Lombard Italy
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The Fifty-Three Known Forefathers of the Italian People: Latest Discoveries from Genetics
This is a story about Italian y-DNA. But putting it that way is misleading. For there is not a single coherent story of “Italianness” that stretches back in time. And that story is almost inseparable from the stories of the surrounding populations with which developments in Italy are intimately connected. But it is the case that the science of genetics is gradually unfolding a richer picture of the past than was known before. If we go back far enough (thousands of years) we find (along the patrilineal line) that virtually all Italians are descended from only fifty-three men. Why there are so few, we will see below. Casual labels are…
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Doctor Who? Trotula of Salerno
She was a doctor and a master of the art of healing who taught others. She is usually called Trotula, although her true name was Trota or Trocta. For three centuries medical works on the health and treatment of women circulated under her name: “The Trotula”. She has been lauded as among the finest doctors of the European Middle Ages or she has been so forgotten that it has been said that she did not even exist. It was only at the end of the 20th century that her true practice of medicine was recovered. Salerno Trotula lived in Salerno: but the Salerno of Trotula’s time is almost as little known…
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Sicily’s Medieval Map of the World
It must have been magnificent to see: a vast world map made of pure silver. For three centuries no better map was made. The glittering silver original graced the Palermo court of Roger II, the Italo-Norman King of Sicily and Southern Italy. It was made for him by his scholar geographer friend Muhammad Al Idrisi. The map represented one of the most ambitious scientific undertakings of its day taking more than 15 years to complete. It was imagined by a king famed for his learning at the height of his kingdom’s powers. It took almost 150 kilograms of silver to make and showed the world in 7 climates. To make…
