(video link) One of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world wasn’t contained in a nation or a city. It was a series of trade routes that crisscrossed Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Swahili Coast of Africa, and dubbed the “Silk Road” by modern explorers. For centuries, these routes passed through wealthy cities whose vibrant cultures were hybrids of Eastern and Western culture, joined by the spirit of trade and knowledge exchange. The Silk Road civilization thrived because it had no borders. In this episode of Ancient People Did Stuff , we talk about some of the more unusual discoveries that archaeologists have made at excavation sites along the ancient Silk Roads. One of the great medieval cities of the Silk Road was Samarkand, located today in Uzbekistan. Its people were called Sogdians, and their language was the lingua franca of the Silk Road during roughly the 4 th through the 8 th centuries. And yet one of the only remaining examples we have of written Sogdian is in an angry letter that an abandoned wife sent to her husband, which was lost in a mailbag and found over a millennium later. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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The strangest things archaeologists have found on the ancient Silk Roads
Saint Catherine’s Monastery, a sacred Christian site nestled in the shadow of Mount Sinai, is home to one of the world’s oldest continuously used libraries. Thousands of manuscripts and books are kept there — some of which contain hidden treasures. An anonymous reader shares a report: Now, a team of researchers is using new technology to uncover texts that were erased and written over by the monks who lived and worked at the monastery. Many of these original texts were written in languages well known to researchers — Latin, Greek, Arabic — but others were inscribed in long-lost languages that are rarely seen in the historical record. Manuscripts with multiple layers of writing are known as palimpsests, and there are about 130 of them at St. Catherine’s Monastery, according to the website of the Early Manuscript Electronic Library, which has been leading the initiative to uncover the original texts. With the rise of Islam in the 7th century, Christian sites in the Sinai Desert began to disappear, and Saint Catherine’s found itself in relative isolation. Monks turned to reusing older parchments when supplies at the monastery ran scarce. To uncover the palimpsests’ secret texts, researchers photographed thousands of pages multiple times, illuminating each page with different-colored lights. They also photographed the pages with light shining onto them from behind, or from an oblique angle, which helped “highlight tiny bumps and depressions in the surface, ” Gray writes. They then fed the information into a computer algorithm, which is able to distinguish the more recent texts from the originals. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Target is the top corporate installer of solar power in the USA with 147MW installed on 300 stores. Walmart is close behind with 140MW, while Ikea has installed solar on 90% of its retail locations. The Solar Energy Institute of America (SEIA) report shows over 1, 000MW of solar installed in almost 2, 000 unique installations by the largest corporate entities in the country. Additionally these groups have more than doubled their installation volume year on year, with 2015 seeing a total of 130MW, while 2016 is projected to be closer to 280MW. Big box retail locations offer some of the best potential spaces for solar power to be installed — on top of square, flat structures and in previously built parking lots. The average size of an installation by a company in this group is about 500kW — 75X the size of an average residential solar installation. The RE100 organization has signed up 81 global corporations (many on the SEIA list) who have pledged 100% renewable energy. “We’re incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made in improving building efficiencies and reducing environmental impact. Our commitment to installing solar panels on 500 stores and distribution centers by 2020 is evidence of that progress” — said John Leisen, vice president of property management at Target. The geographic breakdown of solar installations is based upon three main drivers — good sunlight, expensive electricity and state level renewable mandates, with Southern California having all three. The northeast USA, with its expensive electricity and aggressive clean energy push, has been on par with California (50% of total solar) for commercial installations. A report put together by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the World Resources Institute (WRI) breaks down the various state level laws that support corporations going green — and, without surprise, it becomes clear that the legal support of renewable energy is a definite driver. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
