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This paper looks at some of the oldest examples of visual art that show evidence of experiences of altered states of consciousness reported by the last persistence hunters. Persistence hunters relied on endurance and stamina to pursue their prey until it collapsed and was easily killed. Persistence hunting has been studied from viewpoints of paleontology and ethnography, this article offers a psychological connection between persistence hunting hypothesis and origins of symbolic culture. The article outlines the persistence hunting hypothesis describing its significance for future studies of the prehistoric cultures and their achievements. It covers persistence hunting and tracking methodology, its possible origins and how it may explain bigger brains in our species. It also describes the connection between endurance running and altered states of consciousness, and its connections with some shamanic practices. The article presents visual evidence, or fragments, that can be interpreted through persistence hunting and tracking, covering recurring topics such as hoof prints, blood trails, vulva imagery, therianthropes and nasal bleeds. Archaeologist David Lewis-Williams has proposed a shamanic explanation for rock art interpretation. This approach was based on ethnographic studies of Southern African hunter-gatherers. He suggested that African rock art often depicts trance hallucinations experienced by the shamans. This article offers an alternative and additional naturalistic explanation of prehistoric imagery based on the hunting methods used by the prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Combining the main outlines (persistence hunting hypothesis and its visual evidence in prehistoric rock art) this article offers a novel approach to rock art research which involves the history and documented experience of persistence hunting and tracking among the early hunter-gatherer societies. Peer reviewed

Ella Margareta Kivikoski (25 May 1901 in Tammela–27 July 1990 in Helsinki) was the first woman in Finland to defend her Doctoral thesis in Archaeology in 1939. Many duties in the State Archaeological Commission of Finland provided a good basis for her research career. In 1941 she received a docentship (an associate professorship) at the University of Helsinki in the Department of Archaeology of Finland and the Nordic Countries. In 1948 Kivikoski was appointed to the chair of the same department, becoming at the time the only female professor, the second in sequence, at the University of Helsinki and the first female professor in archaeology in the Nordic countries. After the appointment to a professorship, Kivikoski was called to the Finnish Academy of Sciences, becoming its first female member. She retired in 1969. The Finnish Iron Age was Kivikoski’s main speciality. Her published scientific production is wide, consisting of several monographs, articles and edited works. Her major publication is Die Eisenzeit Finnlands, the catalogue of Iron Age artefacts found in Finland, that is still used today. Kivikoski was well networked in the learned societies, internationally active and awarded many foreign distinctions of honour. Kivikoski was demanding, even abrupt, as a professor but many remember her warm interest in her students. She guided students to fieldwork, especially at Iron Age sites on the Åland Islands where she also initiated the study of Iron Age houses in Finland. Kivikoski kept to culture-historical approaches and comparative typological analyses of artefacts and solid remains. Peer reviewed

What connection with institutional religion ought modern political states promote? As they developed their political thinking in the early years of the Weimar Republic, Leo Strauss and Edith Stein came up with opposite answers to this question. While Strauss discerned in Carl Schmitt's maximalist concept of the theopolitical a possible remedy against the flaws of liberal democracy, Stein ascribed democracy's chance of survival to a renewed distinction between the political and religious spheres. Here, Strauss can be viewed as an heir to the ancient and medieval Jewish understanding of the ideal state, whereas Stein appears rooted in the critical legacy of the German Haskalah. At a fundamental level, the contrast between the two thinkers has to do with a difference in their respective philosophical episteme. While Strauss, walking in the footsteps of Heidegger, thinks in terms of Geschichlichkeit ("historiality"), Stein applies a phenomenological method based on the intuition of essences and very much indebted to Adolph Reinach's philosophy of law. That Stein's essentialism succeeds where the 'historial' thinking of the young Strauss fails; that is, in diagnosing the nature of the political threat that would soon engulf European Jewry, is the main conclusion of the present paper. Peer reviewed

The role of seasonality is indisputable in climate and ecosystem dynamics. Seasonal temperature and precipitation variability are of vital importance for the availability of food, water, shelter, migration routes, and raw materials. Thus, understanding past climatic and environmental changes at seasonal scale is equally important for unearthing the history and for predicting the future of human societies under global warming scenarios. Alas, in palaeoenvironmental research, the term ‘seasonality change’ is often used liberally without scrutiny or explanation as to which seasonal parameter has changed and how. Here we provide fundamentals of climate seasonality and break it down into external (insolation changes) and internal (atmospheric CO2 concentration) forcing, and regional and local and modulating factors (continentality, altitude, large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns). Further, we present a brief overview of the archives with potentially annual/seasonal resolution (historical and instrumental records, marine invertebrate growth increments, stalagmites, tree rings, lake sediments, permafrost, cave ice, and ice cores) and discuss archive-specific challenges and opportunities, and how these limit or foster the use of specific archives in archaeological research. Next, we address the need for adequate data-quality checks, involving both archive-specific nature (e.g., limited sampling resolution or seasonal sampling bias) and analytical uncertainties. To this end, we present a broad spectrum of carefully selected statistical methods which can be applied to analyze annually- and seasonally-resolved time series. We close the manuscript by proposing a framework for transparent communication of seasonality-related research across different communities. Peer reviewed

Dr Erik von Willebrand first described a family with bleeding symptoms in a Finnish publication in 1926. A closer look at this landmark publication sheds light on some pathophysiological aspects of von Willebrand disease that may be applicable even in the current era. We attempt to relay in this article how the teachings from this original description may provide a benchmark for further research in this condition. Non peer reviewed

AbstractThis article examines the synoptic saying on serving two masters (Matt 6.24; Luke 16.13) in light of the evidence for jointly owned slaves in documentary papyri. The saying implies that the slave of two masters will inevitably be more loyal or exclusively loyal to one master. Scholars usually accept this as an accurate depiction of jointly owned slaves. However, the papyrological evidence shows that the relationship between jointly owned slaves and their owners varied in everyday life and that slaves had little control over their loyalty to each master. The saying is, therefore, not a fully realistic portrait of how jointly owned slaves served their masters in antiquity but is possibly a slave stereotype that contributes to the (un)faithful slave imageries in the Gospels.

Non peer reviewed

AbstractThe Markan Passion narrative alludes to Ps 22 (LXX Ps 21) in reverse, culminating with Jesus’ cry: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mark 15.34; cf. Ps 22.1). I argue that this ‘extended inverted allusion’ was an admired literary technique. Through select examples of this technique in the writings of the Hebrew Bible and Greco-Roman literature, I demonstrate its various functions—it can be employed to reverse meaning, to dissociate causation or to create new narrative trajectories. Reading Mark 15 in light of the literary functions of inverted allusion reveals new interpretive possibilities. In the Septuagint, Psalm 21 suggests that the psalmist's suffering was merited because of transgressions, but the inverted allusions to this Psalm in Mark 15 reinforce that Jesus’ suffering is unmerited (cf. Mark 15.10, 14) by decoupling the suffering from the transgressions. Additionally, in LXX Ps 21, the psalmist moves from forsakenness on account of transgressions toward divine deliverance. By alluding to this Psalm in reverse, Jesus travels the psalmist's journey in reverse. Rather than move from forsakenness toward divine deliverance, Mark's Jesus moves toward forsakenness, precisely to bring about divine deliverance.

AbstractIn Christian tradition, Paul is the apostle to the nations. However, his portrayal in the Book of Acts is more nuanced. For a longer period, Paul's ministry is limited to Jews. Only from Acts 13 onwards does Paul slowly emerge as ministering to non-Jews. Yet even then, Paul remains foremost an emissary to diaspora Judaism. In its apology for Paul and his disputed way of including non-Jews into the people of God, Acts emphasises that Paul did so without diminishing the priority of Israel, as a staunch proponent of Jewish monotheism and in a way that took full account of the precarious situation of diaspora Judaism.