Forbes gets it right about Catal Huyuk ( Çatalhöyük)

Twenty-five years ago, when I was first teaching ancient history, I spent a whole lecture of the Anatolian site of Catal Huyuk as an example of an early city. The settlement was called a village in most accounts, but it looked like a city to me. I was following a very persuasive and accessible discussion by Jane Jacobs, who may not have been an anthropologist but knew a thing or two about the development of cities.

Today I ran across an article in Forbes which covered the peculiar burial customs of the people of CH. What caught my eye, though, was the clear statement that Catal Huyuk is "One of the world’s earliest cities [7500 BC, population 10,000]." Hurray! Jane justified! I can't link to the images somehow; look at some good ones by following the link above.

On CBC Radio this morning was news of a partial cure for MS developed by Canadian researchers. Partial cure means this does not benefit lots of people with MS (there are a number of different types of MS). But in an experimental group of 20+ most of the patients got significantly better. One woman who was unable to walk danced at her wedding and took up downhill skiing.

Here's how they did it. They collected stem cells from a patient, destroyed the immune system with chemotherapy, then used the stem cells TO RECONSTRUCT A HEALTHY IMMUNE SYSTEM. This is an amazing achievement, Nobel Prize territory I bet, and right up there with the most important scientific breakthrough ever to come out of Canada: the use of insulin to treat diabetes.

This can't but help in the creation of new therapies.

Reconstruct a healthy immune system. Sounds miraculous.

Here's a CBC article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ms-treatment-impressive-results-ottawa-lancet-1.3609031

The key words for me are "high risk" and "neurological recovery."

My review of Anne Curry's Agincourt (from the Medieval Review)

Curry, Anne Agincourt. Great Battles. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp. 256. $29.95. ISBN: 978-0-19-968101-3.

Reviewed by Steven Muhlberger

Nipissing University (retired)

steve.muhlberger@gmail.com

Anne Curry is a distinguished and prolific scholar of the Hundred Years War. Since 2000 she has written at least three books and ten articles, almost all of them focusing on the battle of Agincourt. Agincourt, her most recent book-length offering, is part of an Oxford University Press series on "Great Battles." The cover blurb briefly sums up its goal: telling the story of "one of the most iconic battles English history, how it was fought, how it has been remembered, and what it means for us today." This is a reasonably accurate summation of the emphasis of this treatment. There is much more about the historical reception of the battle than there is about the conflict itself.

There are eight chapters, including the introduction and the conclusion. Chapter 2 guides the reader through the events of the battle and the English campaign that preceded and followed it. It is here that Curry offers her own reconstruction of the battle. Chapters 3 through 8 take the reader through various interpretations of the battle, English and French, from the earliest reports to the present. At the same time that Curry discusses the histories, chronicles and archival sources and summarizes the information and interpretations they provide, she shows how these interpretations have originated and how changing priorities have shaped both popular and scholarly understanding of Agincourt and late medieval warfare in general. For instance, historians and chroniclers have long been interested how many warriors fought on either side. Rather than being a subject of military science, studies of the numbers participating more often been scrutinized to gauge the courage or lack of it is those who fought.

Similarly, Agincourt has long been used to make claims about the military virtue of the English or British, or the national characteristics and special talents of regional groups. Some of these claims are unfamiliar: Curry cites a small exhibition mounted by the Public Record Office in 1915 which emphasized key role of Lancashire archers at Agincourt More prominent today is a popular tradition in Wales that connects Welsh bowmen to this famous victory. Curry points out however that this special role of the Welsh is a relatively new story, and seems to be a product of the twentieth century. Both the briefly-praised Lancashire archers and the more prominent Welsh bowmen sprang into prominence during the First World War, and reflect the needs of that time; some of the Welsh still have use for the story.

The well-known legend of the English archers' crucial and devastating role in stopping the advance of the French men at arms during the battle began well before the twentieth century. Curry shows that the image of Agincourt as an archery battle is derived from a variety of sources, some of them late and quite curious. The very early historian of Agincourt, Tito Livio Frulovisi, gives much more prominence to the use of dismounted men at arms by Henry V than he gave to the archers. The nineteenth century saw a great revival of archery as a genteel sport. It is only natural that the connection should be commonly made between the heroic archers of the Hundred Years War (and especially Agincourt) and men and women interested in archery as a heritage sport. The first known British reenactment of the battle, at an Army Pageant of 1910, featured archery and identified Henry's archers as Welshmen. (Whether arrows were actually shot is unclear, but the program emphasized the key role of archery.)

Such events as the Army Pageant had by the twentieth century a great deal of literary, dramatic and graphic material to draw upon in creating reconstructions. Curry devotes two full chapters and parts of others to famous and obscure artistic depictions of the battle. Of course, Shakespeare's Henry V takes pride of place here, due to its long influence on the historical imagination. There is no doubt that Henry V is England's most famous warrior king, with perhaps the sole exception of Richard I. The victory at Agincourt has absorbed whatever fame that Crécy and Poitiers might have been due. Shakespeare's picture of Agincourt has also been transformed by the ability of cinema to provide visually striking visions of the medieval battle that are easily accessible to the mass audience. Curry documents the lasting influence of the Lawrence Olivier film version of Henry V, but one wonders if its influence is even now being displaced by Kenneth Branagh's grittier 1989 production.

Chapter 7, "Rival Experts Do Battle over Agincourt," (the title coming from a striking if inaccurate newspaper headline) directs reader's attention to the use of archival sources by modern historians to give a fuller and more detailed picture of Agincourt. This chapter serves to convey the state of the question or questions about the battle and the armies that fought it. Curry is well qualified to discuss this scholarly activity, since she has contributed so substantially to recent debates.

Because Agincourt is Agincourt, the best known medieval battle in the English language tradition after Hastings, there is a lively interchange between popular and scholarly understandings and evaluations. Old questions and old images continue to pop up in the media and even affect the assumptions that scholars work from. It is noteworthy that scholars continue to debate how many warriors fought on either side of the battle. Curry's readers will go away with a keen appreciation of how important historical questions never seem to be finally laid to rest.

Back to the 1970s again

Last summer I went to Art in the Park in Windsor and discovered that this event preserves the attitudes and flavor of the 1970s to an almost scary extent. One of the key moments was when I spotted a man wearing a Dark Side of the Moon T-Shirt. Well this year I Went to Art in the Park and the first person I saw coming out of the park was that same guy or somebody else wearing a Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt. And one musician was playing the Crosby Stills and Nash song "Long Time Gone." Not quite a 1970s song but close enough. Thing is, this is the second time I've heard it sung live this month.

Not a horned helmet among them

A couple or three weeks ago I had a look at the Last Kingdom, a TV series depicting the period of Alfred the Great and his wars with the Danes. I was referred by friends to a critique of the authenticity of this film put on YouTube by a man named Lindy Beige. Mr. Beige is repeatedly offended by the fact that ninth century warriors wore soft leather armo and all sorts of inexplicable fur and leather accessories. And even the kings are dirty. One of them wears the same clothes for 10 years!

Fair enough – but I have to say that I found the series inexplicably good. When was the last time you saw a commercial video depiction of the Vikings that has nobody wearing horned helmets? In my case I think I can say "never!"

It's also surprising to me that the treatment of Alfred the Great, a man who was very eccentric in terms of his own time, is reasonably believable.

Mr. Beige says sense somewhere in his critique that he has no trouble with the plot or the acting of the last kingdom. Indeed? And you want more?

Summon back the fire-witch to the court of the Crimson King

<\p>Did the young George R.R. Martin listen to King Crimson A LOT?

Living on different planets

Some odd stuff has been taking place recently within my field of view.

Some people might think by reading the official documents of government in North America that cannabis is illegal. Yet at the same time there are dispensaries in many places where you can on a good day acquire some of the stuff. People come on the radio and talk about the cannabis business on the basis of being financial consultants to the cannabis industry. And did I say that not every day is a good day for acquiring cannabis? On the good days you can walk into a store and buy it if you can cite medical necessity. On a bad day the cops will break down the door of your favourite dispensary and arrest people because they are selling food spiked with cannabis without proper zoning approval. Police raids to uphold zoning regulations! That must be a new one. These cops don't seem to be aware that the federal government is going to legalize cannabis in short order. Or maybe they do and that's the whole point of their actions.

Then there are the federal Conservatives who met this past weekend and took their opposition to same-sex marriage out of their official statement of policy. There was a lot of fuss made about whether this is a good idea and whether people who believed in the traditional definition of marriage would leave the party. As one scoffer shouted out at the convention, with "where would they go?" Said scoffer had a point since marriage equality has been the law of the land for over a decade now.

The traditional marriage supporters seem to think that people care about what their documents said. Thousands of gay couples have married in the past decade. The conservative policy statements, the forthright anti-gay marriage one and the present one which leaves the issue unaddressed, neither of them say what should be done about those existing marriages. So we get to guess: was this all posturing for the rubes, or did the champions of traditional marriage really think that they lived on a planet where saying marriage equality was no good might make it go away? Well even the rubes aren't buying it. Someone quoted a 75-year-old grandmother in Cape Breton as saying "we don't care about that stuff." Reflect that this lady is about the right age to have taken part in the Summer of Love, if she was adventurous.