Monthly Archives: November 2009

Terms of the Hunt

The fol­low­ing excerpt is from A View to a Death in the Morn­ing by Matt Cart­mill. My sis­ter sent me the excerpt and said the book’s aim was to “trace the his­tory of the sym­bol­ism of hunt­ing (mostly in the West) and changes in humanity’s under­stand­ing of nature as it relates to hunt­ing, so as …

November 9, 2009 – 11:01 pm | By Matthew Scheer | Posted in Jargon of Hunting | Comments (0)

Cremation of a Viking Chieftain: more than just fire in a boat…

This descrip­tion of a Swedish Viking’s funeral in the 10th cen­tury was writ­ten by Ibn Fad­lan, an Arab trav­eler, who saw it first hand:
One day I learnt that one of their chief­tains had died. He was placed apart in a grave which was cov­ered over for ten days until cloth­ing for him had been cut out …

November 4, 2009 – 7:57 pm | By Matthew Scheer | Posted in Eye Witness History | Comments (1)

A Schoolboy’s Day, Sumer, c. 2000 BC; and Hunting Crocodiles, Egypt, c. 450 BC

These two quotes are from The Mam­moth Book of Eye-Witness His­to­ries, edited by Jon E. Lewis. They are both trans­la­tions from the orig­i­nal texts:
A Schoolboy’s Day, Sumer, c. 2000 BC
Anony­mous
[The Sume­ri­ans of Mesopotamia (now Iraq), built the first cities, the first state. They invented writ­ing and the for­mal edu­ca­tion of chil­dren.]
Arriv­ing at school in the morn­ing I …

November 3, 2009 – 10:32 pm | By Matthew Scheer | Posted in Eye Witness History | Comments (0)