Watch the Destruction of Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius, Re-Created with Computer Animation (79 AD)

A good dis­as­ter sto­ry nev­er fails to fas­ci­nate — and, giv­en that it actu­al­ly hap­pened, the sto­ry of Pom­peii espe­cial­ly so. Buried and thus frozen in time by the erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius in 79 AD, the ancient Roman town of 11,000 has pro­vid­ed an object of great his­tor­i­cal inter­est ever since its redis­cov­ery in 1599. Baths, hous­es, tools and oth­er pos­ses­sions (includ­ing plen­ty of wine bot­tles), fres­coes, graf­fi­ti, an amp­ithe­ater, an aque­duct, the “Vil­la of the Mys­ter­ies”: Pom­peii has it all, as far as the stuff of first-cen­tu­ry Roman life goes.

The ash-pre­served ruins of Pom­peii, more than any oth­er source, have pro­vid­ed his­to­ri­ans with a win­dow into just what life in that time and place was like. A Day in Pom­peii, an exhi­bi­tion held at the Mel­bourne Muse­um in 2009, gave its more than 330,000 vis­i­tors a chance to expe­ri­ence Pom­pei­i’s life even more vivid­ly. The exhi­bi­tion includ­ed a 3D the­ater instal­la­tion that fea­tured the ani­ma­tion above. Watch it, and you can see Pom­peii brought back to life with com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery — and then, in snap­shots over the course of 48 hours, entombed by Vesu­vius again.

As inher­ent­ly com­pelling as we find the sto­ry of Pom­peii, mod­ern dra­ma has strug­gled to cap­ture the pow­er of the dis­as­ter that defines it. The late-1960s BBC show Up Pom­peii! offered a comedic ren­der­ing of life in the city before the explo­sion, but more seri­ous inter­pre­ta­tions, like the 2014 Hol­ly­wood movie Pom­peii, met with only luke­warm crit­i­cal recep­tion. Best, it seems, to stick to the words of Pliny the Younger, wit­ness to the destruc­tion and still its most evoca­tive describer:

You could hear the shrieks of women, the wail­ing of infants, and the shout­ing of men; some were call­ing their par­ents, oth­ers their chil­dren or their wives, try­ing to rec­og­nize them by their voic­es. Peo­ple bewailed their own fate or that of their rel­a­tives, and there were some who prayed for death in their ter­ror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imag­ined there were no gods left, and that the uni­verse was plunged into eter­nal dark­ness for ever­more.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Metafliter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour Through Ancient Rome, 320 C.E.

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

Ten Dis­cov­er­ies That Rewrote His­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Dave Grohl Shows How He Plays the Guitar As If It Were a Drum Kit

For decades now, debate has raged on whether Neil Young is a “gui­tar god or gui­tar slob.” His play­ing is slop­py and untu­tored, but so com­plete­ly heart­felt, so total­ly engross­ing, that it’s nev­er mat­tered to his fans, myself includ­ed. I come firm­ly down on the “gui­tar god” side of the ques­tion, and not only because he’s inspired me when I’ve felt less than accom­plished as a musi­cian, but because I gen­er­al­ly pre­fer musi­cian­ship that’s kin­da messy, impro­vi­sa­tion­al, and idio­syn­crat­ic ver­sus clas­si­cal­ly-trained virtuosity—at least in rock and roll, where mak­ing a mess is kind of the point. Young him­self couldn’t care less what peo­ple think about his rudi­men­ta­ry lead gui­tar play­ing. “When you’re able to express your­self and feel good,” he said in a 1992 inter­view, “then you know why you’re play­ing. The tech­ni­cal aspect is absolute hog­wash as far as I’m con­cerned.”

The dif­fer­ence between Neil Young and many an unschooled ama­teur musi­cian is often pret­ty clear: He’s a great song­writer with such a feel for rhythm, tone, and dynam­ics that intu­itive musi­cal­i­ty, one might say, is at the heart of his musi­cian­ship. I would say sim­i­lar things about a play­er like Dave Grohl, who—as a drum­mer and a guitarist—has always pos­sessed a con­fi­dent, intu­itive sense of what music is and does. And he’s done it, as he says in the inter­view above, with bare­ly a les­son to speak of. He’s pret­ty much entire­ly self taught on both instru­ments, and—like Neil Young, Jimi Hen­drix, and a whole pas­sel of oth­er famous players—hasn’t mem­o­rized much the­o­ry or learned hun­dreds of chords. When he moved from pri­mar­i­ly play­ing drums to gui­tar, as he demon­strates above, Grohl learned to think of the gui­tar strings as cor­re­spond­ing to the parts of a drum kit.

He shows how the riff for “Ever­long,” for exam­ple, came to him by think­ing about strum pat­terns as drum pat­terns, and it makes per­fect sense. He also talks about how his gui­tar tech­nique cor­re­sponds not only to drum tech­nique, but also to what­ev­er means of expres­sion he needs at a par­tic­u­lar moment in a song—whatever sounds good, as he puts it. Part of his ethos comes from a punk rock, DIY atti­tude of want­i­ng to “just fig­ure it out,” and not read the instruc­tions. It’s a musi­cal stance that can work per­fect­ly well in punk, hard­core, or the Foo Fight­ers’ melod­ic alt-rock. Or in the sham­bling folk-rock of Neil Young. Not so much in, say, jazz or most gen­res of heavy met­al or prog rock, forms of music that seem to have arisen express­ly around vir­tu­oso play­ing. If that’s what you’re into, you may need a few lessons. But what­ev­er kind of music you play, as Grohl dis­cuss­es above, the per­fect is still the ene­my of the good.

Grohl says he tries “to appre­ci­ate an imper­fect per­for­mance, or an off-the-cuff idea, or a lyric that might seem unfin­ished or in such a sim­ple form it doesn’t seem sophis­ti­cat­ed enough….” To let one’s inner edi­tor step in and try to guide the process is to give up the unforced spon­tane­ity that makes music excit­ing. “When,” he asks, “did per­fec­tion become so impor­tant in music?” He doesn’t spec­u­late, but I would say it might cor­re­late to the rise of the dig­i­tal machines in music pro­duc­tion, which allow pro­duc­ers to edit every sin­gle note, fix every off-key vocal, move every drum hit into a per­fect grid, smooth out every rough, messy performance—or do away with the “imper­fect” human ele­ment alto­geth­er. Such pro­duc­tion kills the spir­it of record­ed rock and roll—and even, I’d argue, makes for dull, unin­spired elec­tron­ic music. And such per­fec­tion in play­ing live music is, Grohl says, “unat­tain­able.”

I’d per­son­al­ly say that the ascen­den­cy of slick pro­duc­tion over inter­est­ing per­for­mance has been in large part respon­si­ble for the declin­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of main­stream rock and roll, as its edges are too often planed away and it’s ren­dered safe and bor­ing. Grohl has his own the­o­ry, which he dis­cuss­es above, relat­ing to a back­lash against the post-Nir­vana com­mer­cial­ism of the 90s and a nascent elit­ism among rock bands. His idea is as much a defense of the Foo Fight­ers’ “pop­ulism” as an expla­na­tion for why rock songs are rarely hit songs any­more. If you pre­fer his ear­ly work, you can hear him dis­cuss his role in Nir­vana, below, and talk about his rela­tion­ship with Kurt Cobain in this excerpt from the longer inter­view with Sam Jones of Off­Cam­era.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Dave Grohl’s First Foo Fight­ers Demo Record­ings, As Kurt Cobain Did in 1992

1,000 Musi­cians Per­form Foo Fight­ers’ “Learn to Fly” in Uni­son in Italy; Dave Grohl Responds in Ital­ian

Lis­ten to The John Bon­ham Sto­ry, a Radio Show Host­ed by Dave Grohl

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Jacques Derrida on Seinfeld: “Deconstruction Doesn’t Produce Any Sitcom”

Jacques Der­ri­da could enjoy a good movie like any­one else. In a 2002 inter­view with TIME, he declared “I have watched The God­fa­ther 10 times. I must watch it when­ev­er it’s on.” Who could­n’t?

Cop­po­la films were one thing. Appar­ent­ly sit­coms quite anoth­er. In anoth­er 2002 inter­view, a jour­nal­ist asked the French philoso­pher whether, in so many words, decon­struc­tion shared any­thing in com­mon with Sein­feld and the ironic/parodic way it looks at the world. This was tak­ing things too far. “Decon­struc­tion, as I under­stand it,” said Der­ri­da, “does­n’t pro­duce any sit­com. If sit­com is this, and peo­ple who watch this think decon­struc­tion is this, the only advice I have to give them is just stop watch­ing sit­com, do your home­work, and read.” The cringe­wor­thy scene orig­i­nal­ly appeared in the doc­u­men­tary, Der­ri­da, direct­ed by Kir­by Dick and Amy Zier­ing Hoff­man.

via Peter B. Kauf­man 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Teacher Calls Jacques Derrida’s Col­lege Admis­sion Essay on Shake­speare “Quite Incom­pre­hen­si­ble” (1951)

Hear the Writ­ing of French The­o­rists Jacques Der­ri­da, Jean Bau­drillard & Roland Barthes Sung by Poet Ken­neth Gold­smith

130+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

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Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Unabridged & Set to Music By 17 Different Artists

If you want a guide through James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake—the mod­ernist author’s “wordi­est aria,” writes Kirkus Reviews, “and sure­ly the strangest ever sung in any language”—you’d be hard pressed find a bet­ter one than nov­el­ist Antho­ny Burgess. Not only did Burgess turn his study of Joyce to very good account in cre­at­ing his own poly­glot lan­guage in A Clock­work Orange, but he has “taste­ful­ly select­ed the more read­able por­tions” of Joyce’s final nov­el in an abridged ver­sion, A Short­er Finnegans Wake. No doubt “pedants will object,” writes Kirkus, but if any­one can edit Joyce, it’s Burgess, who has writ­ten a thor­ough intro­duc­tion to Joyce’s lan­guage, a guide to Joyce “for the Ordi­nary Read­er,” and the most com­pre­hen­sive sum­ma­ry of Joyce’s last nov­el that I’ve ever encountered—proving that it can be done. Finnegans Wake makes sense!… sort of…

But not, how­ev­er, as any straight­for­ward sto­ry; after all, writes Burgess, “What Joyce is doing… is to make his hero re-live the whole of his­to­ry in a night’s sleep.” And what Burgess does is show us the com­plex scaf­fold­ing and sym­bol­ism of that dream. What he does not do is explain away the music of Joyce’s novel—for it is, after all, not only one long dream, but one long song, the “strangest ever sung.” We can hear Joyce him­self sing from the nov­el­’s Anna Livia Plura­belle sec­tion in the video at the top (accom­pa­nied by sub­ti­tles and a very cool ani­ma­tion, I must say). His lilt­ing tenor enthralls, but his is not the only way to sing Finnegans Wake. Indeed, the nov­el, though very odd and very dif­fi­cult, is Joyce’s invi­ta­tion to the world.

And the world has respond­ed (“Here Comes Every­body!”). Last year, Way­words and Mean­signs, a Joyce project co-found­ed by Derek Pyle, brought togeth­er artists and musi­cians from around the globe to sing, read, and set to music the words of Finnegans Wake. Open Cul­ture’s Ted Mills wrote a post describ­ing the “stag­ger­ing 30+ hours” of Joyce inter­pre­ta­tion, and con­clud­ed, “Those who read this and feel they’ve missed out on the cre­ativ­i­ty of tack­ling Finnegans Wake, don’t wor­ry.” The project was then solic­it­ing con­trib­u­tors for a forth­com­ing sec­ond edi­tion, and now it has arrived. You can hear it in full above, an answer to the ques­tion “How many ways are there to read James Joyce’s great and bizarre nov­el?”

Sev­en­teen dif­fer­ent musi­cians from all around the world, each assigned to ren­der a chap­ter aural­ly. The only require­ments: the chap­ter’s words must be audi­ble, unabridged, and more or less in their orig­i­nal order.

We begin with pages 3–29, “The Fall,” read in a rapid dead­pan over avant-garde free jazz by Mr. Smolin & Dou­ble Naught Spy Car. Next, we have “The Humphri­ad I: His Agnomen and Rep­u­ta­tion,” read by pro­duc­er David Kahne against a back­drop of min­i­mal­ist synths, tin­kling key­boards, and waves of bur­bling elec­tron­ic noise. Per­haps one of my favorite musicians—whose song­writ­ing has always struck me as par­tic­u­lar­ly Joycean—Mike Watt of the Min­ute­men and fIRE­HOSE promis­es to deliv­er his musi­cal con­tri­bu­tion for “Shem the Pen­man” very soon. In its place is a mes­sage from Pyle, who urges you to sign up for the Way­words and Mean­signs mail­ing list for updates. After his mes­sage is a brief excerpt from con­ver­sa­tion he had with Watt on the bass play­er’s pod­cast.

Finnegans Wake, says Watt, “shares with Ulysses the idea of want­i­ng to try and talk about every­thing.” Joyce, Watt goes on, want­ed to “tran­scend” in his writ­ing the cir­cum­stances of his trou­bled fam­i­ly life, fail­ing eye­sight, and finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties; and he was also just “hav­ing some fun.” That’s also a good descrip­tion of the var­i­ous ren­der­ings of Joyce rep­re­sent­ed in this com­pi­la­tion as these artists try to tran­scend ordi­nary ways of read­ing great lit­er­a­ture, and clear­ly have lots fun in the doing. See the Way­words and Mean­signs web­site for pro­duc­tion cred­its and a com­plete track­list­ing indi­cat­ing the spe­cif­ic pages, chap­ters, and sec­tions of each read­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Read Aloud & Set to Music: 31 Hours of Free Unabridged Audio

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

James Joyce Reads ‘Anna Livia Plura­belle’ fromFinnegans Wake

See What Hap­pens When You Run Finnegans Wake Through a Spell Check­er

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Alan Rickman Recites “If Death Is Not the End,” a Moving Poem by Robyn Hitchcock

Odd­ball singer-song­writer Robyn Hitch­cock is a man who knows how to mark mile­stones. Back in 2003, he staged a con­cert at London’s Queen Eliz­a­beth Hall in hon­or of his own 50th birth­day, and in so doing, cre­at­ed a time release mile­stone of sorts for his friend, actor Alan Rick­man.

Mark­ing a half-cen­tu­ry with pas­sive aggres­sive-gag gifts and cards may suf­fice for the rab­ble, but a lyri­cist as gift­ed as Hitch­cock deserves bet­ter. No one can deny Rick­man of fail­ing to deliv­er, when he regaled the crowd in Queen Eliz­a­beth Hall with a recita­tion of Hitchcock’s own poem, “If Death Is Not the End,” above.

It’s an inim­itable per­for­mance that becomes all the more poignant when one lis­tens to it again, fol­low­ing Rickman’s recent death at the age of 69:

Life is what hap­pened to the dead.

For­ev­er we do not exist

Except for now.

Birth­day Boy Hitch­cock cap­tured Rickman’s appeal in a trib­ute post­ed to his Face­book page:

His morose erot­ic drawl and glo­ri­ous­ly dis­dain­ful demeanor shel­tered a pas­sion­ate artist and made for a charis­mat­ic per­former whom I was proud to have as a friend. I just can’t believe I’ll nev­er see him again.

As the poem says, he was made of life.

If Death Is Not the End

If death is not the end, I’d like to know what is.

For all eter­ni­ty we don’t exist,

except for now.

In my gumshoe mac, I shuf­fled to the clifftop,

Stood well back,

and struck a match to light my life;

And as it flared it fell in dark­ness

Light­ing noth­ing but itself.

I saw my life fall and thought:

Well, kiss my physics!

Time is over, or it’s not,

But this I know:

Life pass­es through us like the blade

Of bam­boo grow­ing through the pris­on­er pegged down in the glade

It pierces your blood, your scream­ing head -

Life is what hap­pened to the dead.

For­ev­er we do not exist

Except for now.

Life pass­es through us like a beam

Of char­coal green — a gold­en gleam,

The oppo­site of how it seems:

It’s not you that goes through life

- life is the knife that cuts your dream

Around the seam

And leaves you turned on in the stream, laugh­ing with your mouth

open,

Until the stream is gone,

Leav­ing you cracked mud,

Not even there to be absent,

From the heart­beat of a dying fish.

In bed, upstairs, I feel your pulse run with the clock

And reach your hand

And lock us with our fin­gers

As if we were bump­ing above the Pole.

Yet I know by dawn

Your hand will be dry bone

I’ll have slept through your good­bye, no mat­ter how long I wake.

Life winds on,

Through Cheri and Karl who can no longer smell choco­late,

Or see with won­der wind inflate the sail,

Or answer mail

Life flies on

Through Katy who was Cather­ine but is bound for Kate

Who looks over her shoul­der at the demon Azmodeus,

And sees the Dai­ly Mail

(I clutch my purse. I had it just now.)

Life slices through

The frozen but­ter in the Alpine wreck.

(I found your pho­to upside down

I nev­er kissed a girl so long,

So long, so love­ly or so wrong)

Life is what kills you in the end

And I can cry

But you won’t be there to be sor­ry

You were made of life

For ever we did not exist

We woke and for a sec­ond kissed.

via Audi­boom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Late, Great Alan Rick­man Reads Shake­speare, Proust & Thomas Hardy

Samuel Beck­ett Play Brought to Life in an Eerie Short Film Star­ring Alan Rick­man & Kristin Scott Thomas

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her play, Fawn­book, opens in New York City lat­er this fall. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Download Marc Andreessen’s Influential Blog (“Pmarca”) as a Free eBook

Marc_Andreessen_(1)

Image by Joi, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

For years Marc Andreessen–the entre­pre­neur best known for launch­ing Mosa­ic and lat­er Netscape–ran a pop­u­lar blog called “Pmar­ca” (appar­ent­ly short for “Pri­vate Marc Andreessen”) where he dis­pensed wis­dom on star­tups, busi­ness, invest­ing and beyond. If you’ve worked in star­tups, espe­cial­ly in Sil­i­con Val­ley, you prob­a­bly fol­lowed “Pmar­ca” fair­ly reli­gious­ly.

Like so many oth­ers, Andreessen even­tu­al­ly took down his blog and began “tweet­storm­ing” on Twit­ter–all while serv­ing on the boards of Face­book, eBay, and HP, and run­ning his now influ­en­tial VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz. Before “Pmar­ca” could fade com­plete­ly into obliv­ion, fans asked Andreessen to pre­serve the blog for pos­ter­i­ty. And that he did. You can now down­load an archive of “Pmar­ca” as a free ebook. Avail­able in three for­mats (ePub, Mobi, and PDF), the archived ver­sion can be read in pret­ty much the blog’s orig­i­nal for­mat. Start your down­loads here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Thiel’s Stan­ford Course on Star­tups: Read the Lec­ture Notes Free Online

150 Free Online Busi­ness Cours­es

Start Your Start­up with Free Stan­ford Cours­es and Lec­tures

Try the Oldest Known Recipe For Toothpaste: From Ancient Egypt, Circa the 4th Century BC

Ancient_Egypt_Dentistry

Image of Ancient Egypt­ian Den­tistry, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

When we assume that mod­ern improve­ments are far supe­ri­or to the prac­tices of the ancients, we might do well to actu­al­ly learn how peo­ple in the dis­tant past lived before indulging in “chrono­log­i­cal snob­bery.” Take, for exam­ple, the area of den­tal hygiene. We might imag­ine the ancient Greeks or Egyp­tians as prone to ram­pant tooth decay, lack­ing the ben­e­fits of pack­aged, brand­ed tooth­paste, silken rib­bons of floss, astrin­gent mouth­wash, and ergonom­ic tooth­brush­es. But in fact, as tooth­paste man­u­fac­tur­er Col­gate points out, “the basic fun­da­men­tals” of tooth­brush design “have not changed since the times of the Egyp­tians and Babylonians—a han­dle to grip, and a bris­tle-like fea­ture with which to clean the teeth.” And not only did ancient peo­ple use tooth­brush­es, but it is believed that “Egyp­tians… start­ed using a paste to clean their teeth around 5000 BC,” even before tooth­brush­es were invent­ed.

In 2003, cura­tors at a Vien­nese muse­um dis­cov­ered “the world’s old­est-known for­mu­la for tooth­paste,” writes Irine Zoech in The Tele­graph, “used more than 1,500 years before Col­gate began mar­ket­ing the first com­mer­cial brand in 1873.” Dat­ing from the 4th cen­tu­ry AD, the Egypt­ian papyrus (not shown above), writ­ten in Greek, describes a “pow­der for white and per­fect teeth” that, when mixed with sali­va, makes a “clean tooth paste.” The recipe is as fol­lows, Zoech sum­ma­rizes: “…one drach­ma of rock salt—measure equal to one hun­dredth of an ounce—two drach­mas of mint, one drach­ma of dried iris flower and 20 grains of pep­per, all of them crushed and mixed togeth­er.”

Zoech quotes Den­tist Heinz Neu­man, who remarked, “Nobody in the den­tal pro­fes­sion had any idea that such an advanced tooth­paste for­mu­la of this antiq­ui­ty exist­ed.” Hav­ing tried the ancient recipe at a den­tal con­fer­ence in Aus­tria, he found it “not unpleas­ant”

It was painful on my gums and made them bleed as well, but that’s not a bad thing, and after­wards my mouth felt fresh and clean. I believe that this recipe would have been a big improve­ment on some of the soap tooth­pastes used much lat­er.

Dis­cov­ered among “the largest col­lec­tion of ancient Egypt­ian doc­u­ments in the world,” the doc­u­ment, says Her­mann Har­rauer, head of the papyrus col­lec­tion as the Nation­al Library in Vien­na, “was writ­ten by some­one who’s obvi­ous­ly had some med­ical knowl­edge, as he used abbre­vi­a­tions for med­ical terms.”

When we sur­vey the den­tal reme­dies of Medieval Eng­land, we do indeed find that mod­ern den­tal care is far bet­ter than much of what was avail­able then. Most den­tal cures of the time, writes Trevor Ander­son in a Nature arti­cle, “were based on herbal reme­dies, charms and amulets.” For exam­ple, in the 1314 Rosa Angli­ca, writer John of Gad­des­den reports, “some say that the beak of a mag­pie hung from the neck cures pain in the teeth.” Anoth­er rem­e­dy involves stick­ing a nee­dle into a “many foot­ed worm which rolls up in a ball when you touch it.” Touch the aching tooth with that roly-poly nee­dle and “the pain will be erased.”

How­ev­er, “there is also doc­u­men­tary evi­dence,” writes Ander­son, “for pow­ders to clean teeth and attempts at fill­ing car­i­ous cav­i­ties,” as well as some sur­gi­cal inter­ven­tion. In Gilber­tus Angli­cus’ 13th cen­tu­ry Com­pendi­um of Med­i­cine, read­ers are told to rub teeth and gums with cloth after eat­ing to ensure that “no cor­rupt mat­ter abides among the teeth.” In The Tro­tu­la—a com­pendi­um of folk reme­dies from the 11th or 12th century—we find many recipes for what we might con­sid­er tooth­paste, though their effi­ca­cy is dubi­ous. Danièle Cybul­skie at Medievalists.net quotes one recipe “for black teeth”:

…take wal­nut shells well cleaned of the inte­ri­or rind, which is green, and… rub the teeth three times a day, and when they have been well rubbed… wash the mouth with warm wine, and with salt mixed if desired.

Anoth­er, more extrav­a­gant, recipe sounds imprac­ti­cal.

Take burnt white mar­ble and burnt date pits, and white natron, a red tile, salt, and pumice. From all of these make a pow­der in which damp wool has been wrapped in a fine linen cloth. Rub the teeth inside and out.

Yet a third recipe gives us a lux­u­ry vari­ety, its ingre­di­ents well out of reach of the aver­age per­son. We are assured, how­ev­er, that this for­mu­la “works the best.”

Take some each of cin­na­mon, clove, spike­nard, mas­tic, frank­in­cense, grain, worm­wood, crab foot, date pits, and olives. Grind all of these and reduce them to a pow­der, then rub the affect­ed places.

Whether any of these for­mu­las would have worked at all, I can­not say, but they like­ly worked bet­ter than charms and amulets. In any case, while medieval Euro­pean texts tend to con­firm cer­tain of our ideas about poor den­tal hygiene of the past, it seems that the dai­ly prac­tices of more ancient peo­ples in Egypt and else­where might have been much more like our own than we would sus­pect.

via The Tele­graph/Medievalists.net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Hear The Alan Parson Project’s Prog-Rock Interpretation of Isaac Asimov’s, I Robot (1977)

Pro­gres­sive rock, at its best, meant bring­ing in tech­niques and influ­ences not, up to that point, com­mon in rock music. Part of this meant employ­ing a kind of tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty more often heard in more estab­lished musi­cal tra­di­tions, and anoth­er part meant draw­ing from a wider and deep­er pool of musi­cal and cul­tur­al influ­ences than did oth­er rock com­po­si­tions. The Alan Par­sons Project estab­lished their prog-rock cre­den­tials right out of the gate with their intri­cate­ly craft­ed debut album Tales of Mys­tery and Imag­i­na­tion, not just based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe but includ­ing a read­ing from that work by none oth­er than Orson Welles.

How to fol­low up a record like that? For an answer, Par­sons and his col­lab­o­ra­tor in the Project Eric Woolf­son turned from the past toward the future — or rather, toward Isaac Asi­mov’s vision of the future.

I Robot appeared in 1977, hav­ing tak­en its inspi­ra­tion in the stu­dio from Asi­mov’s Robot series, a uni­verse of sto­ries and nov­els which posit­ed the inven­tion of machines with some­thing resem­bling human con­scious­ness.

Asi­mov very much liked the idea of the album, but couldn’t—a pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny hav­ing bought the rights to his 1950 book I, Robotgrant per­mis­sion for a legal­ly straight adap­ta­tion. And so Par­sons and Woolf­son stayed out of trou­ble by remov­ing the com­ma from their title, and work­ing for­ward from Asi­mov’s con­cepts rather than ref­er­enc­ing them direct­ly. The result stands up to the test of time bet­ter than most sci­ence fic­tion, and cer­tain­ly bet­ter than most prog rock. You can lis­ten and judge for your­self on Spo­ti­fy, where the album recent­ly appeared free to lis­ten. (Don’t have Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware yet? You can down­load it here.)

You can also watch the rough but still haunt­ing ear­ly music video for its hit “I Would­n’t Want to Be Like You” at the top of the post. The album on the whole proved quite suc­cess­ful, due in large part, of course, to its musi­cal crafts­man­ship and endur­ing sto­ry, described by the lin­er notes as that of “the rise of the machine and the decline of man, which para­dox­i­cal­ly coin­cid­ed with his dis­cov­ery of the wheel.” But the tim­ing could­n’t have hurt: I Robot came out just a few weeks after Star Wars, which stoked again human­i­ty’s inter­est in far-flung real­i­ties, out­er space jour­neys, near-mys­ti­cal high tech­nolo­gies, and machines com­ing to life. In the words of Par­sons him­self, “there was a whole new gen­er­a­tion of sci-fi lovers,” and his music had an impor­tant place in that gen­er­a­tion’s sound­track.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Orson Welles Read Edgar Allan Poe on a Cult Clas­sic Album by The Alan Par­sons Project

Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like Today — in 2014

Isaac Asimov’s Favorite Sto­ry “The Last Ques­tion” Read by Isaac Asi­mov— and by Leonard Nimoy

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Isaac Asi­mov Explains the Ori­gins of Good Ideas & Cre­ativ­i­ty in Nev­er-Before-Pub­lished Essay

Isaac Asi­mov Explains His Three Laws of Robots

Leonard Nimoy Reads Ray Brad­bury Sto­ries From The Mar­t­ian Chron­i­cles & The Illus­trat­ed Man (1975–76)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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