Best Of MetaFilter

Mount Vesuvius by Carlo Raso (https://www.flickr.com/photos/70125105@N06/)

Mount Vesuvius didn't kill everyone, with refugees from Pompeii fleeing to nearby towns. This fascinating post by rory highlights how archaeologists are starting to understand how they rebuilt their lives.

Lions and snakes on astronomical ceiling at Dendera

Rhaomi has a fabulous in-depth post on the very fabulous Dendera temple complex, home to "some of the most superbly-preserved ancient Egyptian art known, ranging from early Roman times back to the Middle Kingdom period over 4,000 years ago." Amazing photography, video, interviews, background, blog posts, and a "slick zoomable scroller." So much. So good.

These “forgotten papyrus” scrolls existed circa 1100 B.C. ... 1100 B.C.!! (*feeling very small*) Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Art History) Vienna, Austria by Sharon Hahn Darlin (cc by)

Love in an Orchard, as Written by the Trees. Donating Kittens to the Goddess Bastet. Parental Grief. Same-Sex Love Spells. A Runaway Child Bride. Rumple's post highlights various vignettes of ancient Middle Eastern life from the Papyrus Stories Group Blog.

Greek and Roman epitaphs can be touching. They can also, in the case of Allia Potestas, even be risqué. But they can also be horribly, incredibly embarrassing -- as in the case of Aphrodisios of Alexandria Troas ... Mefites discuss an ancient death — and odd elegy.

image via AromaPrime

paduasoy posts an article from Current Archaeology about Aroma Prime, a company creating historical scents, including the smells of dinosaurs, dodos, mummification, candlemakers, ether, vintage sweets and the Wicker Man.

Image via Aeon Magazine

"For more than 200 years, children have been neglected by archaeologists. It was part of a disciplinary bias towards adult men in archaeological interpretations. This began to change in the 1970s and ’80s with the rise of feminist archaeology and the archaeology of gender..." cgc373 posted Aeon Magazine's article by April Nowell.

MacMummy - Birth (Harry Burton Style) by vintagedept (cc by)

ominous sarcophagus; exhilarating ichnology; how now Homo sapiens?; exasperation excavation; crowdfunded dig dug; preservation annihilation; dig diaries; parched plots expose lots.

an assemblage of artifacts at belowthesurface.amsterdam

Amsterdam drained a canal and put everything they found online, piece by piece, chronologically, and you can see it all ... mygothlaundry's "Under Amsterdam" post is spectacular.

Seafloor Surveys After Katrina by NOAA Images

bassomatic says, "my dad and his team of underwater archaeologists were the first to find an ancient shipwreck using side-scan sonar..."

Scary stories and freaky facts about oxygen deprivation at altitude

How does a scuba diver smell shipwreck cheese underwater? And some other ancient foods, eaten in the name of science

AskMe offers some resources on cloudwatching for beginners

Moby Dick is fabulous - Mefites talk Melville and subtext, and what you thought of classic novels before you read them, and the linked writer drops by to respond

Submersible finds glowy purple orb in the depths

And finally, that pressing question, what if I fell out of an airplane in a tank full of water?

WC [toilet facilities] by State Records NSW

History pals!

Enjoy some newly-animated historical city photos, plus barnacles on the history of Australian public bathrooms "in case you're the sort of person that wants to see 115-year old survey sketches of toilets and urinal blocks".

Or listen to the meticulously recreated ambient sounds of 1700s Paris.

How about Marie Duval, 19th century woman cartoonist called 'one of the forgotten wonders of nineteenth-century art .. the bizarre dreamlike distortions of her comic world look like some steampunk 21st-century version of Victorian London."

Or the re-discovered ancient Chinese texts that rewrite the early history of Taoism and Confucianism.

Speaking of, what are some examples of historical events that are commonly misunderstood?

Did you catch teponaztli transcribing some diary pages from 1799-1804 New York City? "The most I've seen her write about anything was how much she hates games, which I love for its being an angry rant from 200+ years ago."

Or enjoy the brief video on the baseball fan Wild Bill Hagy, which is a time capsule of 1979 Baltimore.

Harking back to 1979, share some sense-memories in what was it like when everybody smoked?

Or looking further back - what was sugar like in 1631?

Finally, what are the best history nerds on Youtube?

Ain Manawir (VII) by isawnyu (cc by)

JoeZydeco on how a vending machine knows what coin you've put in (and why the Mars candy company spun off an electronics company)

seasparrow on ancient underground water-distribution systems called "qanats"... including diagrams

codacorolla on their academic research on Minecraft players

The evolution of thimble technology, as seen in artifacts found scattered across England

A nice discussion of the importance of the skills needed to maintain old systems