which was burned in religious ceremonies) to declare his future role as a priest, and myrrh (which was used in burials) to represent his suffering and death.

But to the ancients, the significance of frankincense and myrrh went far beyond their spiritual symbolism. Both commodities had played a central role in daily life since the dawn of civilization. The resins were introduced to Egypt in the third millennium B.C. from the Land of Punt (thought to have been somewhere between Ethiopia and Eritrea).

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