Strange or Interesting Things
A random list of things I find interesting or odd, usually of historical nature.
- Palimpsest, such as the Archimedes Palimpsest
- As defined by Wikipedia, a palimpsest is a manuscript page, scroll, or book that has been scraped off and used again. A famous example is the Archimedes Palimpsest, written during the 10th century and containing seven different writings. Most of these pages, along with others from some previously unknown and currently unidentified works, were reused in a prayer book completed in 1229. Despite this reuse, today the application of high-tech imaging is now allowing the "removed" writing to be read.
- Piri Reis map
- A map drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a Turkish admiral, that shows the coastline of Antarctica 300 years before its discovery, and, even more amazingly, the coastline underneath the ice, a state the continent last saw in 4000 BC.
- Nazca Lines of Peru
- Hundreds of figures on the Nazca Desert, created between 200 BC and 700 AD. The fact that these figures are only visible from the air raises questions about who really built them and why.