Arts and Humanities Blog - Net Catalogue

Who Were Aborigines of Australia?

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:35:52 +0000

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 Wonders of The World by Time and Categories

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:58:16 +0000

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.

6500 Years Old Village Found

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 05:17:24 +0000

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.”