I’ve been rather busy lately;  as I type, I am in my second week of university, studying archaeology and ancient history. It’s as awesome as I had hoped.

Anyway, I’ve decided I’m going to post some of the more interesting facts, photographs, and quotes from the lecturers every week. So here we go.

Week One.

Ancient History

My favorite part of my first Ancient Rome lecture was when we briefly heard about the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus. The lecturer said in a sad, pained voice,

“Please do not call him Tarquinius Super-bus. His name is Tarquin the Proud, Tarquinius Superb-us. Tarquinius Super-bus is not his name.”

For the record, this guy was the last king of Rome, and he was actually Etruscan, as the Etruscans ruled the Romans at this point, but the Romans threw him out. They were really touchy about having been ruled by the Etruscans forever afterwards, which is why they had this big thing about never having kings.

Archaeology

The first hour of my Archaeology lecture was all about (a) why archaeology is not studying dinosaurs (for those of you looking clueless, that would be palaeontology, as opposed to archaeology, which involves studying humans of the past and their cultures) and (b) why archaeology is not like Indiana Jones.

(Really. It’s not.)

I just sat there and thought, if you don’t know something as basic as these two facts, why are you studying the subject in the first place? It’s a good idea to actually know what it is…

In my archaeology textbook reading for the first week, I found a neat picture of 4000 year old figures from a place called Ain Ghazal in Jordan. I think they look like aliens. 

Illustratory photo of Ain Ghazal figures

See? Totally look like aliens. Or maybe Voldemort’s long-lost cousins… (just look at that pale hairless skin and those snake-like eyes…!)

Also, I found a dude with a really interesting skull.

Incan dude with the interesting skull from the Puruchuco-Huaquerones cemetery in Peru

Look at those cheekbones…

That’s it for my first post.