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The Independent
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The enchanting French theme park just 40km from Disney that's cheaper – and far less busy
'Who makes the magic potion?' I asked my 13-year-old nephew Fred as we landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport. 'Getafix,' he replied without hesitation. While the stories of Asterix, the Gaul had been the mainstay of my youth, Fred had recently discovered this world through Netflix's five-part series released in April. As we walked from Les Trois Hiboux hotel into the park, he looked up at the roller coaster rails of the Goudurix ride towering above the Viking area. 'Are we going on that?' he asked, eyes wide with anticipation and disbelief, after all, it boasts five loop-de-loops followed by a corkscrew. This wide-eyed astonishment would set the tone for our entire weekend. The Adventures of Asterix the Gaul follow the warrior Asterix and his fellow Gaulish villagers as they stand up against the might of Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire. First published in 1959, there are now 40 volumes with another due for release this year. With a whopping 393 million copies sold they are the best-selling European comic book series ever and the second best in the world. Some 40km away, Disneyland Paris was preparing for the May bank holiday, one of their busiest weekends with snaking queues and lengthy waits. We were casually strolling straight into the heart of Parc Astérix. While it isn't striving to imitate its larger, more saccharine neighbour (which it actually predates by three years), the park is reaching new audiences through recent book releases like Asterix in Lusitania, due October 2025, and the new Netflix series. Parc Astérix has grown from strength to strength, recording 2.84 million visitors in 2024. With short transfer times from Charles de Gaulle via an €11 shuttle bus, it's positioning itself as a genuine alternative in European theme parks. Fred took charge of our route, map in hand, leading us through the medieval section, past 19th-century Parisian streets, and straight into ancient Egypt. The park divides into iconic sections from the Asterix universe: ancient Egypt and Greece, Rome, and of course the legendary Gaulish village still holding out against Roman might. Each area is meticulously designed with temples, Parthenons, and Viking thrones, populated by familiar faces from the comic series. I watched Fred's delight as we moved between worlds, taking in the seemingly rickety wooden-framed Zeus roller coaster and Toutatis, Europe's second-fastest roller coaster. The Gallic humour translates perfectly for both adults and children. Characters like Getafix the magic potion-brewing druid, Cocofonix the tone-deaf bard, and Netflix's Potus the clueless Roman general wander the park, creating natural photo opportunities. What struck me most was the staff's genuine passion, most had grown up with these stories, and their warmth felt authentic rather than corporate-trained. The variety of attractions impressed us both. On the second day we were joined by some other writers and their families. The youngest member, aged two-and-a-half, rode one attraction a magnificent eleven times. Roller coasters cater to growing kids, with everything accessible for those over 130cm. Shows run throughout the day, high diving, pirate performances, and an exceptional 4D cinema experience. Yes, they're in French, but the visual spectacle translates beautifully, packed with universal humour. Parc Astérix isn't resting on its laurels. This year sees the opening of Cétautomatix (Fulliautomatix in English), a new spinning chariot roller coaster set in the blacksmith's workshop. Plans are also underway for additional hotel accommodation to complement the existing two 3-star and one 4-star properties. Each hotel has its own theme: the Great Hall of Les Trois Hiboux, the stilted village of La Cité Suspendue, and the magical quayside of Les Quais de Lutèce. All sit within walking distance of the park, perfect for recovering from adrenaline-fuelled days. The value proposition speaks for itself. For two adults and two children under 12, Parc Astérix charges €443 for one night and one day, or €593 for one night and two days, including breakfast. Disney charges €970 for a one-night, two-day package excluding breakfast. Food pricing matches Disney's at the fast-food level – €10 for kids' meals, €18 for adults – but the three-course 'all you can eat' buffet at Restaurant Le Cirque costs just €12.50 for children and €35 for adults, compared to Disney's €25/€45 equivalent. Fred returned to our table beaming with a plateful of food. 'What have you got?' I asked. 'Caviar,' he responded. 'I've never had it before.' The buffet offered lasagne, dauphinoise potatoes, roast meats, vegetarian dishes, whole cooked salmon, extensive desserts, and a cheese board to die for – a veritable feast. Fast-track passes are available, though Disney's are slightly cheaper at €190 per person over three years old, while Parc Astérix costs €239/€199 for ages 3-11. However, the Asterix price includes lunch at Restaurant Le Cirque, adding genuine value. Asterix has always been about a small Gaulish village standing up to Roman imperial might. The parallels with Parc Astérix challenging Disney are unmistakable. Despite being almost dead on his feet, Fred was desperate for one more ride. 'Thanks Uncle Matt, this is the best weekend ever!' he said, and a warm glow of happiness surrounded me. Now that Netflix has successfully brought Asterix back to global screens, perhaps it's time British families discovered what the French have known all along: sometimes David really can outshine Goliath. How to do it Airlines including British Airways, easyJet and Jet2 fly to Charles-De-Gaul Paris from the UK. Parc Asterix runs a shuttle bus from the airport costing €11. If you are arriving by Eurostar at Gare du Nord you can walk to the Gare de l'Est metro station (Verdun) where you catch the subway to Palais Royal. From there, you can take one of the buses that depart every 20 minutes.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Assyrian swimmers: 2,900-year-old carving of soldiers using 'floaties' to cross a river
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Name: Assyrian Swimmers What it is: A relief scene carved in gypsum Where it is from: The Royal Palace of Nimrud (near modern-day Mosul, Iraq) When it was made: Between 865 and 860 B.C. Related: Tarkhan Dress: World's oldest known outfit was worn to an ancient Egyptian funeral 5,000 years ago What it tells us about the past: This carved relief from Nimrud, a major city of the ancient Assyrian Empire in present-day Iraq, regularly drifts around the internet as purported evidence for scuba diving nearly 3,000 years ago. But the wall panel actually depicts an army crossing a river, and soldiers are navigating the waves with the help of ancient flotation devices. The gypsum panel is one of several excavated in the 1840s from the Northwest Palace, which was built on the Tigris River around 865 B.C. on the orders of King Ashurnasirpal II. Originally located around the interior walls of the throne room and royal apartments, the carved panels depict the king leading a military campaign, engaging in rituals and hunting animals. This panel fragment, which is in the collection of The British Museum, shows several men and horses crossing a river. The horses are swimming, pulled on leads by cavalry soldiers. One soldier is free-swimming, one is rowing a small boat, and two are using goat-skin bags that the soldiers are inflating to stay afloat. A cuneiform inscription running across the top of the panel traces the king's lineage and describes his key accomplishments. The two-dimensionality of the perspective — in which the figures appear complete and not half-submerged — is typical in Assyrian art, according to The British Museum. MORE ASTONISHING ARTIFACTS —Sun Chariot: An ornate Bronze Age treasure that may have featured in an ancient Nordic religious ceremony —Prosciutto di Portici: A portable sundial that looks like a pork leg — and it was likely owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law before Mount Vesuvius erupted —Ram in the Thicket: A 4,500-year-old gold statue from the royal cemetery at Ur Animal skin or bladder floats appear several times in the Nimrud wall panels, and they were likely made from goats or pigs. The floats were used to help keep a soldier's weapons dry and to allow an army to sneak up on an enemy. Ashurnasirpal II was known for his military prowess as well as his brutality, and his innovative tactics — including the goat-skin floats — helped him expand his empire considerably in the ninth century B.C. While it's interesting to ponder how much of the world the Assyrian army might have conquered if they'd had scuba gear, the humble goat skin still represents a key invention that helped them maintain power in Mesopotamia for centuries, until the empire fell around 600 B.C.
Zawya
19-06-2025
- Science
- Zawya
AI and the crafting of parallel history
Used wisely, AI rekindles the Promethean spark, not to burn, but to illuminate the dark corridors of our shared past and guide us towards paths once unseen. With the rise of intelligent algorithms capable of generating language and imagery in ways that mirror the human mind, a new realm of historical imagination has emerged, what can be called the "galaxy of historical possibilities". This domain of counterfactual history asks: what if events had unfolded differently? What if Julius Caesar had not been assassinated, or the Arabs had triumphed at pivotal battles? Such questions, once confined to speculative philosophy, have gained new legitimacy through artificial intelligence (AI) and its simulation capabilities. AI, powered by deep learning and neural networks, can now be trained on massive datasets of historical, economic and demographic information. It can simulate countless alternate realities, tracking how a single altered event might cascade through time like a domino effect. These simulations do not recreate history as it was, but they revive possible histories grounded in plausible models and precise probabilities. While traditional historians rely on artefacts, documents and testimonies, AI adds a fourth dimension: the "simulated probability", a causality-based narrative framework that allows a tweak in one event to reveal systemic historical shifts. Used wisely, AI rekindles the Promethean spark, not to burn, but to illuminate the dark corridors of our shared past and guide us towards paths once unseen. Sceptics may argue this overstates AI's power. Indeed, AI does not possess conscious knowledge of the past; it merely generates outcomes from patterns. However, its value lies in offering a hypothetical mirror, an imaginative yet logical contrast to actual history, revealing how contingent the course of human events truly is. This approach reshapes how societies perceive history in three ways. First, it breaks the illusion of historical determinism, revealing that major outcomes are not inevitable but the result of human choices. This awakens political agency, showing individuals that the present is not a dead end but an open frontier. Second, it empowers historically marginalised peoples. For nations colonised or erased from dominant narratives, counterfactual simulations provide moral consolation and restore symbolic justice. It's not about rewriting history but imagining the dignity that was denied. Third, in political science, these simulated models become testing grounds for policy, revealing dangers or opportunities before real-world decisions are made. Such developments provoke a profound question: what is history? Is it a sequence of necessary outcomes dictated by natural and economic systems? Or is it a dance of probabilities around human decisions? AI cannot fully answer this, but it radically expands our perception. It allows us to envision history as a topological field of overlapping timelines, not a straight line. This view aligns with both philosophical critiques of linear progress and quantum physics' interpretation of reality as a wave function collapsing into one observable event. In this frame, parallel histories become a scientifically plausible concept. However, access to 'alternative histories' is not always neutral. Governments or corporations may misuse such simulations to construct persuasive, pseudo-scientific propaganda. By manipulating data inputs or assumptions, they can present a desired narrative as the "most likely" future, shaping public opinion through visually and linguistically compelling stories. This creates a risk that AI becomes not a tool for knowledge, but a factory of illusions. Ethical protocols must be established, requiring transparency in data, clarity about assumptions and openness to peer review, to prevent such misuse. Ultimately, humanity has given AI the unprecedented ability to dissect and recompose time. Not to escape the past, but to reinterpret it. Counterfactual simulations are more than narrative play, they are intellectual tools that reposition humans at the centre of historical agency. If, as philosopher Edmund Husserl said, philosophy is 'the science of absolute beginnings', then AI may be the technological key to rethinking history not as a record of what was, but as a spectrum of what could have been and what may yet still be. By transforming imaginative simulation into a mental laboratory, AI enhances our capacity to ask deeper questions, exercise creative freedom and prepare future generations to envision less tragic, more just futures. Used wisely, AI rekindles the Promethean spark, not to burn, but to illuminate the dark corridors of our shared past and guide us towards paths once unseen. 2022 © All right reserved for Oman Establishment for Press, Publication and Advertising (OEPPA) Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (
Observer
18-06-2025
- Science
- Observer
AI and the crafting of parallel history
With the rise of intelligent algorithms capable of generating language and imagery in ways that mirror the human mind, a new realm of historical imagination has emerged, what can be called the "galaxy of historical possibilities". This domain of counterfactual history asks: what if events had unfolded differently? What if Julius Caesar had not been assassinated, or the Arabs had triumphed at pivotal battles? Such questions, once confined to speculative philosophy, have gained new legitimacy through artificial intelligence (AI) and its simulation capabilities. AI, powered by deep learning and neural networks, can now be trained on massive datasets of historical, economic and demographic information. It can simulate countless alternate realities, tracking how a single altered event might cascade through time like a domino effect. These simulations do not recreate history as it was, but they revive possible histories grounded in plausible models and precise probabilities. While traditional historians rely on artefacts, documents and testimonies, AI adds a fourth dimension: the "simulated probability", a causality-based narrative framework that allows a tweak in one event to reveal systemic historical shifts. Used wisely, AI rekindles the Promethean spark, not to burn, but to illuminate the dark corridors of our shared past and guide us towards paths once unseen. Sceptics may argue this overstates AI's power. Indeed, AI does not possess conscious knowledge of the past; it merely generates outcomes from patterns. However, its value lies in offering a hypothetical mirror, an imaginative yet logical contrast to actual history, revealing how contingent the course of human events truly is. This approach reshapes how societies perceive history in three ways. First, it breaks the illusion of historical determinism, revealing that major outcomes are not inevitable but the result of human choices. This awakens political agency, showing individuals that the present is not a dead end but an open frontier. Second, it empowers historically marginalised peoples. For nations colonised or erased from dominant narratives, counterfactual simulations provide moral consolation and restore symbolic justice. It's not about rewriting history but imagining the dignity that was denied. Third, in political science, these simulated models become testing grounds for policy, revealing dangers or opportunities before real-world decisions are made. Such developments provoke a profound question: what is history? Is it a sequence of necessary outcomes dictated by natural and economic systems? Or is it a dance of probabilities around human decisions? AI cannot fully answer this, but it radically expands our perception. It allows us to envision history as a topological field of overlapping timelines, not a straight line. This view aligns with both philosophical critiques of linear progress and quantum physics' interpretation of reality as a wave function collapsing into one observable event. In this frame, parallel histories become a scientifically plausible concept. However, access to 'alternative histories' is not always neutral. Governments or corporations may misuse such simulations to construct persuasive, pseudo-scientific propaganda. By manipulating data inputs or assumptions, they can present a desired narrative as the "most likely" future, shaping public opinion through visually and linguistically compelling stories. This creates a risk that AI becomes not a tool for knowledge, but a factory of illusions. Ethical protocols must be established, requiring transparency in data, clarity about assumptions and openness to peer review, to prevent such misuse. Ultimately, humanity has given AI the unprecedented ability to dissect and recompose time. Not to escape the past, but to reinterpret it. Counterfactual simulations are more than narrative play, they are intellectual tools that reposition humans at the centre of historical agency. If, as philosopher Edmund Husserl said, philosophy is 'the science of absolute beginnings', then AI may be the technological key to rethinking history not as a record of what was, but as a spectrum of what could have been and what may yet still be. By transforming imaginative simulation into a mental laboratory, AI enhances our capacity to ask deeper questions, exercise creative freedom and prepare future generations to envision less tragic, more just futures. Used wisely, AI rekindles the Promethean spark, not to burn, but to illuminate the dark corridors of our shared past and guide us towards paths once unseen.
BBC News
15-06-2025
- General
- BBC News
Downham Market coin hoard 'probably lost by a Roman invader'
A hoard of 13 silver coins found in a field was probably lost in the wake of the Roman invasion of Britain in AD43, according to a historian. The discovery was made by a metal detectorist in a field near Downham Market, Norfolk, in September and is the subject of a treasure inquest. The denarii date from the late 2nd Century BC, in the last tumultuous decades of the Roman republic, to the first Roman emperors and could have been a purse loss."Of course, we've no way of knowing whose it was, but it could have been lost by one of the invaders," said coin expert Adrian Marsden. The Roman Republic lasted from 509 to 27BC and a series of unrest and civil wars in the 1st Century BC marked its transition to an empire. "The oldest coin in the hoard dates back to 152BC and has worn smooth over the two centuries it was in use," said Dr Marsden, a numismatist from the Norfolk Historic Environment Service."This reveals they've got a stable economy, without changes to the denominations, so coins like this can remain in circulation for a long, long time."One of denarii was struck by the Roman dictator Sulla (138 to 79BC), who won the first full-scale civil war in Roman history."Another was struck by Julius Caesar [about 100 to 44BC] a couple of years before he was assassinated, a second by Mark Antony [83 to 30BC] and a third by his rival and winner of that civil war, the first Roman emperor Augustus [63BC to AD14]," said Dr Marsden. The most recent coin of the 13 came from the reign of Octavian's stepson, the second emperor Tiberius (AD14 to 37).It was the latter's nephew, the emperor Claudius (10BC to 54AD), who ordered the invasion of Britain in AD43, eventually leading to a Romano-British province which lasted until 5th Century. Dr Marsden described it as "one of the more interesting" hoards to cross his desk in the past year."It is earlier than most of the silver denarii hoards we see and it's got this drum roll of coins from the late republic through to the early empire," he said.A coroner decides if a discovery is treasure and a museum usually gets first refusal over whether to add it to its this case, the Lynn Museum in King's Lynn hopes to be able to acquire it. Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
