In the mid 7th-century someone wrapped 411 objects in a cloth, and buried them in a pit, near what is now the Kursk region of Russia. They obviously never came back to get them, so presumably, things did not end well. The hoard was accidentally… Read more
I like to see things for myself. It can give me a sense of place or scale that one doesn’t get from books or the internet. It also gives a chance to spot something new, that whoever might have photographed the original, wasn’t thinking about.… Read more
What’s a guy to do during lock-down? I’ve chosen to time-travel back to around the first and second centuries AD. At that time the Roman Empire stretched over much of Europe, and along the southern Mediterranean as well. In two of its provinces, Noricum and… Read more
Do we have a submerged ‘Doggerland‘ in New Zealand? In 1950 a boat, the HMNZS ‘Lachlan’ dredged a sample of “lignite” from the bottom of Toitoi (or Toetoe) Bay, at the far south end of New Zealand’s South Island, from a depth of nine fathoms… Read more
You’d have to really dislike someone to bash a nail up their nose. The day before Wanaka’s Alchemy Cafe closed because of the flooding, I was sitting there, watching a doco on YouTube: ‘A Troubled Island – The Minotaur’s Island’, about ancient Crete. I generally… Read more
So where the heck is Smyrna? I’d heard a little about the awful days of 1922, but despite having made a few trips to Turkey, I’d never noticed Smyrna on a map. It wasn’t until I read Giles Milton’s book: ‘Paradise Lost: The Destruction of… Read more
We don’t know what she looked like, because most of her upper body has vanished…. Most of you probably don’t know of my ‘secret’ ambition – to ‘time travel’ by recreating life-like images of people from long ago. I’m keen to know what those corroded… Read more
Tourism – good thing or bad? I’ve written about Develi before –a town in central Turkey, where I was based, along with my geological colleagues. It’s a culturally conservative city, where women tend not to be on the streets. Not because they can’t, it’s just the… Read more
‘Fox-holes’ perhaps? Did snipers crouch in these to fire down on an enemy below? What were these little rings of rocks strategically placed high up along the edges of central Turkish gorges? (see the featured image) How old are they? Fifty years? Five hundred? Five… Read more
The most famous ‘little log cabin in the woods’ is probably the one in which Abraham Lincoln grew up in Kentucky. It was built in 1808, but unfortunately, no longer exists. However, in St Petersburg, Russia, there is to this day, a log cabin built… Read more