In 2022, we shared news of a monumental discovery at Peru’s Nazca Pampa, a UNESCO World Heritage site once home to pre-Inca Indigenous peoples who were fond of etching gargantuan artworks into the earth’s surface. Discovered in 1927, archaeologists spent nearly a century uncovering 430 figurative glyphs depicting animals, people, […]
Month: September 2024
Snuggle Up with the New ‘Smithsonian Handbook of Interesting Bird Nests and Eggs’
The cape penduline tit, found in the sub-tropical shrublands of southern Africa, builds an innovative nest that includes a false chamber to trick predators. And the brown noddy, a tropical seabird, constructs a small platform from its own guano upon which to lay a single egg. Dozens more species feature […]
An Ancient Peruvian Site Reveals a Remarkable Painted Throne Room
Between about 350 and 850 C.E., a society known as the Moche thrived in the coastal valleys of northern Peru. Pañamarca, in the Nepeña Valley, is the southernmost center of the Moche culture and the site of a remarkable series of recent archaeological discoveries, including the latest: a monumental pillared […]
Step Into Beguiling Bygone Eras in Jeff Bartels’s ‘Urban Glitch’ Series
Around the time he turned 50, Jeff Bartels (previously) found himself thinking more and more about memory and nostalgia. “It occurred to me that I could remember certain things from my past exactly, while other memories were mixed up or even wrong,” he tells Colossal. “So I decided to explore […]
John Peralta Explodes Historic Technology into Three-Dimensional Diagrams
On individual strings of monofilament, John Peralta (previously) suspends every single component of historic gadgets, from Rollieflex cameras to Singer sewing machines. The Austin-based artist reinterprets iconic technology to create complex, three-dimensional exploded diagrams using real objects. Peralta recalls childhood memories of pulling a red wagon around the neighborhood with […]