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Archaeologists are good at recovering things left behind by the past, such as buildings, incense altars, tools and relief carvings. What they are not so good at recovering are the ideas, feelings and emotions—the innerness—of sentient ancient beings. It’s one thing to examine a temple’s holy of holies; it’s another thing to understand what went on there and what people experienced. Sometimes, however, there’s an exception to the rule.

Numerous classical authors report that natural phenomena played an essential part in one of their most sacred religious rituals: the oracle at Delphi. According to the geographer Strabo (c. 64 B.C.–25 A.D.), for example, "the seat of the oracle is a cavern hollowed down in the depths … from which arises pneuma [breath, vapor, gas] that inspires a divine state of possession" (Geography 9.3.5). Over the past five years, a team of researchers -- a geologist, an archaeologist, a chemist and a toxicologist -- has put that claim to the test, making it much more likely that we will actually...

A Washington Post article about banning laptops in the classroom claims that professors have found themselves losing to the “cone of distraction” generated by these devices. It’s ironic because the universities themselves exerted strenuous efforts to ensure that every student had a laptop only to find them a nuisance. They mandated them only to ban them. > Julian Jaynes in his “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” claimed that men once heard different parts of their brain as distinct voices. “According to Jaynes, ancient people in the bicameral state would experience the world in a...

Archaeologists found a significant discovery at a Celtic sacrificial place near the village Slatina nad Bebravou. They discovered relief-decorated shoulder boards made from bronze that were part of a breastplate of a prominent Greek warrior. "It is the oldest original Greek art relic in the area of Slovakia," said deputy of director of Slovak Archaeological Institute in Nitra, Karol Pieta, as quoted by the SITA newswire. The relief was made in the Greek colony of Taranto in southern Italy in the middle of the fourth century BC. It came to Slovak territory about one hundred years later. "There is a...

Seeps from which gas and oil escape were formative to many ancient cultures and societies. They gave rise to legends surrounding the Delphi Oracle, Chimaera fires and "eternal flames" that were central to ancient religious practices - from Indonesia and Iran to Italy and Azerbaijan. Modern geologists and oil and gas explorers can learn much by delving into the geomythological stories about the religious and social practices of the Ancient World, writes Guiseppe Etiope of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Italy. His research is published in the new Springer book Natural Gas Seepage. "Knowing present-day gas fluxes...

A sculpture found in Greece in 1939 may have been part of King Midas' lost throne, an archaeologist has said. The 23cm-tall ivory sculpture, known to scholars as The Lion Tamer, has puzzled historians of classical Greece since its discovery... Keith DeVries, of the University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, said there are signs that it once adorned Midas' royal throne... Mr DeVries said the sculpture appears to be Phrygian and to have been produced around the time that Midas was alive... According to Mr DeVries, Midas donated his throne as a gift to Delphi, where it was...

...the rituals and divine utterances of Apollo's oracle at Delphi were subjects recorded and commented upon by numerous ancient writers through the centuries, including Pliny the Elder, Diodorus Siculus, Plato, Aeschylus, Cicero, Strabo and Plutarch, a Boeotian native who gained fame in late 1st century AD Rome for his essays and biographies, provides a firsthand account of the oracle at Delphi. As a senior priest who long served in the sanctuary, Plutarch recorded detailed observations of the Pythian priestess's trance-like, occasionally erratic behavior during sacred rituals... a multidisciplinary team of specialists in the late 20th century uncovered tangible proof that...

Tradition attributed the prophetic inspiration of the powerful oracle to geologic phenomena: a chasm in the earth, a vapor that rose from it, and a spring... The ancient testimony, however, is widespread, and it comes from a variety of sources: historians such as Pliny and Diodorus, philosophers such as Plato, the poets Aeschylus and Cicero, the geographer Strabo, the travel writer Pausanias, and even a priest of Apollo who served at Delphi, the famous essayist and biographer Plutarch... in about 1900, a young English classicist named Adolphe Paul Oppe['s] opinions were so strongly expressed that his theory became the new...

The temple of Apollo, cradled in the spectacular mountainscape at Delphi, was the most important religious site of the ancient Greek world, for it housed the powerful oracle. Generals sought the oracle's advice on strategy. Colonists asked for guidance before they set sail for Italy, Spain and Africa. Private citizens inquired about health problems and investments. The oracle's advice figures prominently in the myths. When Orestes asked whether he should seek vengeance on his mother for murdering his father, the oracle encouraged him. Oedipus, warned by the oracle that he would murder his father and marry his mother, strove, with...

Researchers at the University of Leicester have unravelled a 2,700 year old mystery concerning The Oracle of Delphi -- by consulting an ancient farmer's manual. The researchers from the School of Archaeology and Ancient History sought to explain how people from across Greece came to consult with the Oracle... on a particular day of the year even though there was no common calendar... celestial signs observed by farmers could also have determined the rituals associated with Apollo Delphinios. Postgraduate student Alun Salt said: ..."I was playing around with a planisphere while suffering from insomnia. This is when I noticed that...