The usual lifetime of men of that period ranged from 6 to 9 hundred years:
Moses died at 120 years of age.
Jacob died at 147 years of age.
Abraham died at 175 years of age.
Isaac died at 180 years of age.
Terach died at 205 years of age.
Enoch (family of Cain) died at 365 years of age.
Shem died at 600 years of age.
Lamech died at 777 years of age.
Mahalalel died at 895 years of age.
Enosh died at 905 years of age.
Kenan died at 910 years of age.
Seth died at 912 years of age.
Adam died at 930 years of age.
Noah died at 950 years of age.
Yered died at 962 years of age.
Methuselah died at 969 years of age (oldest).
The oldest woman was Sarah/Sarai/Sara, died at 127 years of age.
It took Noah and his family 120 years to build the Ark.
Enoch walked with God for 300 years, and he disappeared and went straight to Heaven, did not see death.
A flaming chariot descended from Heaven, drawn by horses of fire in a whirlwind brought Enosh (father to Methuselah), straight to Heaven, did not see death.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
The Real Beginning of the Civil War
The American Civil War began under the administration of Abraham Lincoln, or so history books tell us. We have been taught that the first shots of that terrible conflict were fired on April 12, 1861, when the North attempted to reinforce Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. A closer look, raises some doubts as to precisely when the war began, and who was president at the time.
With the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union and was soon followed by six other Southern States. The fat was in the fire, but it was President James Buchanan who had to cook it, not Abraham Lincoln. The president-elect wouldn't take office until March.
Buchanan would have loved to just let things simmer until the inauguration of the new president, but he was backed into a corner. The recently occupied garrison of Fort Sumter was badly in need of supplies.
So, in early January, he ordered the Star of the West, a merchant ship, to deliver the much needed provisions. Down the coast it went to Charleston. on January 9, it reached its destination. Unfortunately South Carolina was ready.
Buchanan's secretary of state, John Floyd, a southern sympathizer, had warned the Rebel authorities that the Star of the West was on its way, and a battery of anxious cadets from the Citadel positioned several guns at the shore. When the supply ship entered the harbor they let loose with the first shots of the Civil War, three of which hit the Star of the West.
With that, the Star retreated to open waters and returned to its home port. She had been driven off by hostile fire, but as we said, the fat was in the fire.
When Lincoln was sworn in, one of his first acts was to re-order the provisioning of Fort Sumter. This second attempt was likewise repelled by the Rebels, and there was no turning back. The war may have begun in earnest on April 12, 1861, but the first shots over Fort Sumter were fired months before, while James Buchanan, not Abraham Lincoln , in the White House.
With the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union and was soon followed by six other Southern States. The fat was in the fire, but it was President James Buchanan who had to cook it, not Abraham Lincoln. The president-elect wouldn't take office until March.
Buchanan would have loved to just let things simmer until the inauguration of the new president, but he was backed into a corner. The recently occupied garrison of Fort Sumter was badly in need of supplies.
So, in early January, he ordered the Star of the West, a merchant ship, to deliver the much needed provisions. Down the coast it went to Charleston. on January 9, it reached its destination. Unfortunately South Carolina was ready.
Buchanan's secretary of state, John Floyd, a southern sympathizer, had warned the Rebel authorities that the Star of the West was on its way, and a battery of anxious cadets from the Citadel positioned several guns at the shore. When the supply ship entered the harbor they let loose with the first shots of the Civil War, three of which hit the Star of the West.
With that, the Star retreated to open waters and returned to its home port. She had been driven off by hostile fire, but as we said, the fat was in the fire.
When Lincoln was sworn in, one of his first acts was to re-order the provisioning of Fort Sumter. This second attempt was likewise repelled by the Rebels, and there was no turning back. The war may have begun in earnest on April 12, 1861, but the first shots over Fort Sumter were fired months before, while James Buchanan, not Abraham Lincoln , in the White House.
Monday, April 20, 2015
The Suicide Rate Is Highest Among The Elderly
If you judge buy the media and the public education programs, you might be inclined to think that teenagers and young adults (aged 25-24) are the age group most likely to kill themselves. Actually, they have the second-lowest rate of suicide. (The absolute lowest rate is among kids aged 5 to 14; children younger than that are apparently deemed incapable of consciously choosing to end their lives.) It is the elderly, by far, who have the highest rate of suicide.
In the US, of every 100,000 people aged 75 to 79, 16.5 kill themselves. For those 80 and over, the rate is 19.43. This compares to a rate of 8.15 per 100,000 for people between the ages of 15 and 19, and 12.84 for people aged 20 to 24.
As with every age group. men are far more likely to kill themselves, but among the elderly this trend reaches extreme proportions. Of people 65 and older, men comprise a staggering 84 percent of suicides.
Because men commit the vast majority of hara-kiri among old people, looking at these male suicide rates makes depressing reading. For guys aged 75 to 79, the suicide rate is 34.26 per 100,000. In the 80 to 84 group, men's suicide rate is 44.12. When you look at men 85 and older, the suicide rate is a heart-breaking 54.52. Compare this to the suicide rate for dudes in their mid to late teens: 13.22 per 100.000.
It is true that suicide ranks as the second or third most common cause of death in young people (depending on age group), while it is number 15 and under for various groups of the elderly. Still, the suicide rate among the young is equal to their proportion of the population, while the elderly are way overrepresented as a group. And older people are cut down by a great many diseases and disorders unknown to the young, which naturally pushes suicide down in the rankings.
The reasons why this suicide epidemic are highly speculative and would be too lengthy to get into here. However, we can rule out one seemingly likely explanation --- suicide among the aged is invisible because they usually O.D. on prescription drugs or kill themselves in other ways that could be easily mistaken for natural death in someone of advanced years. This doesn't wash, primarily because guns are the most common method of dispatch. Of suicides over 65, men used a gun 79.5 percent of the time, while women shot themselves 37 percent of the time. It's hard to mistake that for natural causes.
The sky-high suicide rate among the elderly applies to the entire world, not just the US. Plotted in a graph, suicide rates by age group around the globe gently curve upward as age increases. When the graph reaches the final age group, the line suddenly spikes, especially for men. Worldwide, men 75 and over have a suicide rate of 55.7 per 100,000, while women in the same age group have a rate of 18.8. This rate for older men is almost three times the global rate for guys aged 15 to 24, while the rate for older women is well over three times the rate for young gals in that age group.
In the US, of every 100,000 people aged 75 to 79, 16.5 kill themselves. For those 80 and over, the rate is 19.43. This compares to a rate of 8.15 per 100,000 for people between the ages of 15 and 19, and 12.84 for people aged 20 to 24.
As with every age group. men are far more likely to kill themselves, but among the elderly this trend reaches extreme proportions. Of people 65 and older, men comprise a staggering 84 percent of suicides.
Because men commit the vast majority of hara-kiri among old people, looking at these male suicide rates makes depressing reading. For guys aged 75 to 79, the suicide rate is 34.26 per 100,000. In the 80 to 84 group, men's suicide rate is 44.12. When you look at men 85 and older, the suicide rate is a heart-breaking 54.52. Compare this to the suicide rate for dudes in their mid to late teens: 13.22 per 100.000.
It is true that suicide ranks as the second or third most common cause of death in young people (depending on age group), while it is number 15 and under for various groups of the elderly. Still, the suicide rate among the young is equal to their proportion of the population, while the elderly are way overrepresented as a group. And older people are cut down by a great many diseases and disorders unknown to the young, which naturally pushes suicide down in the rankings.
The reasons why this suicide epidemic are highly speculative and would be too lengthy to get into here. However, we can rule out one seemingly likely explanation --- suicide among the aged is invisible because they usually O.D. on prescription drugs or kill themselves in other ways that could be easily mistaken for natural death in someone of advanced years. This doesn't wash, primarily because guns are the most common method of dispatch. Of suicides over 65, men used a gun 79.5 percent of the time, while women shot themselves 37 percent of the time. It's hard to mistake that for natural causes.
The sky-high suicide rate among the elderly applies to the entire world, not just the US. Plotted in a graph, suicide rates by age group around the globe gently curve upward as age increases. When the graph reaches the final age group, the line suddenly spikes, especially for men. Worldwide, men 75 and over have a suicide rate of 55.7 per 100,000, while women in the same age group have a rate of 18.8. This rate for older men is almost three times the global rate for guys aged 15 to 24, while the rate for older women is well over three times the rate for young gals in that age group.
Work Kills More People Than War
The United Nations' International Labor Organization has revealed some horrifying stats:
The ILO estimates that approximately two million workers lose their lives annually due to occupational injuries and illnesses, with accidents causing at least 350,000 deaths a year. For every fatal accident, there are an estimated 1,000 non-fatal injuries, many of which result in lost earnings, permanent disability and poverty. The death toll at work, much of which is attributable to unsafe working practices, is equivalent of 5,000 workers every day, three persons every minute.
This is more than double the figure for deaths from warfare (650,000 deaths per year). According to the ILO's SafeWork program, work kills more people than alcohol and drugs together and the resulting loss on Gross Domestic Product is 20 times greater than all official assistance to the developing countries.
Each year 6,570 US workers die because of injuries at work, while 60,225 meet their maker due to occupational diseases. (Meanwhile, 13.2 million get hurt, and 1.1 million develop illnesses that don't kill them.) On an average day, two or three workers are fatally shot, two fall to their deaths, one is killed after being smashed by a vehicle, and one is electrocuted. Each year, around 30 workers die of heat stroke, and another 30 expire from carbon monoxide.
Although blue collar workers face a lot of the most obvious dangers, those slaving in offices or stores must contend with toxic air, workplace violence, driving accidents, and (especially for the health-care workers) transmissible diseases. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration warns that poisonous indoor air in nonindustrial workplaces causes "thousands of heart disease deaths and hundreds of lung cancer deaths" each year.
But hey, everybody has to go sometime, right? And since we spend so much of our lives in the workplace, it's only logical that a lot of deaths happen---or at least are set into motion---on the job. This explanation certainly is true to an extent, but it doesn't excuse all such deaths. The International Labor Organization says that half of workplace fatalities are avoidable. In A Job to Die For, Lisa Cullen writes:
In the workplace, few real accidents occur because the surroundings and operations known; therefore, hazards can be identified. When harm from those hazards can be foreseen, accidents be prevented...
Most jobs have expected, known hazards. Working in and near excavations, for example, poses the obvious risks of death or injury from cave-ins... When trenches or excavations collapse soil was piled right up to the edge, there is little room to claim it was an accident.
The ILO estimates that approximately two million workers lose their lives annually due to occupational injuries and illnesses, with accidents causing at least 350,000 deaths a year. For every fatal accident, there are an estimated 1,000 non-fatal injuries, many of which result in lost earnings, permanent disability and poverty. The death toll at work, much of which is attributable to unsafe working practices, is equivalent of 5,000 workers every day, three persons every minute.
This is more than double the figure for deaths from warfare (650,000 deaths per year). According to the ILO's SafeWork program, work kills more people than alcohol and drugs together and the resulting loss on Gross Domestic Product is 20 times greater than all official assistance to the developing countries.
Each year 6,570 US workers die because of injuries at work, while 60,225 meet their maker due to occupational diseases. (Meanwhile, 13.2 million get hurt, and 1.1 million develop illnesses that don't kill them.) On an average day, two or three workers are fatally shot, two fall to their deaths, one is killed after being smashed by a vehicle, and one is electrocuted. Each year, around 30 workers die of heat stroke, and another 30 expire from carbon monoxide.
Although blue collar workers face a lot of the most obvious dangers, those slaving in offices or stores must contend with toxic air, workplace violence, driving accidents, and (especially for the health-care workers) transmissible diseases. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration warns that poisonous indoor air in nonindustrial workplaces causes "thousands of heart disease deaths and hundreds of lung cancer deaths" each year.
But hey, everybody has to go sometime, right? And since we spend so much of our lives in the workplace, it's only logical that a lot of deaths happen---or at least are set into motion---on the job. This explanation certainly is true to an extent, but it doesn't excuse all such deaths. The International Labor Organization says that half of workplace fatalities are avoidable. In A Job to Die For, Lisa Cullen writes:
In the workplace, few real accidents occur because the surroundings and operations known; therefore, hazards can be identified. When harm from those hazards can be foreseen, accidents be prevented...
Most jobs have expected, known hazards. Working in and near excavations, for example, poses the obvious risks of death or injury from cave-ins... When trenches or excavations collapse soil was piled right up to the edge, there is little room to claim it was an accident.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
The Bayer Company Made Heroin
Aspirin isn't the only "wonder drug that works wonders" that Bayer made. The German pharmaceutical giant also introduced heroin to the world.
The company was looking for a cough suppressant that didn't have problematic side affects, mainly addiction, like morphine and codeine. And if it could relieve pain better than morphine that was a welcome bonus.
When one of Bayer's chemists approached the head of the pharmacological lab with ASA --- to be sold under the name "aspirin" --- he was waved away. The boss was more interested in something else the chemists had cooked diacetylmorphine. (This narcotic had been created in 1874 by a British chemist, who had never done anything with it.) Using the tradename "Heroin" --- because early testers said it made them feel heroisch (heroic) --- Bayer sold this popular drug by the truckload starting in 1898. Free samples were sent to thousands of doctors; studies appeared in medical journals. The Sunday Times of London noted: "By 1899, Bayer was producing about a ton of heroin a year, and exporting the drug to 23 countries," including the US Medicines containing smack were available over-the-counter at drug stores, just as aspirin is today. The American Medical Association gave heroin its stamp of approval in 1907.
But reports of addiction, which had already started appearing in 1899, turned into a torrent after several years. Bayer had wisely released aspirin the year after heroin, and this new non-addictive painkiller and anti-inflammatory was well on its way to becoming the most popular drug ever. In 1913, Bayer got out of the heroin business.
Not that the company has kept its nose clean since then:
A division of the pharmaceutical company Bayer sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting medicine for hemophiliacs --- medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS --- to Asia and Latin America in the mid-1980s while selling a new, safer product in the West, according to documents obtained by The New York Times...[l] Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than 100 hemophiliacs got HIV after using Cutter's old medicine, according to records and interviews. Many have since died.
The company was looking for a cough suppressant that didn't have problematic side affects, mainly addiction, like morphine and codeine. And if it could relieve pain better than morphine that was a welcome bonus.
When one of Bayer's chemists approached the head of the pharmacological lab with ASA --- to be sold under the name "aspirin" --- he was waved away. The boss was more interested in something else the chemists had cooked diacetylmorphine. (This narcotic had been created in 1874 by a British chemist, who had never done anything with it.) Using the tradename "Heroin" --- because early testers said it made them feel heroisch (heroic) --- Bayer sold this popular drug by the truckload starting in 1898. Free samples were sent to thousands of doctors; studies appeared in medical journals. The Sunday Times of London noted: "By 1899, Bayer was producing about a ton of heroin a year, and exporting the drug to 23 countries," including the US Medicines containing smack were available over-the-counter at drug stores, just as aspirin is today. The American Medical Association gave heroin its stamp of approval in 1907.
But reports of addiction, which had already started appearing in 1899, turned into a torrent after several years. Bayer had wisely released aspirin the year after heroin, and this new non-addictive painkiller and anti-inflammatory was well on its way to becoming the most popular drug ever. In 1913, Bayer got out of the heroin business.
Not that the company has kept its nose clean since then:
A division of the pharmaceutical company Bayer sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting medicine for hemophiliacs --- medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS --- to Asia and Latin America in the mid-1980s while selling a new, safer product in the West, according to documents obtained by The New York Times...[l] Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than 100 hemophiliacs got HIV after using Cutter's old medicine, according to records and interviews. Many have since died.
Aristotle Set Back Science For Around 2,000 Years
Aristotle may have been a genius when it came to philosophy---especially logic---but he didn't know squat about science. Sure, we can't excel in every field we try our hand in, but Aristotle's massive errors aren't just a personal embarrassment to him---they directly hampered scientific progress for 1,800 to 2,000 years.
The problem is that from the time he was alive (the fourth century BC) until the Enlightenment, when Aristotle said something, that was the end of the argument. Isaac Asimov notes, perhaps with a tinge of jealousy: "No matter who disagreed with them, even other philosophers, Aristotle's ideas --- whether right or wrong --- usually won out." Chemist John Appeldoorn writes that "Aristotle's teachings were unquestioned. After eighteen centuries accepted them as if they had been written in stone.
For example, Aristotle didn't believe that plants were divided into male and female sexes, so there the matter stood for two millennia, until botanists stated the obvious in the 1700s.
He was also wrong about inertia, and again the world had to wait --- this time for Galileo, followed by Newton --- to speak the truth that objects in motion stay in motion, while objects at rest stay at rest, unless acted upon by outside forces.
Like most Greeks, Aristotle championed the view that the Sun and planets revolved around the Earth. Copernicus (in the early 1500s) and Galileo (100 years later) had to risk their reputations and their lives to put the kibosh on that nonsense.
He further surmised that outer space was made up of 54 spheres and that there were only seven heavenly bodies, which were fixed and unchanging. This meant, for one thing, that comets had to be in Earth's atmosphere. Only in 1577 was this notion put out to pasture. Over the next 50 years, belief in the heavenly spheres faded.
Aristotle declared that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones, an error that could've been exposed with simple experiments. It wasn't until 1,900 years later that Galileo dropped objects off the Tower of Pisa, proving that all things obey gravity at the same rate. By that time, Galileo already had been kicked out of the University of Pisa for daring to question Aristotle's theory.
Some Greeks, including Democritus and Hippocrates, surmised that the brain was the seat of thought, intelligence, and emotion. Tish tosh, said Aristotle, it's the heart --- and that became the accepted wisdom. Aristotle wrote: "The brain is an organ of minor importance, perhaps necessary to cool the blood." Because Greek physicians primarily held brain-centered views, that remained a strong undercurrent, yet Aristotle's heart view dominated until the 1500s.
A fellow Greek philosopher, Democritus, postulated that the physical world was made up of tiny pieces of matter, which he called atoms. But Aristotle pooh-poohed this ridiculous notion, causing it to languish in obscurity until the second half of the 1600s, when scientists began to resurrect it. It wasn't until the first years of the 1800s that the existence of atoms was universally accepted.
Who knows how much further science would've progressed if Aristotle had stuck to syllogisms?
The problem is that from the time he was alive (the fourth century BC) until the Enlightenment, when Aristotle said something, that was the end of the argument. Isaac Asimov notes, perhaps with a tinge of jealousy: "No matter who disagreed with them, even other philosophers, Aristotle's ideas --- whether right or wrong --- usually won out." Chemist John Appeldoorn writes that "Aristotle's teachings were unquestioned. After eighteen centuries accepted them as if they had been written in stone.
For example, Aristotle didn't believe that plants were divided into male and female sexes, so there the matter stood for two millennia, until botanists stated the obvious in the 1700s.
He was also wrong about inertia, and again the world had to wait --- this time for Galileo, followed by Newton --- to speak the truth that objects in motion stay in motion, while objects at rest stay at rest, unless acted upon by outside forces.
Like most Greeks, Aristotle championed the view that the Sun and planets revolved around the Earth. Copernicus (in the early 1500s) and Galileo (100 years later) had to risk their reputations and their lives to put the kibosh on that nonsense.
He further surmised that outer space was made up of 54 spheres and that there were only seven heavenly bodies, which were fixed and unchanging. This meant, for one thing, that comets had to be in Earth's atmosphere. Only in 1577 was this notion put out to pasture. Over the next 50 years, belief in the heavenly spheres faded.
Aristotle declared that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones, an error that could've been exposed with simple experiments. It wasn't until 1,900 years later that Galileo dropped objects off the Tower of Pisa, proving that all things obey gravity at the same rate. By that time, Galileo already had been kicked out of the University of Pisa for daring to question Aristotle's theory.
Some Greeks, including Democritus and Hippocrates, surmised that the brain was the seat of thought, intelligence, and emotion. Tish tosh, said Aristotle, it's the heart --- and that became the accepted wisdom. Aristotle wrote: "The brain is an organ of minor importance, perhaps necessary to cool the blood." Because Greek physicians primarily held brain-centered views, that remained a strong undercurrent, yet Aristotle's heart view dominated until the 1500s.
A fellow Greek philosopher, Democritus, postulated that the physical world was made up of tiny pieces of matter, which he called atoms. But Aristotle pooh-poohed this ridiculous notion, causing it to languish in obscurity until the second half of the 1600s, when scientists began to resurrect it. It wasn't until the first years of the 1800s that the existence of atoms was universally accepted.
Who knows how much further science would've progressed if Aristotle had stuck to syllogisms?
Thursday, April 16, 2015
The World's Museums Contain Innumerable Fakes
The next time you're marveling at a painting, a statue by Michelangelo, or a carving from ancient Egypt, don't be absolutely sure that you're looking at the genuine article. Art fakery has been around since ancient times and is still in full swing---museums, galleries, and private collections around the world are stocked with phonies. This fact comes to us from an insider's insider---Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In his book False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes, he writes:
The fact is that there are so many phonies and doctored pieces around these days that at times, I almost believe that there are as many bogus works as genuine ones. In the decade and a half that I was with the Metropolitan Museum of Art I must have examined fifty thousand works in all fields. Fully 40 percent were either phonies or so hypocritically restored or so misattributed that they were just the same as forgeries. Since then I'm sure that the percentage has risen. What few art professionals seem to want to admit is that the art world we are living in today is a new, highly active, unprincipled one of art fakery.
Ancient Egyptian objects are particularly likely to be bogus. Furthermore, Hoving estimates that the fraud rate for religious artifacts from pagan and early Christian times is literally 99 percent. As many as 5,000 fake Durers were created after the master's death, and half of Vienna master Egon Schiele's pencil drawings are fakes.
But it isn't just current con artists making this junk; the ancients did it, too. For around a millennia, Romans couldn't get enough of Greek statues, gems, glasses, and other objects, so forgers stepped in to fill the demand. Hoving writes:
The volume was so great that Seneca the Elder (ca. 55BC - AD 39) is recorded by a contemporaneous historian as remarking that there were no fewer than a half dozen workshops in the first century AD working full time in Rome on just colored gems and intaglios. Today it's almost impossible to tell what's genuinely ancient Greek and what's Roman fakery, because those gems and intaglios are made of material that dates to ancient times and the style is near perfect.
Art forgery isn't the realm of nobodies, either. During certain periods of all their lives, Renaissance masters Donatello and Verochio put bread on the table by creating faux antiquities. Rubens painted copiers of earlier artists. El Greco's assistants created five or six copies of their boss' work, each of which was then passed off as the original (and they're still wrongly considered the originals).
Hoving reveals that pretty much every museum has at one time or another been suckered into buying and displaying fakes, and many are still showing them. Of course, most of the examples he uses are from the Met, but he also says that phony works still sit in the Louvre, the Getty, the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Vatican, among others. (Hoving estimates that 90 percent of the ancient Roman statues in the Holy See's collection are actually eighteenth-century European knock-offs.)
Revealing further examples, the Independent of London catalogs three Goyas in the Met that are now attributed to other artists: Rodin sketches actually done by his mistress; Fragonard's popular Le baiser a la derobee (The Stolen Kiss), which seems to have been painted by his sister-in-law; and many Rubens works actually created by the artist's students. According to the newspaper: "The Rembrandt Research Committee claims that most works attributed to Rembrandt were in fact collaborative studio pieces."
It's enough to make you question the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The fact is that there are so many phonies and doctored pieces around these days that at times, I almost believe that there are as many bogus works as genuine ones. In the decade and a half that I was with the Metropolitan Museum of Art I must have examined fifty thousand works in all fields. Fully 40 percent were either phonies or so hypocritically restored or so misattributed that they were just the same as forgeries. Since then I'm sure that the percentage has risen. What few art professionals seem to want to admit is that the art world we are living in today is a new, highly active, unprincipled one of art fakery.
Ancient Egyptian objects are particularly likely to be bogus. Furthermore, Hoving estimates that the fraud rate for religious artifacts from pagan and early Christian times is literally 99 percent. As many as 5,000 fake Durers were created after the master's death, and half of Vienna master Egon Schiele's pencil drawings are fakes.
But it isn't just current con artists making this junk; the ancients did it, too. For around a millennia, Romans couldn't get enough of Greek statues, gems, glasses, and other objects, so forgers stepped in to fill the demand. Hoving writes:
The volume was so great that Seneca the Elder (ca. 55BC - AD 39) is recorded by a contemporaneous historian as remarking that there were no fewer than a half dozen workshops in the first century AD working full time in Rome on just colored gems and intaglios. Today it's almost impossible to tell what's genuinely ancient Greek and what's Roman fakery, because those gems and intaglios are made of material that dates to ancient times and the style is near perfect.
Art forgery isn't the realm of nobodies, either. During certain periods of all their lives, Renaissance masters Donatello and Verochio put bread on the table by creating faux antiquities. Rubens painted copiers of earlier artists. El Greco's assistants created five or six copies of their boss' work, each of which was then passed off as the original (and they're still wrongly considered the originals).
Hoving reveals that pretty much every museum has at one time or another been suckered into buying and displaying fakes, and many are still showing them. Of course, most of the examples he uses are from the Met, but he also says that phony works still sit in the Louvre, the Getty, the British Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Vatican, among others. (Hoving estimates that 90 percent of the ancient Roman statues in the Holy See's collection are actually eighteenth-century European knock-offs.)
Revealing further examples, the Independent of London catalogs three Goyas in the Met that are now attributed to other artists: Rodin sketches actually done by his mistress; Fragonard's popular Le baiser a la derobee (The Stolen Kiss), which seems to have been painted by his sister-in-law; and many Rubens works actually created by the artist's students. According to the newspaper: "The Rembrandt Research Committee claims that most works attributed to Rembrandt were in fact collaborative studio pieces."
It's enough to make you question the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
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