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If you're like me, your knowledge of the role guitar played in pre-20th century music is shaky at best. It is a question I get asked all the time, though... by people doing essays on the history of the guitar, and by others with just a general interest. Fortunately, there are lots of sites on the web that deal directly with this question, although no one can be totally accurate about when the guitar, in it's present form, was first introduced. The Guitar Salon International website relays an overview of the evolution of the guitar, up until the 20th century. The Lute and Guitar site deals with a similar topic, coming up with some slightly different details, and includes a quick and handy timeline for the evolution of the guitar.

That's fine for learning about the ancient history of guitar, but most people with a general interest really only want to know about the electric guitar; when was it invented, and when it was popularized, who popularized it, etc. The Lemelson Center site provides an excellent analysis, in a feature entitled "From Frying Pan to Flying V: The Rise of the Electric Guitar". 


And, what about the individual guitar companies? Some of them (Fender for example) haven't gone through the trouble of providing a detailed online history of their guitars, which is a shame. Others, though, like Gibson, have provided on their site a more in depth study of the place in history their guitars had. In a four part document entitled Gibson History: The Early Years, the folks at Gibson provide us with a glimpse on how important their company was to the development of the electric guitar.
One of the first musical genres that the guitar really became integral to was the blues. It's very hard to picture the blues developing without the presence of the guitar. Bluesman Harry has put together an excellent Blues History site that includes explanations of the role of the guitar in the music, and the effect that the creation of the electric guitar had on the blues.
Knowing and appreciating the history of the guitar may not be essential to being a great guitarist. For some, it may not even be of interest. But, I've always believed that understanding and being familiar with the history of music, and its musicians, gives one a broader perspective, and a more comprehensive philosophy on what it means to be a musician. I hope you'll find something on these sites that will spark a similar sentiment.

Black-clad figures with muffled faces skitter through a courtyard, swarming over walls like spiders and running lightly across rooftops, quick as cats.
An unsuspecting samurai sleeps peacefully as these shadows permanently silence his body guards. The bedroom door slides open without a sound, an up-raised blade glints in the moonlight, and...
This is the ninja of the movies and comic books, the stealthy assassin in black robes with magical abilities in the arts of concealment and murder.

 This wraith-like being is very compelling, to be sure. But what is the historical reality behind the popular culture icon of the Ninja?

Origins of the Ninja:

It is difficult to pin down the emergence of the first ninja, more properly called shinobi. After all, people around the world have always used spies and assassins.
Japanese folklore states that the ninja descended from a demon that was half man and half crow. However, it seems more likely that the ninja slowly evolved as an opposing force to their upper-class contemporaries, the samurai, in early feudal Japan.

Most sources indicate that the skills that became ninjutsu, the ninja's art of stealth, began to develop between 600-900 A.D. Prince Shotoku, (574-622), is said to have employed Otomono Sahito as a shinobi spy.

Mainland Influences on the Early Ninja:

The First Known Ninja School:

For a century or more, the blend of Chinese and native tactics that would become ninjutsu developed as a counter-culture, without rules.


It was first formalized by Daisuke Togakure and Kain Doshi.
Daisuke had been a samurai, but he was on the losing side in a regional battle. He lost his lands and his samurai title.
In 1162, Daisuke was wandering the mountains of southwest Honshu when he met Kain Doshi, a Chinese warrior-monk. Daisuke renounced his bushido code, and together the two developed a new theory of guerrilla warfare called ninjutsu.

Daisuke's descendants created the first ninja ryu, or school, the Togakureryu.

Ninjutsu versus Bushido:

In mid-1878, Hubbard named Theodore Vail, the Superintendent of the Railway Mail Services as the new general manager of the Bell Company. This one decision alone would become lead to the basic foundation of what would become the giant monopoly, the "Bell System." The Bell company had 10,000 phones in service at this time

Vail fought any and all the competition with vigor. Indeed, over the course of twenty years, the Bell Company would fight over 600 lawsuits...and win ALL of them.
Vail also expanded the business from the New England area west to the towns and cities of the United States. Coupled with these new exchanges, he developed long distance service to connect them. Vail left the company in the late 1880s, but returned in the early 1900s to guide the Bell System to even greater successes as a company that provided, "Universal Service" to anyone wanting a telephone.
Although Western Union refused the offer of Hubbard to buy all the rights to the patents in 1876, they now realized their tremendous mistake and in December of 1877, using Elisha Gray's patents set up the American Speaking Telephone Company. This was clearly an infringement on the Bell patents. Western Union had actually commissioned Thomas Edison to help in the venture and he developed a carbon-button transmitter that was superior to the Bell transmitter.
In 1878 a manual switching board was introduced that allowed many phones to be connected through a single exchange. The first switchboard was located in New Haven Connecticut. Interestingly enough, the first switching board operators were teenage boys. With the invention of the switchboard, exchanges opened rapidly across the country. Because of the fierce competition, some cities actually had two telephone exchanges.
  

Knowing Western Union had a better transmitter, Bell introduced a newer, better transmitter than Edison's, with the help of two inventors: Emile Berliner and Francis Blake. In September 1878, the Bell Company filed suit against Western Union. To put this suit in perspective consider that Western Union was a giant. The Bell Company was still a small fledgling company. Against the odds, the Bell Telephone Company won the suit. 
An agreement was reached in November of 1879 the Western Union Company gave up all its patents, claims, network and inventory of 56,000 phones (a Western Union phone at right). In return, they would receive 20% of the rentals over the next seventeen years--the life of the Bell patents. With this victory, a new company was chartered; the American Bell Telephone Company.
The company flourished in the 1880s. In 1881, American Bell purchased controlling interest in the Western Electric Company. This is interesting for two reasons. First, Western Electric Company was Elisha Gray's Electrical Supply Company. In fact, it was originally "Gray and Barton." Second, this is the company that supplied phones to Western Union. In 1882, Western Electric became the sole supplier to the Bell Companies.
Also in the 1880s the first "metallic" circuits were installed. Simply put, this was an upgrade from one-wire to two-wire circuits. The change was due to the tremendous "noise" and interference over the one-wire grounded lines.
An interesting turn of events happened in 1891. A Kansas City Undertaker by the name of Almon Strowger tired of waiting for operators to answer the phone to make connections. So, he invented an "automatic" telephone that "dialed" a number with the push of buttons--early push button phones. He formed the Automatic Electric Company. This was a major development and it happened outside the Bell Companies.
With the Bell patents running out in 1893 and 1894, and the public tiring of Bell's monopolistic behavior, the era of "Independent Telephony" was born. Almost overnight, hundreds of smaller companies built phones and installed systems all over the country. And most all of those systems were in smaller towns and rural communities--areas in which the Bell company had no interest.
As the new century dawned, the Bell company had 800,000 phones in service compared to 600,000 in independent territories. The figures tell a story. With public distrust of the Bell company and the independents aggressively expanding--even into Bell operating territories, the Bell companies were starting to feel the heat. By 1903 and for a time, these independents had more subscribers than Bell.  

History of batik

Evidence of early examples of batik have been found in the Far East, Middle East, Central Asia and India from over 2000 years ago. It is conceivable that these areas developed independently, without the influence from trade or cultural exchanges. However, it is more likely that the craft spread from Asia to the islands of the Malay Archipelago and west to the Middle East through the caravan route. Batik was practised in China as early as the Sui Dynasty (AD 581-618). These were silk batiks and these have also been discovered in Nara, Japan in the form of screens and ascribed to the Nara period (AD 710-794). It is probable that these were made by Chinese artists. They are decorated with trees, animals, flute players, hunting scenes and stylised mountains.


No evidence of very old cotton batiks have been found in India but frescoes in the Ajunta caves depict head wraps and garments which could well have been batiks. In Java and Bali temple ruins contain figures whose garments are patterned in a manner suggestive of batik. By 1677 there is evidence of a considerable export trade, mostly on silk from China to Java, Sumatra, Persia and Hindustan. In Egypt linen and occasionally woollen fabrics have been excavated bearing white patterns on a blue ground and are the oldest known and date from the 5th century A.D. They were made in Egypt, possibly Syria. In central Africa resist dyeing using cassava and rice paste has existed for centuries in the Yoruba tribe of Southern Nigeria and Senegal.
Indonesia, most particularly the island of Java, is the area where batik has reached the greatest peak of accomplishment. The Dutch brought Indonesian craftsmen to teach the craft to Dutch warders in several factories in Holland from 1835. The Swiss produced imitation batik in the early 1940s. A wax block form of printing was developed in Java using a cap.
By the early 1900s the Germans had developed mass production of batiks. There are many examples of this form of batik as well as hand-produced work in many parts of the world today. Computerisation of batik techniques is a very recent development.

Ancient Egypt has captivated the hearts and minds of history lovers for centuries. During the Victorian era, mummy fever hit an-all time high with shady characters selling ground mummy powder as a cure-all for ailments. Eventually science begin to reveal the people behind the exotic mummies with techniques of digital facial reconstruction, DNA mapping and carbon dating. Today we have learned valuable information about ancient Egyptian through the bodies of its citizens, the mummies.

Origins

• The word "mummy" comes from the Latin word "mumia," which translated means bitumen. Bitumen is a black organic pitch-like liquid that stains the skin. Early investigators of mummies believed that bitumen was used during the process because of the blackness of the corpses' skin. Microscopic research tested this theory and found no use of bitumen. The oldest known mummy dates from about 3300 B.C. and is called "Ginger" because of the corpse's red hair. Scientists believe that the dry desert sands and the heat made mummification occur naturally at first. Later, religious sects promoting the belief in an afterlife perfected mummification with herbs, ointments and special treatments of the corpses.

Facts

• Egyptians used special embalming techniques to preserve the bodies of the deceased. According to their religion, it was important to preserve the mummy to appear as life-like as possible. Mummification may have been in use throughout the entire history of ancient Egypt since its beginnings around 4000 B.C. Practitioners removed the major organs like the stomach, lungs, liver and intestines. But the heart stayed intact, because was believed to contain the deceased's soul and personality. In later years, mummification took 70 days and consisted of soaking the body in chemicals and packing it internally and externally with herbs. It was also a religious ceremony, which called for incantations and magic spells.

     Zombie (Haitian Creole: zonbi; North Mbundu: nzumbe) is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft.[1] The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli. Since the late 19th century, zombies have acquired notable popularity, especially in North American and European folklore.
In modern times, the term "zombie" has been applied to an undead race in horror fiction, largely drawn from George A. Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead.[2] They have appeared as plot devices in various books, films and in television shows.

West African Vodun

According to the tenets of Vodou, a dead person can be revived by a bokor, or sorcerer. Zombies remain under the control of the bokor since they have no will of their own. "Zombi" is also another name of the Vodou snake lwa Damballah Wedo, of Niger–Congo origin; it is akin to the Kikongo word nzambi, which means "god". There also exists within the West African Vodun tradition the zombi astral, which is a part of the human soul that is captured by a bokor and used to enhance the bokor's power. The zombi astral is typically kept inside a bottle which the bokor can sell to clients for luck, healing or business success. It is believed that after a time God will take the soul back and so the zombi is a temporary spiritual entity.[3] It is also said in vodou legend, that feeding a zombie salt will make it return to the grave.

Haitian Vodou and alleged pharmaceutical explanation

In 1937, while researching folklore in Haiti, Zora Neale Hurston encountered the case of a woman who appeared in a village, and a family claimed she was Felicia Felix-Mentor, a relative who had died and been buried in 1907 at the age of 29. Hurston pursued rumors that the affected persons were given a powerful psychoactive drug, but she was unable to locate individuals willing to offer much information. She wrote:
“ What is more, if science ever gets to the bottom of Voodoo in Haiti and Africa, it will be found that some important medical secrets, still unknown to medical science, give it its power, rather than gestures of ceremony.[4] ”
Several decades later, Wade Davis, a Harvard ethnobotanist, presented a pharmacological case for zombies in two books, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1985) and Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie (1988). Davis traveled to Haiti in 1982 and, as a result of his investigations, claimed that a living person can be turned into a zombie by two special powders being entered into the blood stream (usually via a wound). The first, coup de poudre (French: 'powder strike'), includes tetrodotoxin (TTX), a powerful and frequently fatal neurotoxin found in the flesh of the pufferfish (order Tetraodontidae). The second powder consists of dissociative drugs such as datura. Together, these powders were said to induce a death-like state in which the will of the victim would be entirely subjected to that of the bokor. Davis also popularized the story of Clairvius Narcisse, who was claimed to have succumbed to this practice.
The process described by Davis was an initial state of death-like suspended animation, followed by re-awakening—typically after being buried—into a psychotic state. The psychosis induced by the drug and psychological trauma was hypothesised by Davis to re-inforce culturally-learned beliefs and to cause the individual to reconstruct their identity as that of a zombie, since they "knew" they were dead, and had no other role to play in the Haitian society. Societal reinforcement of the belief was hypothesized by Davis to confirm for the zombie individual the zombie state, and such individuals were known to hang around in graveyards, exhibiting attitudes of low affect.
Davis' claim has been criticized, particularly the suggestion that Haitian witch doctors can keep “zombies” in a state of pharmacologically induced trance for many years.[5] Symptoms of TTX poisoning range from numbness and nausea to paralysis (particularly of the muscles of the diaphragm), unconsciousness, and death, but do not include a stiffened gait or a death-like trance. According to psychologist Terence Hines, the scientific community dismisses tetrodotoxin as the cause of this state, and Davis' assessment of the nature of the reports of Haitian zombies is viewed as overly credulous.[6]
Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing highlighted the link between social and cultural expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychological aspects of zombification.[7]
South Africa

In some South African communities it is believed that a dead person can be turned into a zombie by a small child.[8] It is said that the spell can be broken by a powerful enough sangoma.[9]