Užgavėnės

Women dancing in the region of Oued Souf in Algeria. (Photo R. Richard, around 1950)

world's best athletes catching covid and collapsing at the olympics left and right . this is not normal how is everything going on as if it's normal

Jewellery & weaponry belonging to Queen Ahhotep II. An inscribed ceremonial axe blade made of copper, gold, electrum and wood was decorated with a Minoan style griffin. Three golden flies were included and were awards usually given to people who served and acquitted themselves well in the army. A couple of items bore the name of Kamose, but more were inscribed with the name of Ahmose I.

TIL a family in Georgia claimed to have passed down a song in an unknown language from the time of their enslavement; scientists identified the song as a genuine West African funeral song in the Mende language that had survived multiple transmissions from mother to daughter over multiple centuries (x)

The Tunnel posting ✌🏼 (chapter 35 in the original and 36 in some editions in english. anyway, if you read it and find it boring please DON'T let me know lol)

Reading a book about slavery in the middle-ages, and as the author sorts through different source materials from different eras, I am starting to understand why so many completely fantastical accounts of "faraway lands" went without as much as a shrug. The world is such a weird place that you can either refuse to believe any of it or just go "yeah that might as well happen" and carry on with your day.

There was this 10th century arab traveller who wrote into an account that the fine trade furs come from a land where the night only lasts one hour in the summer and the sun doesn't rise at all in the winter, people use dogs to travel, and where children have white hair. I don't think I'd believe something like that either if I didn't live here.

Charles Freger photographed and travelled through 19 countries to collect this stunning collection of photos of European Pagan Rituals surviving to this day.

‘Bark paper devils made by Don Alfonso, Otomi village of San Pablito, Sierra de Puebla, Mexico. 1970s’

An Ortodox Bulgarian bride from Raykovo village, Smolyan, Bulgaria

(via Bulgarian Archives State Agency - Smolyan)

An extraordinary Acheulean handaxe knapped around a fossil shell circa 500,000-300,000 years ago.

The maker appears to have deliberately flaked around the shell to preserve and place it in a central position. As a result this handaxe has been described as an early example of artistic thought.

From West Tofts, Norfolk.

Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, Courtesy Alison Fisk