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r Dec 2014
ants lean left more than right
it's true, it must be

i read it in Fox News

especially the red ones
that wear berets
like Che

the impertinent invertebrate
arsonist fire ants

who tend to get stepped on
by the man
who exterminates

according to anthropologists.

:)
r ~ 12/30/14
Lucero Oct 2014
Every morning I longed to be by my mother’s side.
She was kind and true.
As true as the facts anthropologists find to prove our human roots.
They say we evolved from monkeys and such.
I say there are always lies in between truths.
My mother promised to keep me safe.
She made my world a rainbow dune.

Her all-natural perfume gave me the ability to touch the sky.
Her rhythm and tune collided to bring out a pleasant triad.
I touched the blue and white with my bare hands.
No, I did not hesitate, for she was kind and true.
She gave me life and spirit too.
So easily, I assume.

Now all I see is a flooded platoon.
I was all too naïve to believe in the wicked disease.
My surroundings were made out of candies and sweets.
I am disgusted by her attempt to keep my life platonic and safe.
My mother manipulated my innocence without a care of the sea.
She had forgotten to introduce gangsters, and demons into my docile life.

I was only six when it happened.
My beautiful, heartwarming mother took her life.
She abandoned me to face the demons all too soon.
I was thrown into the streets and lived an uneventful life.
Lee found me lying on the street with tears streaming from both eyes.
The rest of my childhood was spent watching Lee slaughter innocent souls.

I saw too much from my own baby blue eyes.
There were screams and body parts rapidly falling from sight.
I knew all too well that Lee was my savior, so I tried to fit in as an alien might try.
Too soon did I become what my mother would never praise and I did not put an end.
As children, we are too weak and need guidance to live.
We mirror what we see, no matter how wrong it may be.

I needed the right soul to look after me.
I did not have that and so I fell into dark tunnels, you see.
I am not to blame, so why blame the innocent and not those at fault?
Those that walked right past me when I was only six could have helped.
They had the upper hand, I did not.
I never did, I was just a little innocent kid.
This poem isn't about me, but about children who may have gone through this.
Tony Luxton Jun 2015
Gold and silver battle *****
torn from swords saddles and crosses
lying beneath a farmer's field
tributes to kings and bellicose gods.

Fierce birds of prey snakes fish and bears
framed in filigree geometry
guarded warriors' savage souls.
No mercy in Mercia.

Archeologists anthropologists
historians librarians
curators and consertvators
collect confer and classify
while I just try to connect.
Yenson Apr 2019
One Republic
pick and mix, assorted all sorted
wrinkles missing, smooth as glaciers
toils reversing on harbingers like excesses does
walking the trodden alleys learning Sods mathematics
organs pains for non-organics are inherent consequences so
one Republic and the anthropologists utters a myth in passing
all bananas look like all bananas because bananas are bananas alike
sing a song of three pence and a pocket full of fear
Plato's cave a grand auditorium for lames
united disunited ages in anti-virus glares
white noise in white air and masses sigh
the emperor's coat plays invisible chess
ladies think long and hard in minds
for a dolphin swims like none-other
the glides of the sweetest depths
and in those places unseen
expanded vibes of feels
know reasons why so
it's the bigger snap
it's the difference
the forbidden
fruit lures
will not
move
not
go
in
This piece is inspired by the Brexit situation where the masses are in disarray, confused, pent-up, belligerent and feed up yet cannot stop being obsessive and charmed by it. Monsieur Barnier is determined, Angela Markel has dreams of taking it big and sea of free dolphins swimming. We all dream on and the equally obsessed Press write dirges, doom laden nonsense and masturbatory expose on distorted views and wishful thinking. Hapless Mrs May goes grey daily and watches helplessly as wrinkles arrives daily on faces that cannot let go and just doing the same thing and saying the same-thing over and over and over again  and by the way, what is the Black Rod doing about all this (for does familiar with British politics ) I definitely think  
the Black Rod will calm things down, yes, that's it !!
Marshall Gass Apr 2014
Housed in a walking stick
the King stuck a feather duster at the top
fancied his fourth wife and tickled his fifth.

Ten mutton chops later
a gourd of red blood wine
two scoops of brain cutlets
he was feeling better.

With a bowl of imported shrimp in hand
battered and buttered
with chilly powder ,a chilli *****
he was getting excited at the prospect
of knocking his seventh wife
but a flagging spirit ruined his *******
and he commanded the courtyard maidens
to dance like Queen of Sheba
on the High Priests entrails
as the music beat a violent end
to heads rolling in the dusty desert sands.

Done.
He counted the bowed heads
and picked the odd number out
to even his court ****.

The cradle of all creation was found ten yards
away in fossilised rock after five years of
guessing it must be around here.

Author Notes
Parody of procreation.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
Adam Struble Oct 2014
we've got to do a better job of getting lost in the relativity
**** your tooth fairy
...and suddenly i know things again
anthropologists taking notes
guttural longings
catharsis trailing down
but its delusion, soft swirls to the all

the source
we have now settled into the fortress
never seems like there was time

you are the clockwork
i am the pendulum
sycophant strange
the drywall notes
chanting
return to the what was that?
Mitch Nihilist Oct 2016
&
I respect therapists
like I respect anthropologists,
they dig and encounter an ampersand,
they can always inform beforehand
and foreshadow results,
but they found my bones
below 6 feet
and can’t form an answer,
they knew where to search
they found the ticking finger
pointing at lazy fissures,
and buried blisters
but dripping shovels
keep raising a faded flag
that says
“they’re nothing here keep moving”
She was in the knowing stage of being ****
Which, a century ago would be alluring
Making her mysterious and marveled, elusive
Taboo even
In this aweless, lawless digital wasteland
She was relegated to the position of commoner
A trillion, trillion pixels of poses
Not for posterity, no
More for posturing
More for positioning herself for
Instafication
Sordidly salivating as the counter clicked
Ever higher the number of persons
She didn't even like, pretending
To like her
And her
Hy-Pro
Framed low
Dreamy glow
Her self-esteem a public offering
Tethered to the hope of approval
From whomever happened to be
Wandering through the matrix
Worthiness rising and crashing
In a virtual tide of comments
Affirming her value
She cherished no secrets
Publishing her imbecilic itinerary
Instantly alerting the word
To her geographic location accompanied
With acronyms and emoticonceited hieroglyphs
Whose absurdity will baffle
Future generations of anthropologists
Should there be any living
Who will be interested in studying humanity
Once it's gone?
Who will find the fortitude
To glance away from the machine screen?
Will she be reluctant to escape her avatar
For something tangible?
The polished filtered flesh
She mistakes for her reality
Is an unending string
Of ones and zeroes
Fewer ones
An ever expanding mass of zeroes
Sam Temple Sep 2015
transparent disparages
ensnare carefree societies
implying unreliable disguises
with a flair for pageantry
daring prayer, rare hares prepare
hairy Unitarians to marry
shareholders in gay Paris  (Pari’)
repairing the tear
offering free-range diversity
university perversions revert
extroverted exhibitionists
to airline reservationists
impatiently, first-world philanthropists
**** on lists twisting
the anthropologists mood into a balloon animal
this scandalous tryst helps
black-balled priests insisting
on peace to release persistent
victims’ names to mass media outlets
disabled vets regret investing
as corporate jets rest on golden runways
dark days on the horizon
implying these lies perpetrated
cause an uprising that surprises
those late to realize
the fly’s on the eyes of
poor black children
are all of our future –
aurora kastanias Jun 2017
Much like the Mayans thousands of years before,
Granting 2012 the honour to host
An apocalyptic end of the world,
Peruvian shamans now declare
2017 the year
Of turbulence and widespread war.

The healers thus reunite on a hill,
In the capital of Lima to perform
Cleansing rituals able to prevent
The fatal clash between North Korea and the US.
It comes at a time of heightened tensions
Between the two countries over
Threatening nuclear missile programmes.

An unprecedented inferno ignites the night of a West
London residential skyscraper burning
From its second to its twenty-seventh floor
Unleashing the worst nightmares
Of its sleeping inhabitants
And the courage of sleepless fire-fighters.

Colombia's Farc rebels hand over their weapons
To United Nations Inspectors
As part of historic peace accords,
While the President declares,
“Peace will be built little by little,
Like a cathedral, which you build brick by brick"
Revolutionary forces no longer armed.

Migrations creating social unrests
People fleeing their threatening nests,
As mayors plead governments not to let
Any more in and ministries ask, cities to absorb
Two hundred and fifty thousand more.
Coast guards relentlessly saving the drowning ones.

US Attorney General denies, having undisclosed meetings
With Russian officials in Washington hotels.
Any suggestions of collusion with the Kremlin described
As appalling and detestable lies.
Agency’s investigation into Russian political meddling impeded
As Intelligence believes in conspiracies. Memories of Cold Wars
And Bond movies where the ‘traitor’ was lucky to be fired and not shot.

While doctors announce people over 75 taking
Daily aspirin after a stroke or heart attack
Are at higher risk of major and sometimes fatal
Stomach bleeds than previously thought,
Anthropologists excavating in Morocco
Find fossils of potential ancestors, the oldest sapiens retrieved,
Tracing back our steps to 300, 000 years before present.

Across the ocean, somewhere in Arizona,
A man heading to a retirement home prepares,
Cleans up his garage with the help of a neighbour
And finds a 15 million dollar *******, he ignored
He ever had.
To compensate for (A -Z)
     ineradicable alphanumeric
     character flaws (i.e. mutations
     of body or mind,)

     and avoid amass
sing wracking up vexatiously
     undesirable threatening class
action lawsuit against

     Matthew Scott Harris,
     which preliminary measure
     taken to avoid disembarrass
sing said individual as

     a majorly flawed individual
literal shortcomings of body,
     mind and spirit,
     the metier of writing doth encompass

a creative realm to trump
     geomorphology, sans groundmass
at the unsolicited expense
     (mine alter ego i.e. worst critic)

     will gleefully find,
     and expose grammatical,
     misspelling, spelling,
     et cetera errors to harass

glommed together with isinglass
hop, skip and jumping
     to appear as a *******
whereat no respect

     able collegiate lass
would give a fig about me,
     one totally tubular royal morass,
which expert anthropologists

     stumped asper nonclass
     if eye able ****
     sapiens mutant ninja turtle
case in point being his

     wanting in height not e'en pass
     sing the six foot mark
     plus mental illness
     perhaps traceable to

     besotted cognitive damage
     inherited predecessors
     quaffing an overdose of quass
made obvious peering at resulting

     Ct scan results viewed
     via microscopic spyglass
revealing abnormal amygdala
automatically designating
     his aptitude underclass
among average human
     with mettlesome Zeusian brass.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
i know that the devil is blamed for much evil, but so little evil is condensed into words... imagine what good would have arisen had mein kampf been protected from the assurance of third party muscles being exerted into verbs from orientating out of nouns with ego as pro / favouring the disnobling of stone with a human voice as thus named, stone, thrown. imagine? too late, history has been written; hell... evil doesn’t really write, it just acts on impulse... good writes a lot, so much that being good becomes fiction, obviously, since fiction exists, which naturally compares with evil furthered as a denial of some sort in the historical context orientating an established contnet.*

so a bunch of anthropologists and some other etc.
met at the top of the pyramid and discussed
whether a labourer believed in paradise right at the bottom...
and the labourer said... well... i don’t care
for top or bottom, but the corner-stone doesn’t exist
as a crucifixion for the rest of this structure to be
elevated and stable... surely?!
i actually forgot to mention in one poem,
christianity’s saving grace numbers only one:
doctor heal yourself...
well by saving i mean amused grace -
doctors reconsider proclaimed fault progress,
and thus claim knowledge as acquisition rendered revelatory
via progress rather than a stasis of intuition / i.e.
fake knowledge / hidden work, as all magic serves
in whatever limitation is necessary for a logic to express its full potential;
esp. if hidden and if revealed only upon the crucifix.
i hate those idiots at the top... the beatniks would have
just called them squares... we have to just call them atheists...
or if you’re polite english... ***** / wankers.
RAJ NANDY Feb 2022
Dear friends, this poem was posted on the ''Facebook'' last month along with maps and photographs, and was much appreciated. Unfortunately, I am unable to post any maps or photos on this Site! I post on the 'Facebook' these days which provides greater visibility & interaction! Hope you like this composition, - Best wishes, - Raj, New Delhi. Feb. 2022.

DATING EVENTS OF ANCIENT HISTORY : BY RAJ NANDY

FURTHER WE GET BACK IN TIME, WE ENTER THE FOG AND MIST OF THE PAST,
WHEN KNOWLEDGE BECOMES INSECURE, AND SPECULATIONS AND GUESS WORK STARTS!
WHEN WE ENTER THE REALM OF LEGENDS AND MYTHS
TO ENTERTAIN OURSELVES WITH FANCIFUL FACTS,
WAITING FOR HISTORY TO TAKE SHAPE, BASED ON RESEARCHED WORK AND VERIFIED FACTS!
IN OUR NOBLE PURSUITS AND ENDEAVOUR OUR ARCHIEOLOGISTS, GEOLOGISTS, ANTHROPOLOGISTS, - ALL COMBINE TO HELP US;
AND THEY HAVE INDEED HELPED OUR MODERN HISTORIANS, TO UNRAVEL MANY HIDDEN MYSTERIES
OF THE PAST!

NOW WHEN IT COMES TO DATING EVENTS OF THE ‘ANCIENT HISTORY’, IT MUST BE REMEMBERED BY
ALL OF US,
THAT EXACT DATES OF EVENTS CANNOT BE MADE AVAILABLE TO US!!
SINCE DATES ARE BASED ON INTERPRETATIONS OF ARCHIEOLOGICAL FINDINGS  MADE BY OUR  
LEARNED SCHOLARS,
WHICH HAS KNOWN TO VARY BY A CENTURY, OR
EVEN BY MANY MORE YEARS!!
SO IT IS WITH FACTS OF ANCIENT HISTORY, WHERE
WE CAN NEVER BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN,
WETHER HOMER WAS REALLY BLIND, OR THAT HIS EPICS WERE DICTATED BY HIM OR WRITTEN?
THE TROJAN WAR IS THOUGHT TO HAVE TAKEN PLACE BETWEEN 1200 AND 1150 BC,
BETWEEN THE MYCEANEAN GREEKS AND THE TROJANS,
IN THE NORTH-WESTER CORNER OF PRESENT-DAY TURKEY.
IT WAS A PERIOD WHICH SAW THE COLLAPSE OF THE MYCENEAN BRONZE AGE CIVILIZATION.
COMMENCING THE 400 YEARS OF “THE DARK AGES” IN GREECE, -ABOUT WHICH WE HARDLY HAVE ANY NOTION!
SO SCHOLARS HAD RELIED ON SEVERAL ARCHIEOLOGICAL DIGS, WHILE COMPOSING ANCIENT TROJAN HISTORY.
WHICH WE NOW GET TO READ, THOUGH SURROUNDED BY FEW MYTHS AND MYSTERIES!

NOW THE SEVEN LAYERS OF THIS TROJAN CITY WAS DUG UP  IN THE 19TH AND THE 20TH CENTURIES AT PLACE CALLED ‘HISARLIK  TELL’;              (Tell = is a mound)
WHICH WAS A MAN MADE MOUND BUILT ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER, WITH MANY HIDDEN MYSTERIES AS WELL!
SO THE CITY OF TROY DID EXIST, AND A TROJAN WAR MIGHT HAVE ALSO TAKEN PLACE.
BUT THE REAL CAUSE FOR THIS WAR REMAINS ELUSIVE,
AND OUR  SCHOLARS CAN ONLY GUESS!
WE GO BY GENERAL CONSENSUS AMONG SCHOLARS WHO SPOKE OF MARTIME RIVALRY BETWEEN THE MACENEANS AND THE TROJANS,
FOR CONTROLLING THE SHIPPING LANE TO THE BLACK SEA UP NORTH, BY SAILING ACROSS THE WATERS OF
THE AEGEAN.      (Map here cannot be shown on this site!)
NOW AS FOR “THE FACE THAT LAUCHED A THOUSAND SHIPS” WHICH WE FIND IN CHRISTORHER MARLOW’S ‘DR. FAUSTUS’ DURING LATER DAYS;
WELL, IN THOSE ARCHEOLOGICAL DIGS THERE ARE NO TRACES OF ANY ADULTEROUS LOVE, OR OF FAIR HELEN’S BEAUTIOUS FACE!

FRIENDS, LET US NOT FORGET THE BRITISH AUTHOR JK ROWLING,  WHO BECAME ONE OF THE RICHES FEMALE NOVELISTS OF OUR WORLD;
WITH HER ‘HARRY POTTER’ SERIES WHICH DESCRIBES A LEGENDARY, MAKE-BELIVE AND A FANTASY  WORLD!!
NOW AS A POET I DO LOVE THE MYTHS  AND LEGENDS OF THE PAST, IMAGINING THAT THEY ARE TRUE,
BUT WHEN IT COMES TO ‘DATING EVENTS’ OF ANCIENT HISTORY MY FRIENDS,
I REMAIN AS SKEPTICAL, OR EVEN AS GULLIBLE AS YOU!!
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
NOTES:  IN ANCIENT GREECE HISTORICAL DATING IS SAID TO HAVE COMMENCED WITH THEIR FIRST OLYMPIC GAMES HELD DURING 776 BC, WHICH FOLLOWED A CYCLE OF A FOUR YEAR PERIOD, WHICH HELPED IN THEIR SUBSEQUENT DATINGS.  ARTIST’S IMPRESSION OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES HAVE BEEN POSTED FOR YOU.   - By Raj Nandy, New Delhi, Jan. 2022.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2017
zoo
i once grew a beard to never glimpse at the sight of my chin, a year later: i can't see my neck!

it's always handy to keep a piece of toilet
paper, oh, sorry, journalism at hand...
just this overarching sense of how journalists
have no ambition to stretch it into
a novel category of blah blah -
   or the audacity of curbed haiku -
and the immediate numbing interlude
of the many hiatuses that come their way...
which is why i find poetry to be
the equivalent of: spring cleaning,
          levelling all the junk of narrative -
i want the idea, which is poetic:
  less strain on the eyes than a paragraph,
yet still so potent in reminding me of:
claustrophobia -
    so little words, yet so much sea.
        - yet i have to have some journalism
handy...
             although it encompasses but
a day, its over-inflammatory caricature of
novels or alternatives -
its toilet paper quality -
it's supposed lack of... *clinging
,
   it's immediate devaluation due to the reason
that: there has to be a story tomorrow,
even though today a story was promoted
from the realm of journalism
into a realm of history...
                    let's face it, journalists
are maddened by the fact that they write
for a living, are scared of poetry and are
told: fiction is session of yoga
   in a steam room!
            i love journalism -
it keeps me "informed", but at the same time
help me forget, which allows me to
read a book...
            in front of me is a loaf of bread,
but it's handy to have a few crumbs
from the previous reading loiter...
             which is a noun for a previous
verb of doing, by noun be, i.e.
       the one imitating knitting with
his excessive pride in mandible thumbs...
        journalism is great for that...
airy fairy hardly ima-gínary
(that hyphen and the acute iota add up
to - in diacritical arithmetic of
syllable dissection as: imagee-canary)....
           but that's beside my fascination,
i live a pretty rustic life -
then again, the simpler life breeds
the most impassioned pleasures derived
from what others would deem: mundane.
akin to ancient greece...
    i once sported long hair like a spartan...
now i have my ****** ***** to entertain my
grooming "gallantry" (dict. meaning
no. 2, hence the dissociating no. 1 literal) -
     i just think journalists are keeping me
informed about the fancies, lusts and debaucheries
of ancient Athens...
                    on the skirmish lines of
where the metropolis ends and the countryside
begins, i'm far from the urbane
   fiddling, squatting, swindling,
squandering neurotics of
  what you think predicates i think...
these journalists reveal a world of the ancient
lure of the unnerved and the revealing
taste for unconscious sabotage...
           and since there's no what in
the fact that i think, there's only me thinking
as a placebo artefact of what could have been
what you think is of no consequence -
alas, journalism tells as otherwise...
  which is why having even the most
uninviting, minuscule effort from the medium
at hand, can allow you to, quiet frankly:
relax.
                   i live among foxes -
i am on the periphery of civilisation -
among the feral kind -
    i have no urban ambitions -
    but in my youth i have noted a clear
distinction between translating ancient greece
into modern, english society...
these journalists recount an athenian life -
i live a spartan life...
        i simply watch them trip up on their
own faeces and hubris with a unforgiving sense
of delight...
        primarily their affairs and conundrums with
the use of technology...
     my mantra was always:
go in, do what the *******'re supposed
to do and... get the **** out before
they can say: aliceinwonderlandthepornmovie;
i might as well call it:
   the return of anthropologists -
but i'm afraid it's too late to revise this
society with anthropology -
        since we're not studying aliens
anymore: but alienation -
                      every time i travel into
central london i'm walking into a zoo,
the same apparent cages, bars and tranquillisers...
notably on the weekend -
                 an **** fest of
                   disembodiment, rattled with
a zombie perfume of a rotten sense of:
       the lost art of imagination.
wordvango Aug 2017
funk me   shaman
anthropologists
disclaim me
where the native is sold or stolen
and the dreamcatcher's catch nothing but gold
my allies are my soul
the issues older than Geronimo
the  rivers red with blood
the lands stole
plantations rose
the great spirit rode
off in a chariot
left me wondering where
here is now
verdant green acres covered the planet of the apes
like a petticoat junction
donning barrel of skinny dipping monkeys.

Once drought stricken vast landscape
far as the eye could see
suddenly flush with promise
of budding new shoots
and ladders for vine companions
harkened prelapsarian Edenic prominence,
when mother nature resplendent
videre licet morning glory of primeval Earth
pregnant with multitudinous color pallette
regaled bipedal forerunners

of humankind with
panoramic pristine kingdom,
where legendary tropical verdure
availed countless plant and animal species
teeming with flora and fauna
offering veritable Smörgåsbord
to plethora of herbivores and omnivores,
where expansive webbed wide world
subtly hinted, negotiated and suggested
horn and hardart of good and plenty.

Lush vegetation adrip with downpour aftermath
tempted all creatures great and small
all things wise and wonderful
to emerge from their respective hideaway
courtesy the palpable pulsation of Gaia
exuding potential power to proliferate
gifting superlatives linkedin to survival of the fittest
blessing natural advantageous propensities
to buzzfeed capital one reproductive traits
redeeming symbiotic qualities
with generations of beneficial mutations
at evolutionarily optimal junctures
though devoid of thinking beings
to witness or record phenomenal events.

Nasty short beasts proliferated
refining technique to do the wild thing
stir (fried) crazy
as concupiscent bison teen in estrus
while shuffling off to Buffalo,
(or where that city
in the United State of America
would take shape)
hashtagging where x marks the spot
made within man/woman caves
that did be hoof anthropologists
even nearly a bajillion years later.

Imagine dragons galumphing
during flintstone age
culture club wielding proto humans
impossible mission their mental acuity to gauge
of **** neanderthalensis
very intelligent and accomplished humans,
Whereby current evidence from both fossils and DNA suggests that Neanderthal and modern human lineages separated at least 500,000 years ago. Some genetic calibrations place their divergence at about 650,000 years ago,
nevertheless amongst the scattered clans
there probably lurked an anonymous sage
smart enough to induce quantum leap
did jump/kick start scattered population
with wits about them to sustain their existence.

Appearance of super duper wiseacre
invariably punctuated **** sapiens
progenitors as an unknown mover and shaker,
who helped fledgling forebears
of contemporary people
to discover trappings to weasel out
from being between a rock and a hard place
and squirrel away linens and things
for anticipated future creature comfort or necessity.

Imponderable and inscrutable poetic philosophical meanderings of mine (expounded upon while I nourished myself on a snicky snack prepared by the missus – graham ******* with Almond butter plus Rhubarb jam) found me most unexpectedly tangentially linkedin with the invaluable scientific knowledged bequeathed to civilization courtesy the greatest thinker for Grecian formula(s).

Noah (way) did Archimedes
(born c. 287 BCE, Syracuse, Sicily
[Italy]—died 212/211 BCE, Syracuse)
discover flood insurance nor prevention,
but hands down he ranked as the most famous
mathematician and inventor in ancient Greece.

He is especially important for his discovery of the relation between the surface and volume of a sphere and its circumscribing cylinder.

He is known for his formulation of a hydrostatic principle (known as Archimedes’ principle) and a device for raising water, still used, known as the Archimedes *****.

There are nine extant treatises by Archimedes in Greek.The principal results in On the Sphere and Cylinder (in two books) are that the surface area of any sphere of radius r is four times that of its greatest circle (in modern notation, S = 4πr2) and that the volume of a sphere is two-thirds that of the cylinder in which it is inscribed (leading immediately to the formula for the volume, V = 4/3πr3). Archimedes was proud enough of the latter discovery to leave instructions for his tomb to be marked with a sphere inscribed in a cylinder.

Measurement of the Circle is a fragment of a longer work in which π (pi), the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle, is shown to lie between the limits of 3 10/71 and 3 1/7. Archimedes’ approach to determining π, which consists of inscribing and circumscribing regular polygons with a large number of sides, was followed by everyone until the development of infinite series expansions in India during the 15th century and in Europe during the 17th century.

— The End —