Photochrome of a glacier, Grindelwald, Switzerland, c. 1890. © Rijksmuseum

Discovery

Volume X, Number 2 | spring 2017

Miscellany

Archaeologists in France discovered in 1865 a Stone Age human skull with a hole sawed in it. They believed it had served as a drinking vessel; one wrote the hole was “expressly made for the application of the lips.” But later study by an anatomist proved this to be incorrect: the skull was actually evidence of ancient brain surgery.

Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure.

—Anaxagoras, c. 450 BC