10 Mysterious Mosaics
Mosaics have graced floors, walls, and ceilings for millennia. Made of thousands of interlocked tiles, their sturdy construction makes them nearly indestructible. Their design is simultaneously ancient and modern as the precursor to both impressionism and pixel-based graphics. Mosaics endure and so do their mysteries.
10 Hagia Sophia’s Hidden Angel
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An image of a six-winged angel has been revealed in Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia. The mosaic depicts a seraph, a member of the angelic choir, the highest order of angel hierarchy. For 160 years, the image was hidden under a metal mask and seven layers of paint. The image appears on pendetives (curving triangular surfaces) on the central dome and is believed to be 700 years old. The image remained hidden due to the ban on representational images in Islam.
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10 Mysterious Ancient Maps
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Archaeologists at Spain’s Moli del Salt site discovered what may be a 13,800-year-old map. The schist slab features seven semi-circular etchings, which experts believed to be huts. The shape coincides with modern hunter-gatherer dwellings of the Kalahari Bushmen and Aboriginals of the Australian Outback. The number seven reflects a typical population size. If true, this would be the earliest image of a human habitation ever discovered.
Anthropologists are thrilled by the idea that these huts are a spatial representation of social structure. All of the lines were carved with the same tool at the same time suggesting one individual captured what was in front of him at one moment.