antiquity-sweetly-sung - Tumblr blog

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I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.

It's right-handed

I am right-handed

There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly

I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.

There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.

I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.

A homo erectus made it

Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.

Who were you

A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?

Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?

Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?

Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?

Who were you?

What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?

What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby's head when a stranger holds them.

Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?

Or has it always been divine?

Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?

Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.

The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it's done.

Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?

I'm not religious.

But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn't partaking in the divine

I don't know what is.

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She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it.

-Terry Pratchett, Soul Music

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Something about the way bibliopunk/punk academia is treated on here Bugs Me and I think it can be best summed up as this:

You can't just throw the "punk" descriptor onto whatever you like and call it an aesthetic

Punk is not an aesthetic

Punk is a mindset, it's a philosophy-- it's a rebellion against societal systems

When I say bibliopunk, I don't mean sweater vests and old library photos and quotes from classics.

Bibliopunk, to me, a punk librarian, is about freedom of information. It's about making sure everyone and anyone can have the resources they need to learn, whatever that means for them. It's no late fees and fighting against censorship. It's defunding the police and funding community resource centers that specialize in making sure there's a place where people can go to ask for help, to read books on any subject they can think of, to connect with events and organizations that exist to help THEM. It's about making zines and learning how to bookbind, because fuck the idea that traditional publishing and Amazon are the only people that can make something a book.

Punk academia, which is used colloquially here, is related to this-- it's saying fuck the academic systems that keep out the poor, the people of color, and the disabled. Fuck your Ivy Leagues, education is whatever the hell you make it. College should be free, classes should be accessible WITHOUT being forced to give up all of your personal financial and health information, curriculums need to include as many varying perspectives as they can because fuck the idea that a cishet abled white man is the authority on any given topic.

Bibliopunk, punk academia, and any other Tumblr "aesthetic" with the punk descriptor is not just a moodboard of photos you stole from Pinterest.

Because what's more punk than a public library?

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With apologies to the entire archaeological community

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Yawanawa: Strength. (Brazil 2015) a documentary by DJ Alok Petrillo

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Archaeologists Uncover Upper Paleolithic Proto-Writing System

https://www.sci.news/archaeology/upper-paleolithic-proto-writing-system-11546.html

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I’m not a classicist, but I suspect one of the reasons so many of the Greek gods are portrayed so unflatteringly was less because they were seen as villains than because they represented their domains.  Of course Zeus sometimes misuses his power, that’s what a king does.  Of course Artemis’s wrath is wild and painful, that’s what nature can be.  Of course Hades snatched away a young girl from her mother’s arms, that’s what death does.  This is one of the reasons callout posts for some gods comparing them negatively to ‘nicer’ gods are kind of missing the point.

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"The literal meaning of life is whatever prevents you from killing yourself"

Albert Camus

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Punk academia isn't dead, its just asleep on a library couch

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I remember when the chaotic academia tag was filled with people blogging about their ink smudge hands, committing arson, staying up late in the night because they are so infatuated with a piece of knowledge. All I see now is pretty pictures that are euro-centric. What chaotic academia was, was like celestial. It had its problems but I'm fed up with this elitist white supremacist bullshit that the academic realm has perpetuated for so long. Knowledge is diverse and chaotic as living hell, so let it live as such!!

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100 years ago today (November 4, 1922), Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. Or, to put it more accurately, 100 years ago today Egyptian workmen whose names have been lost to history discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun while Howard Carter looked on.

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Another september begins. Classes are back and I just hope everything goes well. // @ohrelena

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Friendly reminder that in Troilus and Cressida Thersites calls Patroclus Achilles’ bitch and Achilles is like. Patroclus he means you

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fuck it, post red figure shrimp

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being critical of academia because it’s heavily hierarchical and systemically racist, and saying that individuals within academia are in no way more qualified to discuss academic subjects than non-academics are two completely different things. sjcjdjahe i swear some people think that to get a history degree you just read like. commercial biographies and watch hamilton. idk how to tell you all this but tiktok doesn’t have a peer review process

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This whole "Ancient Greece had women stay at home all day veiled and had no rights or the right to compete in sports or political power and only exist to make babies!!!" thing we see and hear about all the time is Athens. You mean Athens. You are talking about Classical era Athens, this is what happened in Athens. Not in every city-state. Not in Sparta, not in Thebes, not in Macedonia, not in Crete.

Because if we keep this narrative up we are gonna have a novel set in ancient Sparta in which a girl is bemoaning why she can't play sports like the boys do and cannot own land like men do.

i will never forget when i told my professor i would rather live in sparta than athens and she was like "but you'd never see your husband though!"

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