Daily Archives: April 5, 2017

South of Cairo, at the Dahshur royal necropolis, the remains of a pyramid that may date back some 3,700 years ago have been discovered.

The pyramid was discovered by an Egyptian archaeological mission working approximately 25 miles south of Cairo, near the location of King Sneferus Bent Pyramid. Adel Okasha, the head of the Dahshur necropolis site, confirmed that the team uncovered an interior corridor leading to the inside of the pyramid, a hall leading to a southern ramp and a room at the western end. Inside the corridor, they also discovered an alabaster block measuring 15-by-17 centimeters (roughly 6-by-6 inches), engraved with 10 vertical hieroglyphic lines.

The head of the Ancient Egyptian Antiquities Sector, Mahmoud Afifi, confirmed in a statement that a granite lintel (likely used to support a door or entrance) and a collection of stone blocks showing the interior design of the pyramid were also found. Luckily, the pyramid remains are reported to be in good condition.

This forgotten pyramid at Dahshur is already unique. While the vast majority of Egypts pyramids were constructed during the Old and Middle Kingdoms (from the 3rd to the 12th dynasties). This newly found pyramid is believed to date to the 13th dynasty, when only a few pyramids were constructed. The last structure built during this dynasty was the pyramid of Ahmose, an 18th dynasty king, but historians believe it was used as a cenotaph (or monument) rather than a tomb.

Dahshur is a royal necropolis on the west bank of the Nile. Its home to numerous pyramids, including two of the oldest, largest and best preserved examples, both built by King Senferu during Egypts 4th Dynasty, a golden age that lasted from 2613 to 2494 B.C. The first, known as the Bent Pyramid, was constructed with slopes that change angles from 54 degrees to 43 degrees about halfway up. The second, known as the Red Pyramid for its limestone hue, is the third-largest pyramid ever constructed, and has been seen by many (at least until now) as Egypts first success at constructing a true smooth-sided pyramid.

While King Sneferus Bent Pyramid is seen by some as the first attempt to build a smooth-sided pyramid, other researchers have argued that it was the transitional form between step-sided and smooth-sided pyramids. The bent slope sides of this newly discovered pyramid begs the question, could this forgotten pyramid actually be ancient Egypts first successful smooth-sided pyramid?

The Dashur necropolis was used as a burial site for courtiers and high-ranking officials, as well as royals, and authorities have not yet confirmed the identity of who was buried there. Further excavations are planned to continue to unearth more of the pyramid and identify who may have been buried within.

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3700-Year-Old Pyramid May Yield Clues to Tomb Evolution - History

April 5, 2017 Credit: Elena Poiata

A classicist, biologist and computer scientist all walk into a roomwhat comes next isn't the punchline but a new method to analyze relationships among ancient Latin and Greek texts, developed in part by researchers from The University of Texas at Austin.

Their work, referred to as quantitative criticism, is highlighted in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper identifies subtle literary patterns in order to map relationships between texts and more broadly to trace the cultural evolution of literature.

"As scholars of the humanities well know, literature is a system within which texts bear a multitude of relationships to one another. Understanding what is distinctive about one text entails knowing how it fits within that system," said Pramit Chaudhuri, associate professor in the Department of Classics at UT Austin. "Our work seeks to harness the power of quantification and computation to describe those relationships at macro and micro levels not easily achieved by conventional reading alone."

In the study, the researchers create literary profiles based on stylometric features, such as word usage, punctuation and sentence structure, and use techniques from machine learning to understand these complex datasets. Taking a computational approach enables the discovery of small but important characteristics that distinguish one work from anothera process that could require years using manual counting methods.

"One aspect of the technical novelty of our work lies in the unusual types of literary features studied," Chaudhuri said. "Much computational text analysis focuses on words, but there are many other important hallmarks of style, such as sound, rhythm and syntax."

Another component of their work builds on Matthew Jockers' literary "macroanalysis," which uses machine learning to identify stylistic signatures of particular genres within a large body of English literature. Implementing related approaches, Chaudhuri and his colleagues have begun to trace the evolution of Latin prose style, providing new, quantitative evidence for the sweeping impact of writers such as Caesar and Livy on the subsequent development of Roman prose literature.

"There is a growing appreciation that culture evolves and that language can be studied as a cultural artifact, but there has been less research focused specifically on the cultural evolution of literature," said the study's lead author Joseph Dexter, a Ph.D. candidate in systems biology at Harvard University. "Working in the area of classics offers two advantages: the literary tradition is a long and influential one well served by digital resources, and classical scholarship maintains a strong interest in close linguistic study of literature."

Unusually for a publication in a science journal, the paper contains several examples of the types of more speculative literary reading enabled by the quantitative methods introduced. The authors discuss the poetic use of rhyming sounds for emphasis and of particular vocabulary to evoke mood, among other literary features.

"Computation has long been employed for attribution and dating of literary works, problems that are unambiguous in scope and invite binary or numerical answers," Dexter said. "The recent explosion of interest in the digital humanities, however, has led to the key insight that similar computational methods can be repurposed to address questions of literary significance and style, which are often more ambiguous and open ended. For our group, this humanist work of criticism is just as important as quantitative methods and data."

Explore further: The 'close reading' of multicultural literature expands racial literacy, scholar says

More information: Joseph P. Dexter et al, Quantitative criticism of literary relationships, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2017). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1611910114

While the phrase "close reading" may not resonate for someone outside of an English department, Stanford literary scholar Paula Moya wants to reclaim the useful literary tool, especially when it comes to multicultural writers.

Heated debates about the quantifiable value of arts and literature are a common feature of American social discourse. Now, two researchers from The New School for Social Research have published a paper in Science demonstrating ...

Maps help us locate landmarks and can even trace historical change.

The social networks behind one of the most famous literary controversies of all time have been uncovered using modern networks science.

When a 2013 study published in Science concluded that reading literary fiction for as few as 20 minutes could improve someone's social abilities, it made quite the splash. However, when researchers from the University of ...

University of Illinois English professor Ted Underwood recently wrapped up a research project involving more than 4,200 books. Since that work revealed dramatic shifts in the English language between the 18th and 19th centuries, ...

Oxford University researchers have tracked how recent aircraft incidents or accidents trigger past events and how some are consistently more memorable than others. Using the English version of Wikipedia, they analysed articles ...

A classicist, biologist and computer scientist all walk into a roomwhat comes next isn't the punchline but a new method to analyze relationships among ancient Latin and Greek texts, developed in part by researchers from ...

Approximately 13,500 years after nomadic Clovis hunters crossed the frozen land bridge from Asia to North America, researchers are still asking questions and putting together clues as to how they not only survived in a new ...

A study of the DNA in ancient skeletal remains adds to the evidence that indigenous groups living today in southern Alaska and the western coast of British Columbia are descendants of the first humans to make their home in ...

A cave in southern Oregon that is the site of some the oldest preserved evidence of human activity in North America was also once home to not-too-distant cousins of the common bed bug.

Reader preferences for liberal or conservative political books also attract them to different types of science books, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Chicago and Yale and Cornell universities. ...

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New approach developed by humanists and scientists maps evolution of literature - Phys.Org

Kitt Johnson in Rankefod, part of World Stage at Harbourfront. ( WORLD STAGE )

Kitt Johnson X-act: Rankefod

Choreography by Kitt Johnson

Until Apr. 8, at Harbourfront Centre Theatre, 235 Queens Quay W., or 416-973-4000.

Danish dance artist Kitt Johnson is not the first to attempt to evoke our primordial past through movement. Such efforts can too easily appear corny or, worse still, cute. Instead Johnsons Rankefod is epic and awe-inspiring.

In her 50-minute solo that opened at Harbourfront Centre on Tuesday Johnson takes us on a journey at once strange and haunting, from the infinite vastness of a universe devoid of life to an evolutionary moment when our primitive ancestors took to dry land and hind legs.

An improvised electronic soundscape by Johnsons longtime artistic collaborator Sture Ericson roars deafeningly in the darkness; the birth of the universe perhaps. It then diminishes to a whispering, unworldly ambience.

A dim circle of light gradually intensifies to reveal an unidentifiable creature, a mound of animal matter with a prominent spine suggestive of an exoskeleton. It begins to breathe and pulsate, shooting out stunted bodily appendages in staccato bursts of movement. The creature unfurls, becomes increasingly mobile and scampers about as if exploring unknown terrain.

By now, of course, we know its Johnsons human form generating these images of primitive existence yet, naked except for a rough-textured loincloth and with a blank, glassy-eyed expression on her pale-painted face, we never for a moment see her as anything but pre-human. Now in her late fifties, Johnson remains a formidable presence and performer, her body lithe and expressive.

The solos title is the Danish word for a subclass of crustacea known as cirripedia. Barnacles qualify as such along with various other arthropoda. Its not necessary to know this to appreciate Rankefod although it does help explain some of Johnsons oddly contorted modes of locomotion, redolent of leggy insects or sideways-moving crabs.

Rankefods overall poetic resonance is enigmatic, more easily felt than explained. The image conveyed by designer Charlotte Ostergaards deeply textured backdrop varies according to how it is lit by Mogens Kjempff. It can be a rocky cliff or transform into a barren, gullied landscape. It is towards this that Johnson turns her glance before finally staring out beyond us towards an unseen and, we ponder, threatening future.

This is a return visit to Toronto for Rankefod. Johnson first performed it here nine years ago as part of Harbourfront Centres World Stage, a series presenting both international and Canadian artists from a range of contemporary performance disciplines and their evolving hybrid forms. Now Johnson is the opening event of World Stage Redux, a compact 18-day festival comprising eight programs, three of them featuring Canadian artists.

Launched in 1986, World Stage was once a high-profile festival that introduced Toronto to a host of major international theatre artists but when munificent corporate sponsorships began to dry up World Stage became a more modest although still artistically adventurous series of performances.

This year, as Harbourfront Centre re-evaluates its place in the local cultural landscape, it has opted for an interim to dip into its past with a festival of encore appearances. A combination of timing, logistics and available funding doubtless determined the choices. Five of the eight shows feature solo performers, which of course makes them no less interesting.

This week World Stage Redux also features a fresh iteration of actor Clare Coulter and director Philip McKees exploration of Shakespeares Lear as well as dancer/choreographer William Yongs Steer, an unnerving portrayal of how technology may denude us of our humanity; as if it hasnt already. Among next weeks highlights, if that can properly describe a theatrical memorial to the Holocaust, is Rotterdam-based Hotel Moderns chilling Kamp in which three performers animate the occupants of a roughly 1:20 scale model of Auschwitz. World Stage Redux will end with Mies Julie, South African Yael Frabers contemporary re-imagining of August Strindbergs torrid drama.

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Rankefod takes human evolution on a poetic journey: review - Toronto Star