Friday, January 10, 2025

How cats helped win an ancient battle 🐈

Even the most dedicated ailurophile will admit that felines can be vicious when tested, but cats didn't help the Persians win an ancient battle because of their sharp claws.

Cats helped win an ancient battle.

World History

E ven the most dedicated ailurophile will admit that felines can be vicious when tested, but cats didn't help the Persians win an ancient battle because of their sharp claws. Rather, the Persians emerged victorious against Egypt in the 525 BCE Battle of Pelusium by using cats, ibises, and other animals the Egyptians considered sacred as hostages. According to the Greek historian Polyaenus, the Egyptians dared not fire their arrows when their Persian opponents held cats aloft in front of them, allowing the latter to take the city of Pelusium with relative ease. This decisive victory led the First Persian Empire (also known as the Achaemenid Empire) to take the pharaoh's throne for Cambyses II, beginning the 27th Dynasty of Egypt under Achaemenid rule.

Cats are hardly the only animal to grace the battlefield with their presence throughout history. Elephants and horses are perhaps the beasts of burden most famous for their wartime contributions, but camels, dogs, pigeons, oxen, and even bears have seen combat, too. There are various monuments and memorials to their service across the world, as well as the Dickin Medal, an honor first bestowed by the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) in 1943. Initially created for animals who served Britain in World War II, it has been given to 32 messenger pigeons, 38 dogs, four horses, and, yes, one very good cat.

By the Numbers

Length (in years) of the Achaemenid Empire's reign

228

Pedigreed cat breeds recognized by the Cat Fanciers' Association

45

Percentage of DNA shared by cats and tigers

95.6%

Length (in years) of Pepi II's reign, the longest of any pharaoh

94

Did you know?

Cats aren't nocturnal.

Everyone with a cat knows that felines love running around at night, especially when their humans are trying to sleep. Despite that, cats aren't actually nocturnal — they're crepuscular, meaning they're most active during dusk and dawn. The reason they prefer these times of day has to do with their hunting instincts, as their eyes are well attuned to low-light conditions that allow them to see their prey while remaining hidden themselves. And because cats are descended from desert hunters, dusk and dawn are also favorable due to cooler temperatures. This doesn't stop them from sleeping all day, of course, but they're always ready to wake up in an instant — an adaptation that helps keep them safe from predators and alert to opportunities for tiny prey.

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How did real languages influence J.R.R. Tolkien’s creation of Elvish?

If you're a fan of "The Lord of the Rings," you know many dialects of Elvish play a part in creating the rich fantasy world.
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How did real languages influence J.R.R. Tolkien's creation of Elvish?

If you're a fan of "The Lord of the Rings," you know many dialects of Elvish play a part in creating the rich fantasy world. Author J.R.R. Tolkien was inspired by several real-world languages to create new, complete languages.

Old and elvish forest with a thick layer of green moss covering rocks

F rom Klingon to Dothraki and whatever dialect "bazinga" comes from, popular culture has given us entirely new words and languages that didn't exist before the 20th century. Among the more fascinating and complex examples are the Elvish languages, which were developed by fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. To create the language spoken by the Elves of Middle-earth, Tolkien drew inspiration from real languages he studied and admired, including Finnish and Welsh. While entire treatises can be written about Tolkien's genius, let's take a quick look at some of the inspiration for the Elvish languages.

The Elvish language family contains a variety of dialects, the two most popular being Quenya, the language of the "High Elves" used primarily for poetry and ceremony, and Sindarin, which is more commonly spoken. There are many other dialects — including Telerin, Noldorin, Silvan, Avarin, Vanyarin, and Valarin, each of which serves a specific purpose in the LOTR universe — as well as the writing systems Tengwar and Cirth.

Having taught English language and literature classes at the University of Leeds and Oxford, focusing on Old and Middle English, Tolkien had the academic chops for this work. He also worked for the Oxford English Dictionary for a time. But that doesn't mean the language construction was fast or easy. The author began creating Elvish long before he published The Hobbit in 1937 and the Lord of the Rings series in 1954 and 1955. In 1914, he penned The Story of Kullervo, a tale that was heavily inspired by the Finnish mythological poetry collection Kalevala. According to the BBC, Tolkien "liked the long vowel sounds of Finnish and the umlaut accents." He borrowed many Finnish grammatical concepts and words while developing the Quenya dialect. They're not identical, but Quenya avoids large clusters of consonants and relies heavily on frequent vowel usage, which are also features of Finnish.

Sindarin, meanwhile, was more directly inspired by Welsh. The Guardian notes that Tolkien enjoyed Welsh for its sound, citing an essay in which he said that Welsh "pierced [his] linguistic heart." Both Welsh and the created Sindarin dialect use consonant changes to express grammar, demonstrating Tolkien's influence.

This is just the tip of the iceberg for Tolkien's linguistic creations, of course — you could teach entire academic courses about the creation of Elvish (and they exist!). But if you listen to Elvish and Finnish or Welsh side by side, you'll notice some striking similarities.

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The World She Edited by Amy Reading

The World She Edited

By Amy Reading

Being a reader of "The New Yorker" is a marker of a certain kind of intellectualism. But in the early 20th century, the publication was actually a humor magazine with a very different reputation. This book gives the credit due to Katherine White, the fiction editor of the magazine from 1925 to 1959, for crafting its distinctive voice and legacy. In particular, White shaped the early careers of authors such as John Updike and Vladimir Nabokov, and championed women writers at the publication.

Jennifer A. Freeman, Word Smarts Senior Editor

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What Exactly Is a Preposition?

A preposition indicates the position of something or someone in relation to something else. But what's so special about this part of speech and when do we need to use it?

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