Book Launch Tour: The Vesuvius Isotope, by Kristen Elise, Ph.D.

This post is part of a book launch tour for the release of The Vesuvius Isotope, a new book by drug discovery biologist Kristen Elise.  This book might be of interest to those of use that enjoy a thriller with a bit of archaeology thrown in :)  All the posts on Kristen's blog tour are related in some way to the content of her new novel - see below and be intrigued, maybe you've found your next Summer read!

The Crocodile Library of Tebtunis

[F]or some of the Egyptians the crocodiles are sacred animals... and each of these two peoples keeps one crocodile selected from the whole number, which has been trained to tameness, and they put hanging ornaments of molten stone and of gold into the ears of these and anklets round the front feet, and they give them food appointed and victims of sacrifices and treat them as well as possible while they live, and after they are dead they bury them in sacred tombs, embalming them.

-The Histories, Herodotus (ca. 484–425 BCE) 

In the winter of 1899/1900, an expedition into the Fayoum Oasis outside of Cairo, Egypt was initiated. The expedition was led by the University of California at Berkeley and the Hearst Foundation. Its goal was to excavate an ancient site: the ancient city of Tebtunis. The researchers were looking for human mummies; what they found instead were mummified crocodiles.

One of the workers from the expedition was so disgruntled that he took a machete and began hacking at one of the mummified crocodiles. And this was how it was discovered that within some of the crocodiles, an incredibly large collection of papyrus documents had been preserved for two thousand years. Papyri were found both in the crocodiles, where they were sometimes used as part of the mummification process, and within the city itself. More than 30,000 ancient texts were eventually recovered from Tebtunis, comprising the largest collection of ancient papyri that exists in the United States today.

Mummified crocodile, Naples Archeological Museum

The majority of the texts date to the second century BC, although others hail from the first or second centuries AD. This is the same era that produced the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, offering an Egyptian counterpart to the Roman resource that is still mostly buried beneath the ash from Mount Vesuvius. And, like the texts from the Villa dei Papiri, the ancient papyri of the Tebtunis excavation are still legible to this day.

Mummified baby crocodile, Naples Archeological Museum

Within the library were more than a dozen fragments of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. Also found were birth, death, and tax certificates, and petitions to Queen Cleopatra from her subjects. It is unfortunate that no texts have ever been found - either in this database or any other - that were actually written in the hand of Egypt's enigmatic last pharaoh.

Also excavated at Tebtunis were several scientific and medical texts, including at least one example of an illustrated treatise on the medicinal properties of plants. Contrasting with these are a number of astrology and magic texts. The juxtaposition between magic and medicine in the same era underscores a critical transition that was underway at that time - the transition from superstition to true science.

Tebtunis illustrated medical text

It is interesting to note that the Tebtunis papyri are written in both Egyptian and Greek - sometimes within a single document. The demotic Egyptian language was common among earlier pharaohs but rarely used in the later years of the first milleneum BC. A gradual replacement of Egyptian with Greek evolved with the Ptolemaic Dynasty, and the Roman conquest of Egypt brought with it an increase in the use of Latin.

Cleopatra, the last ruler of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, was the only one to speak all three languages.

For more information about the Tebtunis Papyri, visit the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri.

This blog post explores a non-fictional theme or locale that is incorporated in The Vesuvius Isotope, a novel by Kristen Elise, Ph.D. Order your copy at www.kristenelisephd.com.

Kristen Elise, Ph.D. is a drug discovery biologist and the author of The Vesuvius Isotope. She lives in San Diego,  California, with her husband, stepson, and three canine children. Please visit her websites at  ww.kristenelisephd.com and www.murderlab.com. The Vesuvius Isotope is available in both print  www.kristenelisephd.com and www.amazon.com) and e-book formats (www.amazon.com for Kindle, www.barnesandnoble.com for Nook, www.kobo.com for Kobo reader.) 

The Vesuvius Isotope:
When her Nobel laureate husband is murdered, biologist Katrina Stone can no longer ignore the 

secrecy that increasingly pervaded his behavior in recent weeks. Her search for answers leads to 

a two-thousand-year-old medical mystery and the esoteric life of one of history’s most enigmatic 

women. Following the trail forged by her late husband, Katrina must separate truth from legend 

as she chases medicine from ancient Italy and Egypt to a clandestine modern-day war. Her quest 

will reveal a legacy of greed and murder and resurrect an ancient plague, introducing it into the 

twenty-first century.

Neolithic Adventures

I haven't really been using this blog completely in the way I intended... I guess I intended I would write a lot more (then an evening class and a startup jewellery business got in the way)!  But I wanted this to be a bit of documentation of the adventures of the foray into the world of academia, from the perspective of one who is just starting out.  And things keep happening, and I'm not documenting!!

I think I've missed my opportunity to properly recall a great day of lectures in Oxford entitled Neanderthals and Modern Humans (could there ever be a more interesting title for a day of lectures?? It also included a tour of their C14 dating Accelerator Mass Spectrometer unit!! https://c14.arch.ox.ac.uk/publictalk.html) But this month, my partner and I went on a lovely trip to Wiltshire to check out some of the amazing Neolithic monuments and earthworks only a short drive (to this Canadian anyway!) away.  To the right you will see - of course - the famous Stonehenge, which isn't actually even a henge...

It was great to be in the landscape, and my company and I had a lot of discussion of 'phenomenology', the study of archaeological areas through the experiences of the senses - it seems a bit of a fluffy approach but is really fascinating and cannot be ignored when trying to more fully understand a site.  Going beyond a positivist framework of facts and figures and ignoring the human experience, we can miss criucal pieces of what it was, and is, like to experience these ancient places.

We walked from Stonehenge down a long path in an effort to locate Durrington Walls.  It was a great way to take in th entire landscape - Stonehenge is but a part of this neolithic centre of activity, and when you see the huge amount of barrows dotted around the horizon it's really made clear.  We walked along fields with sheep and young lambs skipping about, and got a bit lost, but it was all worth it as it was a lovely walk.  When we finally found Durrington Walls, across from woodhenge, we realised it would have been a lot easier to drive - but then I couldn't look at molehills or collect pinecones and bits of iron slag off the ground, could I??

We next visited the West Kennet Longbarrow, perhaps the oldest of the sites mentioned here, and probably the one I found most fascinating.  It's located on top of a hill and is very windswept, and offers a great view around the landscape.  It's about a day's walk from Stonehenge (dont worry - we drove), and is also one of many monuments on a busy landscabe which includes Silbury Hill, and Avebury (a stone circle with a bank that makes Stonehenge look puny).  The longbarrow has an interesting entrance that keeps out the wind, and has a number of chambers off the long corridor once inside.  When it was opened to the public, they reconstructed the roof which had fallen in and installed plexiglass skylights that let in the light, so you can walk around inside and see inside the chambers.  Interestingly, a lot of newagers leave little stones and candles and flower petals everywhere, hints of the modern day uses of the barrow! 

The best thing about Avebury, which we visited last, is that you can walk up and touch the stones (which are in an around the village and fields) which is a greater experience than standing behind the rope at Stonehenge.  It seems like a great town to visit and spend some time in - we witnessed a very 'free spirited' wedding, and all the new agers you could ask for making merry in the local pub.  I bet it attracts the most interesting of people... unfortunately, as we got to Avebury in the evening, the gift shop had already closed!  I love gift shops...

Having all this prehistory on your doorstep is something that I absolutely love about living in Britain.  Wood rots away unfortunately, and although the Museum of Anthropology at UBC is one of the most fabulous places to visit, it's hard to find any accessable bits of British Columbian PRE-history. 

My parter and I are now dreaming of living in a van for a couple of months and driving around to all the prehistoric sites in Britain - what an adventure that would be! 

This day was a great window into the ancient past - well - not too ancient.  The Neolithic was only a couple thousand years ago, really...

And for anyone who's interested in learning more about Britain's Neolithic past, I've been reading/keeping this book by my bed for the last 6 months or so now!  But don't let that fool you, it's really good... I'm just bad at finishing books these days!  Francis Pryor is a wonderful writer and makes you feel like your his buddy in the pub as he talks to you engagingly about this era.  He's a fantastic writer and balances the academic topics well in an accessable way.  Highly recommended, even if you're like me and know virtually nothing about the Neolithic... if it happened after 50,000 years ago, chances are it's news to me!

Evolutionary Linguistics 101

Biologists are interested in the origins of life, geologists are interested in the formation of rocks, but few linguists are interested in the origins of langauge, as Friedrick Newmeyer once pointed out.  But this is a problem to be rectified... and if I have my way, every linguistics major program will have a required 'origins' component.  I'll write the texbook myself, I will!

But until that can happen (and someone will probably beat me to it), for the budding evolutionary linguist, here are the seminal works to lay a foundation for getting a grasp of the discipline.  This is the best I can do to spread the evo-lingo love:


Pinker, S., and Bloom, P., 1990. Natural language and natural selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13, 707-784.

This paper is commonly cited as starting the snowballing of interest in language evolution.  It was very important for the discipline to be seen as a legitimate line of study as well as for language to be viewed as a complex biological adaptation that had to have evolved.

Hauser, M. D., Chomsky, N., and Fitch, W. T., 2002. The faculty of language: what is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298, 1569-1579.

Probably the most widely read paper on evolutionary linguistics because of both the prominence of the authors and the unlikeliness of their co-authoring together.  The paper rocks up with an authoritative air, but kicks off a lot of argument and discussion, namely the resulting papers published by Pinker and Jackendoff in Cognition in 1995.  It was answered by HCF, and another reply by Pinker and Jackendoff was also published, all in Cognition between 2005 and 2007.

Jackendoff, R., 2002. Foundations of Language.

Ray Jackendoff outlines most clearly and for perhaps the first time, a reasonable complete picture of the way in which language likely arose. 

Christiansen, M., and Kirby, S.,2003. The Evolution of Language.
 
This book is an edited collection of essays from the leading evolutionary linguists in the field, speaking about a wide range of topics in the discipline from mirror neurons to the archaeological record to computerised simulations.

Johansson, S., 2005. Origins of Language: constraints on hypotheses.

Constraints are so important for focussing a new and excitable dsicipline like language evolution, and Sverker Johansson's book is a wonderful introduction to the discipline.


Bickerton, D., 2007b. Language evolution: a brief guide for linguists. Lingua 117, 510-526.

Derek Bickerton has been a major name in evolutionary linguistics for ages.  This paper outlines the discipline and provides a real focus on the questions it should be addressing.

Kenneally, C., 2008.  The First Word: The search for the origins of language.

Because the actual discipline of evolutionary linguistics is just as fascinating as the subject it studies, this is possibly my faovurite book on evolutionary lingusitics.

Botha, R., and Knight, C., 2009 (eds.). The Prehistory of Language.
Botha, R., and Knight, C., 2009 (eds.). The Cradle of Language.

These two books are collections of essays that, like Christiansen and Kirby's 2003 book, show a wide range of topics from a wide range of experts in the field giving is a good look at the state of the discipline.

If you manage to read all of these, email me and I will create a badge for you that says 'expert language origins master' or something :)

And if you ever need more, the Langauge Evolution and Computation Bibliography is an excellent source:
http://www.isrl.illinois.edu/amag/langev/