~Star~Crash~ All & Everything

[Eltitoguay]

...On the way down, I come across another little young strawberry tree that grows isolated at the beginning of the pasture/sabana:

As I descend, close to my house, the vegetation clears up, and I can see the valley and the little village in the background:

 

[Eltitoguay]

After last Christmas, my little 7-year-old niece reminds me that I promised to take her to a museum "to see things about prehistoric men"... On January 4th I decide not to postpone it any longer, because I have a temporary job in neighboring Portugal and any day they call me to leave. So we take the car, we leave our mountains and our valley, and we head north, going into the plains of La Mancha, towards the small city of Ciudad Real, to visit its small and humble (but very interesting) Provincial Museum of History.

The museum itself is small and poor, as the most spectacular pieces are usually taken to other larger and more famous museums in larger and much more visited cities, outside the province, or even the nation (Toledo, Jaén, Córdoba, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Rabat...) Even so, it contains several "jewels"... This museum exhibits pieces from about 1.5 million years ago during the Paleolithic, until the Middle Ages.

So let's start at the beginning, with the skeleton of this colossal mastodon, whose tusks are the length of several adult humans. It is also very tall: compare the chair and table of the museum janitor that can be seen in a photo, with the size of the skeleton (without all the thick and enormous layer of muscles, fat and hair that made it even much bigger). It is the largest mastodon specimen found to date in Europe, with more than 3 meters high and weighing more than 5 tons when alive:

And a video was shown on a screen in the room, with digital animations of hunting scenes, using different images of prehistoric cave paintings of the area:

...

 

[Chunkypigs]

After last Christmas, my little 7-year-old niece reminds me that I promised to take her to a museum "to see things about prehistoric men"... On January 4th I decide not to postpone it any longer, because I have a temporary job in neighboring Portugal and any day they call me to leave. So we take the car, we leave our mountains and our valley, and we head north, going into the plains of La Mancha, towards the small city of Ciudad Real, to visit its small and humble (but very interesting) Provincial Museum of History.

The museum itself is small and poor, as the most spectacular pieces are usually taken to other larger and more famous museums in larger and much more visited cities, outside the province, or even the nation (Toledo, Jaén, Córdoba, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Rabat...) Even so, it contains several "jewels"... This museum exhibits pieces from about 1.5 million years ago during the Paleolithic, until the Middle Ages.

So let's start at the beginning, with the skeleton of this colossal mastodon, whose tusks are the length of several adult humans. It is also very tall: compare the chair and table of the museum janitor that can be seen in a photo, with the size of the skeleton (without all the thick and enormous layer of muscles, fat and hair that made it even much bigger). It is the largest mastodon specimen found to date in Europe, with more than 3 meters high and weighing more than 5 tons when alive:
View attachment 18844766 View attachment 18844767 View attachment 18844768

And a video was shown on a screen in the room, with digital animations of hunting scenes, using different images of prehistoric cave paintings of the area:

...

Dood, these mastodon stories are fabulous, I really dig the tusks! Takes me right back to the caves of Altamira and all that jazz, but will you hurry up and get to the part about the naked cavegirl with the pierced nose and Greek tendencies please....

 

[Drumskinz]

Dood, these mastodon stories are fabulous, I really dig the tusks! Takes me right back to the caves of Altamira and all that jazz, but will you hurry up and get to the part about the naked cavegirl with the pierced nose and Greek tendencies please....

Your seester’s not gonna like you much CP

 

[Eltitoguay]

...Well, in this museum, there are no references to any "naked cavewoman with a pierced nose and Greek tendencies", it is wrong... There are references to a naked Hispano-Roman woman of whom nothing is known about her nose or her tendencies, but we do know something about some of her curious personal items...

 

[flower~power]

 

[armedoldhippy]

"my, grandma! what big white teeth you have..."

 

[purpleplayer007]

Some new specimens View attachment 18843607 View attachment 18843608 View attachment 18843609 View attachment 18843610 View attachment 18843611

Nice selection .. all 4 outdoor? Hows the ridgeline supposed to be like?

 

[RoostaPhish]

I kinda assumed that it was the same fella with a different handle. Now where are those african sativas.

 

[flower~power]

Nice selection .. all 4 outdoor? Hows the ridgeline supposed to be like?

I don’t know anything they were all gifts from Chucky

 

[flylowgethigh]

...Well, in this museum, there are no references to any "naked cavewoman with a pierced nose and Greek tendencies", it is wrong... There are references to a naked Hispano-Roman woman of whom nothing is known about her nose or her tendencies, but we do know something about some of her curious personal items...
View attachment 18844853
View attachment 18844851
View attachment 18844855
View attachment 18844860

That is where the middle finger salute came from. A dick on one end, the finger on the other. It was the decoder ring for what the finger meant.

 

[Eltitoguay]

...But before reaching the Roman room, you have to go through the Neolithic-Cupper-Broze-Tartessian room and later the Iberian room...
The first of those room welcomes us with this video on a screen at the entrance (we ere now in Neolithic-Cupper Age-Broze Age, to the era here of the Los Millares culture, and of both the Tartessian and Agaric cultures and states):


Until the beginning of the last 20th century, Tartessos, like Troy, only existed in literary references: in the Bible, where many identify it as Tarsis and its ships that supplied Solomon and other kings with lead, tin, copper, and silver; and in classical Greek sources, where Tartessos appears as a legendary region of fabulous wealth and mythical heroes, as the scene of Hercules' tenth labor—the capture of the oxen of the three-headed giant Geryon—on the far reaches of the known world. The Greek myth tells that Hercules, after killing the giant Geryon – the first king of Tartessos, according to legend – appropriated his herd of red bulls.

Just like and shortly after the discovery of Troy, it was a German archaeologist who would bring myth to historical reality: Adolf Schulten at the beginning of the 20th century, when he embarked on the search for an opulent city in the Lower Guadalquivir trying to emulate what his compatriot Heinrich Schliemann had achieved with Troy (because not all Germans are crazy-headed marihuanos and mentally horny like @MadMac: there are also very serious and brainy people there) with his publication in 1924 of his work "Tartessos, the first civilization of the West".
We are entering historical times because the Tartessians had writing, which is still being deciphered (we are missing a "rosseta stone" with the same text also written in some other contemporary writing of the peoples that were related to them and that we do know: Egyptians, Phoenicians or Greeks).

This museum exhibits from this time, these famous and spectacular "warrior stelae"; Some of the largest found are almost 1.80 meters (3.3 feet): Warrior stelae appear around 1500 BC, being used for funeral rituals or as markers of territories and communication routes. On the stelae, the placement of the weapons is based on their use, one of the most notable compositional aspects being the importance given to the shield and the symbology engraved on it.
The first of those "warrior stelae" (dated, I think, between 1,500 and 900 BC), are at the center of controversy lately, having been part of the reason for the latest archaeological expeditions by both National Geographics and the filmmaker J. Cameron, in search of the historical truth that Plato's Legend of Atlantis may or may not have...
The symbology engraved on the shield on the stelae (the warrior is protecting the city formed by concentric circles of walls and water channels, according to them ), the coincidence of cities/towns of the time built following this pattern of concentric rings, as well as various other coincidences between findings and legend, is which launches National Geographics into their latest theories about Atlantis... (According to this, the Tartessian culture would be the little and main thing that survived from the Atlantean collapse...)
They could be right, or just a coincidence: only time and new excavations and studies can perhaps clarify the truth... Here are: the Latin inscription on one of them was made in Roman times, perhaps more than a millennium later:

This other piece of stelae is accompanied by this fun and explanatory video animation:

...

 

[Eltitoguay]

That is where the middle finger salute came from. A dick on one end, the finger on the other. It was the decoder ring for what the finger meant.

Heh heh heh... Actually, I'd say it's an index finger... (an allusion to digital clitoral stimulation...?) It's such a fun and interesting piece...

 

[flower~power]

...But before reaching the Roman room, you have to go through the Neolithic-Cupper-Broze-Tartessian room and later the Iberian room...
The first of those room welcomes us with this video on a screen at the entrance (we ere now in Neolithic-Cupper Age-Broze Age, to the era here of the Los Millares culture, and of both the Tartessian and Agaric cultures and states):


Until the beginning of the last 20th century, Tartessos, like Troy, only existed in literary references: in the Bible, where many identify it as Tarsis and its ships that supplied Solomon and other kings with iron, lead, tin, copper, and silver; and in classical Greek sources, where Tartessos appears as a legendary region of fabulous wealth and mythical heroes, as the scene of Hercules' tenth labor—the capture of the oxen of the three-headed giant Geryon—on the far reaches of the known world. The Greek myth tells that Hercules, after killing the giant Geryon – the first king of Tartessos, according to legend – appropriated his herd of red bulls.

Just like and shortly after the discovery of Troy, it was a German archaeologist who would bring myth to historical reality: Adolf Schulten at the beginning of the 20th century, when he embarked on the search for an opulent city in the Lower Guadalquivir trying to emulate what his compatriot Heinrich Schliemann had achieved with Troy (because not all Germans are crazy-headed marihuanos and mentally horny like @MadMac: there are also very serious and brainy people there) with his publication in 1924 of his work "Tartessos, the first civilization of the West".
We are entering historical times because the Tartessians had writing, which is still being deciphered (we are missing a "rosseta stone" with the same text also written in some other contemporary writing of the peoples that were related to them and that we do know: Egyptians, Phoenicians or Greeks).

This museum exhibits from this time, these famous and spectacular "warrior stelae"; Some of the largest found are almost 1.80 meters (3.3 feet): Warrior stelae appear around 1200 BC, being used for funeral rituals or as markers of territories and communication routes. On the stelae, the placement of the weapons is based on their use, one of the most notable compositional aspects being the importance given to the shield and the symbology engraved on it.
The first of those "warrior stelae" (dated, I think, between 1,500 and 900 BC), are at the center of controversy lately, having been part of the reason for the latest archaeological expeditions by both National Geographics and the filmmaker J. Cameron, in search of the historical truth that Plato's Legend of Atlantis may or may not have...
The symbology engraved on the shield on the stelae (the warrior is protecting the city formed by concentric circles of walls and water channels, according to them ), the coincidence of cities/towns of the time built following this pattern of concentric rings, as well as various other coincidences between findings and legend, is which launches National Geographics into their latest theories about Atlantis... (According to this, the Tartessian culture would be the little and main thing that survived from the Atlantean collapse...)
They could be right, or just a coincidence: only time and new excavations and studies can perhaps clarify the truth... Here are: the Latin inscription on one of them was made in Roman times, perhaps more than a millennium later:
View attachment 18844997 View attachment 18844999

This other piece of stelae is accompanied by this fun and explanatory video animation:
View attachment 18845002

...

I love Ancient history it’s one of my favorite subjects…What an amazing place this world was

 

[flower~power]

I would’ve love to live in the Pax Romana the greatest era of prosperity in human history

 

[Eltitoguay]

I love Ancient history it’s one of my favorite subjects…What an amazing place this world was

I'm glad that's the way it is... I was going to go directly to my walks along endless beaches full of topless women, in case our museum visit bored you... Now seriously: if you get bored, tell me, because as I told you before, I'm only posting this in your thread in case my humble adventures are of interest to you...
Would you like to see a short sword (iron decorated with silver thread damascene) from the Iberian period and culture? This is the famous "Iberian falcata or Roman gladius", since it is the weapon copied from the Iberians and used by the legions of Ancient Rome (as Carthage also did) since the 3rd century BC. C., to achieve that Pax Romana later...

 

[flower~power]

Man, I love your posts

 

[flower~power]

as you can see the thread is titled All & Everything

 

[Eltitoguay]

Would you like to see a short sword (iron decorated with silver thread damascene) from the Iberian period and culture? This is the famous "Iberian falcata or Roman gladius", since it is the weapon copied from the Iberians and used by the legions of Ancient Rome (as Carthage also did) since the 3rd century BC. C., to achieve that Pax Romana later...

The conquest of the Phoenician Tire and Phocea by Babylon and Persia in the 6th century BC. C., supposed a deep economic crisis for Tartessos (the Phoenicians were the main commercial partner of Tartessos at that specific moment). Carthage, which from that ancient Phoenician colony in present-day Tunisia "picks up the Phoenician baton", does not merely seek to be a commercial empire like its predecessors, but adds to its idiosyncrasy a strong militarism and imperialist expansionism... This collides with the Tartessian militaristic idiosyncrasy as well as commercial, so Tartessos turns its commercial policy towards Greece, which has a strictly commercial policy with them like the one the Phoenicians had.

In 537 BC. the Carthaginians decided to get rid of the competition and the Greek economic pressure and decided to go on the attack. To compensate for their military inferiority, they allied with the Etruscans and together they launched an attack against the new Phocaean Greek metropolis of Alalia, on the island of Corsica. Between the Carthaginians and the Etruscans there were 120 ships while the Phoceans only had 60. The superiority of the Phocean ships allowed them to win the battle despite the double number of enemies. But it was a Pyrrhic victory, since his entire fleet was sunk or disabled. The few remaining Phocaean military forces had to focus on evacuating the colony of Alalia and defending the Greek Phocaean colony from the current Marseilles, leaving Tartessos without their help for its naval protection. And it seems that Carthage would not forgive the Tartessian alliance and support for the Greek side in the battle, and set out to conquer the Tartessian kingdom (which then occupied more than the southern third, but less than half, of the Iberian Peninsula) to, pass, keep their resources and secure a geopolitical space.
The end of Tartessos is dated between 500 and 450: the inland Tartessian cities, which the Carthaginians not reached, were ritually burned first, and then buried with earth by their last inhabitants, before abandoning them.

After the collapse and disintegration of the Kingdom of Tartessos, the culture (fusion of the local, the Phoenician/Punic and the Greek) and Iberian kingdoms arose. Some would eventually be conquered by Carthage, and others would hold out until almost the end of the first century BC and the Roman conquest.
This epoch covers approx from 500 BC to O. From the Iberian room of this museum, are the photos of the falcata; specifically from the Kingdom of Oretania, which would be the one that would dominate the land where the museum is now located.
...

 

[Eltitoguay]

I would’ve love to live in the Pax Romana the greatest era of prosperity in human history

Nor is there much of the turbulent Carthaginian era, although it was the local Iberians from Oretanian Kingdom who were responsible for the defeat and death of the maximum leader of Carthage at that time, Amílca Barca, after what his son Anibal had to happen to him. Likewise, she was also from Oretania by birth, and in Oretaniadied, the last Queen of Carthage, Imilce, wife of Anibal.

...So I go directly to the time after the Roman conquest, and the Pax Romana...
The Roman room of the museum seems pretty to me, but few pieces, taking into account all the sites and finds in the area:

...