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Post by Brandon S. Pilcher on Aug 11, 2024 17:53:16 GMT -5
The subject of this acrylic painting is based on a nearly 300,000-year-old hominin skull found at the site of Broken Hill near the Zambian town of Kabwe. Paleoanthropologists have traditionally assigned this specimen to the species Homo heidelbergensis, the species believed to be the common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans, but a paper in 2021 classified it as a late-surviving member of Homo bodoensis, the species immediately ancestral to modern humans after we split from the Neanderthal and Denisovan lineage. An old nickname for the Kabwe specimen is “Rhodesian Man” (since Zambia was under the thumb of British colonial rule as Northern Rhodesia at the time of the skull’s discovery), but what if it was a woman’s skull instead?
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Post by Brandon S. Pilcher on Aug 12, 2024 20:06:06 GMT -5
A video comparing my reconstruction to the original skull:
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Post by Brandon S. Pilcher on Aug 13, 2024 10:50:47 GMT -5
I wanted to play more with acrylic paints, so here’s a quick painting of an Egyptian palace guardsman. You can tell he’s higher-ranking in the Egyptian military by virtue of his having more body armor than the majority of the common soldiers would have worn (which appears to have been none, due to the hot North African climate).
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Post by Brandon S. Pilcher on Aug 13, 2024 22:03:58 GMT -5
It’s a clash of empires in northeastern Africa as the armies of ancient Egypt and Kush vie for control over the Nile Valley. If you need to know who’s who in this scene, the Egyptians are the guys with the blue and gold sashes on the left side of the composition whereas the Kushites are the dudes with red sashes on the right.
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Post by Brandon S. Pilcher on Aug 16, 2024 15:59:51 GMT -5
Another throwback today, although this one is from earlier this year... Our Queens of the Nile Cleopatra and Amanirenas are posing for a selfie! Of course, this isn’t meant to be historically accurate (unless you really believe they had smartphones back in the first century BC). BTW, I used a website called Zeeob to generate the fake Instagram post.
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Post by Brandon S. Pilcher on Aug 17, 2024 9:50:21 GMT -5
This is a colored-pencil drawing of the Kushite warrior king Piye (r. 744-714 BC), who invaded a then divided Egypt and brought most of it under Kushite control (it was his successors Shebitku and Shabaka who would consolidate their dynasty’s reign over the whole country). A devout follower of the god Amun, Piye seems to have viewed his invasion as a holy crusade, requiring that his soldiers wash themselves as part of a cleansing ritual before entering battle. He was also so fond of horses that he expressed disgust at one Egyptian ruler’s leaving his to starve in their stable in his victory stela, and then would be buried with a whole herd of the animals in his tomb at El-Kurru.
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Post by Brandon S. Pilcher on Aug 18, 2024 19:18:26 GMT -5
This map depicts the Mediterranean Basin in an alternate-history scenario wherein Cleopatra VII of Ptolemaic Kemet (Egypt), instead of committing suicide and leaving her kingdom in Roman hands, instead joined forces with Amanirenas of Kush and brought the fight to Rome itself. With the help of Mauretanian, Garamantian, Aksumite, and Parthian allies, the combined Kemeto-Kushite army managed to crush the Roman forces and seize control of the city and the territory under its domain. Thereafter, the whole Italian peninsula would become a province of a united Kemet and Kush (with Rome being rechristened Antonium after the late Mark Antony), Mauretania would lay claim to southern Iberia, and Parthia would acquire the Levant, Anatolia, and Greco-Macedonia. On the other hand, the more northerly regions the Romans had conquered earlier, such as northern Iberia and Gaul, would find themselves overrun by indigenous tribes such as the Gauls and Celtiberians.
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Post by anansi on Aug 18, 2024 19:27:49 GMT -5
Interesting alternate scenario, I hope you develop it further.
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Post by Brandon S. Pilcher on Aug 18, 2024 20:27:29 GMT -5
Interesting alternate scenario, I hope you develop it further. Thanks, I just need to figure out how the Egypto-Kushite forces could pull off a conquest of Late Republic Rome. I'm no expert in military history.
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Post by anansi on Aug 19, 2024 8:38:21 GMT -5
Well whatever happens next, you are gonna need a competent sea power as allies, Carthage is long gone two and half centuries prior, and when I say competent I'm talking about more than crossing the Med for an invasion, for rest assured the Romans developed a pretty good navy learnt from battles with the Carthaginians centuries ago, so you'd have to scurry around looking for Sea wolves.
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Post by Brandon S. Pilcher on Aug 19, 2024 15:57:55 GMT -5
Well whatever happens next, you are gonna need a competent sea power as allies, Carthage is long gone two and half centuries prior, and when I say competent I'm talking about more than crossing the Med for an invasion, for rest assured the Romans developed a pretty good navy learnt from battles with the Carthaginians centuries ago, so you'd have to scurry around looking for Sea wolves. You mean pirates?
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Post by anansi on Aug 19, 2024 17:23:18 GMT -5
Yup! the type that captured a 25 yrs old Julius Caesar before he became emperor of Rome. Julius Caesar was once captured by pirates. Then he got revenge. Only Caesar lived to tell the tale. A mosaic depicting Julius Caesar in a boat surrounded by people. The ancient world had a big piracy problem. (Credit: GiorcesBardo53.jpg / Wikipedia) Key Takeaways The 25-year-old Caesar treated his captors like his personal underlings. After being released, the future dictator hunted down the pirates and crucified them. Though (probably) part propaganda, the story foreshadows the future that awaited Caesar. Before Gaius Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon, and laid the foundation for his adopted son Octavian Augustus to turn ancient Rome from a republic into an empire, he was just another affluent patrician looking to make a name for himself in the Roman bureaucracy His ambition led him across the known world, from the shores of Spain to the mountaintops of Asia Minor. On one of these trips, while crossing the Aegean Sea, a 25-year-old and still-untested Caesar found himself captured by Cilician pirates. Far from stopping him in his tracks, however, the pirates were among the first to learn just what the future dictator was made of. bigthink.com/the-past/julius-caesar-pirates/
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Post by Brandon S. Pilcher on Aug 20, 2024 21:57:36 GMT -5
I have a work-in-progress alternate-history illustration showing a triumphant Cleopatra and Amanirenas marching into a newly conquered Rome. Here are the sketch and lineart phases for the artwork, which I should have colored tomorrow.
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Post by anansi on Aug 20, 2024 23:44:53 GMT -5
Awesome.
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Post by Brandon S. Pilcher on Aug 21, 2024 2:46:58 GMT -5
And here is the finished artwork!
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