Battle of Antietam - Bloodiest in American History - Awesome Stories - 7 views
Culture Evolves Slowly, Falls Apart Quickly | Wired Science | Wired.com - 8 views
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“just as evolutionary biologists use phylogenetic trees constructed using genetic data to test evolutionary hypotheses, anthropologists have recently begun to use cultural phylogenetics to test hypotheses about human social and cultural evolution,”
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Political complexity indeed grew slowly, bit by bit, with no sudden jumps from bands to chiefdoms or tribes to states. “Political evolution, like biological evolution, tends to proceed through small steps rather than through major jumps in ‘design space,’” wrote Mace and Currie. However, purely forward-marching models didn’t fit the data. There was evidence of societies marching backwards as well, and this didn’t follow the same step-by-step path. Societies could collapse.
How we remember them: the 1914-18 war today | openDemocracy - 6 views
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After the war, however, the problem of reintegrating into society both those who had served and those who had lost, and finding a narrative that could contain both, found one answer by an emphasis on the universality of heroism. A British society that has since the 1960s grown increasingly distant from the realities of military service - whilst remaining dedicated to it as a location for fantasy - has been unable to move on from this rhetorical standpoint
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The war's portrayal has always been shaped by contemporary cultural mores, and commemorative documentaries demonstrate just how much the relationship between the creators and consumers of popular culture has changed over the last fifty years. For the fiftieth anniversary of 1914, the BBC commissioned the twenty-six part series The Great War, based around archive footage and featuring interviews with veterans. There was an authoritative narrative voice, but no presenters. For the eightieth anniversary, it collaborated with an American television company on a six-part series littered with academic talking-heads. For the ninetieth anniversary, it has had a range of TV presenter-celebrities - among them Michael Palin, Dan Snow, Natalie Cassidy and Eamonn Holmes - on a journey of discovery of their families' military connections. These invariably culminate next to graves and memorials in a display of the right kind of televisual emotion at the moment the formula demands and the audience has come to expect. The focus of these programmes - family history as a means of understanding the past - is worthy of note in itself. It is indicative of the dramatic growth of family history as a leisure interest, perhaps in response to the sense of dislocation inherent in modernity
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The search for family history is usually shaped by modern preconceptions, and as such it seldom results by itself in a deeper understanding of the past. The modern experience of finding someone who shares your surname on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website, taking a day trip to France and finding his grave (perhaps with a cathartic tear or few) might increase a person's or family's sense of emotional connection to the war, and may bring other satisfactions. Insofar as it is led not by a direct connection with a loved one, however, but by what television has "taught" as right conduct, it can seldom encourage a more profound appreciation of what the war meant for those who fought it, why they kept fighting, or why they died.
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Schools look set to dumb down history | Adelaide Now - 8 views
History shows there's no pleasing everyone with a national curriculum | The Australian - 4 views
American Folklore: Famous American folktales, tall tales, myths and legends, ghost stor... - 4 views
The Poisonous Mushroom - 4 views
German Propaganda archive - 5 views
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Der Giftpilz, the German word for toadstool, was a publication of Julius Streicher's publishing house. It was aimed particularly at kids, and was sometimes used in the schools. In each case, the caption under the picture is translated to the right. In several cases, there is a link to a translation of the story that accompanied the picture.
Narrative Sources - 1 views
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