Since men discovered the usefulness of metals, one of their biggest worries has been to locate the places where the gold, the silver, the iron, the tin, the copper, the lead… are.
Exposure of corpses
Human beings, unlike other animals, attend their dead and their corpses. This is attested since the Palaeolithic. The ways and customs of the various peoples referred to the fact of death and to treat the bodies, are many and varied. No doubt these rites are the result of confusion that causes death in all living beings; people seek immortality but man finds the decomposition of the body. It is therefore necessary to perform rites to avoid the process of decomposition . In expression of Walter Burkert, the Homo sapiens is a homo sepeliens (from Latin sepelio, burial), a man who buries his dead comrades.
All that shines is not gold; lapis specularis
The Iberian Peninsula was rich in minerals in Antiquity. Since ancient times minerals were prospected, found and exploited by Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans.
The Pillars of Hercules
The mythical hero Hercules (because he does not reach the category of a god) couldn´t imagine that his famous columns representing the two mountains he placed when he opened the strait that separates the Atlantic Ocean from the Mediterranean Sea (Mare Nostrum = our sea, for the Romans), one in Africa, the other in Europe, would actually be, in effigy, naturally, in the pockets and bank accounts of millions of persons all over the world.
The names of the months are Roman
Among the many things that the Romans have left us no less important is the calendar with the names of the months, days and seasons. To understand the logic and coherence of the names “september= September; october= October; november= November and december= December,” which etymologically means “seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth” we must know that the primitive Roman year had ten months and began in March.
Beati hispani quibus vivere est bibere. Lucky the Spaniards, for whom living is drinking
“Lucky the Spaniards, for whom living is drinking” – A reference to the Spanish pronunciation of the Latin, in which “v” (“vivere”) was pronounced as “b” (“bibere”).
What is an epigram?
The word comes from the Latin epigramma, and this from the Greek ἐπίγραμμα (from ἐπί = on and γραμμα =, writing, letter), which means “inscription”. Its etymology refers to burial or votive inscriptions on stone or other material, naturally short
With the ships on the shoulders
Apollonius of Rhodes gave us the only Greek epic poem that is conserved from Homer to the Hellenistic period, “The journey of the Argonauts”. Five centuries have passed and many things have changed. If Homer’s gods mingle with the heroes in their struggle, now the work is of men, although the gods, powerful, influence, help but do not mix with them. Actually the poem seems more like a novel and as such should be read.
The Latin is one but the forms of talk it were many
Latin is a language that has maintained a remarkable unity as a written language for over 25 centuries. In many of these centuries, in reality along most of them, remained only as a written language.
The deep caves surprise and attract devout and believer men
Some natural areas, whether by their hidden beauty, by their silence or by their depth that sink in the bowels of the earth, seem to emanate a strong attraction to humans. Of these places the caves have a special force. Not surprisingly the man dwelt in them during the long night of their childhood as a species.