Category: Blog

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and the start of the period known as the High Holy Days, begins on Friday evening at sunset. Interestingly, in the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, the holiday was simply called, “Yom Teruah, the Day Read more…

We’re familiar with the sights, tastes, and sounds of Rosh Hashanah—the sweet sensation of honey on our tongues, the rhythmic swaying of the congregation in prayer, the cry of the shofar piercing the air. But have we ever stopped to Read more…

Definition of shofar : the horn of a ruminant animal and usually a ram blown as a trumpet by the ancient Hebrews in battle and during religious observances and used in modern Judaism especially during Rosh Hashanah and at the Read more…

Mike Huckabee, one of several American Christians in Jerusalem for the opening of the US embassy last week, announced that he planned to commemorate the occasion on live TV with a Hebrew greeting and by blowing a shofar. The shofar, Read more…

Shofar, also spelled shophar, plural shofroth, shophroth, or shofrot, ritual musical instrument, made from the horn of a ram or other animal, used on important Jewish public and religious occasions. In biblical times the shofar sounded the Sabbath, announced the Read more…

Despite a near worldwide ban on the sale of elephant ivory, tens of thousands of African and Asian elephants continue to be slaughtered every year for their tusks. Now, thanks to accelerating climate change, the melting of permafrost in the Read more…

Heat-induced color changes of fossilized Miocene mastodon ivory (13-16 Ma) have been known at least since the Middle Ages. Cistercian monks are believed to have created odontolite, a turquoise-blue “gemstone,” by heating mastodon ivory found in Miocene geological layers next Read more…

Late Pleistocene societies throughout the northern hemisphere used mammoth and mastodon ivory not only for art and adornment, but also for tools, in particular projectile points. A comparative analysis of the mechanical properties of tusk dentine from woolly mammoth (Mammuthus Read more…

Distinguishing elephant from ancient ivory is challenging and becoming more and more important for the owners of knives with handles of ancient ivory. However, there are two reliable keys to make the determination easier. Polished cross sections of elephant and Read more…

Until recently, I did not fully appreciate fossil teeth. Their significance for identifying species and narrowing down the general diet of extinct animals was obvious, but I didn’t understand that teeth also hold intricate records of an individual animal’s life. Read more…