But “The large structure is said to have a calming effect on those who visit it,” writes Charlie Haigh. Haigh sketches the lineaments and folkloric background of this enigmatic “false door.” On a more day-to-day practical level, Ruth Schuster reports that Archaeologists Find Homes of Europe’s First Monument Builders, and They’re Fortified. Seems the first European megalithic manufacturers about 6500 BP weren’t free from defensive threats. And the history of another very practical development has been illuminated as a 2,400-year-old Flush Toilet Unearthed in China Could Be One of the World’s Oldest. Ben Turner describes the circumstances and context of the find and the reaction of those at the archaeological site when they realized its function. On perhaps a more refined level of daily existence, an Ancient Antler Found in Vietnam May Be Early Musical Instrument. One researcher says this two-millennia-old “chordophone” fills a gap between earlier “lithophones” and “more modern instruments.” Our own “phonic gap” being thus amended, we turn to what would seem a humbler accessory, and even there find wide-ranging insights. For Smithsonian Magazine’s Chris Klimek details What a Comb Can Tell Us About the History of the Written Word. It’s not only “one of the most important discoveries made in recent years,” per one archaeologist; the Canaanite sentence on the comb and its fossilized lice remains prove the simple tool achieved its intended purpose! (WM)
— Delivered by Feed43 service