the people of the echoing valley

In a letter about the discovery of the Weiß Chronicles, Johanna wrote that the teacher Christian Gottlieb Weiß (1782-1867) had his first teaching job in "Höllenthal" - which would suggest the etymological interpretation as "Hell's Valley". I had always assumed that this was the historic name of the village now known as Hellenthal (Eifel), but Wikipedia seems to think it's got nothing to do with hell, and that it's all about the Hall you hear in the valley, ie the echo (Old High German hellan, to sound, resonate). As there was a lot of mining and metalworking in the area, the valley may have been echoing with the clanging of hammers and anvils.

Anyhow, Christian Gottlieb, who is also the earliest born ancestor of whom we have a photo, found himself a wife at Hellenthal. In 1806, he married Anna Gertraud Käuer, (1777-1858; alternative spelling: Keuert), whose ancestry is solidly from that village. Coming out of the Weiß family that is crawling with clergymen (up to 13 among his direct ancestors, many more in the extended family), he is the first in our lineage to leave that tradition behind and marry somebody with no church family background whatsoever. Also, he married outside the (former) Sponheim territory, where the whole clergy marriage network operated. And she was four years older than him.

Back in the noughties, my father hired a professional genealogist to look into the Hellenthal ancestry. He drew up a report on Anna Gertraud's family and found 14 of her 16 great-grandparents. No academics in sight but a few metalworkers. And a very tightly knit community where the family names like Vader(s), Pieroth and Bastert occur in duplicate in the generation of the great-grandparents. I was reminded of that fact when I updated my list of family names recently, so am now looking into the Hellenthal family tree again in the hope of discovering common ancestry for those pairs of great-grandparents sharing a surname.

My scan of a tourism brochure from the 1990s.

So here comes a little family tree for Anna Gertraud:

1. Anna Gertrude Keuert (Kauer) * 8. 3.1778 Hellenthal; ~ Gemünd + 7. 4.1858 Simmern u. Dhaun (80)

 

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2. Keuert Tilmanus * 24. 8.1749 Hellenthal + 8.12.1819 Hellenthal (70) smith, agricultural worker

} oo 29. 5.1777 Gemünd

3. Regina Catherina (Maria Catherina) Freischmid * 14. 5.1747 Hellenthal + 28. 3.1813 Hellenthal (65)

 

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4. Johann Peter Keuert * um 1725 Hellenthal + after 1759

} oo 11. 2.1748 Gemünd

5. Anna Catharina Dresen (Drees) * 4. 3.1715 Hellenthal (if no. 10. correct) + after 1759

 

6. Paulus Freischmid * 23.12.1696 Hellenthal + 1. 5.1752 Hellenthal (55)

} oo 21. 5.1724

7. Maria Piroth (Pyroth) * 25. 4.1705 Hellenthal + Hellenthal (73) [] 3.10.1778

 

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8. Mattheis Keuer * 27. 8.1690 Hellenthal + after 1737 Hellenthal

} oo 29. 5.1719 Gemünd

9. Elisabeth Bruch (Bruich) * 26.12.1698 Kirschseiffen + after 1737 Hellenthal

 

10. Jacob Drees * 9. 2.1681 Hellenthal +

} oo 1. 5.1708 Gemünd

11. Gertrud Lüperts * um 1685 Hellenthal + before 1748

 

12. Paul Freyschmidt * around 1675 Hellenthal + 1724 Hellenthal

} oo

13. Elisabeth Pyroth * 1676 + 1705-1724

 

14. Johann Pyroth * 9. 1670 Hellenthal + after 1715

} I.oo around 1704

II.oo around 1707 Maria Hellenthal in Hellenthal

15. Elisabeth Thus (Theissen) * 10.12.1677 Hellenthal + 1705-08

 

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16. Tilmann Keuer * around 1660 + after 1696

} oo before 1682

17. Gertrud Vader * around 1660 + after 1696

 

18. Peter Bruch * around 1660 Heimbach ? + after 1702

} oo 1683-87

19. Ida Bastert * 8. 3.1662 Kirschseiffen + after 1702

 

20. Johann Drees * around 1650 Bronsfeld +

I.oo before 1672 Catharina Huperts

}II.oo 1680

21. Margaretha Kuhl

 

22. Arnold Lüperts * around 1650 Bronsfeld + 1688-1708

} oo before 1672

23. Maria Huperts * around 1650 Hellenthal + after 1688

 

24. (Freischmidt)

} oo

25.

 

26. Firmondt Pieroth

} oo

27. Cathrin Basters

 

28. Paul Pyroth (junior) * before 1650 Hellenthal ? + after 1678

} oo before 1668

29. Johanna Balters * + after 1678

 

30. Heinrich Thus * + after 1686

} oo around 1675

31. Maria Vader * before 1660 + after 1709

 

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38. Johann Pastart (ert) *

} oo vor 1660

39. Elsgen Bungart

 

40. Thonnes Dreßen * Bronsfeld near Schleiden (recorded as a godfather in 1671)

56. ?Paul Pyroth (seeing that 28. was referred to as Paul Pyroth Junior?)

Note that there is a family tree on familysearch which is much less complete and deviates in the paternal grandparents and their parents. They also have a wrong year of birth and death for 2. Tilmanus - according to them he would have been 9 years old at the birth of his daughter. My guess is they picked another person also called Tilmanus Keuer and thus ended up with a different set of ancestors on the paternal side. So I guess we can safely ignore that dataset.

 

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A few leads for further investigations:

Bastert (yes, the name means exactly what you think): There is a Pastert ironworks tradition in this area, see for instance Peter Pastert (1641-1728) in Schleiden (northern neighbour of Hellenthal). Also, a Bastardt family near Schleiden has been involved in a long running inheritance dispute in 1618-1628.

Pyroth / Pierot: The spelling varies wildly, but our genealogist and others have speculated that these people go back to a francophone lineage of Pierrot (derived from Pierre, the French version of Peter). As Hellenthal is a mining and metalworking town, this name could be from migrating miners coming in from Wallonia. We have some of these elsewhere too, eg in Fachbach.

Vaders: The genealogist said there were several Vader families in the previous generation and he couldn't establish a specific connection to any of them. There are seven GedBas entries for a (Peter) Reinhard Vaders born Hellenthal around 1635 who in 1674 married Anna Magdalena Lang from Neunkirchen (Saar) and moved there, producing lots of Vaders descendants. Seeing that he was around 40 at the time of this marriage, he could very well have had a previous family at Hellenthal, from which 17. Gertrud or 31. Maria Vader could be his children. Or his nieces. His parents were Franz Vaders and Evgen NN. All the Gedbas profiles seem to come from Saarland descendents not too interested in Hellenthal, so this trace goes cold very quickly.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

another old violin's tale

Some thoughts on

The Violin Maker’s Secret
Evie Woods
Harper Collins 2026

Bookshop.org

Last year I read an old (1914) novel about a fictional Stradivarius violin following the fates of real and fictional players through the centuries of its lifetime. The author of that very romantic romp hiding behind a male pseudonym was Anna von Bonin (1856-1933).

Now I discovered a modern equivalent in the novel by Evie Woods (120 years younger than Anna von Bonin). It is a similarly wild romantic romp, but thankfully this time the violin is not a Stradivarius. It was made by a fictional Irish luthier called William Rathbone who died in 1841. He allegedly learned the craft from Thomas Perry (1738-1818) and knew Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840). Again, we're getting a mix of historic and fictional people through the two centuries of the violin's lifetime (1817-2025). There is a fantasy element in that the soul of the luthier's tragically deceased fiancee appears to have entered the violin, speaks to us as the voice of the instrument, and seems to have a magical influence on the romantic lives of the people who come near it.

Most of the plot is set in the present day (2025), however, with dramatic events unfolding after criminals steal the violin from an auction house but leave it at Heathrow airport where a baggage handler finds it and takes it home. A lot of the novel is also about personal baggage, so the protagonist's job is kind of an early hint to where we're going.

I've read this fairly swiftly and enjoyed it thanks to the subject matter matching my current interest in lutherie. I also happen to agree with the romantic statement being made here that string instruments can change lives (magically or otherwise) - can happen to all of us. I would also consider the author's earlier work The lost bookshop, for similar reasons (is it nominative determinism that she's drawn to objects made from trees?), but might skip the one about a bakery.

languages: the rise and fall

Languages evolve, diversify and become extinct, so they count as biology, right? A recent paper modelling the rise and fall of language diversity gave me a welcome excuse to revisit languages from an evolutionary perspective:

How languages evolve and die

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 17, 7 September 2026, Pages R925--R927

Restricted access to full text and PDF download

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

(Unfortunately, this year's features will no longer become open access one year after publication - do contact me if you would like a PDF and the magic link has expired.)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky.

Last year's thread is here .

The 7,500 languages known today represent only a fraction of the language diversity that existed as recently as 2,000 years ago. (Photo: mrpbps/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).)

naming names

Reading (most of) a book about German family names I got inspired to update the list of names I had left unattended in the depths of my family history file for many years. The version I started from had 162 names, and the one I ended up with now (see this page) has 326 names, so yes, it's been neglected for too long.

Some of the most common German surnames.
Source: RossiLeone, Wikimedia Commons.

To give a rough indication of how close or distant in history these names are, I included the Kekule number of the last carrier (except for the immediate family up to the generation of my grandparents). By default, these carriers are all women. There are only a couple of cases where a male line took on a new name (eg after marrying into a farm and adopting the name of the farm, see Wolff). I've ignored the previous names in these cases as we typically don't know much about them. Similarly, I have also ignored the (speculative) previous life of Johann Dopheide, who may or may not have been identical with Jean d'Oppède. If he was, the family tree wins dozens of additional ancestors in the French nobility going back to the crusades, but that would be an entirely different story to the rest of my family history, so I'm tending to ignore that.

After adding the numbers for multiple occurrences of the same name, we end up with around 375 name lines ending in a woman, or 375 female ancestors whose maiden name we know. There are probably as many with only a first name and no known family name, and many more males, so these named women are a minority and it was an interesting experience to go through the list and acknowledge their existence one by one by copying over their number into the names list.

I also spotted quite a few cases where the same name occurs several times in the same geographic area without being a very common name like Schmidt or Mayer. I am planning to look at these cases again to find out if I can find evidence of shared ancestry between the women sharing those names.

The page serves as an index to blog entries where I have explored the origins of specific names (like eg Bitsch) and/or the biographies of several generations in an extended name line.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

a village called Weiler

The German word "Weiler" means small village (or hamlet) and is often included in the names of villages such as Adamsweiler, Annweiler, Belgweiler, Birkweiler, Eckweiler, Nickweiler, Ohlweiler, Rießweiler, Sensweiler, etc. - all these place names actually occur in my family tree.

There are also quite a few villages just called Weiler. One of those is on the river Nahe, downstream from Kirn, between Martinstein and Monzingen, and on the opposite bank to Merxheim. It used to be one of the places that I knew nothing about even though they pop up several times in my family history. A helpful reader of my blog who has an ancestor from Weiler pointed out to me that it is missing in my list of places. Here I am compiling all references to Weiler, so I have something to link to when I add it to the list.

So far, I have no known direct ancestors with biographical dates located at Weiler, but I have found three instances concerning siblings of my direct ancestors, one more remote link, and one relating to the Fuchs family tree which I researched for somebody else.

The historic Sponheim vineyard at Weiler.
Source: Wikimedia, photo by giggel.

In 1749, Anna Maria Ebner, daughter of the vicar of Alterkülz Philipp Nikolaus Ebner, married Carl Morlang from Weiler and had four children with him. The family settled at Pfalzdorf in the Lower Rhine area, together with a whole group of would-be migrants who had wanted to go to America via Rotterdam but only got that far as the Netherlands refused to let them pass. Carl Morlang's father came from Dhronecken (Hunsrück), but his mother, Anna Sophie Cullmann was a Weiler native.

In 1758, Marianne (Maria Anna Dorothea) Weiß, daughter of the vicar of Eckweiler, married Johann Georg Orth from Weiler near Martinstein, on the river Nahe. He is number IX-59 in the Orth genealogy. This means that he is a 3xgreat-grandson of Baltahasar Orth, the second protestant vicar of Kirn, and the nameline goes via Jakob junior, born at Kirn, then Hans born at Merxheim, and another three generations born at Weiler. There are dozens of Orth people listed in the residents book. Note that Marianne Weiss and Johann Georg Orth, although both related to me, were not related to each other as far as we know. (Their lineages in my family tree only meet in the next generation, when the mayor of Pferdsfeld Johann Gottlieb Weiss marries Anna Katharina Andrae from Gebroth, who has Orth ancestry.) They have six children and 17 grandchildren according to the Orth page. Note also that our Weiss Chronicles state that Marianne's husband was called Philipp Orth, but I tend to trust the modern research over our cherished old document in this case. Johann Georg in the Orth genealogy did have a younger brother called Philipp, so it isn't completely ruled out that she could have married one after the other.

One generation further down in the Weiß chronicles we have Johann Philipp Weiß,the firstborn son of the mayor of Pferdsfeld Johann Gottlieb Weiß and Anna Katharina Andrae from Gebroth. He became a teacher at Weiler and married Anna Margaretha Kaiser from Merxheim (on the opposite side of the river Nahe). I still need to find out whether she was related to our Caesar / Kaiser ancestors.

These three siblings of ancestors moving to Weiler are all linked to the lineage described in the Weiß Chronicles. More surprisingly, they are all closely connected to one person, Katharina Elisabeth Ebner (1712-1750), who married the vicar Johannes Weiß, in a kind of matrilinear way (Katharina Elisabeth is also at the centre of my matriline of Lutheran vicar's families!). They are, respectively, Katharina Elisabeth's sister, daughter, and grandson. When this penny dropped late at night, I had visions of Katharina Elisabeth conspiring with her sister to arrange the marriages of her daughter and her grandson, but sadly she didn't live long enough to do this. And Anna Maria migrated to the Lower Rhine anyways, so the accumulation of Weiler links may in fact be a coincidence. Also, it's not that far from Eckweiler and Pferdsfeld to Weiler and Merxheim, maybe around 10 km for the shortest link (Pferdsfeld to Weiler) and no more than 15 km for the longest (Eckweiler to Merxheim).

Separately, one of the vicars of Eckweiler (1674-1690), an ancestor in the Fuchs family tree, Johann Justus Leyendecker. Born ca. 1642 in Trarbach, he was the vicar of Eckweiler 1674-1690, was then moved to the parish of Weiler, where he died 28.11.1699, aged 57. (The regionally common name Leyendecker describes a roofer specialising in slate roofs.)

 

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There is a book of residents of Weiler (1667-1900) available online here. I'm struggling to get much info out of it because by the time I've located the page I want the site starts blocking me for making too many requests. It also contains a short history of the village, which appears to have been the source for the slightly shorter history here.

The village which today has around 450 residents is a prime location for wine growers in the Nahe region, which explains that all three feudal authorities that ruled the Sponheim territories over the years have set up a vineyard here. There is the Badische Weingut, the Sponheimer, and the Schmidtburger one. The brief history of the village here (and in the residents book) notes that the wine growing tradition may go back to Roman times as some Roman artifacts were found in the ground. This lovely video from the regional TV channel SWR presents the current family businesses residing in the three feudal vineyards.

Note also that it is close to the upper end of the Nahe wine region, travel further up to Kirn you'll find hops and the brewery.

 

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My famlily history index pages: people -- surnames -- places -- migration events

1664: something brewing in Strasbourg

After discovering various ancestors in 17th century Strasbourg (still a Free Imperial City at that point), it occurred to me that Kronenbourg, having named one of their beers "1664" might have been around at that time too. Unfortunately, the history of the brewery doesn't appear to be very well presented anywhere (it is extremely thin on the company website), so I'll use this entry to compile the bits and pieces I find.

Von Florent from Paris, France - 1664, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10911888

In 1664 Geronimus Hatt IV (Jérôme Hatt in French; 1633-1675), son of a dyer, started brewing in a house called Zur Kanone (cannon) at the square Rabenplatz (now known as Place du Corbeau). It was named after the raven as in the Middle Ages this area was the place of executions and the birds came to consume the dead bodies. More recently though, this has become a very desirable address, just across the river Ill from the cathedral (reached via the raven's bridge). The brewery business stays in the possession of the Hatt name line until 1977, across more than three centuries and eight generations, which is very impressive. According to his French Wikipedia page (no other language versions available at this point), he had obtained his brewer's licence the same year, whereas this F1 fan page suggests a slightly different version.

According to the F1 page, his son Claude took over the brewery in 1683. However, this name and date doesn't appear in the Wikipedia overview of the family history. There, many different descendants are brewers in various places in Strasbourg and beyond, so to simplify things I'll try to pick out the lineage that leads to the last owner of the family business.

1) Jérôme Hatt IV (1633-1675) marries in 1664 Marguerite Hamm, daughter of the baker Johann Hamm. As described above, he starts brewing in 1664 at Rabenplatz (Place du Corbeau). The very amazing website Maisons de Strasbourg has info on the house numbers 1, 7, 8 and 9 and none of these had a Hatt person (nor a brewer) in the 1660s. The numbering around the square (see the map) only went up to 9, so that only leaves numbers 2-6. Number 5 is huge, so for the humble beginnings of a newly licensed brewer I'd imagine one of the smaller houses.

2) Jérôme Hatt V (1668-1734), brewer renting the house Zum Vogelgesang / Chant des Oiseaux in 1692 (7 quai des bateliers, just a few doors down from the Rabenplatz), marries Catherine Boch the same year. In 1713, he inherits the birdsong house from his mother, who had married the owner Hans Jacob Verius in 1675 and bought the house with him in 1689 when the previous owners filed for insolvency.In 1716 he marries Catherine Goll, mother of brewer number 3). She was previously married to a priest called Georges Frédéric Leonhard, and in 1736 marries Philippe Guillaume Milius In 1746 her son, the brewer Jean Daniel Hatt and his wife (oo 1740) Susanne Marie Kammerer inherit the house. It stays in the Hatt family until 1759. Search "Hieronymus" on the page about the house to find 25 entries relating to the Hatt family. For instance, in the 1730s they also buy neighbouring properties and apply for permission to knock through walls to expand their business space.

3) Jean Hatt (Strasbourg, 14 août 1720-Strasbourg, 29 octobre 1753), founder of the brewery l'Espérance en 1745 à Strasbourg then at Schiltigheim. Marries Marguerite Barbe Heyl 1746 at Strasbourg. Rents the basement of 6 rue de la Croix in 1747. (There are many more hits for Espérance on the website, probably enough info to reconstruct the history of the breweries operating under that name.)

4) Jean-Louis Hatt (Strasbourg 1752 - 1804), brewer at l'Espérance. Marries Anne Barbe Kellervitter in 1780 at Strasbourg.

5) Philippe Jacques Hatt (Strasbourg 1787 - 1862), brewer at l'Espérance, founder of the brewers' association of Strasbourg. Marries Marie Catherine Rothenbach (1791-1838) 1812 at Strasbourg.

6) Philippe Jacques Hatt (Strasbourg, 16 november 1813)

7) Frédéric Guillaume Hatt (Strasbourg 1849 - 1916), leads the brewery at the Kronenbourg quarter of Strasbourg. Marries Eugénie Boersch (1854-1883) 1874 at Strasbourg.

We have a bit of a consistency problem here, as the company website claims that Frédéric Guillaume Hatt moved the brewery to Kronenbourgh in 1850, at which point he would have been around one year old. Maybe he had an uncle with the same name who is missing in the wiki family history. That would also fit the counting of generations on the website as they say sixth generation. The reason for the move was the flood risk in the city centre. The Kronenbourg district is on hills and thus safe. Wikipedia gives 1862 as the date of the move (still inconsistent) and also mentions that hills enabled the use of cellars for cold storage during longer brewing procedures.

8) Maurice Jérôme Hatt (Strasbourg 1869 - 1958), acquires the brasserie du Tigre and creates the brand Tigre Bock. Marries Hélène Nessmann 1897 at Strasbourg, then after her death, Valérie Fischer 1911 à Strasbourg.

9) Jérôme Maurice Hatt (Strasbourg 1912 - Perthuis 1998). The last leader of the family business.

Production at the Kronenbourg site ceased in 2014. All brewing is now happening in Obernai.

Which is all very interesting but not much use for my family history. I need to find the first three bearers of the name Geronimus Hatt, as they would have overlapped with our goldsmith Franz Bolion von der Rosen and his wife Ottilia Flach.

 

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Stop Press: This Lutheran vicar Matern Hatten (1470-1546) moves from Speyer to Strasbourg and marries Barbara Hager from Regensburg has a son called Hieronymus, who marries Agnes Stock and again has a son of the same name, and he is a dyer. Now that looks very promising.

In the history of the birdsong house we find the marriage entry of Hieronymus Hatt IV with the name of his late father given as Hieronymus Hatten.

With the search term Hieronymus Hatt (as opposed to Geronimus which I had from the wiki page of the first brewer) I also found a family tree for the brewery founder in Geneanet. So, going backwards now, we have:

1. Hieronymus Hatt IV (1633-1675)

2. Hieronymus Hatt 1596-/1633 (this marriage in 1630 also in Gedbas)
3. Maria Gassner /1613-

4. Hieronymus Hatt 1573-
5. Susanna Jung 1575-/1625
6. Daniel Gassner †1631/
7. Anna Maria Mischler (according to GedBas)

8. Philipp Hatt /1550-/1611
9. Dorothea Windisch 1552-
10. Martins Damian Jung /1540-1595/
11. Margaretha Jud /1549-/1576

18. Matthes Windisch †/1577
19. Ursula Baldner †/1558
20. Martin Jung †1566/
22. Jacob Jud /1507-1566/
23. N Post /1510-

Sadly, Geneanet runs out of Hatt ancestors at this point, although we're still one Hieronymus short, if the one born 1633 is the fourth. I think this fits quite plausibly with the son of the vicar mentioned above though. So if we trust the numbering of the Hieronymuses, we could fill in Hieronymus I as number 16. and the vicar would be 32. Actually, Wikipedia says that Hieronymus (son of Matern Hatten) had sons called Hieronymus and Philipp. So that works. We then have, based on that Wiki entry:

16. Hieronymus Hatt + after 1566
17. Agnes Stock + before 20. Mai 1546

32. Matern Hatten * around 1470 Speyer + 14. März 1546
oo before July 1537
33. Barbara Hager * Regensburg

64. Matern von Hatten (from the place Hatten near Wissembourg?)
65. Margarethe Reuß (from a family with lots of clerics at Speyer)

While these brewers are not attached to my ancestry (yet), there are parallels to the history of the Kirner Pils brewery, where we have a known family connection, so I do have an excuse for being nosy.

 

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

There's also a nascent index of place names here.

And here's the index of migration events.

megalith mysteries

Some thoughts on

Stonehenge: Making Sense of a Prehistoric Mystery

by Mike Parker Pearson, Joshua Pollard, Colin Richards, Julian Thomas, Kate Welham.

Council for British Archaeology's Archaeology for All 2015

I didn't know much about Stonehenge before reading this and had only seen the monument from the roadside, but seeing that I sometimes get to cover ancient DNA work about various prehistoric populations and communities, I figured I should know something about it, so I picked up this book when I saw it at a charity shop.

I was surprised to learn that the site is a lot more complex and dynamic than I would have thought. It had been a major site even before those famous megaliths were installed, and there are five major phases of its development spanning more than a thousand years (2900-1600 BCE). Intriguing points I noticed include:

• The fundamentally egalitarian nature of pre-agricultural societies, which the authors seem to struggle to understand. They keep wondering about why we don't see the "elite" of stone age groups being marked in any obvious way. I would suggest that's simply because there was no elite, when you were hunting and gathering in a group of a few dozen people, you didn't have the resources to spare to feed a king and his entourage, even though you would still respect the experience of your seniors.
• The scientific challenges of finding out where those stones came from, how they were transported and erected etc.
• How it makes sense that populations that lived in wooden huts if they had any shelter at all spent all this effort to create stone monuments for their deceased. Apparently, an archaeologist visiting from Madagascar made that point clear based on his knowledge of similar megalith culture surviving in Madagascar to this day. The point is that life is transient but the afterlife is forever, so you want ephemeral structures for your lifetime but eternal ones for eternity. Makes sense, in a way. And we still use gravestones, too.
• Archaeologists also found related settlements nearby which may have housed the workers.
• Back in the days of megalith societies, the Orkney Islands were a major centre of excellence for building megalith sites. Part of the reason being that the settlers on those islands had used up all the trees and had to use stones for building by default, so they had more expertise in the use of stones.

PS Here is a recent (June 2026) study of the provenance of one of the megaliths.

don't create, evolve

I've taken the recent media attention around an effort to create "artificial cells" as an excuse to revisit the boundary between non-life and life, and how life emerges from non-living material. To me, evolution removes the entire question of "creating" complexity, as complexity tends to evolve from simpler forms all by itself. What we really need to find is the point where chemicals, instead of just sitting there, start to evolve.

Based on this philosophy, I was quite underwhelmed by those artificial cells, which, in the tradition spanning from Frankenstein to Craig Venter, represent another attempt to create something with dubious credentials as a living being but still much too complex to count as an origin of life. Luckily, there has been a significant breakthrough in self-replicating ribozymes recently, so I covered this as a positive example of what I would like to see instead of all the "creator" hybris.

Anyhow, the resulting feature is out now:

Making life from scratch

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 16, 17 August 2026, Pages R875--R877

Restricted access to full text and PDF download

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

(Unfortunately, this year's features will no longer become open access one year after publication - do contact me if you would like a PDF and the magic link has expired.)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky.

Last year's thread is here .

Mythological and fictional accounts of the origins of life feature the creation of complexity (Prometheus producing humans, in this case). As we now know that complexity evolves, we only need to find the origin of evolution. (Image: marble relief by an unknown artist courtesy of the Louvre Museum.)

time flows slowly in Venice

Some thoughts on

The glassmaker
Tracy Chevalier
The Borough Press 2025

In her novel about the glassmaker families of Murano, which is next door to Venice in the same lagoon, Chevalier uses a slightly unusual technique of slowing down time for the main protagonists of her story. We follow the fates of one family across five generations, but it magically spans more than five centuries (1486 to the present), as time flows more slowly for them. The author uses the allegory of a stone skimming across the lagoon and touching the water several times to visualise the way her characters touch the normal timeline of world events at timepoints separated by decades, sometimes even a century.

As a chemist, I would rather describe the family as an experimental sensor dipped in to probe the times. One could easily rationalise this by prefacing the beginning of each chapter with "What if". What if Orsola Rosso's family had lived during the time when the Black Death first arrived in Venice? What if, only slightly older, they had still been around (minus one or two inevitable deaths) at the time Napoleon conquered the city and handed it over to the Austrians? What if the more mature Orsola Rosso and her grandchildren lived through the Covid-19 pandemic and to the present day?

The advantage of this approach for writer and reader is quite obvious to me - you can have a family history spanning five centuries, without the confusion of going through 15-20 generations of the family involved. It saves time, names, and dead bodies. And in this particular ecosystem, where families really have stayed in the glass making business for centuries, it kind of makes sense. Of course the same people can't be around 500 years later, but their descendants, pursuing the same trade and possibly sharing the same Christian names could be. So it may be less confusing to just use the same cast to dip into the flow of time at various points.

Although, on the other hand it reduces their humanity, as they remain aloof from the times they dip into. I vaguely remember getting a similar feeling in Simone de Beauvoir's novel Tous les hommes sont mortels, where the protagonist is immortal (read 40 years ago). We wouldn't want to do that to real people we're interested in eg from our family history.

Venice and Murano provide a unique test tube for this experiment, with the Venetian cityscape uniquely protected by the lagoon environment which rules out modern development and the Murano glass trade maintaining its traditions in isolation from the world. Thus, while others might feel tempted to apply the dip-in sensor approach to other long-lived trade ecosystems such as wine growing or brewing, I feel it wouldn't work as well without the magical isolation of Venice.

how many insects are there?

Attempts to get an overview of all living species on Earth always run into trouble when it comes to insects. There isn't even a clear consensus on how many species there may be. Historically, estimates have gone as high as 30 million, with a recent trend towards lower figures around 6 million. New research now suggests that this last figure needs to be multiplied by three.

This is in line with the fact that wherever researchers have a closer look at insect diversity, they tend to discover several times more species than were previouslly known. I've combined both the challenge of the global count and some recent discoveries, together with the threat of population losses and extinctions to a feature about insect numbers which is out now:

Counting insects

Current Biology Volume 36, Issue 15, 03 August 2026, Pages R833--R835

Restricted access to full text and PDF download

Magic link for free access
(first seven weeks only)

(Unfortunately, this year's features will no longer become open access one year after publication - do contact me if you would like a PDF and the magic link has expired.)

See also my new Mastodon thread where I will highlight all this year's CB features.

My mastodon posts are also mirrored on Bluesky.

Last year's thread is here .

A study of rove beetles in China revealed 61 new species. (Photos: Qing-Hao Zhao.)

lucky day

Pirate Luthier update

After a bit of a drought period in terms of new violins coming in, I had a lucky day this week discovering a violin (number 38) and two violas in one lot at the Gloucester Green market. They appear to have come the same journey because all three instruments have been "decorated" with splodges of red paint. initial tests show the paint isn't water soluble so I'll probably have to leave it on.

Will share some photos once I've put strings on them. I'm not entirely against the red paint. In the meantime here's how I carried the three of them back from the market (hashtag #carryshitolympics). I'm really glad I decided a few months ago to have the big blue coop bag in my shopping bag when I go into town just in case any instruments need carrying. It would have been tricky without it:

The instruments are short of almost everything (although they do have cases and their soundposts are in place), but I also picked up some accessories from a friendly freegler on the same trip, so it will work out in the end. Will have to order viola strings though. And pegs are beginning to become a crisis. The three instruments only have eight pegs between them, and not necessarily well-fitting ones either.

 

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NB I've now moved the list of instruments that pass through my pirate luthier workshop to a permanent page which I will update whenever necessary, independent of the blog entries.

pioneering printers

Our Strasbourg goldsmith Franz Bolion von der Rosen married Ottilia Flach, born around 1560, and I have seen speculation that she might descend from the Strasbourg printers Martin Flach the Elder and his son, the Younger. So let's see how these fit together:

Martin Flach the Elder was born mid 15th century in Küttolsheim near Strasbourg, and died 20.11.1500 in Strasbourg. After an apprenticeship with Johannes Mentelin, he started his own printing workshop in Strasbourg in 1487 and mainly printed religious works eg by Albertus Magnus. For reference, Gutenberg completed his pioneering printing of the bible in 1454 and died in 1468.

Bust of Johannes Mentelin at the humanists' library in Sélestat
Source: Von Alexandre Dulaunoy from Les Bulles, Chiny, Belgium - La bibliothèque humaniste de Beatus Rhenanus / Humanist Library of Beatus Rhenanus, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11779810

His son, Martin Flach the younger, was also a printer and active in Strasbourg between 1500 and 1539.

Our earliest Flach, Adam Flach (the Elder) was born around 1480 in Maisonsgoutte (source). (Note that this local tourism website says the village was called Hisselbach in the 14th century, which then mutated to the French Maisonsgoutte, which was Germanised in 1603 to read Maisengott and then became Meissengott in 1665.) Judging by his age, he could be a brother or cousin to Martin the Younger. He died 6.3.1533 in Schlettstadt (today Sélestat).

Following the nameline down from Adam, we have Adam the Younger, Gabriel, then Ottilia:

Adam Flach was born in Schlettstadt around 1510, immatriculated at the University of Freiburg in 1538 , died at Weilertal after 1539.

Gabriel Flach was born 1524 in Weyerthal near Strasbourg, and died 1580 in Strasbourg.

The second question is if and how Ottilia is related to the Flach ancestors of Albert Schweitzer (which is claimed in this forum contribution). The longest Flach nameline I could find online goes up from his great-grandmother Marie Madeleine Flach (1782-1847) to

Jean Jacques Frederic, born 1756, then

Johann Christoph, 1725

Johann Christoph, 1701

Johann Christoph, 1656

So we're still a century or 3-4 generations away from a potential brother of Ottilia.

On both fronts, I could do with a few more Flach people to join those dots.

 

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Confused about who is who? - see my new name index for all things family history.

There's also a nascent index of place names here.

And here's the index of migration events.