I’d rather be a pegasus than a unicorn

This vessel is more than 1,900 years old, and it can be traced back to the northern highlands of Peru. It's crafted in the Recuay style, which is an artistic tradition that existed from about 200-700 CE.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

The first millennium CE was a period of expansive artistic creativity and strong stylistic regionalism in Peru. Several communities in the northern highlands shared a distinctive tradition that is known today as the Recuay. This tradition emerged following the disintegration of the Cupisnique and Chavín cultures, which thrived between 1200 and 500 BCE and whose art featured depictions of ferocious beings and predatory animals.

Around 200 CE a new style of pottery emerged—one that we recognize as Recuay today—and spread rapidly throughout the mountainous part of the Ancash region, a territory located between the temperate valleys of the Pacific coast and the tropical forests of Amazonia.

This particular motif (a feline depicted with a bird on its head or back) also appears in the artwork of the Paracas culture, which is an older tradition that existed along the southern coast of Peru in 800-400 BCE.

Sources & More Info:

The Ethnological Museum of Berlin: Clay Vessel

Flickr: Recuay Cat Pot

Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Art of the Recuay

Cleveland Museum of Art: Similar Cat-Shaped Vessel with a Coatimundi on its Head

Gold serpent labret, Mexica (Aztec), 1325-1521 AD

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH

by Maya Angelou

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet

Traveling through casual space

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns

To a destination where all signs tell us

It is possible and imperative that we learn

A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it

To the day of peacemaking

When we release our fingers

From fists of hostility

And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it

When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate

And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean

When battlefields and coliseum

No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters

Up with the bruised and bloody grass

To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches

The screaming racket in the temples have ceased

When the pennants are waving gaily

When the banners of the world tremble

Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it

When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders

And children dress their dolls in flags of truce

When land mines of death have been removed

And the aged can walk into evenings of peace

When religious ritual is not perfumed

By the incense of burning flesh

And childhood dreams are not kicked awake

By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it

Then we will confess that not the Pyramids

With their stones set in mysterious perfection

Nor the Gardens of Babylon

Hanging as eternal beauty

In our collective memory

Not the Grand Canyon

Kindled into delicious color

By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe

Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji

Stretching to the Rising Sun

Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,

Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores

These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it

We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe

Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger

Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace

We, this people on this mote of matter

In whose mouths abide cankerous words

Which challenge our very existence

Yet out of those same mouths

Come songs of such exquisite sweetness

That the heart falters in its labor

And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet

Whose hands can strike with such abandon

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness

That the haughty neck is happy to bow

And the proud back is glad to bend

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it

We, this people, on this wayward, floating body

Created on this earth, of this earth

Have the power to fashion for this earth

A climate where every man and every woman

Can live freely without sanctimonious piety

Without crippling fear

When we come to it

We must confess that we are the possible

We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world

That is when, and only when

Carved Conch with Lakshmi-Narayana. India, 11th to 12th Century.

Conch shell pendant with feathered serpent, Mexica (Aztec), 1325-1521 AD

This piece is called Neon American Anthem by indigenous artist Nicholas Galanin “to mourn the loss of lives, freedoms, and safety for people and lands subjected to American violence, and to protest continuing oppression.”

Text below the line to make it easier to read!

When it comes to color, mammals are hardly the most vibrant creatures of the animal kingdom. Their fur often comes in drab shades of brown, gray or black, unlike some birds, insects or fish that can dazzle with brilliant, iridescent displays. However, a new study is challenging this notion, finding that brilliant colors in mammals are more common than previously thought. Iridescence is a phenomenon where colors change when an object is viewed from different angles. It is not created by the presence of colored pigments but is a trick of the light produced by the way it interacts with different structures. For example, it is what makes a soap bubble or the surface of a compact disk shimmer with a rainbow of colors.

Attributed to Jacob Heise (1621 - circa 1675), German, Königsberg, circa 1650-60, Tankard; amber, silver-gilt.

Courtesy Alain Truong