1.
Museum of Natural Sciences
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The Museum of Natural Sciences is a museum in the Belgian capital of Brussels dedicated to natural history. The museum is a part of the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and its most important pieces are 30 fossilized Iguanodon skeletons, which were discovered in 1878 in Bernissart. The dinosaur hall of the museum is the worlds largest museum hall completely dedicated to dinosaurs, another famous piece is the Ishango bone, which was discovered in 1960 by Jean de Heinzelin de Braucourt. Like in most museums, there is a department and a public exhibit department. The museum was founded on 31 March 1846 as a descendant of the Musée de Bruxelles of 1802 and it was based on the collection established by Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine, which dated from the 18th century. Bernard du Bus de Gisignies, became the first director of the museum in 1846, on this occasion he donated 2474 birds from his own collection to the museum. In 1860, during the construction of new fortifications around Antwerp, the museum also obtained the skeletons from a bowhead whale and a young blue whale, which are still on display in the museum. In 1860 the skeleton of a mammoth was found near Lier and due to the action of François-Joseph Scohy it was preserved and brought to the museum. At that time the only other skeleton of a mammoth on display was in the museum of Saint Petersburg, in 1878, the largest find of Iguanodon fossils to date occurred in a coal mine at Bernissart in Belgium. At least 38 Iguanodon individuals were uncovered, of which 30 have been on display since they were moved here from their home at the Palace of Charles of Lorraine in 1891. Since 2007, a renovated and enlarged dinosaur hall of 4580 m2 is the largest dinosaur hall in the world. The Dinosaur hall, with the world famous Iguanodon skeletons Of Men and Mammoths, about the evolution of man, the Mammal Gallery, recent and extinct mammals, including a thylacine. The North and South Pole, a view of two different worlds in a glass tunnel, the Whale Hall, skeletons of whales, dolphins, walruses, sirenians, seals. A small part of the hall is devoted to the role in the economy. The Shell Gallery houses an aquarium and a complete survey of the lower classes of invertebrates. The nearby North Sea Discovery Room takes you on a tour around beach. The entire collection consists of 9000000 specimens and is one of the three biggest shell collections in the world, a great deal was collected by Philippe Dautzenberg. The Insect Gallery, insects, spiders, crustaceans and other arthropods, the collection consists of 15000000 specimens of which ten thousands are holotypes of great scientific value
2.
Bone tool
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In archaeology, a bone tool is a tool created from bone. A bone tool can conceivably be created from almost any bone, bone tools have been documented from the advent of Homo sapiens and are also known from Homo neanderthalensis contexts or even earlier. Bone has been used for making tools by virtually all hunter-gatherer societies, any part of the skeleton can potentially be utilized, however, antlers and long bones provide some of the best working material. Long bone fragments can be shaped, by scraping against a stone, into such items as arrow and spear points, needles, awls. Bone tools had mainly been made from bone splinters or were cut into a useful shape, archaeologists are convinced that bone tools were purposefully made by deer antlers cut into shape. The bone was fashioned into tools such as spoons, knives, awls, pins, fish hooks, needles, flakers and they made musical rasps, flutes and whistles as well as toys of bone. Decoratively carved articles were made of bone such as hair combs, hair pins. Antler is much harder than bone and was used for flakers, points, knives, even the teeth and hooves did not go to waste. The teeth were drilled and used for decoration on clothing and necklaces, the hooves were also drilled and used for decoration on clothing as well as strung for rattles and bells. As an organic material, bone often does not survive in a way that is archaeologically recoverable, however, under the right conditions, bone tools do sometimes survive and many have been recovered from locations around the world representing time periods throughout history and prehistory. Also many examples have been collected ethnographically, and some peoples, as well as experimental archaeologists. The oldest excavated bone tools are from Africa, dated to about 1.5 million years ago and it is widely accepted that they appeared and developed in Africa before any other geographic region. A very famous excavation of bone tools is that of the Blombos Cave in South Africa, a collection of twenty-eight bone tools were recovered from 70 thousand year old Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave. Careful analyses of these tools reveal that production methods were used to create awls. Bone tools have been discovered in the context of Neanderthal groups as well as throughout the development of modern humans, archaeologists have long believed that Neanderthals learned how to make bone tools from modern humans and by mimicking stone tools, viewing bone as simply another raw material. Modern humans, on the hand, took advantage of the properties of bone and worked them into specific shapes. The uncovering of lissoirs at these sites is significant as they are about 51,000 years old, prior to the Industrial Revolution, many everyday tools such as needles were made from bone, such items continue to be valued today as antiques. Bone folders are used by bookbinders
3.
Upper Paleolithic
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The Upper Paleolithic is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity, modern humans are believed to have emerged about 195,000 years ago in Africa. Although these humans were modern in anatomy, their lifestyle changed very little from their contemporaries, such as Homo erectus, about 50,000 years ago, there was a marked increase in the diversity of artifacts. In Africa, bone artifacts and the first art appear in the archeological record, between 45,000 and 43,000 years ago, this new tool technology spread with human migration to Europe. The new technology generated an explosion of modern humans which is believed to have contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals. The Upper Paleolithic has the earliest known evidence of organized settlements, in the form of campsites, artistic work blossomed, with cave painting, petroglyphs, carvings and engravings on bone or ivory. The first evidence of fishing is also noted, from artifacts in places such as Blombos cave in South Africa. More complex social groupings emerged, supported by more varied and reliable food sources and this probably contributed to increasing group identification or ethnicity. By 50, 000–40,000 BP, the first humans set foot in Australia, by 45,000 BP, humans lived at 61° north latitude in Europe. By 30,000 BP, Japan was reached, and by 27,000 BP humans were present in Siberia above the Arctic Circle, at the end of the Upper Paleolithic, a group of humans crossed the Bering land bridge and quickly expanded throughout North and South America. Both Homo erectus and Neanderthals used the same crude stone tools, archaeologist Richard G. Klein, who has worked extensively on ancient stone tools, describes the stone tool kit of archaic hominids as impossible to categorize. It was as if the Neanderthals made stone tools, and were not much concerned about their final forms and he argues that almost everywhere, whether Asia, Africa or Europe, before 50,000 years ago all the stone tools are much alike and unsophisticated. These new stone-tool types have been described as being distinctly differentiated from each other, the invaders, commonly referred to as the Cro-Magnons, left many sophisticated stone tools, carved and engraved pieces on bone, ivory and antler, cave paintings and Venus figurines. The Neanderthals continued to use Mousterian stone tool technology and possibly Chatelperronian technology and these tools disappeared from the archeological record at around the same time the Neanderthals themselves disappeared from the fossil record, about 40,000 years ago. Settlements were often located in valley bottoms, possibly associated with hunting of passing herds of animals. Hunting was important, and caribou/wild reindeer may well be the species of single greatest importance in the anthropological literature on hunting. Technological advances included significant developments in flint tool manufacturing, with industries based on fine blades rather than simpler and shorter flakes, burins and racloirs were used to work bone, antler and hides. Advanced darts and harpoons also appear in period, along with the fish hook, the oil lamp, rope
4.
Baboon
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Baboons are African and Arabian Old World monkeys belonging to the genus Papio, part of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. The five species are some of the largest non-hominoid members of the order, only the mandrill. Previously, the closely related gelada and the two species of genus Mandrillus were grouped in the genus, and these Old World monkeys are still often referred to as baboons in everyday speech. They range in size and weight depending on species, the Guinea baboon is 50 cm and weighs only 14 kg, while the largest chacma baboon can be 120 cm and weigh 40 kg. Five species of Papio are commonly recognized, although there is disagreement about whether they are really full species or subspecies. They are P. ursinus, P. papio, P. hamadryas, P. anubis, many authors distinguish P. hamadryas as a full species, but regard all the others as subspecies of P. cynocephalus and refer to them collectively as savanna baboons. However, recent morphological and genetic studies of Papio show the hamadryas baboon to be closely related to the northern baboon species than to the southern species. In 2015 researchers found the oldest baboon fossil dating 2 million years ago, the traditional five-form classification probably under-represents the variation within Papio. However, current knowledge of the morphological, genetic, and behavioral diversity within Papio is too poor to make any final and these calluses are nerveless, hairless pads of skin that provide for the sitting comfort of the baboon. All baboon species exhibit pronounced sexual dimorphism, usually in size, males of the hamadryas baboon species also have large white manes. Baboons are terrestrial and are found in savannah, open woodland. Their diets are omnivorous, but mostly herbivorous, yet they eat insects and occasionally prey on fish, trout and salmon if available, shellfish, hares, birds, vervet monkeys and they are foragers and are active at irregular times throughout the day and night. They can raid human dwellings, and in South Africa, they have known to prey on sheep. Baboons in captivity have been known to live up to 45 years, baboons are able to acquire orthographic processing skills, which form part of the ability to read. Their principal predators are Nile crocodiles, lions, spotted and striped hyenas, leopards and they are considered a difficult prey for the leopard, though, which is mostly a threat to young baboons. Large males will often confront them by flashing their eyelids, showing their teeth by yawning, screeching, making gestures, although they are not a prey species, baboons have been killed by the black mamba. This usually occurs when a baboon accidentally rouses the snake, most baboons live in hierarchical troops. Group sizes vary between five and 250 animals, depending on circumstances, especially species and time of year
5.
Quartz
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Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in Earths continental crust, behind feldspar. There are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are semi-precious gemstones, since antiquity, varieties of quartz have been the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewelry and hardstone carvings, especially in Eurasia. The word quartz is derived from the German word Quarz and its Middle High German ancestor twarc, the Ancient Greeks referred to quartz as κρύσταλλος derived from the Ancient Greek κρύος meaning icy cold, because some philosophers apparently believed the mineral to be a form of supercooled ice. Today, the rock crystal is sometimes used as an alternative name for the purest form of quartz. Quartz belongs to the crystal system. The ideal crystal shape is a six-sided prism terminating with six-sided pyramids at each end, well-formed crystals typically form in a bed that has unconstrained growth into a void, usually the crystals are attached at the other end to a matrix and only one termination pyramid is present. However, doubly terminated crystals do occur where they develop freely without attachment, a quartz geode is such a situation where the void is approximately spherical in shape, lined with a bed of crystals pointing inward. α-quartz crystallizes in the crystal system, space group P3121 and P3221 respectively. β-quartz belongs to the system, space group P6222 and P6422. These space groups are truly chiral, both α-quartz and β-quartz are examples of chiral crystal structures composed of achiral building blocks. The transformation between α- and β-quartz only involves a comparatively minor rotation of the tetrahedra with respect to one another, although many of the varietal names historically arose from the color of the mineral, current scientific naming schemes refer primarily to the microstructure of the mineral. Color is an identifier for the cryptocrystalline minerals, although it is a primary identifier for the macrocrystalline varieties. Pure quartz, traditionally called rock crystal or clear quartz, is colorless and transparent or translucent, common colored varieties include citrine, rose quartz, amethyst, smoky quartz, milky quartz, and others. The most important distinction between types of quartz is that of macrocrystalline and the microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline varieties, the cryptocrystalline varieties are either translucent or mostly opaque, while the transparent varieties tend to be macrocrystalline. Chalcedony is a form of silica consisting of fine intergrowths of both quartz, and its monoclinic polymorph moganite. Other opaque gemstone varieties of quartz, or mixed rocks including quartz, often including contrasting bands or patterns of color, are agate, carnelian or sard, onyx, heliotrope, amethyst is a form of quartz that ranges from a bright to dark or dull purple color. The worlds largest deposits of amethysts can be found in Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Russia, France, Namibia, sometimes amethyst and citrine are found growing in the same crystal. It is then referred to as ametrine, an amethyst is formed when there is iron in the area where it was formed
6.
Tally stick
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A tally stick was an ancient memory aid device used to record and document numbers, quantities, or even messages. Tally sticks first appear as animal bones carved with notches during the Upper Paleolithic, historical reference is made by Pliny the Elder about the best wood to use for tallies, and by Marco Polo who mentions the use of the tally in China. Tallies have been used for purposes such as messaging and scheduling. Principally, there are two different kinds of sticks, the single tally and the split tally. A common form of the kind of primitive counting device is seen in various kinds of prayer beads. A number of artefacts have been conjectured to be tally sticks. It is a dark brown length of bone, the fibula of a baboon and it has a series of tally marks carved in three columns running the length of the tool. It was found in 1960 in Belgian Congo, the Lebombo Bone is a baboons fibula with 29 distinct notches, discovered within the Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains of Swaziland. The so-called Wolf bone is a prehistoric artefact discovered in 1937 in Czechoslovakia during excavations at Vestonice, Moravia, dated to the Aurignacian, approximately 30,000 years ago, the bone is marked with 55 marks which some believe to be tally marks. The head of an ivory Venus figurine was excavated close to the bone, the single tally stick was an elongated piece of bone, ivory, wood, or stone which is marked with a system of notches. The single tally stick serves predominantly mnemonic purposes, related to the single tally concept are messenger sticks, the knotted cords, khipus or quipus, as used by the Inca. Herodotus reported the use of a knotted cord by Darius I of Persia, the split tally was a technique which became common in medieval Europe, which was constantly short of money and predominantly illiterate, in order to record bilateral exchange and debts. A stick was marked with a system of notches and then split lengthwise and this way the two halves both record the same notches and each party to the transaction received one half of the marked stick as proof. Later this technique was refined in ways and became virtually tamper proof. One of the refinements was to make the two halves of the stick of different lengths, the longer part was called stock and was given to the party which had advanced money to the receiver. The shorter portion of the stick was called foil and was given to the party which had received the funds or goods, using this technique each of the parties had an identifiable record of the transaction. If one party tried to change the value of his half of the tally stick by adding more notches. The split tally was accepted as proof in medieval courts
7.
Tally marks
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Tally marks, also called hash marks, are a unary numeral system. They are a form of used for counting. They are most useful in counting or tallying ongoing results, such as the score in a game or sport, however, because of the length of large numbers, tallies are not commonly used for static text. Notched sticks, known as tally sticks, were historically used for this purpose. Counting aids other than body parts appear in the Upper Paleolithic, the oldest tally sticks date to between 35,000 and 25,000 years ago, in the form of notched bones found in the context of the European Aurignacian to Gravettian and in Africas Late Stone Age. The so-called Wolf bone is an artifact discovered in 1937 in Czechoslovakia during excavations at Vestonice, Moravia. Dated to the Aurignacian, approximately 30,000 years ago, the head of an ivory Venus figurine was excavated close to the bone. The Ishango bone, found in the Ishango region of the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo, is dated to over 20,000 years old, upon discovery, it was thought to portray a series of prime numbers. He also writes that no attempt has been made to explain why a tally of something should exhibit multiples of two, prime numbers between 10 and 20, and some numbers that are almost multiples of 10. Alexander Marshack examined the Ishango bone microscopically, and concluded that it may represent a lunar calendar. Tally marks are typically clustered in groups of five for legibility, roman numerals, the Chinese numerals for one through three, and rod numerals were derived from tally marks, as possibly was the ogham script
8.
Belgian Congo
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The Belgian Congo was a Belgian colony in Central Africa between 1908 and 1960 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Colonial rule in the Congo began in the late 19th century, King Leopold II of the Belgians persuaded the government to support colonial expansion around the then-largely unexplored Congo Basin. Their ambivalence resulted in Leopolds creating a colony on his own account, with support from a number of Western countries, Leopold achieved international recognition for a personal colony, the Congo Free State, in 1885. Belgian rule in the Congo was based on the trinity of state, missionary. The privileging of Belgian commercial interests meant that large amounts of capital flowed into the Congo, the country was split into nesting, hierarchically organised administrative subdivisions, and run uniformly according to a set native policy. This was in contrast to the British and the French, who favoured the system of indirect rule whereby traditional leaders were retained in positions of authority under colonial oversight. The Congo had a degree of racial segregation. The large numbers of immigrants who moved to the Congo after the end of World War II came from across the social spectrum. During the 1940s and 1950s, the Congo had extensive urbanisation, one of the results was the development of a new middle class of Europeanised African évolués in the cities. By the 1950s the Congo had a labour force twice as large as that in any other African colony. This ended with the seizure of power by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, until the later part of the 19th century, few Europeans had ventured into the Congo basin. The rainforest, swamps and accompanying malaria and other diseases, such as sleeping sickness. After Henry Morton Stanley had explored the region in a journey that ended in 1878, Leopold courted the explorer, Leopold II had been keen to acquire a colony for Belgium even before he ascended to the throne in 1865. The Belgian civil government showed little interest in its monarchs dreams of empire-building, ambitious and stubborn, Leopold decided to pursue the matter on his own account. European rivalry in Central Africa led to tensions, in particular with regard to the largely unclaimed Congo River basin. In November 1884 Otto von Bismarck convened a 14-nation conference to find a resolution to the Congo crisis. The rules recognised the Congo basin as a free-trade zone, but Leopold II emerged triumphant from the Berlin Conference and his single-shareholder philanthropic organization received a large share of territory to be organized as the Congo Free State. The Congo Free State operated as a corporate state privately controlled by Leopold II through a non-governmental organization, the state included the entire area of the present Democratic Republic of the Congo and existed from 1885 to 1908, when the government of Belgium annexed the area
