LAHAINA, MAUI—Time Magazine reports that Kimberly Flook of the Lahaina Restoration Foundation and her colleagues estimate that at least four museums and thousands of artifacts have been lost in the recent wildfires. Among the objects believed to be lost is an original flag of the Hawaiian kingdom, last flown on August 12, 1898, when it was replaced with the American flag. Hawaiian feather work, furniture, photographs, and objects made of kapa, a fabric made of fibers from trees and shrubs, are also likely to be gone. The destroyed or damaged museums include the Wo Hing Museum & Cookhouse, a social hall for Chinese immigrants who built tunnels and irrigations systems; the Baldwin Home, which was the oldest standing residence on the island; and the Old Lahaina prison, which dates to the whaling era of the mid-nineteenth century. “We’ve lost physical pieces of history,” Flook said. “We have not lost our history, our culture. And we won’t.” 

COLOGNE, GERMANY—According to a Live Science report, M. Dores Cruz of the University of Cologne and her colleagues have found early evidence for the practice of plantation slavery at Praia Melão, the recently identified site of a sixteenth-century sugar mill on the northeastern coast of the island of São Tomé. The Portuguese inhabited the island, which is located off the coast of West Africa in the Gulf of Guinea, in the late fifteenth century. They soon found, however, that migrants to the previously uninhabited island endured high rates of malaria. Convicts, Jewish children, and enslaved Africans were soon forced to work there, harvesting and processing sugar cane, and building and maintaining the sugar mills. Praia Melão includes a large stone two-story building with a clay roof. Its lower floor served as a sugar boiling room, while domestic quarters were placed on the upper floor. Fragments of cone-shaped sugar molds similar to those found at Portuguese sugar mills in Madeira have also been recovered at the site. By 1530, plantations on São Tomé were so profitable that additional sugar mills were constructed, but the Portuguese eventually moved much of their sugar production to Brazil in the early seventeenth century. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Antiquity.

ISTANBUL, TURKEY—According to a Live Science report, a badly damaged marble figure of Pan, the ancient Greek god of the wilds, woods, fields, shepherds, and flocks, has been discovered at the site of St. Polyeuctus, an early Christian church in what was the city of Constantinople. The statue’s surviving head, torso, and an arm measure less than one foot long and show Pan playing a reed pipe. The sculpture was likely transferred to the site with backfill from another location in the city in the 1960s after an archaeological investigation, explained Mahir Polat of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. He added that the figure is thought to have been sculpted during the Roman period and brought to Constantinople between the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. as an historical work of art for display in a public place or a palace. To read about an ancient bronze mask of Pan found in Israel, go to “Mask Metamorphosis.”

AGRIGENTUM, SICILY—According to a statement released by the Sicilian Region Institutional Portal, an excavation led by archaeologist Maria Concetta Parello at House VII b in Sicily’s Valley of the Temples has uncovered a votive deposit containing at least 60 terracotta figurines, oil lamps, small vases, bronze fragments, and bones. The deposit was found above a destruction layer attributed to the burning of the Greek city in 406 B.C. by the Carthaginians. Parello and her colleagues will try to determine if the objects were left by residents who returned to their ruined city.

Humanity depends on the boundless energy, ideas and contributions of youth everywhere. Today and every day, let’s support and stand with young people in shaping a just and sustainable world, for people and planet. “

UN Secretary-General António Guterres

2023 Theme: Green Skills for Youth: Towards a Sustainable World

Today, the world is embarking on a green transition. The shift towards an environmentally sustainable and climate-friendly world is critical not only for responding to the global climate crisis but also for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A successful transition towards a greener world will depend on the development of green skills in the population. Green skills are “knowledge, abilities, values and attitudes needed to live in, develop and support a sustainable and resource-efficient society”.

These include technical knowledge and skills that enable the effective use of green technologies and processes in occupational settings, as well as transversal skills that draw on a range of knowledge, values and attitudes to facilitate environmentally sustainable decisions in work and in life. Due to their interdisciplinary nature, the essence of green skills is sometimes expressed, partly if not wholly, through other associated terms such as “skills for the future” and “skills for green jobs”. While green skills are relevant for people of all ages, they have heightened importance for younger people, who can contribute to the green transition for a longer period of time.

For the official commemoration of International Youth Day 2023, DESA will organize a global webinar in collaboration with the UN Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth and Generation Unlimited. The webinar will offer critical information and data and will promote discussions and an exchange of ideas on green skills for youth. It will feature perspectives from international organizations, national governments and young experts working in this area. Knowledge products will be developed to support and encourage stakeholders to celebrate International Youth Day 2023 in their various contexts and roles. Please find the webinar agenda here.

Sharing the human spirit through friendship

Our world faces many challenges, crises and forces of division — such as poverty, violence, and human rights abuses — among many others — that undermine peace, security, development and social harmony among the world’s peoples.

To confront those crises and challenges, their root causes must be addressed by promoting and defending a shared spirit of human solidarity that takes many forms — the simplest of which is friendship.

Through friendship — by accumulating bonds of camaraderie and developing strong ties of trust — we can contribute to the fundamental shifts that are urgently needed to achieve lasting stability, weave a safety net that will protect us all, and generate passion for a better world where all are united for the greater good.

https://www.un.org/en/observances/friendship-day

Background

The International Day of Friendship was proclaimed in 2011 by the UN General Assembly with the idea that friendship between peoples, countries, cultures and individuals can inspire peace efforts and build bridges between communities.

The resolution places emphasis on involving young people, as future leaders, in community activities that include different cultures and promote international understanding and respect for diversity.

To mark the International Day of Friendship the UN encourages governments, international organizations and civil society groups to hold events, activities and initiatives that contribute to the efforts of the international community towards promoting a dialogue among civilizations, solidarity, mutual understanding and reconciliation.

The International Day of Friendship is an initiative that follows on the proposal made by UNESCO defining the Culture of Peace as a set of values, attitudes and behaviours that reject violence and endeavour to prevent conflicts by addressing their root causes with a view to solving problems. It was then adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1997.

Iranian documentary “Persepolis- Chicago” directed by Orod Atarpour will be screened at the 1st edition of the History International Film Festival in Austria.

Iranian documentary “Persepolis- Chicago” is about the adventures of the Achaemenid tablet fragments, which reveal the economic, social and religious history of the Achaemenid Empire in the fifth century BC. The tablets were discovered during the excavation of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire.

Film Festival will be held 9th – 15th of August, 2023 in Austria.

ÉRIDA, SPAIN—According to a Miami Herald report, a well-preserved mosaic floor has been found in a building at the Huerta de Otero archaeological site by students from the Barraeca II Professional School. The floor is made up of a central depiction of Medusa, images of jellyfish and other fish, peacocks, masks, flowers, and geometric motifs. Team leader José Vargas said that the four peacocks are situated in the four corners of the mosaic and represent the four seasons, while the figure of Medusa would have served as a protection for the inhabitants of the dwelling

“Mangroves are in danger: it has been estimated that more than three quarters of mangroves in the world are now threatened and with them all the aquatic and terrestrial organisms that depend on them. This is why UNESCO has decided to act to protect them, along with other valuable blue carbon ecosystems, through its Geoparks, World Heritage sites and biosphere reserves.”Mangroves are rare, spectacular and prolific ecosystems on the boundary between land and sea. These extra ordinary ecosystems contribute to the wellbeing, food security, and protection of coastal communities worldwide. They support a rich biodiversity and provide a valuable nursery habitat for fish and crustaceans. Mangroves also act as a form of natural coastal defense against storm surges, tsunamis, rising sea levels and erosion. Their soils are highly effective carbon sinks, sequestering vast amounts of carbon.

Yet mangroves are disappearing three to five times faster than overall global forest losses, with serious ecological and socio-economic impacts. Current estimates indicate that mangrove coverage has been divided by two in the past 40 years.

Message from Ms Audrey Azoulay, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of the International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem

https://www.unesco.org/en/days/mangrove-ecosystem-conservation

COLOGNE, GERMANY—According to a statement released by the University of Cologne, a team of linguists has partially deciphered a writing system found in inscriptions on cave walls and on pots unearthed in Central Asia called “unknown Kushan script.” The writing system was used by early nomadic peoples of the Eurasian steppe and then the rulers of the Kushan dynasty between about 200 B.C. and A.D. 700. Svenja Bonmann, Jakob Halfmann, and Natalie Korobzow analyzed an inscription in Tajikistan that had been written in both Bactrian and unknown Kushan script, and an inscription in Afghanistan that had been written in Gandhari or Middle Indo-Aryan, Bactrian, and unknown Kushan script. The breakthrough came in the form of the royal name Vema Takhtu, which appeared in both Bactrian texts, and the title “King of Kings,” which was then identified in unknown Kushan script. These discoveries allowed the researchers to recognize other character sequences and determine the phonetic values of individual characters in unknown Kushan script, which they now believe recorded a previously unknown Middle Iranian language. Bonmann, Halfmann, and Korobzow suggest that the language could now be called “Eteo-Tocharian.” They are planning to look for additional inscriptions in Central Asia with Tajik archaeologists. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Transactions of the Philological Society. To read about a merchant city that flourished in what is now Tajikistan from the fifth to eighth century A.D., go to “A Silk Road Renaissance.”