World’s oldest animation, 5,200 years old

Film showing images from a 5,200-year old bowl from an ancient burial site in Iran.

An Italian team of archaeologists unearthed the bowl goblet in the 1970s from a burial site in Iran’s Burnt City, but it was only recently that researchers noticed the images on the bowl tell an animated visual story.

The oldest cartoon character in the world is a goat leaping to get the leaves on a tree.

According to an article in the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies:

The artefact bears five images depicting a wild goat jumping up to eat the leaves of a tree, which the members of the team at that time had not recognised the relationship between the pictures.

Several years later,Iranian archaeologist Dr Mansur Sadjadi, who became later appointed as the new director of the archaeological team working at the Burnt City discovered that the pictures formed a related series.

The bowl has some controversy associated with it. Some researchers claimed the tree on the bowl to be the Assyrian Tree of Life, but the bowl dates to a period before the Assyrian civilization.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Kris’s Archaeological Blog at About.com:

Now this is deeply cool. The Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) in Iran has made a short film using the images on a bowl from the Burnt City. The Burnt City (Shar-i Sokhta) is a site in Iran that dates to about 2600 BC, and has seen some decades of investigation. The bowl shows five images of a wild goat leaping, and if you put them in a sequence (like a flip book), the wild goat leaps to nip leaves off a tree.

Bugs Bunny has nothing to worry about yet, if you ask me.

This entry was posted on March 10, 2008 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Anthropology, Archaeology, History, History and art, History blogs, Science. Tagged: Ancient Iran, animation, Archaeology, Pottery, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Pink Floyd-Wish You Were Here (live)

IFPI Takes ISP to Court to Impose Music Piracy Filter

The ‘Big Four’ record labels - EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner have started legal proceedings to force an ISP to end piracy on its network. The action, brought against Irish ISP, Eircom, is the first of its kind.

Eircom is the largest Irish ISP. Today, the Big Four record labels have started legal proceedings which they hope will force Eircom to effectively end music piracy on its network. According to the Ireland.com report, this action is the first against an ISP, rather than individual file-sharers.

Mr Justice Peter Kelly today admitted the proceedings at the court under the Copyright and Related Rights Acts 2000. It appears the labels are trying to get an order to effectively force Eircom to take responsibility for their customer’s actions by saying that it’s the ISP that is doing the ‘making available’ to the public, by facilitating the infringement.

Eircom’s lawyers see if differently. They say that Eircom was “not on notice of specific illegal activity that infringed the rights of the companies”, adding that it was under no legal obligation to monitor traffic on its network.

Willie Kavanagh, Managing Director of EMI records in Ireland said of Eircom: “with the greatest of respect” it was “well aware” that its customers used its networks to infringe copyrights “on a grand scale”.

Previously, Eircom has refused to use any filtering technology to interfere with file-sharers, something the labels wish to address in this case too.

It looks like the IFPI has shifted its focus from the individual filesharer to the ISPs. Last month, the IFPI won a court case in Denmark, and the ISP “Tele2″ was ordered to block all access to The Pirate Bay. Tele2 announced later that it will fight the decision.

Banning illegal filesharing from their network, voluntary or not, is in the best interest of ISPs according to the IFPI: “Illegal P2P file-sharing may have helped drive broadband subscriptions in the past, yet today these activities, particularly in respect of movies, are hogging bandwidth,” they state.

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F15 Eagle Dog Fight

Teaser Trailer for The Incredible Hulk Movie Trailer

The trailer for The Incredible Hulk will premiere this Wednesday at 9:56pm eastern standard time on MTV. But to hold you off until then, MTV has released this teaser advertising the the trailer, which can be watched after the jump.

Kate Beckinsale is Making Snow Angels

by Jordan Riefe

Kate Beckinsale is not just another pretty face. Sure, she’s gorgeous, but she’s already had a more varied career than most of her peers. Every time you try and pin down Kate Beckinsale as “this” or “that” type of actress, she switches it up. Beckinsale broke through in indie movies like The Last Days of Disco but was soon stuck as an action star after the Underworld movies. Instead of battling werewolves in leather pants for the rest of her career, she switched it up again and started to be taken seriously again in movies like The Aviator and, now, the highly acclaimed Snow Angels. She sat down with us to talk about the ups and downs of her career and her new film, which sounds like a definite up.

Kate Beckinsale on playing a character like Annie:

“Well we all made it together, that’s what I like so much about working with [director] David [Gordon Green] is that he was very flexible from the beginning, wanting us to improvise and bring ideas and Sam and I absolutely leapt on that with both hands. For me it really helped that my husband and kid were there in Nova Scotia with us. It was the first time my daughter was not on the set with me every day because there were just too many things that were…I think it would have been distressing for her to see me so upset and it wouldn’t have been right. So I was able to commit completely to the working day and then go home and get in bed with my daughter and my husband not try to kill me and everything was great, you know. But it was definitely…we prepared a lot, we worked really hard and I think it was just Sam and I were a good combination, we liked each and each other’s work and by the end it sort of took on a life of its own.”

Beckinsale on her character’s pain:

“I think [co-star] Sam [Rockwell] and I really felt like we created this whole history together and by the end of the movie when everything is coming undone it was really incredibly painful and extremely exciting and thrilling as well. But it was very tough and it’s going to be weird seeing it with an audience. It’s going to feel very exposing and personal and strange to have that seen. I feel kind of weird about it, but it’s good.”

On the response her fans might have to the darkness of the film:

“I think it’s a constant flow of that, I mean I started out in British movies and it was kind of difficult because it was like, ‘well she can’t really play an American because she’s British’. Then I did The Last Days of Disco and Brokedown Palace and then it was, ‘oh she’s very fragile” and [then I did] Pearl Harbor and then I did Underworld and it was like, ‘well she’s kind of tough’. So I’ve been dealing with this…you know it’s a constant quest to not get stuck. I have absolutely no snobbery about movies at all. I like good movies, but I don’t only like one type of movie. I love Little Miss Sunshine, All About Eve, and I love Rocky. I don’t feel that one cancels out the other, so I’m perfectly open to doing all genres of movies. I don’t feel I have turned my back on anything, it’s just that I like to keep trying new things.”

On the relationship between Annie and Arthur:

“That was always there, that sense of …it wasn’t so much I think from Annie’s side a sexual crush, I think it was almost a nostalgic crush, the feeling of being the hot babysitter. It’s been a long time since she felt like the hot babysitter and I think that’s what she’s flirting with more than flirting with him, what it felt like to be the one people desired and fantasized about. But she’s in a different spot now, so it’s like a little blast from the past.”

On her inspiration to get into the film business:

“I didn’t really have a mentor as such. I always felt…my father died very suddenly when I was young and I always I think got slightly confused - I was only five - between the concepts of, God, my father, and John Lennon, slightly all blurred into one thing (laughs). So I definitely felt that my father was an amazing and brilliant actor and I always grew up knowing that I would never be as good of an actor as he was, but I like the fact that he would be proud of me and he liked me a lot and was into me and I really like feeling that connection. I didn’t believe in myself, was a completely insecure, overweight, self loathing, aggressive freak growing up. So the believing in myself is coming. It’s coming and I thank my husband for that more than anything.”

Beckinsale on her expanding fanbase:

“I actually spent a couple of evenings during Oscar time with Jonah [Hill] from Superbad and I’m so happy I have my fanbase and not his fanbase. That guy, literally every two seconds someone goes, ‘DUDE!’ and I couldn’t stand it. My fanbase, my teenage male fanbase go really quiet and run away, which is very easy for me to have that happen because I’m just as frightened of them as they are of me. I don’t really think about it much, like I said they do tend to run away from me more and whisper. Adam Sandler and Jonah have the high-fiving kind, which would definitely scare me more. People are usually very cool, very nice, it’s fun. Comic-Con is always a bit of a surprise I never realized so many people dress up like that all of the time.”

-- Jordan Riefe

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Top 9 Jumpiest Movie Moments

Why do we love being scared by movies so much?

Where is the satisfaction in being forced to jump out of our skins as someone or something leaps out at the least obvious moment? Why do we do it to ourselves? Is it a battle of wills between us and the director to see whether he can make you actually make you physically shit yourselves?

Or it that same impulse that when someone tells you to smell something bad, you can't help but do it? It's OK, we've all done it. Whatever the reason, some directors have certainly succeeded where others have failed by making you actually lift off out of your seat.

They can almost be measured by the sound of everyone landing. And here are the best, with video…

9. The Bourne Identity

We're not sure what's more shocking, the moment the guy comes through the window or the fact he commits suicide by deliberately jumping back through it.

8. Jaws

We are going to need a bigger boat. It's possibly the defining moment of the film, as Brody suddenly gets his first good look at the shark while chumming.

7. Deep Blue Sea

If anyone ever tells you they knew that a flying shark was about to come and bite Samuel L Jackson in half they are simply lying.

No, we don't want to hear it. Liars, the lot of you.

6. The Thing

OK, it may not make you jump out of your skin, but it certainly shocked us. Just didn't see it coming.

5. Alien

All right, it's hardly shocking now because we all know what happens, but remember the first time you saw it.

If you're not convinced, just look at the actors' reactions. They had no idea what was going to happen. Brilliant!!

4. Friday 13th – Part 1

Just when you thought it was safe to put the cushion that you'd welded to your face throughout the movie down, there is another bloody shock as Jason suddenly re-appears from under the water to knock off the remaining survivor. A million sequels are spawned.

3. Jaws – The head

It doesn't matter how many times we see this, we still jump at that stupid head coming out.

2. Carrie

Surely one of the biggest jumps ever, as Carrie's blood-soaked hand comes out of her grave and grabs the hand of a terrified Amy Irving.

1. Seven

If you did not jump at the moment when we realise the Sloth guy is not actually dead you must be dead yourself. We think our bowels loosened for a brief moment. There should be a law against it.

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