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Last login: 4 days agoKavis: kavis is a 42 year old woman from Athens, Greece.; Likes 1,801 pages, 143 videos, 75 photos • 102 fans • Received 20 reviews; Member since Jun 12, 2006

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Toxel.com & World's Oldest Skyscrapers: Jul 20, 6:48am 14 reviews architecture, ancient-history
http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2008/05/19/worlds-oldest-skyscrapers/; From the page: "Shibam, a town in Hadramawt, Yemen, is considered to have the world's oldest skyscrapers. It has about 7,000 inhabitants and all of the town's house are made out of mud bricks. Some of these structures rise 5 to 9 stories high.

This technique of building was implemented in order to protect residents from Bedouin attacks. While Shibam has existed for around 2,000 years, most of the city's houses come mainly from the 16th century.

Shibam is often called "the Manhattan of the desert."

overview&-&museostibbert.it: Jul 20, 6:44am 1 review architecture, interior-design, arts, museums, florence
http://www.museostibbert.it/english/overview.html; Wonderful little museum in Florence - eclectic, quirky, charming!

The Medici and Science: Jul 20, 6:22am 1 review science, ancient-history, museums, florence, di-medicis
http://www.imss.fi.it/news/emedici.html; From the page: "The exhibition, curated by Filippo Camerota and Mara Miniati, revolves around the prominent role that physical-mathematical disciplines played in Tuscany in the 16th-17th century, particularly from Cosimo I until Ferdinando II. The Medici were great patrons of instrument-makers and natural philosophers inasmuch as they, more than any other European ruler, were fully aware that scientific knowledge and the technological control of nature conferred stability and prestige on political power. For this reason, along their rich treasure of paintings, sculptures and jewels, the Medici sovereigns formed a notable collection of mathematical instruments. This close relationship between art and science emerges from the beauty and preciousness of many of these instruments, some of which are unique pieces and authentic works of art in themselves.
The Medici and Science highlights the alliance between art, science and political power by combining a broad selection of instruments from the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza with an equally ample selection of paintings, books and manuscripts coming from the institutions of the Polo Museale Fiorentino and from other prestigious Italian institutions."

Polo Museale Fiorentino: Jul 20, 6:18am 0 review arts, museums, florence
http://www.polomuseale.firenze.it/bargello/

Further information on description: Jul 20, 5:39am 1 review arts, renaissance, louvre, decorative-arts
http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/detail_image.jsp?CONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=10134198...; Helmet -circa 1570, Louvre Renaissance Decorative Arts Collection

Researchers Resurrect Extinct Judean Date Palm Tree from 2,000-Year-Old Seed (6/…: Jul 20, 4:46am 25 reviews archaeology, botany, ancient-history, genitics
http://www.geneticarchaeology.com/research/Researchers_Resurrect_Extinct_Jude...; From the page: "researchers led by Dr. Sarah Sallon of Jerusalem's Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center, part of the Hadassah Medical Organization have brought an extinct date palm back to life by resurrecting the oldest seed ever. They call it Methuselah, and they describe their carbon-dating and genetic-analysis efforts in the 13 June 2008 issue of the journal Science."

Marlowe: A Portrait?: Jul 20, 4:31am 2 reviews literature, art, portraits, renaissance
http://www.marlowe-society.org/marlowe/view/portrait.html; From the page: "This portrait is believed to be of Christopher Marlowe. It was discovered at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, in 1953 and required extensive restoration work.

The age of the sitter and date of the portrait as inscribed in the top-left corner match Marlowe, who was born in February 1564, and who attended the College between 1580 to 1587. The inscription reads ANNO DNI AETATIS SVAE 21 1585 - "Aged 21 in 1585".

Beneath this is inscribed the motto, QVOD ME NVTRIT ME DESTRVIT, which translates from the Latin as "that which nourishes me destroys me"."

The Leonardo Project: Jul 17, 11:04am 18 reviews civil-eng, leonardo-da-vinci
http://www.vebjorn-sand.com/leonardo.html; From the page: "Leonardo Bridge Project

In 1502 Leonardo da Vinci did a simple drawing of a graceful bridge with a single span of 720-foot span (approximately 240-meters.) Da Vinci designed the bridge as part of a civil engineering project for Sultan Bajazet II of Constantinople (Istanbul.) The bridge was to span the Golden Horn, an inlet at the mouth of the Bosphorus River in what is now Turkey.
The Bridge was never built.

Leonardo's "Golden Horn" Bridge is a perfect "pressed-bow." Leonardo surmised correctly that the classic keystone arch could be stretched narrow and substantially widened without losing integrity by using a flared foothold, or pier, and the terrain to anchor each end of the span. It was conceived 300 years prior to its engineering principals being generally accepted."

Phaistos Disc declared as fake by scholar - Times Online: Jul 14, 9:41am 2 reviews archaeology, greece, relics, scientific-testing
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts...; From the page: "Some say that its 45 mysterious symbols are the words of a 4,000-year-old poem, or perhaps a sacred text. Others contest that they are a magical inscription, a piece of ancient music or the world's oldest example of punctuation.

But now an American scholar believes that the markings on the Phaistos Disc, one of archaeology's most famous unsolved mysteries, mean nothing at all" because the disc is a hoax.

Jerome Eisenberg, a specialist in faked ancient art, is claiming that the disc and its indecipherable text is not a relic dating from 1,700BC, but a forgery that has duped scholars since Luigi Pernier, an Italian archaeologist, "discovered"� it in 1908 in the Minoan palace of Phaistos on Crete."

Pia de Tolomei: Jul 13, 6:37am 1 review history, women, siena, murder, renaissance
http://www.tuscanjourney.org/tuscan-characters/pia-de-tolomei/; From the page: "Pia: a name which still echoes amongst the words sung by folksingers (which are still around today) from the Tuscan Maremma, a land of legends and secrets whispered around the fireplace. Among such tales there are many which tell of the dramatic and moving story of Pia de' Tolomei: a ancient unsolved murder mystery which, if it weren't for Dante Alighieri and his Purgatorio, we would know nothing about."

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