THE STONE OF SCONE WAS ORIGINALLY A DOORSTEP (POSSIBLY)
And other stories that have most tickled my historical nerdbone this week, including leper squirrels, Plato's flute and a medieval number chart to predict whether you will soon die
It has, in many ways, been Quite The Week. Right now I was due to be in Paris, prancing around the Musée de Cluny and the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée de having a beer and generally forgetting about everything.
Instead it appears that I am sitting on a train through the suburbs of London, because various things happened, including one of my teeth breaking in half, and the drains flooding and filling one of the bathrooms with (horrible phrase) raw sewage, and - well, stuff that is of greater consequence to me that you, but no less annoying for it.
But there’s no point whining. So, by way of remedy, I thought I would write you a little note, pulling together the top five things that have not been annoying to me this week. Historical things. Things that are pretty cool, and might put a smile on your face for the weekend. Might even put a smile on mine.
As a friend’s grandmother used to say in times of crisis: cheer up, chicken, you’ll soon be dead.
1. The Stone of Scone was actually a doorstep
In the latest season of my podcast This Is History, I’ve been telling some of the story of Edward I’s ham/mer-fisted attempt to conquer Scotland. One of the beastly things the old boy did was to steal the Scots’ famous coronation stone - a hunk of rock kept at Scone Abbey, on which the medieval Kings of Scots were traditionally crowned.
Stone of Scone lore has variously held that it was the rock on which the patriarch Jacob fell asleep; or that it was transported to Scotland from Egypt. But researchers who have inspected it now speculate that it could have been ‘part of a step or threshold, perhaps from an earlier church at Scone or possibly a nearby Roman ruin.’
Less sexy, but more probable. Good thing? Bad thing? Depends what gets you going.
2. AI reveals what Plato did before he died
Artificial Intelligence will transform - has already transformed - historical study. At its most banal, ChatGTP can now write an essay indistinguishable from the formulaic dreck students are trained to produce in class, usually to the detriment of their enjoyment of history.
But it can do jawdroppingly cool stuff, too.
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