history

Are we enslaved by the finer things in life?

Hunter-gatherers probably had more spare time than you.

A new study provides a possible scientific explanation for the existence of stories about ancient saints performing miracles with water.

“It’s not always about agreement, more often it’s about business.”

A curated list of must-watch films from Big Think readers.

James Gillray’s ‘plumb-pudding’ caricature is “probably the most famous political cartoon of all time.”

Digitized logbooks from the 1800s reveal a steep decline in strike rate for whalers.

The ‘reasonable person’ represents someone who is both common and good.

How the German political philosopher called out Henry David Thoreau on civil disobedience.

555-million-year-old oceanic creatures share genes with today’s humans, finds a new study.

“Large-scale indiscriminate killing is a horror that is not just a feature of the modern and historic periods, but was also a significant process in pre-state societies,” the researchers wrote.

A reversal in Earth’s magnetic field 42,000 years ago triggered climate catastrophes and mass extinctions. Can the field flip again?

Research reveals a new evolutionary feature that separates humans from other primates.

The chariot survived ancient eruptions and modern-day looters to become a part of the world heritage site.

The key? A computational flattening algorithm.

Using machine-learning technology, the genealogy company My Heritage enables users to animate static images of their relatives.

Most people seem to enjoy liberalism and its spin offs, but what is it exactly? Where did the idea come from?

MIT professor Azra Akšamija creates works of cultural resilience in the face of social conflict.

Legendary cartoonist John Groth’s pictorial map captures LA’s film factories in their Golden Age.

Researchers analyze prehistoric viruses in animals dug out from the Siberian permafrost.

Research shows that bone fragments of Jesus’s (possible) brother belong to someone else.

Pandemics have historically given way to social revolution. What will the post-COVID revolution be?

Waun Maun was an ancient Welsh stone circle that had an awful lot in common with Stonehenge.

A study of europium crystals shows the planet was mostly flat during its middle ages.

A new model of plate tectonics offers a chance to look back a billion years with new found accuracy.

More than a century after the end of hostilities in 1918, some battlefields of WWI are still deadly enough to kill you.

Some mysteries take generations to unfold.

The study found that people who spoke the same language tended to be more closely related despite living far apart.

A crash course in the history of money, the birth of Bitcoin, and blockchain technology.

Meet a spectacular new blue—the first inorganic new blue in some time.