Posts tagged Radio
The Drawings on the Wall
Feb 7th
The image is an example of the sort of shape they’re talking about. You can see it bigger at Flickr.
Well yes that may be true, but it’s not just Palaeolithic men who’d want to venerate them. Slightly more seriously art is ambiguous. The Minoans are known for their bull symbolism, but it’s unlikely any of the bulls would appreciate their role in the sacrifice.
Thanks to the tip from Archaeozoology and the reminder from Remote Central, I’ve been listening to The Drawings on the Wall. It’s one of those series of 15 minutes documentaries that the BBC sometimes does. George Nash, who’s discovered Neolithic rock art, is the presenter and he does a great job. Really cave art should be one of those subjects that makes awful radio, just a step away from the All-England Live Mime Championship, or Harpo Marx in his own words. On the contrary he does a really good job of capturing the interest and passion of the archaeologists working in the caves.
He also talks about some of the reasons why rock art matters. It’s difficult because he has little time to do this in, but rock art is one of the hot fields in archaeology at the moment, not More >
Alexander von Humboldt
Oct 4th
Humboldt’s painting of Chimborazo
I missed the start of In Our Time last week. Fortunately for me Juice picked it up, so I’ve been listening to a discussion about Alexander von Humboldt. It’s very interesting. Humboldt was an astonishing man, and possibly the last all-round scientist rather than a specialist in a field. Yet he isn’t that well known. All sorts of reasons are put forward. One they may have overlooked is the inaccessibility of South America where he made his most famous observations.
They mention this a bit, he’s one of the first non-Spaniards there and that the revolutions meant he was the only source for the region for a long while. From a European perspective though I still don’t think that South America has made much impression – which is very much Europe’s loss. I don’t know if the view from North America is different.
The programme went out Thursday, so you can only pick up the MP3 version for today. The Real Player version should stay accessible in the archive though.
