History News

I've stumbled across a couple of gems recently:

An Irish "bog man" who used hair gel (well at least that's the journalistic take on it):
"The preserved remains of two prehistoric men discovered in an Irish bog have revealed a couple of surprises - one used hair gel and the other stood 6 foot 6 inches high, the tallest Iron Age body discovered.
...the other man was quite short, about 5 foot 2 inches," said Ned Kelly, head of antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland.
The shorter man appeared to attempt to give himself greater stature by a rather curious headdress which was a bit like a Mohican-style with the hair gel, which was a resin imported from France," Kelly told BBC radio. ...
... Kelly said the fact he was able to buy imported cosmetics suggests he was a wealthy member of Irish society about 2,300 years ago."

And good news about the Chinese starting to treasure their heritage. A Sung dynasty merchant ship (dated to between 1127-1279), 25 metres by 10 metres and containing an estimated 70,000 piece of pottery, is to be raised whole from off Guangdong (Canton) and, it is hoped, eventually put on display in a sea-water tank.

According to Zhang Bo, the first step is that the surrounding environment of the ship will be cleared as it is covered with two-meter-thick silt and sits at 20 meters below sea level. The second step is that stakes will be rammed into the seabed and the ship covered with a huge box with the bottom sealed. Following this, the box will be slowly moved on board a 4,000-ton ship, which will be specially built for the salvage in May 2006.