Ligabue Magazine 58

We begin with an exceptional discovery in Bolivia. In collaboration with Italian and Bolivian experts, the Study Centre brought to light the remains of a prehistoric hunter buried in an Andean valley. The man lived long before the invention of agriculture in South America. The animals that he saw and hunted are now extinct. In fact, the fauna in his day consisted of prehistoric giants, such as the glyptodont (a kind of armadillo the size of a car), whose abandoned empty shells once studded the valleys and plains like small igloos. The man had been buried with his spear and its deadly stone point. Ongoing laboratory tests, also to establish a more precise idea of his age, could come up with even more surprises. The same expedition made a second sensational discovery: a pre-Inca settlement with the remains of dwellings, canals, mills, walls and hundreds of terracing’s for houses and crops. The discovery also highlighted a tragedy: the town had been destroyed by an enormous landslide which had halted the course of time. Having discovered of the remains of a prehistoric hunter and a buried settlement, this expedition seems to have come straight out of the trailblazing days of archaeology. But the discoveries were not made by chance, because seeking for the remains of the past concealed in inaccessible remote places is a challenge that the Study Centre has pursued for many years now. This often translates into missions to spectacular locations, such as those described by Richard Céspedes Paz and Antonio Paolillo in their article on the prehistoric man in Bolivia.

With a swift change of scenery, we come to Alessandro Minelli’s article and a very special way of inquiring into the past. The subject is evolution. Why do the long-necked giraffes have precisely seven vertebrae and no more (a few extra might have been handled). Why are there as many as 200 species of Scolopendra (a genus of centipedes) with 23 pairs of legs and an incredible 500 with 21 pairs of legs but none with 22 pairs of legs? To answer these questions, we must delve into one of the most stimulating research fields: evolutionary developmental biology, or Evo-Devo for short. In practice it is the study of the assembly line building living beings, with all its various mechanisms and dead ends, which Alessandro Minelli explains so well in his article. On the subject of evolution, one place where you can review millions of years of life on Earth is the Venice Museum of Natural History, where some new rooms have recently been opened. The museum and its new layout are described here by Mauro Bon and Lorenzo Greppi. The museums over 2 million items include an intact dinosaur (Ouranosaurus nigeriensis) from 100 million years ago unearthed by Giancarlo Ligabue in an expedition to the Ténéré Desert in 1973.

It’s not all that surprising that the facade of one of the finest palaces on the Grand Canal conceals a dinosaur, because the history of the Fontego dei Turchi, as the palace is called, is full of surprises. Before becoming an emporium and trading centre for Turkish merchants in Venice, it was even once the temporary home of a Byzantine emperor. From Venice to Assyria, and the article by Viviano Domenici, who takes a look at behaviours, rites and superstitions associated with eclipses in various civilisations over the millennia. Marina Rubinich, on the other hand, takes us on a guided tour of an ancient Roman fitness centre: i.e. the Great Baths of Aquileia. The town itself was a vital crossroads in the empire especially for trade. Amber from the Baltic and goods of all kinds from North Africa and Asia found their way to this frontier town in what is now northeast Italy. Situated in the heart of Aquileia, the monumental baths could be admired by people from far and wide. They were on a scale comparable to the famous Baths of Caracalla in Rome. Now the subject of a major excavation project, they take us back in time to the forgotten atmospheres of the ancient world. The archaeologists’ instruments have brought to light mosaics and the remains of marble decorations in the frigidarium, tepidarium and calidarium. You can almost hear the chatter and laughter of well-to-do Romans being massaged by slaves or immersed in water heated by underground furnaces.

And who knows how much more will be brought to light from this still almost entirely buried city. This issue of the magazine ends with a rather unusual subject. How to drink water in Venice. Now that mains water is supplied to the houses and hotels, nobody wonders any longer how the Venetians managed to procure water in the past, given that the water all-round the city is either salty or brackish. They actually adopted a very simple strategy: the wells that you can see in the campi (as the squares are called in Venice) did not draw water from an underground source but collected it from above, i.e. rainwater. In short, the wells were large cisterns filled by drains situated at the edges of the squares. Described in detail by Bruno Berti, the old Venetian system of procuring drinking water was one of the secrets making it possible to build what for many is the most beautiful city in the world.

Good reading and Bon Voyage!