Vickers’ First Aeroplane and the Mawson Expedition
Reading time: 31 minutes Believed to be the first Vickers-Pelterie REP-type tractor monoplane...
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Category: Historical Sites
What stone tools found in southern tip of Africa tell us about the human story
Reading time: 6 minutes
Stone tools. Our ancestors made them, some people still make them, and many species of extinct humans made them too. For more than three million years, fractured pieces of hard rock provided past people with a means to extract their livelihood from the environment. Because stone is plentiful and cheap to acquire, stone tools were made in large numbers. And because it is so durable, it usually outlasts other traces of human activity. With the passing of time, everything from our thoughts and languages to clothes, food waste and even our own bones are inevitably erased. But stone tools have remained.
Why we are still living with the legacy of Waterloo – that ‘most bloody battle’
Reading time: 6 minutes
Our views of war are sanitised today. In an age of professional armies trained for increasingly technical tasks, few of us have witnessed combat, much less taken part in it. In that vein, commemorations of the 200th anniversary of Waterloo will focus on the battle’s strategic significance. There are, though, individual accounts that give us a glimpse into what sword fights and cavalry charges must have been like – and the deadly consequences of defeat.
Gallipoli’s rich history of conflict started well before 1915
Reading time: 5 minutes
There are few geographical areas that have seen as much military action as the Gallipoli region, the site of the Anzac landings in 1915. The conflicts in the region include some of the most renowned wars from Greek antiquity.
Out of Africa, only to die … new clues on early human migration
Reading time: 4 minutes
But modern studies of this process were reinvigorated by genetic evidence that clearly showed that the far greater genetic diversity of humans outside Africa reflects their dispersal from a common origin in Africa.
Inuit folklore kept alive story of missing Franklin expedition to north-west passage
Reading time: 6 minutes
The ships HMS Erebus and Terror, which sailed from England in the summer of 1845, were aiming to chart the north-west passage. They disappeared into what is now the Canadian Arctic. Stranded in the ice north-west of King William Island in the summer of 1846, the ships were abandoned by the surviving officers and men in the spring of 1848.
Scientists at work: Public archaeologists dig before the construction crews do
Reading time: 8 minutes
I’m the director of the Public Archaeology Facility, a research center specializing in cultural resource management. Our mission is to identify, evaluate and preserve significant sites, train students to be professional archaeologists and share our results with the public. We can work on up to 100 projects a year. Since our inception in 1972, the center has discovered more than 3,500 archaeological sites.
Glastonbury: archaeology is revealing new truths about the origins of British Christianity
Reading time: 5 minutes
Many Christians believe that Glastonbury is the site of the earliest church in Britain, allegedly founded in the first or second century by Joseph of Arimathea. According to the Gospels, Joseph was the man who donated his own tomb for the body of Christ following the crucifixion. By the 14th century, it was popularly believed that Glastonbury Abbey had been founded by the biblical figure of Joseph. The legend emerged that Joseph had travelled to Britain with the Grail, the vessel used to collect Christ’s blood. For 800 years, Glastonbury has been associated with the romance of King Arthur, the Holy Grail and Joseph of Arimathea. Later stories connected Glastonbury directly to the life of Christ.
Of course Australia was invaded – massacres happened here less than 90 years ago
Reading time: 4 minutes Much has been made of the University of New South Wales’ “diversity...
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MUSEUM REVIEW – RAAF Amberley Aviation Heritage Centre
Reading time: 12 minutes With the unfortunate cancellation of the 2022 Air Tattoo at RAAF Base...
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Our mapping project shows how extensive frontier violence was in Queensland. This is why truth-telling matters
Reading time: 6 minutes The Native Mounted Police operated in Queensland for 80 years, starting in 1849. It consisted of small groups of between six and 15 Aboriginal troopers under the command of white officers. The troopers were typically recruited from areas far from where they were sent to serve. Detachments of troopers were regularly sent out on patrol, covering large areas along the frontier of the colony in pursuit of Indigenous people who were considered to be “problematic”. Their main job was to protect civilian settlers, the lands they had taken up, and their livelihoods – by whatever means necessary.
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DNA from elusive human relatives the Denisovans has left a curious mark on modern people in New Guinea
Reading time: 5 minutes
An encounter with a mysterious and extinct human relative – the Denisovans – has left a mark on the immune traits of modern Papuans, in particular those living on New Guinea Island. This is a new discovery we describe in a study published in PLoS Genetics today. It further suggests that our modern human diversity didn’t just evolve – some parts of it we got from other, extinct human groups.
