Arthur's "Round Table" Actually a Huge Structure

Artist's conception of Round Table from 13th Century.

Researchers exploring the legend of Britain’s King Arthur now believe his stronghold of Camelot was built on the site of a recently discovered Roman amphitheatre in Chester. The familiar legend describes his knights gathering at a round table where they would receive instructions from their King.

But rather than it being a piece of furniture, historians believe the meeting site would have been a vast wood and stone structure allowing more than 1,000 of his followers to gather.

According to the London Telegraph, the latest thinking is that regional noblemen would have sat in the front row of a circular meeting place, with lower ranked subjects on stone benches grouped around the outside. Rather than Camelot being a castle, it would have been housed within a structure already built and left over by the Romans.

Historian Chris Gidlow said: “The first accounts of the Round Table show that it was nothing like a dining table but was a venue for upwards of 1,000 people at a time. We know that one of Arthur’s two main battles was fought at a town referred to as the City of Legions. There were only two places with this title. One was St Albans but the location of the other has remained a mystery.”

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Monks Trained Eyes for Super-Fine Drawing

The Chi-Rho page from the Book of Kells, circa 800 AD.

A Cornell paleontologist claims to have solved the mystery of how monks in the 7th and 8th centuries could illustrate manuscripts with details comparable to the finest engravings on a modern dollar bill ~ centuries before magnifying lenses were invented.

Some of the geometric designs are so precise that in some places they contain lines less than half a millimeter apart and nearly perfectly reproduced in repeating patterns ~ leading a later scholar to call them "works not of men, but of angels."

According to Physorg.com:

The answer, says Cornell paleontologist John Cisne, may be in the eyes of the creators. The Celtic monks evidently trained their eyes to cross above the plane of the manuscript so they could visually superimpose side-by-side elements of a replicated pattern, and thereby, create 3-D images that magnified differences between the patterns up to 30 times.

The monks could then refine any disparities by minimizing the apparent vertical depth of the images ~ ultimately replicating the design element to submillimeter precision. Cisne proposed the idea in the July 17 issue of the journal Perception.

The paper suggests that the technique, called free-fusion stereocomparison, which takes advantage of the brain's ability to perceive depth by integrating the slightly different views from each eye, was known nearly a thousand years before it was articulated by stereoscope inventor Sir George Wheatstone in the 19th century.

Cisne analyzed the most detailed illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, created between 670 and 800 AD ~ including the circa 800 Book of Kells ~ where some have as many as 30 lines per centimeter.

Click here for the complete Physorg.com article.

Click on the photo to see much more detail.

Medieval Walls Contain Baked Bones

Medieval walls around Granada, Spain, contain animal bones to help strengthen them.

Archaeologists in Spain have determined that the purpose of a 14th century brick oven was to bake animal bones and mix them with other materials to produce a protective coating to strengthen the medieval walls of what is today Granada, Spain.

Ancient decorative and protective layers ~ or patinas ~ covering the outside of very old buildings have been subject of many analyses in archaeology, conservation and chemistry. Patinas have been a popular finishing for building exteriors and walls for aesthetic and protective reasons since ancient times.

“However, the results of this work are significant for archaeologists since this is the first report of burnt bones in a patina on a Muslim monument, as well as the archaeological artifacts ~ the oven and raw materials ~ used to produce them,” archaeologist Carolina Cardell told ScienceDaily.

Using a novel new method to identify the components of historical artifacts, the team found hydroxyapatite ~ the main component in bone pigments and animal bones ~ in the patina of Granada’s medieval walls. Their new test is inexpensive, identifies chemicals more accurately and does not harm the historical artifacts.

Click here for the ScienceDaily article.