Blog Archives

For the introductory blog post to San Diego’s historical landmarks, click on San Diego’s Historical Landmarks.

San Diego Historical Landmarks

#1: El Prado Area Designation, part 1

#1: El Prado Area Designation, part 2

#1: El Prado Area Designation, part 3

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Next to the California Tower is a huge dome:

Under the Dome (you’re welcome, Stephen King), is the Museum of Man where the history of man is documented from his earliest primate appearances to what might be in store for our future, and everything in between. There are permanent exhibits and rotating exhibits. Here is some of what I saw on my visit:

A stella is a tall shaft of carved stone usually incorporating a calendar depicting a lengthy period of time, a sculptured portrait of a ruler, and hieroglyphic texts recounting historical, mythological, and astronomical events. The are three stella in the center of the picture.

Zoomorphism is the shaping of something in animal forms or terms. For example, “Russel is a real dodo bird.” Zoomorphs often are boulder-like, so the two zoomorphs in the picture are at the left and right. The zoomorph at the left depicts the “Cosmic Monster,” a mythical waterbeast that swam in the primordial sea of the Underworld.

The Peruvian mummy is from Lupo, Peru, and is about 550 years old. To me it looks like it was frightened out of its skin, so to speak. It is a result of natural mummification which can occur in a perpetually dry or frozen climate, as long as a few other conditions are also present.

When an enemy was killed in battle, he would be decapitated and have his head shrunk.

To create a shrunken head:

Peel the skin and hair carefully from the skull; discard the skull.
Turn the skin inside out, clean, and simmer in a large pot of water.
Turn the skin right-side-out and sew the bottom, lips, and eyes shut.
Fill the head with hot sand or pebbles and smoke over a fire to complete the drying and shrinking.

After the face was burnished and dyed black, the victorious warrior would wear the shrunken head on a cord around his neck to transfer any remaining power of the dead warrior to the victor and his family.

I think I would have found a different tribe to belong to.

Lucy is the common name of AL 288-1, Australopithecus afarensis. It was discovered in 1974 at Hadar in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression. She is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago, and the several hundred pieces of bone representing about 40% of the skeleton was an astonishing discovery that provided an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence. Lucy was named after The Beatle’s song, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” which was playing loudly and repeatedly on a tape recorder in the camp when Lucy was brought in. She was about 3’7″ tall and weighed about 64 pounds. Lucy’s arms and fingers indicated that she spent time in the trees, but her spine, pelvis, knee, and foot bones, as well as her having a case of “knock knees,” indicated that she walked upright.

The San Diego Museum of Man’s Armana Collection provided one of the most exciting finds relating to Egyptian studies. The Armana Collection was given to the Museum of Man by Ellen Browning Scripps (1836-1932). Ellen was a great philanthropist, well-known to audiences throughout Southern California. Some of her major philanthropic gestures include founding or subsidizing the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla Women’s Club, Scripps Aquarium, Torrey Pines State Park, Scripps Memorial Hospital, Scripps College in Claremont California, Bishop’s School in La Jolla, and the La Jolla Public Library.

This limestone fragment has the missing cartouche of Nefertiti at the left center of the limestone fragment. A cartouche is an oval with a horizontal line erected at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name. Cartouches came into use during the beginning of Egypt’s Fourth Dynasty under Pharaoh Sneferu.

In September 1996, Egyptologist Dr. W. Raymond Johnson discovered that the limestone fragment in the Museum of Man’s collection fit perfectly into a blank area at the bottom right of a shrine in Egypt from the House of Panehsy, Akhenatan’s High Priest. The shrine, now almost complete, is one of the most important stone monuments ever discovered at Armana.

The Museum of Man has a Children’s Discovery Center where a periaktoi is displayed on the wall:

Peraktois were wall puzzles owned by wealthy Egyptian families to keep their children occupied. The puzzles were made of rotating triangles, providing three separate puzzles:

If you were creative like me, you could create a puzzle within a puzzle. Compare the following to the first periaktoi picture above.

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