A Tocharian how-to guide for speaking to the dead in a dead language. Happy Halloween!

My favorite will always be “romæcæstri” from the Franks casket. Romchester, the eternal city

Mallory & Adams (1997) claim the wild goat was widespread following the Pleistocene, but the claims for widespread domestic goats are restricted to the Neolithic and onwards

“Emergence and intensification of dairying in the Caucasus and Eurasian steppes” (Scott et al 2022) does seem to show the establishment of goat pastoralism as a post-Eneolithic development in the steppe, coming from the Caucasus

It seems a little hard to square the following with some more recent archaeological work, unless I’m misunderstanding the claim

When you have dragon-horses, tigers seem like housecats

A somewhat literal brick inscription from Summer 2024

Chogha Zanbil seems to be within the range of Sciurus anomalus

The front paws side by side between the longer back paws look a lot like squirrel tracks.