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In this 1485 manuscript, people live inside giant snail shells

By: Popkin
11 August 2026 at 14:45
giant snail shells — Robert Testard, Traponee (f. 60v) from Les secretz de l'histoire naturelle, ca. 1485, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 22971 / public domain (via The Public Domain Review)

A French manuscript from about 1485 shows a woman spinning wool in her doorway while her child plays beside her. The doorway is the mouth of a giant snail shell. She lives there.
Robert Testard painted it for Charles d'AngoulΓͺme, a count in southwestern France, as one of 56 miniatures in Les secretz de l'histoire naturelle.Β  β€” Read the rest

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The oldest known two-part music was written around the year 900

By: Popkin
5 August 2026 at 18:00
earliest polyphonic music β€” Unknown scribe / Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)

Polyphonic music has two or more melodic lines running at the same time, and the earliest known written example is a short piece in praise of Saint Boniface, composed around the year 900. Giovanni Varelli found it in 2014, when he was a PhD student at St John's College, Cambridge. β€” Read the rest

The post The oldest known two-part music was written around the year 900 appeared first on Boing Boing.

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