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Earlier this month was National Sisters Day, which got me thinking about famous sibling duos. I thought it would be fun to share a list of the most famous of these sister pairings, but to be fair, there are so many famous pairs of sisters out there that it would be impossible to list them all. That’s why I’ve decided to leave out most of the contemporary examples you’re probably already familiar with, like Paris and Nikki Hilton and Venus and Serena Williams. I’ve also left out all of the popular sister singing groups from the last hundred years because there are so darn many of them between the Pointer Sisters, The Andrews Sisters and the gals from Heart.
That being said, here are some sisters who impacted history.
These not-so-attractive ladies are probably some of the earliest examples of famous sister groups, even if they aren’t exactly real. The Graeae were three ancient goddesses from Greek mythology who shared one eye and one tooth amongst the group. While they were actually archaic goddesses, when they interacted with humans, they usually took the form of old witches.
Perseus stole the eye of the witches when they were passing it amongst themselves and used it to force the Graeae to tell him where the three objects he needed to kill Medusa were hidden. Thus, the Graeae were instrumental in the killing of Medusa, who was one of their sisters. Even if these siblings aren’t real, the story has been so long-lasting that it’s hard to imagine it not having any impact on European history to some extent.
Around the same time that tales of Jesus were starting to be spread through the Middle East, two Vietnamese sisters were kicking butt, leading a revolt against the Chinese oppression of their country.
It all started when Trung Trac fell in love and married a man named Thi Sach. The Chinese rulers of Vietnam were making assimilation into their way of life mandatory and when Thi Sach took a stand against the repression of his culture, he was executed. His death was supposed to be a warning against all those who would consider rebelling, but instead it spurred his wife and sister-in-law, Trung Nhi, to take up his cause and fight against the Chinese.
The two sisters were raised learning martial arts and studying the art of warfare, so when it was time to start a rebellion, they were ready. In 39 AD, the two women repelled a small Chinese unit from their village and started to assemble a large army of rebels –mostly women according to popular legends. Within a few months, they already had taken back over 60 citadels from the Chinese and had liberated the kingdom of Nam Viet. The two were named as queens of their free country and they were able to keep the territory free from the Chinese for over two years.
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Poor Greece. First it was the whole debt crisis, then came this pestilence of frogs:
Greek officials say a horde of frogs has forced the closure of a key northern highway for two hours.
Thessaloniki traffic police chief Giorgos Thanoglou says "millions" of the amphibians covered the tarmac Wednesday near the town of Langadas, some 12 miles east of Thessaloniki.
"There was a carpet of frogs," he said.
What’s next? Locusts? Well, whatever it is, it probably can’t be as bad as what happened to Australia.
Link (Photo: AP/Alpha TV)
A team of archaeologists on the Greek island of Crete found a tool way older than what they expected to find. Thomas Strasser of the University of Providence and his crew hoped to find artifacts dating back as far as 11,000 years. The five-inch axe they uncovered was something completely different.
Knapped from a cobble of local quartz stone, the rough-looking tool resembled hand axes discovered in Africa and mainland Europe and used by human ancestors until about 175,000 years ago. This stone tool technology, which could have been useful for smashing bones and cutting flesh, had been relatively static for over a million years.
Crete has been surrounded by vast stretches of sea for some five million years. The discovery of the hand ax suggests that people besides technologically modern humans—possibly Homo heidelbergensis—island-hopped across the Mediterranean tens of thousands of millennia earlier than expected.
More digging unearthed a total of 30 hand axes plus other tools at nine locations on Crete. The rock terraces the tools were taken from are thought to range from 45,000 years old to 130,000 years old.
“I was flabbergasted,” said Boston University archaeologist and stone-tool expert Curtis Runnels. “The idea of finding tools from this very early time period on Crete was about as believable as finding an iPod in King Tut’s tomb.”
It was thought that humans earlier than Homo sapiens were incapable of long deliberate sea voyages. Link
(image credit: Thomas Strasser)
An unusually frank art exhibition has opened in Athens. The Museum of Cycladic Art is hosting a show of 272 objects dating from the 6th century BC to the 4th century AD. The top floor of the museum is off limits to unattended children under 16:
There in three rooms reserved for artistic renditions of sexual congress, pederasty (socially accepted in ancient times), homoerotic love, and the quaintly named “bucolic love affair”, viewers are bombarded with what the ancients were clearly good at: being bawdy. From scenes of anal copulation to mutual oral sex, to lucky charms of giant phalluses and engravings of frenzied sex with the half-man, half beast satyrs and silens, Eros is depicted in all its glory.
Some of the images in the exhibition reportedly contain material that in many countries would result in the arrest and incarceration of the owner (or viewer). It is interesting how, once the items are designated as objets d’art, official attitudes seem to be modified. Or perhaps the legal code of Greece is just more permissive.
Link. Photo of sleeping Eros credit Yiorgos Karahalis/Reuters
I’m sure most of you know at least something about the mysterious Antikythera Mechanism that was found at the bottom of the sea in 1901 near the island of Antikythera (from where the device took its name) and is estimated to have been built between 150-100 BC by an unknown builder. Famed for its mysterious and significantly advanced gear mechanism and complex build the Antikythera Mechanism was eventually found to be a computing calender and clock of sorts for the planets. Which may have been useful to sailors as would be evidenced by why the device was found among the carcass of a sunken ship.
Fast forward to the modern age and we find curator Michael Wright with the first fully functional working model of the Antikythera Mechanism in the World. To imagine that such advanced and complex machines were being built so long ago has fascinated and helped reshape ancient history and knowledge. The mystery concerning this device has increased as archaeologists and scientists wonder why they have only found this sole machine in the past century and why there is no recorded information regarding its creator.
