Paul Cooper

Stairway to Heaven 🌿 #Fallback to April 24 Oakview town hall ruins & Spanish Peaks

When it comes to archaeological landscapes, there are few places in Ireland that can compare to Rathcroghan, County Roscommon, the ancient royal capital of Connacht. At the centre of this image you can see the enormous earthwork enclosure known as Relignaree (Reilig na Rí – the graveyard of Kings).

mfs out here being like “if I have to see my uncle Teuira and my aunt Uira one more fucking time on this tiny island, I will drown myself in the sea, so guess I’m packing up the outrigger canoe and brushing up on my star navigation”

Have sometimes wondered if the way teenagers get hyper-irritated by their parents is actually an evolutionary mechanism, kind of like how tree seeds need a way to get away from the parent tree.

Old photo: one bright, cold, February day, a mist suddenly descended on the ruins of Whitby Abbey. The result was a very 'spooky' atmosphere...!

Clearer pictures of Llanthony Abbey

Corfe Castle today

I have said it before, and I will say it again: the UK countryside is full of interdimensional portals. All you have to do is keep your eyes open and look carefully for them... tomcox.substack.com/p/20-of-the-...

Extremely funny to review Moby Dick and say "The author should be careful in the future not to make too many digressions from the subject"

Excited to announce my third novel will be coming at the start of 2028! We're doing a journey by foot through the wind-blasted ruins of post-Roman Britain - 3 characters thrown together and fleeing for their lives in a world falling into ruin. More soon! Link: www.thebookseller.com/rights/fonta...

An interesting stone marker on the side of the old bridle road SE of Pont Scethin in Dyffryn Ardudwy. It lies close to the junction with the more modern Taith Ardudwy bridleway. Unless you look very closely you miss a lot of graffiti, some of it perhaps as early as the mid 19th c. Not on maps.

Fallen Statue at the Ramesseum, Thebes https://clevelandart.org/art/1992.236

There’s a new episode of Fall of Civilizations! And man, it’s such a specific delight when @paulmmcooper.com starts telling the story of a society by saying “Earth’s surface is a thin crust of solid rock…” Tectonic plates are destiny.

✨ Sunday Read from the latest Digest: "Again and again, these older strongholds appeared along my route, giving me a sense of a landscape shaped by people who built on an epic scale and throughout generations - long before Offa made his mark." 👉 www.digest.andymarsh...

Thrilled to share the cover art for "From An Antique Land," a new short story @reactorsff.bsky.social will publish on November 18! Art by Jon Juarez, editor @annvandermeer.bsky.social

The AI spambots are getting quite confused that my first book was translated into Italian.

Octobre Le Palais du Louvre, Paris In a field by the Seine, a man sows seed, raked into earth by a stone-weighted harrow behind a horse; magpies & crows ignore scarecrow archer & peck stray seeds. Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry 1412-16 Musée Condé Château de Chantilly

HJM on Old Sarum for #HillfortsWednesday: "they chose a low, featureless hill perking up from the valley of the Avon, and breathed upon it, and lo, the turf sank and swelled and vast green billows of earth curled round their crests into oval cirques that even the brutal heel of war could not deface…

Advance of History by Mark Tobey, 1964 https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137544

From Toi Derricotte's book, Captivity: bookshop.org/a/862/9780822954224 #poem #booksky #writing

22 Jan, 26 Sept: St Colmán moccu Béognae (d. 611), founder of Lann Elo/ #Lynally, Co. #Offaly. Author of 'Alphabet of Piety'? St Columba saved him from drowning. St Columba's nephew? Described as "beautiful" in MartG. 📷and 🖇️link: Standing Stone IE #medievalsky www.thestandingstone.ie/2009/12/lyna...

The video for Episode 21 is now available for everyone!

I love coming across this way out into the woods

After two hundred days of battle, they groaned and ate barley bread upon the strange sickle of the south, then drank holy water. Urshanabi wailed, 'It has been a thousand days since I last drank water with Humbaba'

This video was filmed in Palestine. My heart struggles to comprehend such cruelty and the heartbreaking disregard for human life. No human being should have to endure this.

Friend shared this video of a man unveiling the library he hid when he fled Damascus in 2011. It’s incredible

Hans Memling’s astonishing compression of 23 sequential scenes into one aerial composite image, from Christ’s entry into Jerusalem & Last Supper / carrying the cross / to his crucifixion & resurrection (1471). Details at eclecticlight.co/2022/02/04/a...

The video version of Episode 21 is coming for Patreon subscribers on Saturday! This part of the world really has to be seen to be believed. With original reenactments and some of the best drone photography I've ever seen, find out how the Majapahit Empire of Indonesia rose and fell...

Definitely not a British hillfort. Yamchun Fortress, overlooking the mountains of Afghanistan in the Wakhan Valley, Tajikistan. Still Iron Age! Originally built in 300 BCE to guard the ancient Silk Road, expanded in the 10th Century. 📸 by intrepid daughter a couple of weeks ago #HillfortsWednesday

The remains of the south transept wall and crossing at Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire. 📸 My own. #WallsOnWednesday #MalmesburyAbbey

We used to be a country

Caspar David Friedrich - "Dreamer, Ruins of the Oybin"