Arts and Humanities Blog - Net Catalogue

Aborigines of Australia provide an interesting example of Stone Age people. They probably migrated from South-Eastern Asia into Australia over 30,000 years ago, before the sea covered the land bridging New Guinea to Australia. When the British landed in Australia in 1788, the aborigines numbered 3,00,000. Yet they comprised more than 5,000 tribes speaking 300 different languages. australian-aborigines.jpg

Men used spears, harpoons, hooks, traps, nets, clubs and boomerangs to hunt animals and catch fish. They also smoked out animals and, like the ancient Americans, caught fish by drugging then with juices of certain leaves and roots. Women and children collected roots, fruits, edible insects and honey. The aborigines used stone, plant and animal materials skilfully. They carried firesticks and other tools in dilly bags woven from human hair, grasses and bark fibres. In hunting, they often disguised themselves or covered their bodies with mud to hide their smell from their prey. They wrapped babies in tree bark for warmth and rubbed their own bodies with animal fats to fight cold. Their art portrayed myths and legends and geometrical designs. Stylized dances imitated the movements of a tribe’s totem animal or bird. Their musical instruments include didgeridoos and bull-roarers. Their religion included the belief in a dream-time. The aborigines’ religion involved complex rituals, ceremonies and magic. Their witch doctors treated physical and mental illnesses skilfully.

Seven monuments of the ancient world that appeared on various lists of late antiquity (in no particular order) -

•  The Colossus of Rhodes
• The Pharos (lighthouse) of Alexandria
• The Hanging Gardens (and walls) of Babylon
• The Temple of Artemis (or Diana) at Ephesus
• The Pyramids of Khufu
• Te Tomb of Mausolus at Hali Carnassus
• The Statue of Zeus at Olympia

The tradition of “Seven Wonders” has inspired succeeding generations to compile countless list since the Alexandrian era -

Seven Wonders of the Middle Age

• The Colosseum of Rome
• The Catacombs of Alexandria
• The Great Wall of China
• Stonehenge
• The Porcelain Tower (or Pagoda) of Nanking, China
• The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy
  

  

• Hagia Sophia (or Sancta Sophia) of Constantinople

Seven Natural Wonders of the World

• The Grand Canyon, Colorado River, Arizona
• Rio de Janeiro Harbor
• Iguassu Falls, Argentina
• Yosemite Valley and the Giant Sequioas of California
• Mount Everest, on the border of Tibet and Nepal
• The Nile River, Egypt
• The Northern Lights, especially from northern Canada and Alaska

Seven Wonders of Today

• The Great Pyramid of Egypt and the adjacent Great Sphinx of Gizeh
• Hagia Sophia, 6th Century, in present-day Istanbul
• Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy
• The Taj Mahal of Agra, India
• The Washington Monument, Washington
• The Eiffel Tower, Paris
• The Empire State Building, New York city.

Seven New Wonders of the World

(as per list prepared by New Open World Corporation -2007 on the basis of voting) -

•  The Taj Mahal, India
• The Great Wall of China
• The Colosseum, Rome
• Pink ruins of Peta, Jordan
• Statue of Christ the Redeemer (Rio de Janeiro)
• Incan ruins of Machu Picchu (Peru)
• The Mayan city of Chichen Itza, Mexico

Other compilers of “wonder” list include the Panama Canal, the Greek Parthenon on the Acropolis at Athens, the medieval Mont-Saint Michel off the coast of France, St. Peter’s Church in Rome, the Temples of Nikko National Park in Honshu, Japan. Famous places and ruins include the Moorish Alhambra of Granada, Angkor in Combodia, Mayan ruins like Chichen Itza in Mexican Yacatan, and Egypt’s Great Temple of Amon in Karnak.

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a 6500 years old farming settlement in an antiquities-rich area of central Greece. The finds include remains of houses built of wood and unbaked clay, together with pottery vases, ovens and stone tools, the culture ministry announced on November 20. The Neolithic-era finds were discovered during work to lay a gas pipe near the village of Vassili in Thessaly, 280 kms north of Athens.
Thessaly’s fertile plains attracted some of Greece’s first farmers, and the ruins of more than 300 settlements - including what at the time would have been major towns - have been located in the area.
“Thessaly had a very dense pattern of settlement during Neolithic times”
said archaeologist Giorgos Toufexis, who headed the excavation at Vassili. He said the settlement was destroyed by fire, which baked and hardened the clay parts of the houses and preserved imprints of their wooden sections, which included sawed planks.
The buildings had walls made of branches covered with clay, supported by strong wooden posts, and clay-covered roofs. Among the ruins, archaeologists found large quantities of pottery, including painted vases, stone axes and scrapers, bone tools and a small number of terracotta figurines.
“The economy was based on agriculture and animal farming, ” Mr. Toufexis said.

“We can’t provide an estimate yet on the settlement’s size, but it doesn’t seem to be very big. These settlements usually have a diameter of around 150 meters.”