Futuristic Yugoslavian Monuments

These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković...), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic. In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their "patriotic education." After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost.

From 2006 to 2009, Kempenaers toured around the ex-Yugoslavia region (now Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.) with the help of a 1975 map of memorials, bringing before our eyes a series of melancholy yet striking images. His photos raise a question: can these former monuments continue to exist as pure sculptures? On one hand, their physical dilapidated condition and institutional neglect reflect a more general social historical fracturing. And on the other hand, they are still of stunning beauty without any symbolic significances.

Found Here: http://www.cracktwo.com/2011/04/25-abandoned-soviet-monuments-that-look.html

Kazutaka Miyatake

Without paying close attention to the talented artists who worked on Space Battleship Yamato from the beginning, it's easy to overlook the fact that Leiji Matsumoto was not the only veteran who participated in the Playstation games. But one glance at the intricate mechanical designs quickly corrects that oversight. They are the work of Kazutake Miyatake, one of the most respected superstars of anime mecha.

As a charter member of Japan's famous Studio Nue (the design powerhouse behind such anime classics as Crusher Joe, Macross, Gunbuster, and countless others), Miyatake was at ground zero in 1974 when the first TV series went into production and was one of just three artists who designed Yamato herself inside and out. His role expanded in 1978 on Farewell to Yamato when he almost single-handedly designed all the spaceships for the Earth and Comet Empire fleets. If you need one more credential, here it is: the Andromeda was largely his idea.

When the time came to adapt the mecha into the Playstation environment, there was no one more qualified than Miyatake to do the job. He went far beyond what anyone expected, upgrading and refining everything into sleek new forms that retained their original core. Even Yamato was re-imagined to such a degree that Miyatake's new version later became the basis of Bandai's massive 1/350 model kit, released in 2007.

And he didn't stop there---he was front and center for the Playstation 2 games as well, taking things in ever bolder directions. Here are highlights of a lengthy interview with Miyatake that was published in the Fixed Data book for the second Playstation game (DNA Media Books, January 2001) in which he recounts what it was like to create anime's greatest spaceships for both old times and new.

Yamato Must be as Good as the Old Days

Interviewer: What is the goal of a Yamato game for Playstation?

Miyatake: It must be as good for the fans as it was in the old days. The atmosphere is certainly different. The original should be unspoiled, but I wanted to improve some of the roughness of it. Because polygons make a three-dimensional object look different than normal freehand drawing, I thought it could bring a new sensibility to Yamato.

Specifically, it should show modern technology. So I added things like controls for electronic warfare and sensor countermeasures. To begin with, it is a projection of Matsumoto mecha. The sharper feel originates from Soviet fighter design. Matsumoto mecha inherits the coolness of that style.

Interviewer: In a way, it's sad that people of the 20-year old 'robot generation' don't understand things like that.

Miyatake: Indeed, the old Yamato designs may not suit the younger generation today. I thought about ways to adjust the focus of the image and imply more detail.

Interviewer: Your refinement of the Cosmo Tiger II from Farewell to Yamato is considerably stronger.

Miyatake: Yes. New technologies came to pass since the mid-70s, so the Cosmo Tiger II is now decidedely a stealth fighter. Even if the original design is somewhat changed, it is not unreasonable. Someone said I put a little Macross in it. (Laughs)

The economic life of a weapon is long, so some things last for 20 or 30 years, but a fighter needs to keep up with technology to be a state of the art machine. So I wanted to modernize it. The angles on it suppress the reflection of radar waves.

Because a game is drawn with polygons, the polyhedral design of stealth technology is very suitable; it's difficult to express curved surfaces. We could keep the volume of data down while preserving the punch, so I took a bold plunge into stealth! I thought it would be effective, particularly in the case of a fast-moving fighter.

The Cosmo Zero design for Playstation also has a sense of stealth, and it's especially apparent in the Black Tiger. We wanted to use triangles as much as possible to keep the number of polygons low. When I did the original design for animation, the stripes were often drawn incorrectly, but now it's a texture attached to the surface of a polygon, so we no longer have that problem. That's one of the ways it looks different.

Interviewer: What was the design point of the spaceships in Farewell to Yamato?

Miyatake: The balance of the main EDF battleship hasn't changed much from the time of the movie, but the carrier changed considerably. It was adjusted a little for the Yamato 2 TV series, but I wasn't involved with that. Originally, Matsumoto aircraft carriers were designed in a slab-like style, but this is more like the Minsk.

Interviewer: The Soviet Carrier? That was strangely gaudy.

Miyatake: But at the same time the bridge design was fairly simple. That was the first warship to use stealth technology. Bringing that to the Yamato PS game would give it the sense of a living thing. Sorry, I'm going back to the old days...

Interviewer: I think I understand. When a stealth machine like the B2 was drawn in SF anime, it looked like a parody in the time before the real thing appeared. Isn't it hard to surpass both reality and the viewer's imagination?

Miyatake: Yes. Yamato's original image had World War II as its base, so we didn't mind reproducing scenes from old movies. A remake needs to be tailored for its time, but I couldn't take away the nucleus of the original image when I modernized it. The curving, feminine silhouette of Yamato still has a strong visual impression, so it needs to keep that lineage even if the details are quite different.

If it has the Yamato name, it has to look like Yamato. If that's still the case, then I have no problem if the game differs from the anime.

Interviewer: As long as the basic elements are the same...

Miyatake: ...that's why I summarized the design the way I did. However, I couldn't help making a chart to compare the original proportions with the new ones, and use it to pursuade others. Some said it didn't change at all, other had the opposite reaction. It's like the wind. (Laughs)

Interviewer: Were both reactions fair?

Miyatake: Both sides depend on the person's point of view. The comparison was persuasive to both. My designer friends described the PS version as normal evolution. They said if you continued drawing Yamato for ten years or more, isn't this what it would have become? I think that was a natural answer. Even though I changed it, it stayed the same, isn't that how the saying goes?

I thought I would change the Andromeda, too, but I didn't need to, other than making it slightly bigger and adding volume. Because anime is a 2-dimensional picture, it doesn't have to be solid. The form of the ship can change without being incorrect. But a polygon has no choice but to be solid. 3-D animation can never be cheated, or the pieces don't connect.

Honestly, nothing about the Andromeda changed much. It was not necessary. For the original, Mr. Matsumoto left 99% of the Andromeda to me, which means it's done in the Matsumoto style and slightly in my style.

Interviewer: Did it take a lot of thought?

Miyatake: I regretted the EDF battleship (A). My first design didn't have the punch it needed to emulate Yamato. I didn't have enough technical knowledge at the time, and the drawing lacked personality. I felt this most keenly about the bridge. I asked Mr. Matsumoto about it, and he understood.

Interviewer: The Andromeda's bridge was redone many times back then, wasn't it?

Miyatake: No, just once. Mr. Matsumoto drew a rough and I expanded on it. I added all the antennae.

Interviewer: How were the smaller EDF ships designed?

Miyatake: There was not a demand for them at first. In the beginning, there was only Kodai's escort ship (B) [at the beginning of Farewell to Yamato]. The tubular body had only one ring-step around the engine. That basic form was scaled up and given two steps for the patrol cruiser (C). I thought it would need a lot of antennae, so I added more of them. I also used the escort ship as a base for the destroyer (D), decreased the armament and made the bridge lower.

I thought I would want to change them for the PS version of Farewell, but there was no need.

The Comet Empire city was James Blish's New York

Interviewer: You also designed the enemy warships, didn't you?

Miyatake: I did. I discussed them with Mr. Matsumoto to determine their function. We wanted to give a 'compound eye' look to their sensors and use a disc form that would clearly indicate a 'space person' made it. And I added a little more technology.

Instead of designing a clear top and bottom, I thought it would be a better idea to emphasize the technical differences by alternating the panels to build them up. That gave a chain structure to the ships of the Comet Empire.

Interviewer: That different approach to the enemy ships is similar to Macross. Is that how you approach such design?

Miyatake: When you determine the basic form of mecha, the details on the periphery become easier. So we start with a drawing that is like the shape of a car, a ship, or an aircraft. The process is very similar, but we draw it entirely on paper where they make mockups. In the case of automobiles, a full-scale wooden model was often made in the old days.

When you're making something out of physical materials, the core of the idea increasingly changes over time. In the case of our EDF ships, the Andromeda, the escort ships, and all the others were developed to fill each other's gaps. The details fit the needs of the soldiers inside the ships. But it is all based around the fundamental form.

Interviewer: Why does the new version of the Comet Empire City have channels in the lower hemisphere?

Miyatake: This was an order from the producer. He wanted to have trench warfare against heavy armaments. It would also give Kodai a clear direction into the mouth of the aircraft port.

The Comet Empire City was originally inspired by James Blish's New York in the Cities in Flight series; it was built on a hemisphere of exposed rock. If you want to show another way of life, you add a different flavor.

There's also the Battleship Medaluza, which didn't appear in Farewell to Yamato, it was in the Yamato 2 TV series. The [Magna] flame guns are a big, showy highlight. But I didn't work on Yamato 2.

Interviewer: So you refined it this time?

Miyatake: The Medaluza comes from the Comet Empire, so their design is from a different worldview. I couldn't change the parts that define the characteristics of the ship, so I just concentrated on the common areas.

But it was the Dreadnaught that took the most effort. They said the original design would suffice, and there wasn't enough time to do more than a single pass. The amount of linework on it is insane. (Laughs) It all has to be there to show how big it is. Even so, I doubled the number of guns and made it half again as long. In fact, the basic form was quite different from Mr. Matsumoto's original rough. Plus, there was no model sheet of the underside in the old days.

Interviewer: Yamato is only about the size of its stern segment.

Miyatake: That's right. But its bridge tower is about the same size as Yamato's. If you do things like that, the ship looks even bigger. I wanted to do more with it, but the deadline came. (Laughs)

Interviewer: If you have permission from the producer, an artist is cool with even fine detail.

Miyatake: Originally, Mr. Matsumoto came to me near the end of production on the movie. He was running out of time to design the Dreadnaught, and the animators couldn't finish their work without it. Everyone was screaming and tearing their hair out. That was often the situation in those days. So I was glad to have the chance to redo the design.

Interviewer: Even if it took over 20 years to accomplish.

Miyatake: Yes. But I have to offer my apologies to the game director. My first major task for the Farewell game was to rough out the Dreadnaught, even though it doesn't appear until the end. To only draw a front view was too limiting, we had to have the underside and rear as well. I finished them only after the schedule was extended first by three months and then four. It was a tough nut to crack.

I participated in Space Battleship Yamato in 1974!

Interviewer: The first work of yours I ever saw was an internal drawing of Mazinger Z when I was a student.

Miyatake: That wasn't my first professional illustration; I did Kamen Rider's Hurricane Bike before that.

Interviewer: What was your participation in the first Yamato series?

Miyatake: I heard about it when it was still called Asteroid Ship, before it became Yamato. Takeshi Matsuzaki from Studio Nue was working on it as a scenario writer, so he took the lead.

Interviewer: Was he drawing for it, too?

Miyatake: Yes, as a designer. It was the two of us and also Naoyuki Katou and Haruka Takachiho. Previously we had made doujinshis of SF illustration as a group with Takeshi Matsuzaki as our chairman.

I was in graduate school at the time, so I didn't work on it from the start, but I poked my head in and heard about how it was going. Matsuzaki spent all his time in the studio working on it.

Interviewer: What did you draw for it?

Miyatake: I only drew Yamato itself. Naoyuki Kato did, too. The model sheet of the stern view was his.

Interviewer: When I saw the TV series again recently, I was surprised at the impression of weight in the Yamato design.

Miyatake: The director, Noboru Ishiguro, was particularly conscious of that and I stuck to it. But it became more slender in the hands of some animators as the series went on. We had to take the bad with the good; it was a TV series, and all the pictures were drawn by many hands, so it was hard to preserve the sense of weight. But it is thoroughly reflected in the Playstation game. I think the width of the ship has broadened, too.

Interviewer: After all, Yamato really is big and heavy. It's not just in the mind of the viewer.

Miyatake: Speaking of the old TV series...Part 1 and Farewell used different animation studios, so even the cel paint was different and the colors of Yamato were different.

Interviewer: It became more blue.

Miyatake: And lighter. With the old Yamato, the first color we tried was a heavy black, and some said it looked dirty. (Laughs) It looked dark and gloomy. It wasn't a color for normal animation.

Interviewer: It was also framed differently in Leiji Matsumoto's storyboards, with the pulse lasers and the glowing energy.

Miyatake: Those were done by Mr. Ishiguro. He had been making animation since his university days and he'd done research in effects animation at the time. He developed the space explosion that extended in all directions. Almost all the Yamato effects were by Mr. Ishiguro. He says now that he enjoyed it. However, because nobody else could do that kind of work, he kept pulling all-nighters and had to repair a lot of the animation by himself.

Interviewer: A supervisor did animation revision?

Miyatake: Yes. It was the only TV series where someone like him did so much mecha-related drawing.

Interviewer: Anyway, we have that heavy impression in the first TV series. It also had long scenes of space battles with no cutting back and forth. That sort of thing also made a strong impression.

Miyatake: Yamato was exceptional in those days of TV animation. The policy was "no recycling." The voice from the top didn't mind going over budget. There was no restriction on the cel count, although there wasn't much time, either. The idea was to keep the stock footage down so every episode would look new.

Interviewer: There's a famous story from back then about the 'G' cel.

[Editor's note: on animation exposure sheets, the different cel layers are labeled by letter: A, B, C, etc. It is customary not to go deeper than a C layer, but some scenes in Yamato went all the way to an unheard-of G layer: 7 cels in a single exposure.]

Miyatake: Yes. The top layer was badly scratched. The cel material was bad in those days, and it wasn't handled very carefully. The more cel layers they used, the less transparent and the more scratchy they became.

Also, the oil shock made things considerably painful.

Interviewer: Because a cel is a petroleum product.

Miyatake: There is a small amount in it. So even with a big budget you might not get enough cels. Between those shortages and the schedule, Yamato wasn't easy to make.

Interviewer: By the end, even the top supervisor was in the trenches.

Miyatake: That's how it was. I remember people saying Mr. Ishiguro should try to escape.

We had other problems, like the number of windows on Yamato's bridge. It really became a problem. The number often decreased. If you see it from an angle, there are a lot of lines to draw; the outer edges, the glass line, the inner edges. This was the reason the number sometimes dropped from five windows to four. It's a little thing, but it piles up.

Interviewer: What about all those designs that covered several pieces of paper?

Miyatake: I tried to keep a design neatly on a single sheet, but when drawing something in perspective I often had to go off the edge somewhere; there's a limit. I had to add an extension to find a point, otherwise the drawing might lose its power and realism. So I did it without worrying about using up paper.

But there was a problem in those days---copy machines didn't have a reduction function. I had to draw large, it was unavoidable. Mr. Matsumoto didn't understand this at the time either; some of his drawings took up 6 or 7 pages. (Laughs) I remember having a hard time cleaning up his roughs.

Now reduction is really simple, but in the old days there were few machines capable of it, so we had to find a blueprint machine.

Interviewer: In closing, I'd like to ask you about your future hopes. What do you want to do?

Miyatake: A sense of realism is the basis of our work. I was born in Yokosuka, and I grew up looking at military warships. American aircraft carriers made it their port of call...those provided the basics of my work so far.

But now I want to do exactly the opposite, and completely remove the realism. Take a plane, a battleship, or a spaceship--something from the Comet Empire or Gamilas, for example. The aim is to translate technology into a design, to give it a reality and a presence. That's the sort of work that got me here and that's what clients will ask of me from now on.

But I want to try and break that, to find something appealing in the opposite meaning. But I have no idea what kind of work it would lead to.

Interviewer: You want to break out of your shell.

Miyatake: That's right. To create something fundamentally new, that's the dream. Yamato has been that for over 20 years.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.

(Interview conducted in Yokosuka, June 10, 2000)

Found Here: http://www.starblazers.com/html.php?page_id=341

Yoshitaka Amano

Yoshitaka Amano (天野 喜孝 (formerly 天野 嘉孝), Amano Yoshitaka^?) (born July 28, 1952) is a Japanese artist. He began his career as an animator and has become known for his illustrations for Vampire Hunter D and for his character designs, image illustrations and title logo designs for the Final Fantasy video game series developed by Square Enix (formerly Square).^[1] His influences include Western comic books, art nouveau, and Japanese woodblock prints. He has won awards for his work, including the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for his collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Sandman: The Dream Hunters.^[2] In early 2010, he established Studio Devaloka, a film production company.

Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. As a young adolescent, he was fascinated with drawing. In 1967, he began working in the animation department of Tatsunoko Productions, where he was introduced to the early Japanese anime movement.^[4][5] His first paid project was for the Speed Racer anime franchise. He was a character designer for anime shows such as Time Bokan, Gatchaman, Tekkaman, and Honey Bee.^[6]

In the 1960s, Amano was exposed to Western art styles through comic books, which he claims among his artistic roots. He has cited Neal Adams as his favorite comic book artist, noting that he would often purchase used comics based on Adams's cover artwork, only to be disappointed that the interior artist was different.^[7] Amano was also fascinated by the art styles of psychedelic art and pop art of the West, particularly the work of American Pop artist Peter Max.^[8] In the 1970s, Amano studied the artworks of the late 19th century and early 20th century European movement of Art Nouveau, as well as the ancient Japanese hand woodblock printing work of Ukiyo-e.^[8]

Amano remained at Tatsunoko Productions until 1982.

In the early 1980s, Amano concentrated on illustrations for science fiction and fantasy works. Combined with the influence of his prior experience in animation, this focus resulted in a personal style influenced by both modern surrealism and realism.^[6]

In 1983, he illustrated the novel Demon City Shinjuku and the first in Hideyuki Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D novel series.^[6] He also worked as a character designer on the 1985 movie adaptation of Vampire Hunter D, which was one of the first anime movies to be released outside of Japan. In interviews, however, Amano has stated that he was not pleased with the final product of the movie.^{[citation needed]}

His illustrations begin to be published in collections such as Maten in 1984.

In 1987, Amano joined Square (now known as Square Enix) to work on a role-playing video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System: Final Fantasy. Amano produced conceptual design pieces for the game in both traditional and computer designed artwork.^[10] At this time, he also worked for another video game company, Kure Software Koubou, producing box cover illustrations as well as some character designs. This work included designs for Kure's First Queen series.^[11]

Following Final Fantasy VI in 1994, he stepped down as the main character, image, and graphic designer of the series. He continued to provide promotional and character artwork for the following games and to design their title logos.^[12]

In 2006, Hironobu Sakaguchi, the former designer and creator of the Final Fantasy series, recruited Amano and composer Nobuo Uematsu to work on video games at Mistwalker.^[1]

[edit] Branching out

Amano's first exhibition, called "Hiten", was held in 1989 at Yurakucho Mullion in Tokyo, Japan.^[13] In 1990, he began to work as an artist and set designer for stage theater. His first work for theater was Tamasaburo Bando's Nayotake.^[8] He also held further exhibitions and became well-known for his printing works.^{[citation needed]}

Beginning in 1995 with his work at the Biennale d'Orléans in France, he received increased recognition outside of Japan. Further international exhibitions followed, including the 1996 "Hero" at the Angel Orensanz Foundation and the 1997 workshop and exhibition "Think Like Amano".^[14][15]

In 1998, Amano appeared as Hiroshi in the 1998 movie New Rose Hotel, loosely based on the William Gibson short story of the same name.

In 2000, Amano illustrated Neil Gaiman's Sandman: The Dream Hunters,^[17] which won several awards and was nominated for a Hugo Award.^[2] In 2001, Greg Rucka and Amano collaborated on another comic book tale, Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer.^[18] His character designs were used in another Vampire Hunter D movie entitled Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. In 2006, the first volume of his HERO series was released by Boom! Studios.

He illustrated three album covers for the Japanese power metal band Galneryus: The Flag of Punishment (2003), Advance to the Fall (2005), and Beyond the End of Despair (2006).^[19]

In 2008, Amano created an illustrated adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute, published by Radical Comics.^[20] He also collaborated with Christopher "mink" MorrisonQuentin Tarantino's A Band Apart production company, providing illustrations for the novel Shinjuku and two other projects that have yet to be announced.^[21] He was the character designer for the 2009 Jungle Emperor (Kimba the White Lion) TV special, directed by Gorō Taniguchi, to commemorate both the 50th anniversary of Fuji Television and the 80th anniversary of Osamu Tezuka's birth.

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshitaka_Amano

Ctesiphon, the Arch - Baghdad Battery

The Arch of Ctesiphon

Mud brick was the most common building material in Mesopotamia, until the advent of modern concrete. Baked bricks were only used for major projects such as the arch at Ctesiphon, just outside Baghdad, part of a palace built by Sasanian kings in the sixth century AD.

The Sasanians were an Iranian dynasty, but they used traditional Mesopotamian building techniques. The arch, a huge open audience hall 30m (98ft) high and some 43m (141ft) long, should have required massive scaffolding, but the Mesopotamians leant the courses of brickwork back at an angle, so that each course was built against its predecessor, and only a mobile tower for the builders was necessary. The arch was flanked by façades decorated with blank arcading and pilasters, but the one on the right collapsed a century ago.

Found Here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/cultures/mesopotamia_gallery_12.shtml

Ctesiphon, the imperial capital of the Parthian Arsacids and of the Persian Sassanids, was one of the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia. In the 6th century, Ctesiphon was the largest city in the world.^[1]

The ruins of the city are located on the east bank of the Tigris, across the river from the Hellenistic city of Seleucia. Today, the remains of both cities lie in Iraq, approximately 35 km south of the city of Baghdad

The Latin name Ctesiphon or Ctesifon (pronounced /ˈtɛsɨfɒn/) derives from Greek KtēsiphōnΚτησιφῶν), a Hellenized form of a local name that has been reconstructed as Tosfōn or Tosbōn.^[2] In Iranian sources of the Sassanid period it is attested in Manichean Parthian, in Sassanid Middle Persian and in Christian Sogdian as Pahlavi tyspwn, continuing in New PersianTisfun (تيسفون). In medieval Arabic texts the name is usually Ṭaysafūn (طيسفون) or Qaṭaysfūnal-Mada'in (المدائن). "According to Yāqūt [...], quoting Ḥamza, the original form was Ṭūsfūn or Tūsfūn, which was arabicized as Ṭaysafūn."^[3] The Armenian name of the city was Tizbon (Տիզբոն). Ctesiphon is first mentioned in the Book of Ezra of the Old Testament as Kasfia/Casphia (a derivative of the ethnic name, Cas, and a cognate of Caspian and Qazvin).

Ctesiphon rose to prominence during the Parthian Empire in the 1st century BC, and was the seat of government for most of its rulers. The city was located near Seleucia, the Hellenistic capital. Strabo abundantly describes its foundation:

In ancient times Babylon was the metropolis of Assyria; but now Seleuceia is the metropolis, I mean the Seleuceia on the Tigris, as it is called. Near by is situated a village called Ctesiphon, a large village. This village the kings of the Parthians were wont to make their winter residence, thus sparing the Seleuceians, in order that the Seleuceians might not be oppressed by having the Scythian folk or soldiery quartered amongst them. Because of the Parthian power, therefore, Ctesiphon is a city rather than a village; its size is such that it lodges a great number of people, and it has been equipped with buildings by the Parthians themselves; and it has been provided by the Parthians with wares for sale and with the arts that are pleasing to the Parthians; for the Parthian kings are accustomed to spend the winter there because of the salubrity of the air, but they summer at Ecbatana and in Hyrcania because of the prevalence of their ancient renown.^[4]

( as (قطيسفون), in Modern Arabic

Because of its importance, Ctesiphon was a major military objective for the leaders of the Roman Empire in its eastern wars. The city was captured by Rome or by its successor state, the Byzantine Empire, five times in its history, three times in the 2nd century alone. The emperor Trajan captured Ctesiphon in 116, but his successor, Hadrian, decided to willingly return Ctesiphon, in 117, as part of a peace settlement. The Roman general Avidius Cassius captured Ctesiphon during another Parthian war in 164, but abandoned it when peace was concluded. In 197, the emperor Septimius Severus sacked Ctesiphon and carried off thousands of its inhabitants, whom he sold into slavery.

Late in the 3rd century, after the Parthians had been supplanted by the Sassanids, the city again became a source of conflict with Rome. In 283, emperor Carus sacked the city uncontested during a period of civil upheaval. In 295, emperor Galerius was defeated outside the city. However, he returned a year later with a vengeance and won a tremendous victory which ended in the fifth and final capture of the city by the Romans in 299. He returned it to the Persian king Narses in exchange for Armenia and western Mesopotamia. In c.325 and again in 410, the city, or the Greek colony directly across the river, was the site of church councils for the Church of the East.

Emperor Julian was killed following a battle outside of the city walls, in 363, during his war against Shapur II. Finally, in 627, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius surrounded the city, the capital of the Sassanid Empire, leaving it after the Persians accepted his peace terms.

Ctesiphon fell to the Muslims during the Islamic conquest of Persia in 637 under the military command of Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqqas during the caliphate of Umar. However, the general population was not harmed but the palaces and their archives were burned. Still, as political and economic fortune had passed elsewhere, the city went into a rapid decline, especially after the founding of the Abbasid capital at Baghdad in the 8th century, and soon became a ghost town. It is believed to be the basis for the city of Isbanir in the Thousand and One Nights.

The ruins of Ctesiphon were the site of a major battle of World War I in November 1915. The Ottoman Empire defeated troops of Britain attempting to capture Baghdad, and drove them back some 40 miles (64 km) before trapping the British force and compelling it to surrender.

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctesiphon

The Baghdad Battery

These strange artefacts were originally discovered in 1936 during an archaeological dig at village of Khuyut Rabbou'a which is located approximately 20 miles south east of the city centre of modern Baghdad and close to the Arch of Ctesiphon. Described as 13 – 14cm in height they contained a copper cylinder and within this was suspended an iron rod. In December 1939, shortly after the start of World War II a German archaeologist by the name of Wilhelm Konig came across the item in the basement of the National Museum of Iraq. He immediately recognised their similarity to galvanic batteries and published a paper that suggested that these ancient electrical devices may have been used for electroplating precious gold onto silver. It is around this time that Adolf Hitler began a serious, if eccentric, programme to study the technology of the ancients. Relatively modern films such as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” are based on this obscure reality. There is no easy explanation for the Baghdad Battery and naturally this has created controversy, debate and disagreement in the scientific community. Reconstructions of this device have proved that it could generate an electrical current of between 0.4 and 1.9 volts. Naturally, some scientists dispute these claims and argue that the reconstructions are inaccurate. (Those scientist just love a good dispute – it’s the scientific equivalent of arguing with you history teacher to make sure that everyone else notices that you’re still in the class.)

Found Here: http://www.jimsrandomwebpage.com/The%20Bagdad%20Battery.html

Some of the greatest mysteries are those that surround ancient gadgets. Because of their antiquity, we may never truly know how they were built or what their purpose was. Such is the case with the Baghdad Battery, a device unearthed in Khujut Rabu, just outside of Baghdad, in 1936. It consisted of a small clay jar containing an iron rod suspended inside of a copper cylinder. The copper cylinder was soldered shut and sealed with asphalt. Wilhelm Konig, a German archaeologist working at the National Museum of Iraq, examined the device two years after its discovery and came to the conclusion that it was an ancient battery.

Indeed, when replicas were built they were able to generate small amounts of electricity. But if the device was a battery, it would pre-date other batteries by at least a thousand years. And what, exactly, would an ancient civilization have use batteries for? For many years, experts contended that the Baghdad Battery would have been used to electroplate thin layers of gold onto silver items. That theory has fallen out of favor due to lack of evidence.

In fact, many archaeologists now believe that the Baghdad Battery had no electrical purpose at all. The usability of the ancient batteries has been proven in various scientific and entertainment arenas, but so far all that can be said is that it was possible to produce electricity with these primitive cells. Whether they were ever used for that purpose – and what, exactly, they may have powered – may never be known. Like the Antikythera Mechanism and so many other ancient gadgets, its function may be forever lost to time.

Found Here: http://gajitz.com/battery-of-mysteries-why-did-worlds-first-battery-exist/

Gobekli Tepe - World's Oldest Known Temple

Göbekli Tepe (Turkish for "Potbelly hill") is a hilltop sanctuary erected on the highest point of an elongated mountain ridge some 15 km northeast of the town of Şanlıurfa (formerly Urfa / Edessa) in southeastern Turkey. The site, currently undergoing excavation by German and Turkish archaeologists, was erected by hunter-gatherers in the 10th millennium BC (c. 11,500 years ago), before the advent of sedentism. Together with Nevalı Çori, it has revolutionized understanding of the Eurasian Neolithic.

Göbekli Tepe is located in southeastern Turkey. It had already been noted in an American surveyGerman Archaeological Institute (Istanbul branch) and Şanlıurfa Museum, under the direction of the German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt (1995–2000: University of Heidelberg; since 2001: German Archaeological Institute). Schmidt says that the stone fragments on the surface made him aware immediately that the site was prehistoric. Before then, the hill had been under agricultural cultivation; generations of local inhabitants had frequently moved rocks and placed them in clearance piles; much archaeological evidence may have been destroyed in the process. Scholars from the Hochschule Karlsruhe began documenting the architectural remains. They soon discovered T-shaped pillars, some of which had apparently undergone attempts at smashing.

in 1964, which recognized that the hill could not entirely be a natural feature, but assumed that a Byzantine cemetery lay beneath. Since 1994 excavations have been conducted by the

Göbekli Tepe is the oldest human-made place of worship yet discovered.^[2] Until excavations began, a complex on this scale was not thought possible for a community so ancient. The massive sequence of stratification layers suggests several millennia of activity, perhaps reaching back to the Mesolithic. The oldest occupation layer (stratum III) contains monolithic pillars linked by coarsely built walls to form circular or oval structures. So far, four such buildings, with diameters between 10 and 30m have been uncovered. Geophysical surveys indicate the existence of 16 additional structures.

Stratum II, dated to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) (7500–6000 BC), has revealed several adjacent rectangular rooms with floors of polished lime, reminiscent of Roman terrazzo floors. The most recent layer consists of sediment deposited as the result of agricultural activity.

The monoliths are decorated with carved reliefs of animals and of abstract pictograms. The pictograms may represent commonly understood sacred symbols, as known from Neolithic cave paintings elsewhere. The carefully carved figurative reliefs depict lions, bulls, boars, foxes, gazelles, asses, snakes and other reptiles, insects, arachnids, and birds, particularly vultures and water fowl. At the time the shrine was constructed the surrounding country was much lusher and capable of sustaining this variety of wildlife, before millennia of settlement and cultivation resulted in the near–Dust Bowl conditions prevailing today.^[3]

Vultures also feature in the iconography of the Neolithic sites of Çatalhöyük and Jericho; it is believed that in the early Neolithic culture of Anatolia and the Near East the deceased were deliberately exposed in order to be excarnated by vultures and other birds of prey. (The head of the deceased was sometimes removed and preserved—possibly a sign of ancestor worship.)^[4]sky burial, as practiced today by Tibetan Buddhists and Zoroastrians in India.^[5] This, then, would represent an early form of

Few humanoid forms have surfaced at Göbekli Tepe, but include a relief of a naked woman, posed frontally in a crouched position, that Schmidt likens to the Venus accueillante figures found in Neolithic north Africa; and of at least one decapitated corpse surrounded by vultures. Some of the pillars, namely the T-shaped ones, have carved arms, which may indicate that they represent stylized humans (or anthropomorphic gods). Another example is decorated with human hands in what could be interpreted as a prayer gesture, with a simple stole or surplice engraved above; this may be intended to represent a temple priest.

The houses or temples are round megalithic buildings. The walls are made of unworked dry stone and include numerous T-shaped monolithic pillars of limestone that are up to 3 m high. Another, bigger pair of pillars is placed in the centre of the structures. There is evidence that the structures were roofed; the central pair of pillars may have supported the roof. The floors are made of terrazzo (burnt lime), and there is a low bench running along the whole of the exterior wall.

The reliefs on the pillars include foxes, lions, cattle, wild boars, wild asses, herons, ducks, scorpions, ants, spiders, many snakes, and a very few anthropomorphic figures. Some of the reliefs have been deliberately erased, maybe in preparation for new designs. There are freestanding sculptures as well that may represent wild boars or foxes. As they are heavily encrusted with lime, it is sometimes difficult to tell. Comparable statues have been discovered at Nevalı Çori and Nahal Hemar.

The quarries for the statues are located on the plateau itself; some unfinished pillars have been found there in situ. The biggest unfinished pillar is still 6.9 m long; a length of 9m has been reconstructed. This is much larger than any of the finished pillars found so far. The stone was quarried with stone picks. Bowl-like depressions in the limestone rocks may already have served as mortars or fire-starting bowls in the epipalaeolithic. There are some phalloi and geometric patterns cut into the rock as well; their dating is uncertain.

While the structures are primarily temples, more recently smaller domestic buildings have been uncovered. Despite this, it is clear that the primary use of the site was cultic and not domestic. Schmidt believes this "cathedral on a hill" was a pilgrimage destination attracting worshipers up to a hundred miles distant. Butchered bones found in large numbers from local game such as deer, gazelle, pigs, and geese have been identified as refuse derived from hunting and food prepared for the congregants.^[8]

The site was deliberately backfilled sometime after 8000 BC: the buildings are covered with settlement refuse that must have been brought from elsewhere. These deposits include flint tools like scrapers and arrowheads and animal bones. The lithic inventory is characterised by Byblos points and numerous Nemrik-points. There are Helwan-points and Aswad-points as well.

While the site formally belongs to the earliest Neolithic (PPN A), up to now no traces of domesticated plants or animals have been found. The inhabitants were hunters and gatherers^[9] Schmidt speculates that the site played a key function in the transition to agriculture; he assumes that the necessary social organization needed for the creation of these structures went hand-in-hand with the organized exploitation of wild crops. For sustenance, wild cereals may have been used more intensively than before; perhaps they were even deliberately cultivated. Recent DNA analysis of modern domesticated wheat compared with wild wheat has shown that its DNA is closest in structure to wild wheat found on Mount Karaca Dağ 20 miles away from the site, leading one to believe that this is where modern wheat was first domesticated.^[10] who nevertheless lived in villages for at least part of the year.

Schmidt considers Göbekli Tepe a central location for a cult of the dead. He suggests that the carved animals are there to protect the dead. Though no tombs or graves have been found so far, Schmidt believes they remain to be discovered beneath the sacred circles' floors.^[11] Schmidt also interprets it in connection with the initial stages of an incipient Neolithic. It is one of several neolithic sites in the vicinity of Mount Karaca Dağ, an area where geneticists suspect the origins of at least some of our cultivated grains (see Einkorn). Such scholars suggest that the Neolithic revolution, i.e., the beginnings of grain cultivation, took place here. Schmidt and others believe that mobile groups in the area were forced to cooperate with each other to protect early concentrations of wild cereals from wild animals (herds of gazelles and wild donkeys). This would have led to an early social organization of various groups in the area of Göbekli Tepe. Thus, according to Schmidt, the Neolithic did not begin on a small scale in the form of individual instances of garden cultivation, but started immediately as a large-scale social organisation ("a full-scale revolution"^[12]).

All statements about the site must be considered preliminary, as only about 5% of the site's total area has been excavated as yet; floor levels have been reached in only the second complex (complex B), which also contained a terrazzo-like floor. Schmidt believes that the dig could well continue for another fifty years, "and barely scratch the surface."^[11] So far excavations have revealed very little evidence for residential use. Through the radiocarbon method, the end of stratum III can be fixed at c. 9000 BC (see above); its beginnings are estimated to 11,000 BC or earlier. Stratum II dates to about 8000 BC.

Thus, the structures not only predate pottery, metallurgy, and the invention of writing or the wheel; they were built before the so-called Neolithic Revolution, i.e., the beginning of agricultureanimal husbandry around 9000 BC. But the construction of Göbekli Tepe implies organisation of an order of complexity not hitherto associated with pre-Neolithic societies. The archaeologists estimate that up to 500 persons were required to extract the 10–20 ton pillars (in fact, some weigh up to 50 tons) from local quarries and move them 100 to 500m to the site.^[13]Which came first, monumental building projects or farming? Archaeo News 14 December 2008 [1] It is generally believed that an elite class of religious leaders supervised the work and later controlled whatever ceremonies took place here. If so, this would be the oldest known evidence for a priestly caste—much earlier than such social distinctions developed elsewhere in the Near East.^[11] and

Around the beginning of the 8th millennium BC "Potbelly Hill" lost its importance. The advent of agriculture and animal husbandry brought new realities to human life in the area, and the "stone-age zoo" (as Schmidt calls it) depicted on the pillars apparently lost whatever significance it had had for the region's older, foraging, communities. But the complex was not simply abandoned and forgotten, to be gradually destroyed by the elements. Instead, it was deliberately buried under 300 to 500 cubic metres of soil.^[14] Why this was done is unknown, but it preserved the monuments for posterity.

Göbekli Tepe is regarded as an archaeological discovery of the greatest importance since it profoundly changes our understanding of a crucial stage in the development of human societies. It seems that the erection of monumental complexes was within the capacities of hunter-gatherers and not only of sedentary farming communities as had been previously assumed. In other words, as excavator Klaus Schmidt puts it: "First came the temple, then the city."^[15] This revolutionary hypothesis will have to be supported or modified by future research.

Not only its large dimensions, but the side-by-side existence of multiple pillar shrines makes the location unique. There are no comparable monumental complexes from its time. Nevalı Çori, a well-known Neolithic settlement also excavated by the German Archaeological Institute, and submerged by the Atatürk Dam since 1992, is 500 years later, its T-shaped pillars are considerably smaller, and its shrine was located inside a village; the roughly contemporary architecture at Jericho is devoid of artistic merit or large-scale sculpture; and Çatalhöyük, perhaps the most famous of all Anatolian Neolithic villages, is 2,000 years younger.

Schmidt has engaged in some speculation regarding the belief systems of the groups that created Göbekli Tepe, based on comparisons with other shrines and settlements. He assumes shamanicancestors, whereas he sees a fully articulated belief in gods only developing later in Mesopotamia, associated with extensive temples and palaces. This corresponds well with an ancient Sumerian belief that agriculture, animal husbandry and weaving had been brought to mankind from the sacred mountain Du-Ku, which was inhabited by Annuna—deities, very ancient gods without individual names. Klaus Schmidt identifies this story as an oriental primeval myth that preserves a partial memory of the Neolithic.^[16] It is also apparent that the animal and other images give no indication of organized violence, i.e., there are no depictions of hunting raids or wounded animals, and the pillar carvings ignore game on which the society mainly subsisted, like deer, in favor of formidable creatures such as lions, snakes, spiders and scorpions.^[17][18][19] practices and suggests that the T-shaped pillars may represent mythical creatures, perhaps

At present, Göbekli Tepe raises more questions for archaeology and prehistory than it answers. We do not know how a force large enough to construct, augment, and maintain such a substantial complex was mobilized and paid or fed in the conditions of pre-Neolithic society. We cannot "read" the pictograms, and do not know for certain what meaning the animal reliefs had for visitors to the site; the variety of fauna depicted, from lions and boars to birds and insects, makes any single explanation problematic. As there seems to be little or no evidence of habitation, and the animals depicted on the stones are mainly predators, the stones may have been intended to stave off evils through some form of magic representation; it is also possible that they served as totems.^[20] It is not known why more and more walls were added to the interiors while the sanctuary was in use, with the result that some of the engraved pillars were obscured from view. Burial may or may not have occurred at the site. The reason the complex was eventually buried remains unexplained. Until more evidence is gathered, it is difficult to deduce anything certain about the originating culture.

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

Six miles from Urfa, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey, Klaus Schmidt has made one of the most startling archaeological discoveries of our time: massive carved stones about 11,000 years old, crafted and arranged by prehistoric people who had not yet developed metal tools or even pottery. The megaliths predate Stonehenge by some 6,000 years. The place is called Gobekli Tepe, and Schmidt, a German archaeologist who has been working here more than a decade, is convinced it's the site of the world's oldest temple.

"Guten Morgen," he says at 5:20 a.m. when his van picks me up at my hotel in Urfa. Thirty minutes later, the van reaches the foot of a grassy hill and parks next to strands of barbed wire. We follow a knot of workmen up the hill to rectangular pits shaded by a corrugated steel roof—the main excavation site. In the pits, standing stones, or pillars, are arranged in circles. Beyond, on the hillside, are four other rings of partially excavated pillars. Each ring has a roughly similar layout: in the center are two large stone T-shaped pillars encircled by slightly smaller stones facing inward. The tallest pillars tower 16 feet and, Schmidt says, weigh between seven and ten tons. As we walk among them, I see that some are blank, while others are elaborately carved: foxes, lions, scorpions and vultures abound, twisting and crawling on the pillars' broad sides.

Schmidt points to the great stone rings, one of them 65 feet across. "This is the first human-built holy place," he says.

From this perch 1,000 feet above the valley, we can see to the horizon in nearly every direction. Schmidt, 53, asks me to imagine what the landscape would have looked like 11,000 years ago, before centuries of intensive farming and settlement turned it into the nearly featureless brown expanse it is today.

Prehistoric people would have gazed upon herds of gazelle and other wild animals; gently flowing rivers, which attracted migrating geese and ducks; fruit and nut trees; and rippling fields of wild barley and wild wheat varieties such as emmer and einkorn. "This area was like a paradise," says Schmidt, a member of the German Archaeological Institute. Indeed, Gobekli Tepe sits at the northern edge of the Fertile Crescent—an arc of mild climate and arable land from the Persian Gulf to present-day Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Egypt—and would have attracted hunter-gatherers from Africa and the Levant. And partly because Schmidt has found no evidence that people permanently resided on the summit of Gobekli Tepe itself, he believes this was a place of worship on an unprecedented scale—humanity's first "cathedral on a hill."

With the sun higher in the sky, Schmidt ties a white scarf around his balding head, turban-style, and deftly picks his way down the hill among the relics. In rapid-fire German he explains that he has mapped the entire summit using ground-penetrating radar and geomagnetic surveys, charting where at least 16 other megalith rings remain buried across 22 acres. The one-acre excavation covers less than 5 percent of the site. He says archaeologists could dig here for another 50 years and barely scratch the surface.

Gobekli Tepe was first examined—and dismissed—by University of Chicago and Istanbul University anthropologists in the 1960s. As part of a sweeping survey of the region, they visited the hill, saw some broken slabs of limestone and assumed the mound was nothing more than an abandoned medieval cemetery. In 1994, Schmidt was working on his own survey of prehistoric sites in the region. After reading a brief mention of the stone-littered hilltop in the University of Chicago researchers' report, he decided to go there himself. From the moment he first saw it, he knew the place was extraordinary.

Unlike the stark plateaus nearby, Gobekli Tepe (the name means "belly hill" in Turkish) has a gently rounded top that rises 50 feet above the surrounding landscape. To Schmidt's eye, the shape stood out. "Only man could have created something like this," he says. "It was clear right away this was a gigantic Stone Age site." The broken pieces of limestone that earlier surveyors had mistaken for gravestones suddenly took on a different meaning.

Found Here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/gobekli-tepe.html

As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, representing the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important -- a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable on the planet.

"This place is a supernova", says Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of Turkey's border with Syria. "Within a minute of first seeing it I knew I had two choices: go away and tell nobody, or spend the rest of my life working here."

Behind him are the first folds of the Anatolian plateau. Ahead, the Mesopotamian plain, like a dust-colored sea, stretches south hundreds of miles to Baghdad and beyond. The stone circles of Gobekli Tepe are just in front, hidden under the brow of the hill.

Compared to Stonehenge, Britain's most famous prehistoric site, they are humble affairs. None of the circles excavated (four out of an estimated 20) are more than 30 meters across. What makes the discovery remarkable are the carvings of boars, foxes, lions, birds, snakes and scorpions, and their age. Dated at around 9,500 BC, these stones are 5,500 years older than the first cities of Mesopotamia, and 7,000 years older than Stonehenge.

Never mind circular patterns or the stone-etchings, the people who erected this site did not even have pottery or cultivate wheat. They lived in villages. But they were hunters, not farmers.

"Everybody used to think only complex, hierarchical civilizations could build such monumental sites, and that they only came about with the invention of agriculture", says Ian Hodder, a Stanford University Professor of Anthropology, who, since 1993, has directed digs at Catalhoyuk, Turkey's most famous Neolithic site. "Gobekli changes everything. It's elaborate, it's complex and it is pre-agricultural. That fact alone makes the site one of the most important archaeological finds in a very long time."

With only a fraction of the site opened up after a decade of excavations, Gobekli Tepe's significance to the people who built it remains unclear. Some think the site was the center of a fertility rite, with the two tall stones at the center of each circle representing a man and woman.

It's a theory the tourist board in the nearby city of Urfa has taken up with alacrity. Visit the Garden of Eden, its brochures trumpet, see Adam and Eve.

Schmidt is skeptical about the fertility theory. He agrees Gobekli Tepe may well be "the last flowering of a semi-nomadic world that farming was just about to destroy," and points out that if it is in near perfect condition today, it is because those who built it buried it soon after under tons of soil, as though its wild animal-rich world had lost all meaning.

But the site is devoid of the fertility symbols that have been found at other Neolithic sites, and the T-shaped columns, while clearly semi-human, are sexless. "I think here we are face to face with the earliest representation of gods", says Schmidt, patting one of the biggest stones. "They have no eyes, no mouths, no faces. But they have arms and they have hands. They are makers."

"In my opinion, the people who carved them were asking themselves the biggest questions of all," Schmidt continued. "What is this universe? Why are we here?"

With no evidence of houses or graves near the stones, Schmidt believes the hill top was a site of pilgrimage for communities within a radius of roughly a hundred miles. He notes how the tallest stones all face southeast, as if scanning plains that are scattered with archeological sites in many ways no less remarkable than Gobekli Tepe.

Last year, for instance, French archaeologists working at Djade al-Mughara in northern Syria uncovered the oldest mural ever found. "Two square meters of geometric shapes, in red, black and white - a bit like a Paul Klee painting," explains Eric Coqueugniot, the University of Lyon archaeologist who is leading the excavation.

Coqueugniot describes Schmidt's hypothesis that Gobekli Tepe was meeting point for feasts, rituals and sharing ideas as "tempting," given the site's spectacular position. But he emphasizes that surveys of the region are still in their infancy. "Tomorrow, somebody might find somewhere even more dramatic."

Director of a dig at Korpiktepe, on the Tigris River about 120 miles east of Urfa, Vecihi Ozkaya doubts the thousands of stone pots he has found since 2001 in hundreds of 11,500 year-old graves quite qualify as that. But his excitement fills his austere office at Dicle University in Diyarbakir.

"Look at this", he says, pointing at a photo of an exquisitely carved sculpture showing an animal, half-human, half-lion. "It's a sphinx, thousands of years before Egypt. Southeastern Turkey, northern Syria - this region saw the wedding night of our civilization."

Found Here: http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav041708a.shtml