Building of a ziggurat, as imagined in a much, much, much later etching. (This etching seems to have been created to illustrate the biblical Book of Genesis, possibly representing the Tower of Babel.) Source: Wellcome Collection
Ziggurat of Chogha Zanbil, 1250 BCE, from the ancient city of Dur Untash in what is now Iran. Photo by Richard S. Ellis, Dec., 1959. Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.9117133
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Environmental history
J.R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).
Most of this information can be found in any decent world history textbook. For more information see, e.g., Carol R. Ember, “Hunter-Gatherers” at Yale University, Human Relations Area Files: Explaining Human Culture, https://hraf.yale.edu/ehc/summaries/hunter-gatherers, accessed 10 Jul., 2024.
For one of the most recent translations of Gilgamesh, see Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), Kindle Edition.
Image & Caption: H.S. McCormack, “Labor-Saving Duplicating Machines for the Office” in Scientific American, 107, no. 15 (1912): 302–11. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26011309.
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Face spray paint, hand-stencil technology
Jo Marchant, “A Journey to the Oldest Cave Paintings in the World,” Smithsonian Magazine (Jan 2016): smithsonianmag.com/history/journey-oldest-cave-paintings-world-180957685/, accessed 28 Jan., 2024.
Adhi Agus Oktaviana, “Hand Stencils and Boats in the Painted Rock Art of the Karst Region of Muna Island, Southeast Sulawesi.” In Sue O’Connor, David Bulbeck, and Juliet Meyer , editors, The Archaeology of Sulawesi: Current Research on the Pleistocene to the Historic Period, 48:61–78. ANU Press, 2018. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv8bt3bw.11.
Chinese printing during the Song Dynasty
John King Fairbank and Merle Goldman, China: A New History, Second Enlarged Edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press), 95. Kindle Edition.
Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien, “Chinese Invention Of Paper And Printing,” In Collected Writings on Chinese Culture (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2011), 145–162. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1pb61wm.15 .
H.S. McCormack, “Labor-Saving Duplicating Machines for the Office” in Scientific American, 107, no. 15 (1912): 302–11. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26011309.
See Thomas Edison’s electric stencil pen in action at The Henry Ford Museum of Innovation, “Thomas Edison’s Electric Pen Invention,” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idkNLQq297w .
