A Pyrrhic victory is one where your own losses or damage make it nearly as costly as defeat.

Perhaps that business rival finally went out of business after you lowered prices so much that you can now barely get by. Maybe you managed to prove you were right at the cost of ruining a relationship. Or it could be that the kids did in fact get in the car and go out on that blasted walk only for everyone to have a miserable time, angry at each other for the rest of the day.

Or maybe, as King Pyrrhus of Epirus found in 279 BCE, you won several battles against the Romans while losing so many of your best warriors as to make you wonder at the worth of the whole campaign.

Pyrrhic victory

The Norse Gods are still among us in the names of the days of the week.

Tuesday — from Old English Tiw, for Tyr the Norse god of combat

Wednesday — from Old English Woden, for Odin the one-eyed king of the gods

Thursday — for Thor, the quick to fight god of ordinary people with his magical hammer Mjollnir

Friday — for Frigg, wife of Odin and goddess of marriage and motherhood

While Saturday, Sunday and Monday follow the celestial bodies Saturn, the sun, and the moon.

As a wonderful introduction to the Norse myths and gods you could do much worse than the entertaining and beautifully produced Illustrated Norse Myths I was commanded to read by our 9-year old.

Illustrations based off of those by the excellent Matteo Pincelli.

Days of the week

Jared Diamond’s classic book Guns, Germs and Steel, proposes some remarkable hypotheses about how the pattern of history played out, notably trying to answer the question of why it was generally the Europeans that invaded much of the rest of the world rather than the other way around. One hypothesis, striking in its simplicity if you’ve ever looked at a world map, is the significant contribution of the general orientation of the major continents.

The Americas are largely lined up north–south, while Europe and Asia (Eurasia) are largely lined up east-west. An east-west alignment means the land generally has a more similar climate, day-length and seasonal variations. The general logic of the hypothesis is that the similar latitude of an east–west alignment means animals, crops, as well as travel and trade, more easily spread across the continents than across those with a north–south alignment — of the Americas and Africa — which naturally encounter more different climatic zones.

As a simplified example, horses and other large animals and crops spread throughout the shared temperate latitudes of Eurasia. In contrast, South America’s only large domesticated animal, the thick-coated llama (and related species like the alpaca), couldn’t easily spread to North America through the impassable tropical barrier of the isthmus of Panama. They just aren’t built for it.

There are a lot of viewpoints on the theory, and Diamond includes many more factors of geography and others — like never being able to domesticate the zebra — that go towards answering his question of why Spain invaded the Americas and not vice-versa. But ever since reading his simple hypothesis, available to anyone with a world map, I’ve found it hugely intriguing.

The continental axis hypothesis

This is the idea that people across history budget on average about an hour a day for traveling. Originally observed by Yacov Zahavi, it came from the observation that even as our means of transport sped up, instead of traveling less each day we would just travel further. As in the sketch, this leads to a conclusion that the size of our cities increases partly according to how efficiently we can travel in and out—they generally increase to a size that maintains about an hour round-trip journey.

Cesare Marchetti observed that Greek villages and ancient walking cities, for example, as marked by ancient city walls, tend to share a radius of about 2.5km. Walking at a typical 5km/hr that makes an hour round trip journey. He also pointed out that: “Even people in prison for a life sentence, having nothing to do and nowhere to go, walk around for one hour a day, in the open.”

Unfortunately, if you live in London, the average round-trip seems to be an exception of 1h30.

This is also known as the constant travel time budget hypothesis.

Also see isochrones. It might be interesting to look at these according to transport method…

Image adapted from: Marchetti, C., 1994: Anthropological Invariants in Travel Behavior, Technological Forecasting and Social Change , 47 :75–88, Internal Publication, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.

Marchetti’s constant

The Union Jack flag is made up of the Saltire of St Andrew for Scotland and St Patrick for Ireland — a saltire is the heraldic name for the diagonal cross-look — together with the cross of St George for the Kingdom of England. As Wales was a principality at the time the flag was created, not a kingdom, it is not represented in the design.

Before Ireland’s emblem was added, there was actually an earlier flag back in 1606— the original Union Flag — with just Scotland and England present.

Curious about the difference between Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Isles?

The Union Jack

This is generally the source of much confusion. Even amongst those who live over here. If you look carefully at the description of the United Kingdom, you’ll see it’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And the British Isles is the group of islands as a whole, including all of Ireland too.

The source I liked best for this explaining this and much more was Project Britain.

For much further confusion, think for a moment why there’s a UK passport, Great Britain in the Olympic games, and in football, we compete as England, Wales, Scotland and N. Ireland separately. 🤔

You might be interested in the Union Jack: The making of a flag

Great Britain, the United Kingdom and the British Isles: what’s the difference?

The sort of artefact that make history fascinating. Amazing to behold, a fascinating story, a controversial past and the key to the mystery of hieroglyphics.

The Rosetta Stone has inscribed on it a decree by priests honouring Ptolemy V, who was 13 at the time. The inscription is in hieroglyphic and demotic - both scripts of the Egyptian language - and Greek. Comparing the known Greek with the hieroglyphs with some remarkable talent became the key to deciphering the written language of hieroglyphs.

The Rosetta Stone can be seen for free at the British Museum. I highly recommend it. You could also read Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure a manga comic book featuring the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone

Sadly it turns out that there is not reliable evidence for this derivation of the word POSH, but it’s so nice I’d finished the sketchplanation before I knew it. The story went that if you were travelling by boat from Western Europe to India and the Far East by boat back in the day the rich people naturally took the best cabins. And the best cabins on the way Out, were on the Port side so you got a great view of the coast all the way around Africa. And on the way back on the Starboard site to enjoy the view once more. Et voila POSH as a synonym for rich. After much digging I had to conclude that the story was apocryphal, but it’s nice nonetheless.

POSH: Port Out Starboard Home (apocryphal)

Always good to share with friends and family your knowledge of doric columns, ionic columns or corinthian style classical columns when you spot them in the wild.

Classical columns: doric, ionic, and corinthian

The Mediterranean sea was formed kind of how you think it might have happened from just looking at a world map — the mighty Atlantic ocean breaking free to fill up the giant basin from the African continent pushing into Europe.

I imagine it somewhat like the footage of when the sea reclaimed a tin mine in Malaysia in a few short minutes. Or when the waves finally overcame the walls of my sandcastle, just at a staggering scale.

Sketchplanations tagged with history