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Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Archaeologists unearth tree-lined walkway that led to ancient Egyptian fortress in Sinai Desert
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. This area shows parts of the fortress that archaeologists are uncovering in the Sinai Desert of Egypt. It was rebuilt and modified over a period of centuries. . | Credit: Photo courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities A large ancient Egyptian fortress in the northern Sinai Desert had an elaborate landscape of 500 trees leading to its entrance more than 2,000 years ago, new excavations reveal. Archaeologists made the finding while uncovering more of a fortress that was rebuilt and modified over several centuries. The existence of the fortress has been known for decades. However, new finds by archaeologists from Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities shed light on what the fortress was like more than two millennia ago. Located at the site of Tell Abu Saifi, the fortress was in use during the Ptolemaic period (circa 304 to 30 B.C.), when Ptolemy I — a general of Alexander the Great — and his descendants ruled Egypt, and the Roman period (circa 30 B.C. to A.D. 642), when Egypt was a province in the Roman Empire . They found that during the Ptolemaic period, there were 500 planting circles surrounded with clay on both sides of a road that led to the entrance of the fortress. These would have contained trees, the ministry said in a translated statement . It's not clear what exactly the climate was like in the Sinai Desert around 2,000 years ago. They also found that, during Ptolemaic times, the fortress was surrounded by a trench (a moat) that was more than 6.6 feet (2 meters) deep. This trench would have helped soldiers defend the fortress. The Ptolemies faced a number of adversaries at different times, including the Seleucid Empire, the Roman Republic and rebel groups operating in Egypt. Related: Ancient Egyptians drew the Milky Way on coffins and tombs, linking them to sky goddess, study finds Image 1 of 2 a photo showing where trees were planted in a desert landscape These circles held trees that led up to the entrance of the fortress. Image 2 of 2 an aerial view of an excavated fortress The fortress was in use for centuries and was rebuilt and renovated over time. The planting circles are an interesting find, Elizabeth Macaulay , a classics professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center who was not involved in the excavation, told Live Science in an email. "It is certainly possible that clay planting circles could have been used to plant trees," Macaulay said. "500 trees would have been a lot, but we have evidence from papyri and archaeology for the large-scale cultivation of plants — vines, fruits, trees — in Ptolemaic Egypt." She noted that if the excavation team uncovers the remains of roots, it would help confirm that these circles were used for planting. It might also allow for the identification of the tree species. RELATED STORIES —3,500-year-old 'rest house' used by ancient Egyptian army discovered in Sinai desert —3,200-year-old ancient Egyptian barracks contains sword inscribed with 'Ramesses II' —Dancing dwarf: A 2,300-year-old ancient Egyptian statue of a godlike man with a muscular 6-pack The archaeologists made several other finds, including living quarters of soldiers and perhaps their families. In addition, they unearthed a stretch of road that was 328 feet (100 m) long, 36 feet (11 m) wide, and paved with limestone slabs. It would have been used for military units traveling to the fortress. In an unexpected finding, archaeologists unearthed four corners of a structure that may be from an even earlier period. It's possible that this structure is also a fortress, but the team has not been able to date it or verify its purpose. Live Science contacted the archaeologists who excavated the site but did not hear back by the time of publication. Ancient Egypt quiz: Test your smarts about pyramids, hieroglyphs and King Tut
New York Times
24-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The $40 Billion Issue the N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Aren't Discussing
For decades, politicians have cast education as a great equalizer and cornerstone of a thriving society. But in New York City's competitive mayoral race, it is attracting scant attention. With less than nine weeks until the Democratic primary, none of the major candidates has released a plan centered solely on elementary and secondary education. Across their campaign pages highlighting big issues, the contenders each spend an average of about 75 words talking about education, and 'pandemic' is rarely among those words, even though that health cataclysm still exacts a toll on younger generations. In a city notorious for its divide between opulence and poverty, public education represents both a potential engine of social mobility and one of the biggest ways that local government reaches the everyday lives of New Yorkers. The school system is charged with educating more students than the entire population of San Francisco, preparing them for college or the work force. The city's Education Department, with more than 130,000 staff members, is among the region's top employers. Its $40 billion budget is an unrivaled chunk of spending, exceeding that of the police, fire and health departments combined. But there is little to suggest how the major Democratic candidates for mayor would address the city's middling academic performance, despite the latest results of a gold-standard federal exam that revealed alarming declines in reading and math skills among the city's lowest-performing children. Most candidates have not offered a robust plan to tackle chronic absenteeism after more than a third of students missed at least 10 percent of school days during the last academic year. Their platforms often fail to address the desperate need for more bilingual staff in schools, even though enrollment of children still learning English is ballooning. And in a district with student outcomes sharply divided along income and racial lines, desegregation — or any other means of large-scale school improvement — does not appear to be on politicians' minds. Education experts said the absence of bold ideas was especially striking in New York, one of fewer than a dozen major U.S. cities in which the mayor retains full control over the school system — and a place with a deep tradition of driving national conversations about education. 'The fact that it's now become a footnote is shocking in terms of the time, expense and effort that we put into public education,' said David Bloomfield, an education law and policy professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. Many of the mayoral candidates have emphasized alleviating a major housing shortage, lowering the soaring costs of raising families and expanding access to free child care. The city's affordability crisis has pushed many parents to move, especially Black families. The lack of focus on the nuts and bolts of teaching and learning in New York reflects a national political shift, in which fewer Democrats — once trailblazers on classroom matters — have elevated elementary and secondary education as a priority compared with the 2000s and early 2010s. Thomas Kane, a Harvard economist who studies education policy, said that 'improving student outcomes has long been a progressive goal,' pointing to the 1960s, when the creation of federal funding for schools with low-income students was a centerpiece of President Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty. But in the past decade, Mr. Kane added, voters have split into polarized factions over hot-button subjects such as charter schools, standardized testing and admission to gifted and talented classes for elementary students. In the process, Mr. Kane said, 'a lot of Democrats have become uncomfortable talking about student achievement.' Many of the New York City mayoral candidates have promised to invest in school-based social services, reduce class sizes or expand programs that introduce teenagers to real-world careers. Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor, declares in his platform that after public safety, City Hall has 'no higher calling' than education. Two candidates — State Senator Zellnor Myrie and Scott Stringer, the former comptroller — point to research showing that their child care proposals, which include expanding after-school programs and extending the school day, could boost academic performance and attendance. But few have put forth comprehensive plans for students from kindergarten through high school. Several education experts said that history has shown that piecemeal reforms often fail to produce major change. Outside the classroom, young people face troubles that have gone largely unaddressed, including a pervasive mental health crisis. Nine percent of high schoolers in New York reported attempting suicide in 2021. Marielys Divanne, the executive director of Educators for Excellence-New York, a teachers' group, said in an interview that she helped organize a political forum on literacy this month in part because of how little attention was being devoted to education. 'We were not getting the public discourse that we felt we needed,' said Ms. Divanne, whose group has pressed candidates to commit to building upon Mayor Eric Adams's efforts to overhaul reading and math instruction. 'There's a lot at stake, and ignoring that is a missed opportunity,' Ms. Divanne said. At the literacy forum, candidates were each given two minutes to share their vision for the school system. Mayor Adams and Mr. Cuomo were invited but did not attend. Spokesmen for their campaigns did not respond to requests for comment. Curtis Sliwa, a Republican candidate for mayor, was also invited to the forum but did not attend. Zohran Mamdani, the progressive state assemblyman who has been rising in polls and whose platform does not yet discuss K-12 education, pledged to increase funding for schools and libraries. Adrienne Adams, the City Council speaker and a late entrant in the race, promised to push local colleges to ensure that aspiring educators are better trained to teach reading. Mr. Stringer said he would provide more children with access to tutors. And Brad Lander, the city comptroller, said he wants to evaluate schools not solely on academics but also by other measures of student well-being and success. Still, Mr. Lander acknowledged, 'We're not spending anywhere near enough time in this race talking about New York City's public schools.' It wasn't always like this. Education was a centerpiece of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's legacy as he shuttered low-performing schools, embraced charters and sought to toughen teacher evaluations. A decade later, Mayor Bill de Blasio's creation of a free preschool program for all 4-year-olds — meant to provide children another year of rigorous early education — became a national model. He also bet big on a plan to improve the city's lowest-performing schools, which ended without producing substantial achievement gains. Mayor Adams, who is running for re-election as an independent, brought new reading curriculum into elementary and middle schools, though he has not fulfilled a campaign promise to ensure that all students with dyslexia are better identified and taught. Jorge Elorza, the chief executive officer of Democrats for Education Reform, an advocacy group, said that Democrats' failure to embrace education as a primary issue adds to the 'narrative from the last election that the Democrats have lost touch' with blue-collar and low-income voters. 'The working class cares disproportionately about education,' said Mr. Elorza, whose organization was co-founded by Whitney Tilson, a former hedge fund executive who is running for mayor. 'Education is the ticket to a better life.' Some powerful politicians have signaled that the failure to address education could affect their endorsements. Representative Adriano Espaillat, an influential Dominican American lawmaker, said at the literacy forum that school issues deserved a greater spotlight: 'It's important to elect a mayor that will put education first.' Many experts speculated that Democrats in cities including New York are making a political calculation. Voters rarely rank education among the issues that matter most in local, state and national elections. In New York, efforts to transform the school district often spark public outcry, such as when the city recently tried to overhaul admissions at its most prestigious high schools. Jeffrey Henig, a professor emeritus of political science and education at Teachers College at Columbia University, said campaigns might see a choice between standing out in a crowded field and steering clear of third rails that 'could blow you off at the knees.' 'Right now,' Mr. Henig added, 'the story is avoiding trip wires.'
Boston Globe
07-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Edward Countryman, student of the American Revolution, dies at 80
Influenced by British labor historian E.P. Thompson, with whom he worked at the University of Warwick in England, Dr. Countryman wrote history from the bottom up, examining the way everyday people made decisions that, collectively, affected the course of events — what came to be known as the new social history. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up He promoted the idea that the American Revolution was about much more than just achieving independence from the British: It was, he asserted, a social revolution, with elites forced to give ground to the working and farming classes. Advertisement 'Ed's work was very much part of the move toward integrating political and institutional and new social history,' Kate Haulman, a historian at American University in Washington who studied with Dr. Countryman, said in an interview. His research was multidirectional, examining not just bottom-up history but top-down political history as well. In his work, elites and workers jostled for influence alongside once-excluded groups: women, Native Americans, and Black Americans, who found that the revolution had given them opportunities to influence the emerging social order — 'a collision of histories,' he liked to say. Advertisement 'He showed me how one could be interested in history from the bottom up, in classes and crowds, and still be interested in nations and nation-building,' said David Waldstreicher, a historian at the City University of New York Graduate Center, who studied with Dr. Countryman at Yale. Dr. Countryman's first book, 'A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790,' won the Bancroft Prize, one of the highest honors in history writing, in 1981. He followed that with 'Americans: A Collision of Histories' (1996), which is still widely considered a canonical work of revolutionary-era studies. Fluid and engaging, his books and essays appeared frequently on reading lists at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, an indication that his love of teaching and mentorship was almost as strong as his love of research. Dr. Countryman emphasized not just the complexity of revolutionary American society but also its vastness, pulling in interior regions and frontiers long ignored by historians focused on the elites and urban society. That flexibility allowed him to remain influential long after new generations of historians had shifted the focus to other areas, including women's and African American history. His work made room for a wide variety of people and groups; there was no single "American" type, he liked to say, but instead a multitude of Americans. 'He had a great appreciation for humans, and what's important to humans, which was pretty flexible,' said Katherine Carté, a historian who worked with Dr. Countryman at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where he taught for the past 30 years. 'He wasn't wedded to a particular ideological position.' Advertisement Edward Francis Countryman Jr. was born July 31, 1944, in Glens Falls, N.Y., an industrial city north of Albany. His father worked in education for the state, while his mother, Agnes (Alford) Countryman, managed the home. He received a bachelor's degree in history from Manhattan College (now Manhattan University) in 1966 and a doctorate in history from Cornell in 1971. Dr. Countryman spent his early career outside the United States — first at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand, and then at the University of Warwick and the University of Cambridge in Britain. After serving as a visiting professor at Yale, he moved to Southern Methodist University in 1991 and remained there until he retired in 2022. Dr. Countryman's first marriage ended in divorce. Along with his daughters, he leaves his wife, Evonne von Heussen-Countryman; a son from his first marriage, Samuel; a sister, Judy Fournier; and six grandchildren. Dr. Countryman never adhered to a particular historical interpretation of the American Revolution, in part, he said, because the meaning of the revolution was disputed even at the time. "The aftermath of independence saw half-literate farmers, angry politicians, sophisticated intellectuals and loyalist exiles all writing down their versions of what they had lived through," he wrote in a 1983 essay for the British Association for American Studies. "Yet for all that they had shared in its events, these men and women could not agree on what the Revolution had been." This article originally appeared in
New York Times
06-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Edward Countryman, Student of the American Revolution, Dies at 80
Edward Countryman, a historian whose wide-ranging studies of the various groups — politicians, laborers, Native Americans and more — at work during the American Revolution helped usher in a more complex understanding of the nation's founding, died on March 24 in Dallas. He was 80. His daughters, Karon Ornadel and Kirstein Powell, confirmed the death but did not say what the cause was or where in Dallas he died. Professor Countryman began his career in the 1970s as part of what was known as the neo-progressive school, which focused on the social and economic factors that drove historical change. Influenced by the British labor historian E.P. Thompson, with whom he worked at the University of Warwick in England, Professor Countryman wrote history from the bottom up, examining the way everyday people made decisions that, collectively, affected the course of events — what came to be known as the new social history. He promoted the idea that the American Revolution was about much more than just achieving independence from the British: It was, he claimed, a social revolution, with elites forced to give ground to the working and farming classes. 'Ed's work was very much part of the move toward integrating political and institutional and new social history,' Kate Haulman, a historian at American University in Washington who studied with Professor Countryman, said in an interview. His research was multidirectional, examining not just bottom-up history but top-down political history as well. In his work, elites and workers jostled for influence alongside once-excluded groups like women, Native Americans and Black Americans, who found that the revolution had given them opportunities to influence the emerging social order — 'a collision of histories,' he liked to say. 'He showed me how one could be interested in history from the bottom up, in classes and crowds, and still be interested in nations and nation-building,' said David Waldstreicher, a historian at the City University of New York Graduate Center, who studied with Professor Countryman at Yale. Professor Countryman's first book, 'A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790,' won the Bancroft Prize, one of the highest honors in history writing, in 1981. He followed that with 'Americans: A Collision of Histories' (1996), which is still widely considered a canonical work of revolutionary-era studies. Fluid and engaging, his books and essays appeared frequently on reading lists at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, an indication that his love of teaching and mentorship was almost as strong as his love of research. Professor Countryman emphasized not just the complexity of revolutionary American society but also its vastness, pulling in interior regions and frontiers long ignored by historians focused on the elites and urban society. That flexibility allowed him to remain influential long after new generations of historians had shifted the focus to other areas, including women's and African American history. His work made room for a wide variety of people and groups; there was no single 'American' type, he liked to say, but instead a multitude of Americans. 'He had a great appreciation for humans, and what's important to humans, which was pretty flexible,' said Katherine Carté, a historian who worked with Professor Countryman at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where he taught for the past 30 years. 'He wasn't wedded to a particular ideological position.' Edward Francis Countryman Jr. was born on July 31, 1944, in Glens Falls, N.Y., an industrial city north of Albany. His father worked in education for the state, while his mother, Agnes (Alford) Countryman, managed the home. He received a bachelor's degree in history from Manhattan College (now Manhattan University) in 1966 and a doctorate in history from Cornell in 1971. Professor Countryman spent his early career outside the United States — first at the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand, and then at the University of Warwick and the University of Cambridge in Britain. After serving as a visiting professor at Yale, he moved to Southern Methodist University in 1991 and remained there until he retired in 2022. Professor Countryman's first marriage ended in divorce. Along with his daughters, he is survived by his wife, Evonne von Heussen-Countryman; a son from his first marriage, Samuel; a sister, Judy Fournier; and six grandchildren. Professor Countryman never adhered to a particular historical interpretation of the American Revolution — in part, he said, because the meaning of the revolution was disputed even at the time. 'The aftermath of independence saw half-literate farmers, angry politicians, sophisticated intellectuals and loyalist exiles all writing down their versions of what they had lived through,' he wrote in a 1983 essay for the British Association for American Studies. 'Yet for all that they had shared in its events, these men and women could not agree on what the Revolution had been.'
