Beast Men and Beasts

Copper alloy plate from Italy or Catalonia, c 1500 AD

Ukraine's Southern Offensive

So how is Ukraine's summer offensive going?

So far, not much has happened. Attacks on the flanks of Bakhmut that began weeks ago continue, with recent advances of up to a kilometer. Prigozhin, who is being pretty alarmist these days, was dismissive of this attack, saying that the front lines may well fall but plenty of Russian forces are on hand for defense in depth. I have yet to see any convincing explanation of what Ukraine hopes to gain here, beyond forcing Russia to defend in many places at once.

The new element is the southern advance, which began in a limited way on June 4 but really got under way the night of June 7 to 8. At least one of the June 7 attacks blundered badly, giving us videos of bunched up armored vehicles being shredded by Russian artillery, exactly the reverse of the famous videos of Russian blundering at Vuhledar. This is where the first confirmed loss of a Leopard 2 tank took place. (Ukrainians later released a video showing them recovering a Leopard tank after it had lost a tread, but it was shot too close for anyone to tell if it was this Leopard or some other.) Ukraine also lost three of the six Leopard mine-clearing vehicles they got from Finland.

Which produced a lot of mockery from Russian partisans, which produced a lot of posts from pro-Ukraine guys about the inevitability of losses in any offensive, etc. Also several references to the Second Battle of el Alamein in 1942, when the British Army fought its way through a German fortified line; the units that led the attack lost 80 percent of their tanks and many men as well, but once they broke through the line the situation was suddenly reversed, and the retreating Germans took very heavy losses in their turn. Which is a nice model if Ukraine can get there. 

So far the biggest advance looks like this.

June 10.

June 11. 

Pretty big files if you want to click and zoom in. The maximum advance is between 5 and 6 kilometers.

So the Russians are being pushed back, and in Ukraine they are thrilled by every village retaken. But this is just a village by village slog; Ukrainian forces are still at least 10 kilometers away from the main Russian fortified line, and there is another line beyond that one. Ukraine has used many HIMARS and other missiles, but Russian artillery has not been neutralized and remains very active. 

Ukrainian vehicle losses south of Orkhiv

Russian forces are so far fighting well; one Ukrainian soldier said,

They were just waiting for us, prepared positions everywhere… It was a wall of steel. It was horrendous.

 The Institute for the Study of War wrote,

Russian forces in Zaporizhia Oblast are continuing to defend against Ukrainian attacks in accord with sound tactical defensive doctrine.

Pro-Ukraine guys on Twitter see a video of 20 Russians running from a position and say, "they're panicking!" But this is the front line, not the main line; those soldiers are supposed to extract whatever price they can and then fall back. That's "sound tactical defensive doctrine."  As one Russian soldier put it of these battles,

Regular military work is going on.

You might ask yourself why Ukraine is attacking in the south, where Russia expects it and has spent months preparing defenses. Because, say most of the experts, that is the only place where the strategic situation can be changed in a major way. If Ukraine breaks through to the Sea of Azov they will have cut off a big chunk of territory and possibly thousands of Russians soldiers as well, and they might be able to retake Crimea. Otherwise, say these experts, Ukraine will just pay a heavy price for every square kilometer.

Two things stand out to me about Ukraine's southern offensive so far. First, few forces have been committed. The largest attacks anyone has seen video of are in company strength, maybe a dozen vehicles. Ukraine has assembled a reserve force of at least 25 brigades, and so far maybe five have been committed. 

Why are they making many small attacks rather than one or two large ones? And why are they feeding their forces in so slowly? Some guys on Twitter say it's because grouping several brigades into a small area invites Russia to use a tactical nuke. I doubt that; whatever message it was that the Americans and Chinese delivered to Putin about nukes, it seems to have worked.

One explanation is that they are making what Napoleon called an attack en echelon. This means you keep making attacks in multiple places, forcing your opponent to commit his reserves; once he has no more reserves you send a powerful attack at some other location to break his line decisively. In this view Ukraine is trying to wear the Russians down by small attacks in many places until a decisive thrust can smash through the weary, weakened Russian forces.

On the other hand, who knows?

The Broa Bridle

This bridle was found in a man's grave at a farm called Broa, on the Swedish island of Gotland. The leather is modern, of course; only the  bit and the 21 gilt bronze mounts are original. 

The carved bronze mounts are famous in Viking art, one of the works that define the Broa/Oseberg style.

This one piece probably took hundreds of hours to create.

Amazing. The detail of the beasts and dragon in the image directly above stuns me.

Just when I think I have seen all the really amazing works of Viking art, I discover something new.

Young Americans are Shifting Back toward a Two Gender Model

Via Kevin Drum. 

Semur-en-Auxois

Semur-en-Auxois is a charming town in Burgundy with some splendid old buildings. The view above shows the church and two surviving towers from the castle, both dating mainly to the 13th century.

The town's medieval core is built on a pink granite bluff more than half-encircled by the River Armançon. The river formerly provided power for tanneries and mills, until the 18th century when a dam was built to divert much of its water into the Canal de Bourgogne. 

The place is first attested in a charter of 606, which calls it Sene Muro or "old walls". Archaeology confirms that it was occupied in Carolingian times, but it does not appear again in written records until the 11th century when it was the seat of the Count of Auxois. The county was soon absorded into the Duchy of Burgundy, so it was the Duke who granted the town a charter in 1276.

According the French wikipedia, the town was famous for holding seven fairs every year. One of these was the Fair of Quasimodo, which sounds interesting but Quasimodo is just the Sunday after Easter. The name comes from the Latin words of the mass recited on that day, which begins quasi modo geniti infantes, "like just born infants." Which is why Victor Hugo chose that name for his child-like hero.

The church, La Collégiale Notre-Dame, was founded in 1225 and built over the next fifty years in flamboyant Gothic style. 

The church was restored in the 19th century by that mad Frenchman Eugene Viollet-le-Duc. Which is cool because he is so famous, and it means he left many wonderful drawings, but on the other hand it means you have no idea whether any of the stonework you see is medieval or Viollet-le-Duc. I'm guessing Violet-le-Duc for the face above.

No idea about these heads.

I hope this is a medieval door.

The existing walls were built in the 1360s by Philip the Bold, one of Burgundy's most famous Dukes. He got his name from fighting so bravely at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356. On the other hand he was taken captive, so he was braver than he was effective. Like the whole French side in that horrific defeat, come to think of it. Anway, after he paid an enormous ransom and won his release in 1360 he decided that his towns needed stronger walls against the perfidious English.

The town was a bastion of the Catholic League during the Wars of Religion. Many additions were made to the church around that time in Renaissance styles, including this baptismal chapel.

Seventeenth-century convent.

One of the town's annual events these days goes back to 1566, a footrace called La course de la bague, the Race of the Ring. The prize is a gold ring, hence the name. The race is preceded by a series of races for children of different ages known as La Course des chausses, the Race of the Shoe.

Seems like a wonderful place to be on a lovely late spring day like today.

So Let's Suppose You're a Spy

So, you're a Chinese or Russian or Iranian spy, working like a dog to get little scraps of information about American military plans. And you go online today and discover that stuff beyond anything you thought you might ever find spent years sitting in crumbling cardboard boxes at Mar a Lago:

The classified documents TRUMP stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.

The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods. . . .

Even, like, in the bathroom. Which has a chandelier, for some reason.

And you missed it. Are you the greatest failure in the history of spying, or what? Are you kicking yourself up and down the street? What are your bosses going to say? How will you defend yourself? Will, "Who could ever imagine that the President of the United States would be such a doofus?" be a good enough excuse?

Of course maybe you did find it. In that case, did you tell your bosses that all you had to do was walk into the bathroom at Mar a Lago and open a box? Or did you invent a crazy story about your great inside sources and all the spycraft you had to use to contact them and arrange drops and all that spy stuff? I mean, who ever got promoted for walking into a bathroom and opening a box?

The Sparrowhawk Flute

Israeli archaeologists have announced the discovery of a cache of seven bird-bone flutes from the Natufian site of Ain Mahalla, dating to around 12,000 years ago. That's them above, each photographed from three angles.

These are very small. Here is a replica, made from the wing of a mallard duck, as close as the investigators could make to the original. They say it sounds like a sparrowhawk. You can hear it here, and then an actual sparrowhawk here.

Seems fairly close to me. The archaeologists wonder if it was used in hunting, perhaps to entice hawks or frighten ducks. At least one of the flutes is worn in a way that indicates it was carried on a string, perhaps around someone's neck.

Incidentally Ain Mahalla is a famous site, one of the type sites of the Natufian culture. Its inhabitants seem to have been sedentary hunter-gatherers, living at this location all or most of the year. Above is a mortar for processing seeds.

The most famous find at the site is this arrangement of stones, displayed in an Israeli museum just as they were found. Is that a male human figure?

Figures of Speech

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations:

I saw the dew lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night.

Stephen Marche reviewing the film Anonymous:

“Anonymous” subscribes to the Oxfordian theory of authorship, the contention that Edward de Vere, the 17th earl of Oxford, wrote Shakespeare’s plays. Among Shakespeare scholars, the idea has roughly the same currency as the faked moon landing does among astronauts.

Michael Ledger-Lomas, reviewing historian Peter Brown's memoir:

The gospels changed Rome’s elites, but less rapidly and fully than Brown had once imagined. They bowed to bishops as protectors of the destitute and lavished riches on the poor—or on the monks who deemed themselves such. But they did so for a startling return: piles of treasure in heaven. It was this mining for eschatological bitcoin that generated the material splendor of medieval Christendom. 

Links 9 June 2023

Chain, Kyivan Rus, 12th century

Stand-up comedy in the 15th century.

Isn't it interesting that despite all the news about Orcas attacking boats off Iberia, nobody has tried to kill them? Or even, so far as I can tell, called for killing them? How far back in time would we have to go for that to be the default response?

The fascinating life and appalling murder of David Breaux, the homeless Stanford grad known as "the compassion guy." (NY Times, The Guardian)

Video tour of the Domus of Tito Marco, a very large Roman house in northern Italy, including both the actual ruins and a 3-D reconstruction. In Italian with English subtitles.

Roman artisan district with glass maker, cobbler and metal smith found in France. (English article, French original at INRAP with many more pictures.)

A report that copywriters are already being laid off and replaced by ChatGPT.

New Nazca geoglyphs discovered by AI "deep learning."

Nicholas Kristoff on the enormous improvements in prenatal care, maternal mortality, and child mortality across Africa. In Sierra Leone, more than 90% of women now receive prenatal care and the maternal death rate has falled 74% since 2000. "We are privileged to live in an age of miracles." (NY Times)

Nearly complete 1,100-year-old Hebrew Bible sells for $38 million. The purchaser is donating it to the Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv. More at Sotheby's.

Sherman Alexie says that hardly any American Indians call themselves "Indigenous," a word used only by left-wing activists: "I’d argue that leftist political activists are only a small percentage of the Native demographic. I would posit that the basic Native political identity is ethnocentric, mainstream Democrat, capitalist, socially moderate, remarkably magnanimous, and only intermittently passionate. In other words, the Native American world is very…American." He notes that there are four American Indians in Congress, two of whom are conservative Republicans from Oklahoma.

And more Sherman Alexie, "Introduction to Native American Studies." Reading work by Indian authors is a deep immersion in irony.

Some wonderful recycled plastic chairs.

The women who preached in their sleep, a condition known as "Devotional somnium."

Roman perfume identified as patchouli. My wife used patchouli when I first met her, until I told her it smelled like cat piss on a pine tree. Somehow our relationship survived.

Lots of praise from drama-averse moderates for Biden's performance in the debt ceiling showdown: Matt Yglesias, "It's great to have a President who knows when to shut up" (NY Times); NY Times group podcast, "What Biden Understands about Negotiating that Obama Never Did." 

Why was the age of democratic revolutions also the age of Neoclassicism?

Jennifer Anniston makes the news by posting pictures of her gray hair. Bold blow struck against ageism? Desperate play for attention? Illuminati conspiracy? You decide.

Young American men are getting more conservative.

June in Ben Pentreath's garden.

Many people around the world believe their society is in moral decline, but this is an illusion.

Forecast about AI in 2030.

Tyler Cowen, The High Return Activity of Raising Others' Aspirations

Scott Siskind on the tricky business of putting statistics in context.

Ukraine Links

Lots of chatter that a major Ukrainian offensive began on the night of June 7 to 8, driving south toward the Azov Sea as expected. (here, here, here, here, here, here, NY Times, substantial report from ISR). On June 7 one Ukrainian officer tweeted "Tonight is the night of nights," a reference to D-Day in 1944. Several reports of advances of 5-7 km, first and second Russian lines overrun; on the other hand reports of "greater than expected" resistance. Also many reports that "the main force has not been committed," so we will see what happens as this unfolds.

Didn't take long for the first Leopard 2 tank to be knocked out.

Several different military types on Twitter have said, "You don't blow up dams when you think you are winning."

Two Americans who have been training Ukrainian soldiers for months explain some important shortcomings with Ukrainian training and doctrine.

Ukraine's military wants 200,000 more drones by the end of the year. This war is using up drones like mortar rounds.

Igor Girkin's assessment as of June 1.

Here's another Russian soldier complaining that his side is constantly shelled with no answering Russian fire. Ukrainian soldiers say the opposite.

Russians who didn't support the war at first but now say that Russia must win; peace would have been better but defeat is unthinkable.

Rajan Menon summarizes the political and military situation as of June 6: "There’s no end in sight for this war. The two sides’ minimal conditions are a Grand Canyon apart."

Prigozhin explains that the Bakhmut offensive was essential to bleeding Ukraine and delaying their offensive; without it, the chances of winning shift to Ukraine. From a long and interesting video interview; Part 1, Part 2. Among other things he calls for the army leadership to face the firing squad, as justice for the soldiers' lives they threw away. I think it's important that many people with a strong emotional investment in Russian victory (Murz, Prigozhin, Girkin) sound like they have little hope.

And here is Part 3 of the Prigozhin interview. (Each segment is about 12 minutes) In this part he says he is getting letters from the people of Belgorod, begging him and Wagner to come rescue them from the Free Russia invaders.

And an interview with the Russian army colonel that Wagner kidnapped, roughed up, and forced to record this video; he says Wagner stole tanks and other systems from his unit.

Report from a pro-Ukraine German reporter that Ukraine "probing attack" toward Novodarivka on June 4 was a disastrous failure.

Russian propagandists on Telegram make Joe Biden look like a moviestar military commander.

The Great Beast

The Great Beast is what art historians call a strange animal that appears several times in surviving art from the Viking Age. The Beast looks more like a stag than any other real animal, but it only sometimes has antlers and sometimes it clearly has claws or what look like goat horns. Here is a famous example, from an 11th-century runestone found at St. Pauls Churchyard in London.

Runestone from Jelling in Denmark. The stones at Jelling were set up by Danish Kings, and some scholars think the Great Beast was a symbol of royal power. 

"Weathervane" from Söderala or Heggen, c. 1000. These three pretty much exhaust all the classic Great Beasts, and there seems to be some dispute as to whether any other images qualify as Great Beasts or not.

I think this Swedish silver brooch is pretty convincing, but the site I found it on didn't mention the Great Beast motif and I haven't found it in any lists of Great Beasts.

This handsome fellow, from the Urnes stave church (c. 1130) is another strong candidate.

This thing on the Oseberg Ship is traditionally called a Gripping Beast, and art historians make a hard and fast distinction between Greet Beasts and Gripping Beasts, but couldn't maybe Great Beast grip things?

As to where the image comes from, that is another old argument. The classic examples all come from between 950 and 1050. But this bracteate is usually dated to around 500 AD and it has a pretty good Beast. Mingling animal species just seems to be an ancient human habit, so maybe stags with goat horns and claws just seemed like a great thing to carve.

This mad academic thinks the motif is shamanistic, representing the horse that Odin rode on his vision quests. As you can see in the image above, he finds great beasts all over, sometimes eating gripping beasts. 

Here's a weird thought; does the Great Beast look a little like the mušḫuššu, the "dragon" sacred to Marduk that decorated the Ishtar Gate in Babylon? I suppose that is just the habit of imaginary crossbreeding that I mentioned, but it is certainly not impossible for images to travel many thousands of miles; consider the Three Hares.

I just love these beasts, great, gripping, or little like this one, weaving through the wood and metal tapestry of Norse art, calling our minds away from the mundane to the strange, the magical, the worlds where carved stones ask us to remember dead heroes and gods ride monsters in search of hidden wisdom.