historicall.y

Diary of an Archaeologist Palaeolithic sites in the Vezere Valley Vezere Valley, France Tear your hair out all you historians, the Palaeolithic era lasted over 2 million years of human activity and they did not write so there are NO books where they recorded what they did! However they did leave painted scenes in caves and a range of stone tools. Archaeologists excavate these sites and research the evidence to learn how they did live. I begin my archaeologist's diary with the earliest dated site I worked on, a Middle Palaeolithic cave shelter site at Les Eyzies du Tayac, in the Vezere region. Palaeolithic is from the Greek for old - 'palaios', and stone – 'lithic'. It was  period when humans used their skills to knap a range of tools from hammers, scrapers, axes, borers and blades, from flint,  jasper   or churt stone. It is the longest extending period in human prehistory, stretching from the earliest types of hominids in the Lower Palaeolithi...

Joan of Arc is France's favourite saint who was burnt at the stake charged with heresy by the English. She believed that she was called by God to deliver France from their enemies. But she was caught and sold to the English who accused her of heresy and witchcraft and burnt her to death in 1431. Joan was led to her death in Rouen, France on 30th May 1431, aged only 19 years old. After making a speech, which lasted about 30 minutes, asking people to pray for her and forgiving them, which apparently nearly moved some of the English knights to tears, she was tied to the stake. As her last request, she asked for a cross. She was handed a simple wooden crucifix which she tucked inside her clothes. She spent her final moments uttering prayers and forgiving her executioners. Overcome by the smoke, she became unconscious and her head slumped to her chest. The Maid of Orleans breathed her last. Her body was paraded around the square, naked so that everyone could see that she was a wo...