medieval

It was the largest batch of medieval helmets found in Spain

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It was 1990 when the nets of some local fishermen “fished” two large metal blocks off the coast of Benicarló (Castellón), like says the University of Alicante. Inside were dozens of iron helmets that were initially thought to be Roman. After all, all the clues pointed in that direction: they appeared alongside Roman amphorae, Roman anchors and bronze helmets of the Montefortino type, a model used during the Punic Wars. Almost 40 years later, the error has been discovered: They were old but not that old. The discovery. In fact, they were almost 1,500 years more modern than initially thought. This new study has identified at least 43 matted and corrosion-melted helmets as belonging to the Late Middle Ages. The key to identification has not been the metal, but the textile remains that remained inside some helmets, which, thanks to the fact that they were adhered and sealed by the marine concretionsthey held out until they were able to radiocarbon date them. Why it is important. With 43 copies, according to the University of Alicante the set constitutes the largest known collection of medieval helmets recovered in Spanish waters and even in the western Mediterranean. Furthermore, they are a little-known rarity. according to the research team: non-elite infantry equipment, manufactured in smaller workshops and distributed through secondary or regional markets, and prior to the European standardization of plate armor. On the other hand, this correction several decades later serves as an example to illustrate a common problem in archeology: dating by association, that is, if the remains next to it are ancient, this too. However, if this hypothesis is not supported by absolute scientific methods, glaring errors can be made. On the other hand, it is also a poorly documented rarity, according to the research team: non-elite infantry equipment, manufactured in smaller workshops and distributed through secondary or regional markets, and prior to the European standardization of plate armor. Context. The dates of the dating fit with a time of strong instability on the Valencian coast. The study documents that Islamic piracy on the coast went from sporadic attacks to a structural threat since the mid-14th century, which led to fortifying the coast with watchtowers and mobilizing local militias. In this scenario, a shipment of cheap infantry helmets could have been destined for troops from the Kingdom of Valencia, mercenary companies or municipal militias. By type, these helmets date back to just before Europe standardized 15th-century plate armor, when workshops in Lombardy and Milan were beginning to dominate large-scale production. Before that, armor varied greatly depending on the region. In detail. The samples were sent to two independent laboratories for dating, one in Miami and another in Mannheim, where accelerator mass spectrometry was used. Four of the five dates fell between the third quarter of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century and the fifth was deviated, pointing to being later (more than 100 years later). As a curiosity, the fabric turned out to be a simple taffeta fabric, with vegetable fiber threads, probably a lining or interior padding. Yes, but. The research team points out that the exact origin of the helmets remains open: they could have been manufactured locally in the Iberian Peninsula or arrived via the trade routes of the western Mediterranean, at that time dominated by the workshops of northern Italy. The Crown of Aragon, with Valencia as a weapons producing and exporting centermaintained intense commercial traffic with Genoese merchants that operated in their ports. This fifth date, which behaves like an atypical value, points more to pollution produced on the seabed than to the helmet being used for a longer period of time and at some point having its inner lining changed. As for the reason for the sinking, the study only points to piracy, which is a reasonable assumption, but not a proven fact. In Xataka | The oldest bone spearhead found in Europe was not created by our species: it had already been there for 30,000 years In Xataka | More than 3,000 years ago Europe was already hosting battles involving several regions. We know it thanks to some arrows Cover | cambridge

“If you block an AI because you think it is dangerous, you are in medieval obscurantism”

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The phrase “this AI model is so dangerous that it would be a mistake to make it public” is something more old than the first public versions of ChatGPT. This narrative of “dangerous” AI is more marketing than reality, but it is still the discourse that companies like Anthropic and OpenAI push every time they launch a new model. Because it is still a tool (that is drinking up the world’s resources, but a tool) and Yann LeCun has a message for those companies. If they really believe it is dangerous, they live in medieval obscurantism. Fear narrative = nonsense On April 10, Anthropic released Claude Mythos Preview. The company claimed that it was the best AI model ever created and it was something only they could say because few, very few had access to said model. Analysis and tests from companies like Mozilla indicated that yes, it was really amazing in environments like cybersecurity. Not revolutionary, but a very capable tool. And of course, if it fell into the wrong hands, that tool could be used to exploit systems and find vulnerabilities (something that those companies that had access exploited). It was “too powerful,” according to Anthropic, a narrative of fear that the United States Government itself was responsible for enhancing by prohibiting non-U.S. citizens, including Anthropic workers, from they could use the commercial model: Fable 5. According to the godfather of AI, all of this is nonsense. Yann LeCun He is one of the most famous names on the artificial intelligence scene. It was in 2013 when the former Facebook put this academic from deep learning and machine learning at the head of the company’s AI ship. In the 1980s, LeCun developed an algorithm to train artificial neural networks, and since then he has built a career in both the educational and private sectors. At Vivatech, LeCun participated in a discussion with Steven Levy, a Wired journalist, and they discussed several issues related to the present and future of AI. On stage, LeCun made it clear what his position is on the current language models (the LLMs) and what he thinks about this narrative of fear. Levy and Yann were talking about the Chinese model more focused on open source when the ‘guru’ commented that “many people, particularly those close to the United States government, believe that AI cannot be open source because that scenario is already occupied by Chinese companies. They are good and cheap models, some free to use, and in the middle of that we have companies like Anthropic.” LeCun Hasn’t had any problems in the past when referring to rivals in this field and, in this case, argued that “Anthropic, and a few others, are a lobby that, essentially, wants AI not to be open source because they believe it is an inherently dangerous technology.” Then, Yann began to list changes that have really had a weight in the history of humanity, such as the advances that gave way to new ages. But… AI? “So, What is AI today? At the very least, it is a way to disseminate knowledge. At the moment, it is not a way to generate new knowledge and the only way they work is through repositories of human knowledge and they allow people to have easy access to those repositories. So, it’s basically that, one more way to make people smarter because they can access human knowledge.” “Anthropic, and a few others, are a lobby that essentially wants AI not to be open source because they believe it is an inherently dangerous technology” For LeCun, these LLMs are a vitaminized Wikipedia, but if he has not been shy in the past talking about rivals and players in the field of AI, he did not do so at the Paris fair either. “If you are going to block a tool thinking that it is very dangerous, you are in medieval obscurantism,” said the academic. Levy added, pointing out that basically “that thing of discovering a tool and then taking it out of our hands It is more typical behavior of the Catholic Church calling Galileo a “heretic” for his theories“ Because, for LeCun, it all comes down to a different word than “danger”: “control.” “This is how they control the message and what people can and can’t do with their tools. If you buy a pen, you don’t want the company that sells it to you telling you what you can write with it. There’s a limit to what companies can tell you about using their tools.” In the end, LeCun here is not taking into account that these companies with proprietary models (anyone with a proprietary service, really) can dictate what you do with the tools you license and when they can turn off the tap. We are seeing it even with video games that companies remove your SSD when they consider that you should no longer have it, but that is another topic. “If you buy a pen, you don’t want the company that sells it to you to tell you what you can write with it” Yann finished his argument by pointing out that sharing knowledge is culture, that this is good and that, although there is a negative counterpart (sharing culture can also lead to radicalization), what we should not do is control what people can do with AI tools. “There is a great arrogance and superiority complex in the idea that only a few are able to control AI and rub it on the masses who do not have access.” If LLMs are not the answer, what is? In his speech, LeCun made it clear that, for him, LLMs are not the grail (as several of the CEOs of AI companies who passed through the Vivatech panels did sell). These language models are a Wikipedia on steroids and a vitaminized predictive “keyboard.” There are two things that Yann acknowledges that LLMs do very well: mathematics and code, but the revolution will come with real … Read more

Archaeologists have found the bodies of two women embracing in a medieval tomb. Now they are a huge mystery

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There are eternal hugs, there are mysterious hugs, there are hugs with so much sentimental charge that only those who melt into them understand them and then there are hugs like that of the two corpses from the Middle Ages. located a few years ago next to Opole Cathedralin southern Poland, which add up to all these characteristics (and some more). When archaeologists discovered their intertwined bodies underground in 2023, they began to ask questions that they hoped to resolve by analyzing DNA samples. They have achieved it… halfway. Experts now better understand who the bodies belonged to, but are even more confused about how to interpret their eternal embrace. In a place in Poland… To understand the mystery you have to go back three years ago, between May 2022 and November 2023when a group of archaeologists began to excavate around the cathedral of Opolea small city in Upper Silesia (Poland) located on the banks of the Oder River. The origins of temple They date back to the 11th century (in the 13th it was expanded thanks to the support of the local nobility) and researchers hoped that their tombs would help them better understand the funerary rituals of the time. In total they discovered 46 burialsalthough there was one in particular that caught his attention: a grave that contained two skeletons, baptized ‘nº31′ and ’32’. What was so special about them? To begin with, his tomb was located in the northern area of ​​the cathedral, near the walls and foundations of the temple. That is relevant in itself because not everyone could hope to have their remains rest in a place like that. When both bodies were buried, in the Middle Ages, the burial areas so close to the consecrated temple and its relics were usually reserved for the most powerful and wealthy people. The bones fell apart 154cm deep and were very deteriorated by the passage of time, which greatly complicated their identification. The reason: they were once deposited in the ground, only with shrouds and on stretchers, so parts of the skeleton have been lost and others are fragmented. An enigmatic position. Although the above is interesting, there was another reason that made archaeologists interested in bodies numbers 31 and 32: their posture. The first skeleton (31) reveals that the body was buried face up, in the position in which the deceased were usually buried. The 32nd, however, was lying on his side, leaning on his side, with one leg half bent and his right arm stretched under his partner’s skull. The composition is as clear in 2026 as it probably was in the 13th century: both corpses they are hugged in a position that denotes intimacy. Add and continue. Those in Opole are not the first centuries-old burial sites in which we have found hugging bodies. In 2007 We saw something similar in Mantua, where archaeologists also discovered the remains of two bodies buried 5,000 years ago in an intertwined position. And that is just one of several examples. We located another one in 2015 in the Peloponnese, where a couple from 3,800 BC was found buried in a similar pose. And what does it mean? The big question. The most logical thing is to assume that the two people buried in Opole maintained such a close relationship that those who survived them believed that it was most appropriate to bury them together, in an intimate position, with their bodies intertwined. The key is… Why? Were they family? Did they have a romantic relationship? It is not a simple question because by asking it from the 21st century we run the risk of trying to answer it with a presentist approachbased on our own vision of the world. The DNA wild card. To clear up unknowns, a group of researchers turned to DNA analysis. Their goal was to subject the bones unearthed next to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Opole to an archaeogenetic examination in search of some answers: What age and sex were both deceased? Were they family? Maybe they were father and son, brothers, an uncle and his nephew? The results have just been published in an article published in the magazine Archaeological Science: Reports and they are surprising. Although the bones have degraded and do not allow tooth enamel to be analyzed, a study carried out by experts from the Kiel University Yes, it has revealed three clues. First, the bodies belonged to two people who were around 40 years old. Second, both correspond to women. And third, there was no relationship between them. There is a link, but… what? “Our DNA analysis shows that the two women were not closely related by blood, but genetics cannot tell us how they were socially or emotionally connected,” recognize to The Country Joanna Romeyer-Dherbey, one of the researchers who signed the paper and who highlights how “extraordinary” it is that centuries later archaeogenetics can reveal to us the secrets of two people buried together. If they were not direct relatives, and in view of how they have been found buried, does that mean that the two women from Opole were lovers? Are we looking at a homosexual couple buried together and embracing in the middle of the Middle Ages? Researchers cannot rule it out. Nor affirm it “with confidence”. Theorize yes, but with caution. What your article does insist on is the call for caution: “Archaeologists should avoid projecting modern cultural categories onto past practices when material evidence does not distinguish between multiple plausible explanations.” After all, both women could be lovers, but also friends, relatives without a biological link (through adoption, for example) or even members of the same religious community. To put it another way, what if they had tragically died at the same time and the community decided to bury them together? Are there more clues? Yes. One. and it is fundamental. The bodies have not only appeared in the same grave, in a position that denotes an embrace. … Read more

A medieval poet and some buried trees have just revealed something very strange to us about the 13th century Sun

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At the beginning of the 13th century, the Sun was passing through a solar cycle much shorter than those that exist today, but extremely intense. Having such specific details is complicated for such a distant time, when scientists did not have instruments to measure this type of activity. However, there is something that today’s scientists do have and that has helped them detect this event: a book of poetry and many trees. Art and science. A team of scientists from Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology has described this event using two types of data. On the one hand, a poem written in 1204 by the Japanese writer Fujiwara no Teika. On the other hand, the observation of the rings of buried tree trunks in northern Japan. The conclusion is clear. While today solar cycles are usually around 11 years, back then there were some 6 or 7 years, but the activity was high enough to lead to the formation of auroras in Japan. A proton explosion. When solar activity is very intense, phenomena such as solar flares or the coronal mass ejections. The first is a sudden release of electromagnetic radiation from the solar surface, while the second consists of the expulsion of matter, normally charged plasma particles, from the Sun’s corona. Associated with these phenomena, proton explosions occur, in which these charged particles move at high speed. rare isotopes. Normally, a good part of these charged particles and cosmic rays fail to pass through the Earth’s magnetic field. However, when they are very intense they can reach our atmosphere in greater quantities and interact with the gases in it. In this reaction, isotopes such as beryllium-10 or carbon-14 can be formed. These are beryllium or carbon atoms with a different number of neutrons in their nuclei than the beryllium and carbon that are most abundant on Earth. Knowing this process is useful, because it can give us clues on two levels. On the one hand, beryllium-10 is deposited in ice sheets, while carbon-14 It oxidizes, transforming into carbon dioxide and becoming part of the carbon cycle. In this cycle, living beings incorporate it into their cells in different ways. For example, plants do this through photosynthesis. And this is where what has been so useful to these scientists begins. Solar dating and meteorology. Carbon-14 is often used to date fossils, since they come from living beings that once incorporated that isotope into their tissues. The moment a living being dies it stops incorporating carbon-14. From that moment on, it begins to disintegrate at a known rate, so it can be estimated approximately when it died. The point is that, beyond that, if carbon-14 levels are unusually high, it can also be determined if there was an extreme solar event. The poem describes a dawn The poem. in his diary Meigetsukithe poet Fujiwara no Teika described the observation of “red lights in the sky over northern Kyoto.” This city is at a latitude too far south for auroras to form, but that is clearly what it describes. The auroras They are the result of a type of interaction between the gases in the atmosphere and the charged particles of the Sun that causes the emission of visible light. They are normally formed at the poles, as they are the points on the Earth where the magnetic field is most vertical, so that it acts as a funnel, so that these particles can pass through it. When they occur far from the poles it is because solar activity has been very intense and the resistance normally opposed by the magnetic field has been exceeded. What the trees tell. The rings of tree trunks are a kind of natural calendar. They are formed from the inside out, so we can count them and calculate how the years have passed. For this reason, the authors of the study that has just been published They wanted to analyze the equivalent buried tree rings at the beginning of the 13th century. In the rings from the period from winter 1200 to spring 1201 they found an increase in carbon-14 levels. This also agrees with the levels of beryllium-10 found in ice deposits from that same period. Everything agrees. Also in China. There are historical records from the time when Chinese astronomers also described red lights in the sky. Therefore, it seems clear that there were auroras at unusual latitudes. A very rare case. The most curious thing about all this is that this phenomenon did not occur at the peak of the solar cycle. It possibly took place around its periodic minimum. If there was less activity, why so much aurora and carbon-14? This is something that, at the moment, scientists have not been able to explain. Perhaps there were also many auroras at the peak, but no poet stopped to write about them. Tree rings would have to be analyzed to see what carbon-14 tells us. What is clear is that the Sun was burning in those medieval times. Image | Masaaki Komori (Unsplash)/Wikimedia Commons | Kush Dwivedi (Unsplash) In Xataka | A sunspot 17 times larger than Earth caused red auroras across half the world. It is a very rare event

We have just discovered an intact medieval notebook in a latrine

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You know it and I know it: those few minutes we spend with our butts on the toilet are ideal for catching up on Instagram, sending a WhatsApp or even answering the email. Although there are some people who have gotten out of hand about using their cell phones in the toilet, which can end hemorrhoids or with company measures to minimize losses. Nowadays it is the mobile phone, but before it was a book or a magazine. And if today we talk about the toilet, in the past they were latrines. Of course, that winning combo of reading or writing in the bathroom has a dangerous B-side: you wouldn’t be the first or the last person whose cell phone has fallen from their pocket into the toilet. In fact, someone dropped a notebook into a latrine 700 years ago and now a team of archeology professionals just found it. The curious thing is not that the notebook is very old, it is its state of conservation: it is intact. The discovery. In excavations led by the Westphalian-Lippe Regional Association in the historic center of Paderborn, the team has found a notebook made of wood, leather and wax that dates back to between the 13th and 14th centuries and which, as you can see below, is in a magnificent state of preservation. In fact, archaeologist Barbara Rüschoff-Parzinger confirmed It is the only complete specimen of its characteristics in the entire region. The piece measures 10 by 7.5 centimeters, has ten double-sided wax pages and is protected by a leather bag with a lid. The cover retains a lily printed motif in its entirety, medieval symbol of purity and authority. As for the text, it is written in Latin, so as point the archaeologist responsible for the excavation, Sveva Gai, its possible owner was probably someone well-versed, a merchant from the city. In fact, short notes talk about commerce, finances or personal matters. Be careful because more than a notebook for writing with a pen, it was like a reusable waxed blackboard: the stylus had a sharp tip to engrave letters and a flat end to smooth the surface and erase. This erasure process left remains of other previous writings. A wood, leather and wax notebook in unbeatable condition… for being 800 years old and having been in a latrine. LWL Context. The notebook did not appear alone: ​​among the medieval objects recovered in one of the five latrines discovered during the excavation, they found barrels, a knife, complete medieval ceramic vessels, remains of fabrics and fragments of basketry. The set is what helps confirm the dating of the book. According to Gaithe area adjacent to the Abdinghof monastery was in the Middle Ages a neighborhood of the urban gentry of Paderborn. Knowing that it was a good neighborhood helps to better contextualize the objects, as Gai points out of the remains of fabric found: “The remains of silk fabric from the latrine were partially torn into rectangular pieces, some of them of extremely fine fabric and decoration. Perhaps it was toilet paper after the once elegant fabric was discarded.” Yes, they probably used silk as toilet paper. Why did he survive so well?. Incredible as it may seem, what saved that notebook was ending up at the bottom of a latrine in conditions of high humidity and without oxygen, a combination where the microorganisms responsible for decomposing materials such as wood or leather cannot survive. If this had not been the case, the notebook would have fallen apart in a few decades. In short: anaerobic preservation, one of the phenomena that have converted the sealed latrines in valuable deposits. Susanne Bretzel was the first person to examine the notebook and stands out that beyond giving off an unpleasant smell, it was barely necessary to clean the outside of the notebook: the wood held up without deforming and the interior pages were so adhered that no sediment had entered, which allowed the wax to remain intact and the manuscripts to be read. The unsolved mystery. No one knows how a notebook ended up inside a latrine, but Sveva Gai da the most likely explanation: that it fell by accident. What we do know is that this fate, no matter how fortuitous or deliberate, is precisely what allowed it to survive more than 700 years. The team has outlined a profile of the possible owner, but his name remains a mystery. There is, however, a way to discover it: if that latrine could be linked to a specific plot through the historical archives of Paderborn, the notebook could have a first and last name. In parallel, the team works to recover the layers of erased writing under the wax, where previous annotations, still unread, may be stacked. In Xataka | In medieval Europe, not only humans ended up on the gallows. Other criminals were also executed: the “murderer” pigs In Xataka | In the Middle Ages it was common to sleep inside wooden closets. The big question is why we stopped doing it. Cover | LWL

There is a medieval city in Germany built in a meteorite crater. Its walls hide 72,000 tons of diamonds

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If you’ve seen Shingeki no Kyojin (if you haven’t, I’m envious), the comparison with Shiganshina is inevitable: the image on the left of the montage on the cover corresponds to the Nördlingen market square and the one on the right is the city seen from above, completely fortified with a wall that surrounds it. However and although it is fan pilgrimage destination of the series, there is officially no relationship between the two. At first glance, the architecture of Nördlingen makes it just another fairytale Bavarian village, but this German city in the Donau-Ries district (in Swabia) is anything but just another one. In 1215, Emperor Frederick II promoted it to an imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire and a century later they began to build the wall. The municipality is integrated within the crater that left a meteorite when it fell. However, we know this now: until the 1960s, geologists themselves thought that the depression was an inactive volcano. Nördlingen is in a crater. He Nördlinger Ries It is a depression 24 kilometers wide and up to 150 meters caused by the impact of a meteorite approximately one kilometer in diameter in the Miocene, which pierced a primary crater of 11 kilometers. As deepens the International Union of Geological Sciencesthat hole grew due to the uplift of the crater floor and marginal collapse, until it reached what it is now. The Ries asteroid impacted with a speed of at least 70,000 km/h, causing an explosion of heat and energy that lasted approximately 10 minutes: the shock wave traveled through the area, setting everything on fire up to 100 kilometers away, which ended life in that radius. Afterwards, a lake was formed where diverse flora and fauna settled. The findings in the nearby Ofnet caves They confirm that the site of today’s Nördlingen was already inhabited in the late Paleolithic. The wall outlines the diameter of the meteorite. When in 1327 Louis the Bavarian ordered build the wall of Nördlingen, no one knew that he was tracing the exact outline of the meteorite that had hit there 15 million years earlier, as notes NASA. The medieval historic center fits almost perfectly within the kilometer diameter of the primary crater: a geological coincidence that would not be discovered until the 20th century. With a perimeter of 2.7 kilometers, it is one of the three medieval walls of Germany preserved almost intact and the only one that can be visited in its entirety: five gates, twelve towers and two bastions make up this circuit that, seen from the top of the Daniel tower, reveals its perfectly circular shape: the underlying trace of the Miocene catastrophe. And a small detail: it is made with stones that house small diamonds. The wall of Nördlingen. Wolkenkratzer, via Wikimedia Walls made of diamonds. Cities usually have their stone quarry, but Nördlingen had diamonds: the meteorite impact generated an estimated 72,000 tons of them when it hit a local graphite deposit, so its stone buildings contain millions of small diamonds. The stone is not just any one either: it is the sueviteextremely rare and marbled with small greenish crystals. It is found in other locations on the planet where there were similar impacts, but the concentration of gems in Nördlingen is unique. Those who built those buildings did not know that they were working with diamonds: they discovered it after the visit of Eugene Shoemaker and Edward Chaothe two American geologists who in 1960 demonstrated the origin by impact by finding shock quartz in the walls of St. George’s Church. St. George’s Church. Tkx via Wikimedia The “luxurious” church of St. George. Normally jewelry in churches is reserved for the altarpieces, but in San Jorge they are also on the walls. In fact, it was the construction that revealed the use of suevite extracted from the Ries basin. St. George’s is one of the largest late Gothic hall churches in southern Germany and was built between 1427 and 1505, when Nördlingen was Imperial. The church tower is known as “Daniel” and is 90 meters high: after climbing 350 steps you can reach the viewpoint (70 meters away), where you can observe the perfectly circular shape of the city and the crater that surrounds it. The tower also preserves one of the most unusual traditions of modern Europe: a night watchman who has been shouting before midnight since the Middle Ages to warn that everything is fine. Nördlingen, space training ground. Since impact craters also occur on the Moon and Mars, Nördlinger Ries has been used for decades as a training ground to teach astronauts to recognize the rocks and minerals created by impacts. the astronauts from Apollo 14 and NASA’s Apollo 17 studied the geology of the crater in 1970. But It is not something exclusive of the North American space agency: it is one of the three destinations of the program PANGAEA of the European Space Agency, along with the Italian Dolomites and Lanzarote. JAXA has also carried out training there. In Xataka | That Christian Friedrich von Kahlbut died in 1702 is nothing exceptional. That his corpse has not decomposed, yes In Xataka | A treasure hunter looted a shipwreck, did not reveal where he had kept the treasure and spent 10 years in prison. Now you are free to get it back Cover | Tilman2007 and Bayerische Vermessungsverwaltung

the strange medieval epidemic that paralyzed Europe for two centuries

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At some point in the late 14th century, Charles VI of France stopped moving. Not because of paralysis or fear of his enemies, but because he was convinced that his body was made of glass, and that any touch could shatter it. It was not an isolated case. Those affected by this collective delusion believed that all or part of their body was made of glass. The phenomenon has its own name in the history of psychiatry: the crystal delirium. And his story says disturbing things about how the sick mind always speaks the language of its time. Charles VI, nicknamed El Loco for whatever he may be Charles VI inherited the French throne in 1380, aged eleven. When he turned twenty, he removed his corrupt uncles from power and restored stability to the kingdom’s finances. The people called him le Bien-Aiméthe Beloved. Twelve years later, his definitive nickname would be different: le Fou, the Fool. In August 1392, during a military campaign towards Brittany, the king (23 years old at the time) was riding through the forest of Le Mans when a page dropped a spear. The metallic roar was enough to trigger a violent crisis: Carlos attacked his own knights and killed four before being subdued. It was the first of dozens of episodes that would accompany him until his death in 1422. Pope Pius II wrote that there were times when Carlos believed he was made of glassand that was why he tried to protect himself in multiple ways to avoid breaking, going so far as to have iron rods sewn into his clothes. Something else happened shortly after the onset of the crystalline delirium. In January 1393, the king and several nobles attended a party disguised as “wild men,” wearing linen suits covered in pitch and branches. An errant spark ignited a costume and the fire spread among the men. Only the king and another companion escaped alive, in an event that inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write his macabre story ‘Hop-Frog’. The event went down in history as the Bal des Ardentsthe Dance of the Burning Men. Whether or not that trauma accelerated his mental deterioration is something that historians still debate. When his crises took hold of him, Carlos became a different man: He could sit still for hours and, if he moved, he did so with extreme caution. This had a tremendous political cost: the monarch instability It weakened the French court and allowed rival factions to vie for power, exacerbating the challenges France faced in the midst of the Hundred Years’ War with England. In 1415 his troops were crushed at Agincourt, and in 1420 he signed the Treaty of Troyes, by which he disinherited his own son. The crystal generation Charles VI was, according to historian Gill Speak probably the first documented case of someone believing their entire body was made of glass. But he was far from the only one. The first medical text that records delirium as a recognizable condition dates from 1561, work of the Dutch doctor Levinus Lemnius. The phenomenon belonged to a broader category called “scholar’s melancholy”, an ailment that mainly affected men of letters and nobles from the 15th to 17th centuries. The documented cases are as extravagant as they are revealing. A man was convinced that his buttocks were made of glass and that sitting down would make them burst, so he avoided leaving the house in case a glazier tried to melt it to turn it into a window. Another traveled to Murano, the Italian island famous for its glass, with the intention of throwing himself into a furnace and being transformed into a glass. Engraving of ‘The Stained Glass Licensed’ A third nobleman (always unemployed people, the core issue of the topic) believed he was a glass vessel and spent the day lying on a bed of straw. His doctor ordered the bed to be set on fire with the door closed: when the nobleman pounded on the door asking for help, the doctor asked why it had not shattered with so much fuss. The cure was brutal but, apparently, effective. Transparent glass was not, in the 15th century, an everyday occurrence. It was in that century when the Venetian glassmaker Angelo Barovier invented the cristalloa clear, colorless glass that was extraordinarily rare and was seen by many as something almost magical. Before this innovation, neuroses were different: men who believed they were made of clay and later, in the 19th century, people who believed they were made of cement. The content of delusions reflects the culture of each moment: glass was a new material and therefore became the object of delusions. Glass, specifically, offered transparency: being made of glass meant being precious and fragile, a form of grandeur and isolation at the same time. Miguel de Cervantes published ‘El licensed Vidriera’, one of his ‘Exemplary Novels’, in 1613. The protagonist, Tomás Rodaja, is a brilliant and poor student who, after ingesting a love potion, is convinced that his body is made of glass due to the delicacy and subtlety of the material, with an admirable and delirious internal logic. It is a clear sign that delirium has its corresponding literature at the time: Robert Burton cataloged the phenomenon in ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ (1621) as a symptom of melancholy, and Descartes, in his ‘Meditations on First Philosophy’ (1641), used the “glass man” as an example of madness to distinguish his own philosophical doubts from the delusions of a sick brain. In Xataka | The Middle Ages have a reputation for being a dark period. Until you discover the names they had for their pets

In the 70s Álava left an entire town under its airport. What I didn’t know was that it was hiding a treasure of 5,000 medieval coins.

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He Vitoria airport It may not be the largest, the best connected or the busiest in the country, but it stands out for the volume of merchandise it moves. Last month it exceeded 5,400 tonswhich consolidates it as Aena’s fourth busiest aerodrome, only behind Barajas, El Prat and Zaragoza. If the Alava terminal works, moving cargo, planes and hundreds of thousands of passengers, it is thanks to an old village that ended up buried in the 70s: Otaza. The most curious thing is that he did it with a hidden medieval treasure. The price of growing. In the 1970s, Álava businessmen found themselves with a dilemma. If they wanted to continue growing, they needed better connections, regular flights that would allow them to reach the rest of the metropolises in Spain and Europe. They had the Salburua airfieldinaugurated in 1935, but it did not seem like the best solution, so the technicians had to look for alternatives. And they found her. After evaluating several locations in the region, such as Ullibarri Arrazua. Salvatierra or Zurbano concluded that the best solution was to set up a new aircraft facility on the land of the town of Foronda. A work in record time. The project had the support of the Provincial Council and moved forward with astonishing speed. At least for the deadlines that infrastructures the size of an airport usually handle today. The construction of the aerodrome was approved in 1972 and in 1976 Civil Aviation gave its OK to the first phase. The works, remember The Mailinvolved the construction of a 2,200 x 45 m flight runway, in addition to the operating systems. The work (and procedures) continued to advance at a good pace during the following years. In 1978, the institutional machinery was launched to contract the control tower, accesses and urbanization and just two years later (the January 30, 1980) the ministry officially opened Vitoria Airport to national and international passenger traffic. In April of that same year Iberia inaugurated one of its most important lines, the one that exalts it with Madrid. Sew and sing, right? Not at all. The construction of the terminal encountered a problem: the proximity of a small village that ended up being located 370 meters from the runway. His name: Otaza. The population had a long history and it even had its own church, but it was not what is said to be very populous. It is estimated that at the beginning of the 19th century it hosted only about thirty of people, more or less what there were in 1974, when according to The Mail 26 neighbors lived there. The Álava authorities were therefore faced with a dilemma: What should take priority, the new airfield or a village with a handful of families? And the pickaxe arrived. The expropriation was not what is called simple. Not all the neighbors willingly agreed to leave their homes and in fact there were a few ‘numantinos’ (not many, it is true) who did not leave until the end. Their efforts did not prevent the bulldozers from taking Otaza away. In October 1979, the regional press reported how, after a break and despite not yet having reached a total agreement with the neighbors, the authorities had resumed the demolition work. The Bishopric had fewer objections, which reached an agreement that allowed the village temple to be demolished. The pickaxe had to work little. A few days later, on November 2, the demolition was completed. A town to remember. That was the end of Otaza. Although in its day the town had welcomed dozens of people, had a church and services, the expropriation of the land and the demolition works sealed its fate. Shortly after completing the works, the authorities agreed the disappearance of the council, which is now part of Astegieta. However, as EITB recalls, it was not the only town affected by the works on the new terminal. Antezana of Foronda He also paid a ‘toll’ for Álava to have its own flights. One last surprise. Otaza’s story could have ended there if it weren’t for the fact that shortly after his ‘death’, in April 1980, a family decided to take a walk through the grounds. During the walk, as they passed near the church of San Emeterio and San Celedonio, they found a jar with coins. The piece caught their attention enough to report it to the authorities, who confirmed that it was a curious treasure: more than 5,000 coins of copper and silver minted during the reigns of Alfonso I of Aragon and Alfonso VIIIbetween the 12th and 13th centuries. Today it is known as “the treasure of Otaza”. Images | WikipediaGoogle Earth and Mikelo (Flickr) In Xataka | Barajas needed to improve its roads but a baroque hermitage made it complicated. Solution: put it in a roundabout

In medieval Europe, not only humans ended up on the gallows. Other criminals were also executed: the “murderer” pigs

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For centuries, medieval Europe It was a place where justice was dispensed not only in the courts, but in the squares, in full view of everyone, with public rituals designed to repair order when someone broke it in an intolerable way. At that time, the fear of the unforeseeable did not come only from armies, plagues or famines, but also from what moved through the streets and corrals. In the France Medieval times, for example, the public ritual of punishment (carriage amidst mockery, solemn sentence and execution before the community) did not always have a human as the protagonist: sometimes, the condemned was a pig. The image, which today seems like an oddity from a black chronicle or a folkloric exaggeration, was real enough to leave repeated documentary traces: animals led as prisoners, hung upside down until they died and treated, in practice, as perpetrators responsible for a crime that had broken the social balance. The pig as a real threat The frequency of these cases is better understood by remembering that the medieval world lived attached to animals and their risks. Pigs, in particular, were useful because they ate everything and could feed on scraps, but that same omnivorous condition made them dangerous if they roamed free near small children. The records collect numerous episodes in which pigs killed and even devoured children, a violence that today clashes with the modern image of the docile and slow animal, but which was then associated with specimens closest to the wild boar: fast, strong and capable of imposing themselves physically in seconds. Medieval archives collect cases like the one from 1379when a group of pigs in Saint-Marcel-lès-Jussey killed the son of a swineherd, or the from 1386 in FalaiseNormandy, where a sow destroyed a child who ended up dying. Also that of 1457 in Savigny, Burgundywhen little Jehan Martin was killed by a sow and, especially disturbingly, his six piglets were found nearby, stained with blood. They were not vague rumors, but stories that were fixed with names and placesand that fueled the need for a public response that was not limited to a simple private loss. In France, these events often led to in judicial proceedings formalities in which the animal was imprisoned, transferred and executed as if it were a common criminal. Sources talk about expenses registered normally (cart, prison, executioner even brought from Paris) and an administrative routine that suggests that, for the people of that time, it was not an absurd spectacle, but a legitimate mechanism of justice. The strangeness, therefore, was not that there was violence, but rather that the violence was channeled through a trial with the appearance of ordinary procedure. When money is not enough A practical explanation of these processes was that medieval justice tended to seek reconciliation between partiesand many disputes could be resolved with compensation or agreements. But when a child death came into the picture, that logic was broken: the damage was too serious and the money could be insufficient to close the social wound. In that context, the court intervened to “take control” of the conflict, separate it from private revenge and offer an institutional solution that would distribute the emotional and political burden of the outcome. Trials also functioned as a form of organize the story: It was not just about punishing the animal, but about clarifying human responsibilities. If a pig was known for being dangerouswhy was he allowed to loiter near children? Was there negligence on the part of the owner? a chain of negligence? There was even a suggestion of the possibility of darkest questions: if the child was “unwanted”, if he or she was deliberately left in a risky situation or if the accident hid an intention. The court, by intervening, not only imposed a penalty, it produced an official explanation that the community could accept. Sometimes, the local machinery was not the last word and the matter escalated towards higher authorities. In the case of 1379, some of the accused pigs belonged to an abbey, and from there a petition was sent to Duke Philip “the Bold” requesting clemency. They defended that their animals had not participated and that they were “well-behaved pigs.” The duke heeded the request and issued a pardon for the animals of the abbey, showing that these processes, strange as they may seem, were inserted in real networks of power, influences and political decisions. Far from being simple superstition or peasant rage, these executions could serve to assert authority. The right to erect a gallows and execute criminals it was a privilegeand taking a case to the end allowed a local lord to exhibit the ability to punish and control order. There are episodes that reinforce that reading: a pig murderer from the 15th century it remained imprisoned five years before being executed, and formal letters were sent for permission to build a gallows. When the duke finally agreed, the triumph was not only symbolic: in addition to showing power, the lord stopped carrying the practical cost of keeping the animal imprisoned and feeding it. Plus: another key is the medieval vision of reality as a logical system created by godwith animals destined to serve humans. For a pig to devour a child was an unbearable investment of that order, a rupture of hierarchies that demanded public reparation. In that mental framework, the trial and execution were not theater: they were a way of “putting back together” what had been broken, of affirming that the world still had rules and that chaos, even when it came from an animal, could be put back into place by a solemn act of justice. Image | Ernest Figueras, Zoe Clarke In Xataka | The Middle Ages were not as dark as they told us In Xataka | 900 years ago, Europe had its own Manhattan: the impressive skyscrapers of more than 100 meters of Bologna

In case we didn’t have enough of the wedding fever, medieval weddings are coming

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In Yorkshire it smells like wax and fresh bread. Olivia Healy walks slowly down the aisle of a stone church; The golden crown she wears shines in the flickering light of the candles. There are no spotlights or screens, just an iron arch, a few caped guests, and a reverend who smiles before saying, “Welcome to the 12th century.” It is not the filming of a movie, but a wedding inspired by the medieval ceremonies that were celebrated in England eight hundred years ago. There are minstrelsy, a feast of mead and rye bread, and a vow of union that does not mention God, but “the light that unites the paths of the ancients.” According to The New York Timesscenes like this are repeated in half the world: searches for “medieval wedding” on Pinterest have skyrocketed by more than 400%, and castles have become the new fantasy setting for a generation that flees from conventional weddings. A ritual with purpose. What started as an eccentric niche has become a cultural trend. “Couples are looking for a more symbolic type of ceremony, less commercial and more connected to ancient rites,” explains art historian Nancy Thebaut. It is not just an aesthetic—capes, veils, chalices, robes—but a way of understanding love and commitment as something timeless. Some of the most talked about weddings of the year followed that thread. Artist Harley Weir, known for her ethereal portraits, married in a welsh monastery dressed in a tunic inspired by the novices of the 15th century. As well as actress Rainey Qualley opted for a lace corset and hand-embroidered cape in Italian silk, “like a Pre-Raphaelite queen lost in a digital dream.” In all cases, the pattern is the same: ritual, nature, spirituality. Instead of speeches or photocallsthere are processions with incense, sacred music, mystical readings and vows inspired by Celtic or early Christian ceremonies. The phenomenon goes beyond the disguise. This return to the past, according to the New York Timesaddresses an interpretation of “nostalgia for purposeful rituals”: a way of recovering the symbolic in times where the religious has been diluted. For the fashion magazine Vogue, which has documented Gothic and medieval weddings in Irish castles or Welsh monasteries, what is sought is not historical accuracy, but an emotional aesthetic. The medium calls it “epic romanticism”: a cross between the sacred, the theatrical and the intimate. The art historian Harriet Sonne de Torrens remember that in medieval manuscripts The gesture of joining hands represented mutual surrender and divine blessing. Eight centuries later, that same image is redefined: the symbol remains, although its meaning is secular. From historical rigor to pop romanticism. Not to nitpick, but most of these celebrations are not historically accurate—nor do I think they intend to be. “People confuse medieval with Renaissance, Gothic or even Victorian,” explains The New York Times. But that mix is ​​part of its appeal: today’s medieval weddings They are less a recreation of the past than a pop rereading of history. The success of series like game of Thrones either The Witcher, and even the literary rise of authors such as Sarah J. Maas or the anthological The Lord of the Ringshave consolidated a global aesthetic of the medieval-fantastic, which has filtered into fashion, music and, now, marriage. This medieval fever is not alone. In parallel, thematic weddings are growing: ceremonies that recreate entire worlds—from the 1920s to the Tolkien universe—as a form of aesthetic affirmation. According to Bodas.netmore than 30% of young couples in Spain opt for personalized and symbolic rituals, with their own scripts and narrative scenarios. In times of liquid loves, the ritual matters again. In the digital age, couples look for meaning in ancient symbols. Looking to the past has become a way of recovering intention and intimacy—what the New York media has defined as “a nostalgia for purposeful rituals.” And there opens up an interesting connection.. Because this fascination with the sacred is not limited to the symbolic altars of weddings. Religion—or at least its imagery—has once again become a transversal aesthetic language: from fashion to pop. Rosalía is the most notable example. As my colleague explains in Xataka“the artist has swerved towards Catholic iconography. It is not a whim or a marketing maneuver, but rather swimming in a very favorable current at the moment: the modern and youthful vindication of the faith.” This current is not a return to dogma, but a search for transcendence. Both Rosalía and medieval weddings, the sacred becomes aesthetic; the ritual, in performance. Candles, veils or liturgical choirs are gestures of a visual spirituality, more emotional than doctrinal. “Brides are attracted to historical references because they evoke permanence; it is a way of promising eternity in liquid times,” says designer Paula Nadal. My dear Spain. And, as almost always, here we take it to the next level. In Navia (Asturias), a couple got married this summer during the Medieval Days of the municipality, escorted by Knights Templar and bagpipers. In Burgos, several estates and castles—such as Sotopalacios or Belmonte— They already offer “historical ceremonies” with a mead menu, troubadours and photographers who work only with natural light to imitate the painterly texture of the Quattrocento. In networks, the Spanish “medieval core” mixes layers, baroque virgins and processions with a fervor that, according to Telva“can only be understood in a country that turned Holy Week into performative art.” In a way, medieval weddings are the secular reflection of that same religious theatricality that Spain carries in its blood: a liturgy without faith, but with emotion. A ritual in uncertain times? The trend points to the same thing: couples do not flee from the present, but rather look for a symbolic language. What we know is that in 12th century manuscripts, marriage was a sacrament; in the networks of 2025, it is an aesthetic. But the gesture remains the same. Between the digital noise and the contemporary rush, returning to the 12th century is just a way—I hope—to promise the same thing as always: that … Read more

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