history – Page 2

What’s the oldest song we still know the tune to?

12 July 201513 July 2015 adverbly

Thanks to Redditor /u/dtxvsk, we have an answer to that fascinating question:

The oldest melody which is known to have survived in its entirety is the Song of Seikilos, which was composed in Greece around 200 BC. The song, which was written by a man named Seikilos in memory of his recently-passed wife, was found engraved on a pillar in her grave.

It’s so strange and moving that this simple dirge has endured for more than two thousand years. Would Seikilos be touched to know that his wife’s memory, through his music, has lived on for millennia?

Ancient Mayan cities discovered hidden deep in Mexican jungle

20 August 201412 July 2015 Richard

It doesn’t take long for an unattended lawn to return to pasture, or for ivy to creep up and over the face of a brick building. But the jungle is another force of nature entirely, more than capable of swallowing whole entire cities, perhaps never to divulge them again. Two such cities, lost centuries ago, were recently rediscovered in the Yucatan:

A monster mouth doorway, ruined pyramid temples and palace remains emerged from the Mexican jungle as archaeologists unearthed two ancient Mayan cities.

Found in the southeastern part of the Mexican state of Campeche, in the heart of the Yucatan peninsula, the cities were hidden in thick vegetation and hardly accessible.

“In the jungle you can be as little as 600 feet from a large site and do not even suspect it might be there; small mounds are all over the place, but they give you no idea about where an urban center might be,” said expedition leader Ivan Sprajc, of the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU).

The Kowloon Walled City

23 November 201223 November 2012 Richard

The Kowloon Walled City was something straight out of dystopian fiction – but it was very much factual for the 33,000 people who lived there. Kowloon, as Wikipedia succinctly puts it, was a “densely populated, largely ungoverned settlement in Kowloon, Hong Kong.” In fact, the 6.5-acre

English: Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, photographed from an airplane Deutsch: Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, Luftbild (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

enclave was the most densely populated space on earth: approximately 1,255,000 inhabitants per square kilometer! For comparison, Wikipedia points out that “Hong Kong as a whole (itself one of the most densely populated areas on earth) had a population density of about 6,700 inhabitants per square kilometer.” The settlement dates back to AD 960, but its namesake walls were built by the Chinese in 1847, after the British took control of Hong Kong proper. Following Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II, the Chinese reclaimed Kowloon and opened it to refugees; it was then that its population dramatically increased. The Walled City was ultimately cleared and demolished in 1994.

Right now, there’s an ongoing “ask me anything” thread at Reddit, posted by Reddit user Crypt0n1te, a former inhabitant of the Walled City. He writes:

I lived in KWC when I was 2-3 years old but I have no recollection of that time. Later on, even though our family moved out of there, but since I was enrolled in the schools near there and my parent worked during the day, so my bro and me were dropped off at my relative’s place in KWC everyday. I got to know the place pretty well because I spent at least 4 hrs there everyday from 1984 to 1991. So ask away!

You can read his thread here: I grew up in the cyberpunk-esque dystopia called Kowloon Walled City which inspired the setting in Ghost in the Shell. AMA.

You can see more pictures of the Kowloon Walled City here.