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Cultural Evolution
"Values emphasizing tolerance and self-expression have diverged most sharply, especially between high-income Western countries and the rest of the world."
A poignant, 2,000-year-old burial in northern Italy could be the latest evidence of an ancient friendship.
Architect and brand innovator Kevin Ervin Kelley sounds the alarm for workplace culture — and argues for a “big bang” collision of forms and shapes.
A volley of new insights reignites the debate over whether our choices are ever truly our own.
The essential element needed for innovation is creative dissonance — and the keys to unlocking it were forged by bankers in Italy.
An influential series of books argues that the history of the world is the history of generations. Is it right?
After my father died, my journey of rediscovery began with the Czech language.
Borrow the same technique that produced McDonald’s, the Hawaiian pizza, the Beatles’ greatest hits, and Shakespeare’s rhetorical flair.
The history of hell doesn't begin with the Old Testament. Instead, hell took shape in the 2nd century from Mediterranean cultural exchange.
Once at the pinnacle of Amsterdam’s art scene, Rembrandt van Rijn eventually found himself outcompeted by his own students.
There's nothing like the end of the world to make you a philosopher.
Though over three billion people speak an Indo-European language, researchers are not sure where the language family originated.
Sweet, bitter, salty, sour. These are the four basic tastes we were taught in grade school. But there is a fifth: umami. And it's everywhere.
To this day, one cult believes that Lemuria was real, and that its people left us the sacred wisdom to revive their advanced civilization.
Art isn't a side note in human history; it's the main text.
Wherever automation rises, religiosity falls.
The history of cartography might have been very different if the Latin version of Muhammad al-Idrisi's atlas had survived instead of the Arabic one.
The arsons were no accident, archaeological evidence suggests.
Metaphors like the Great Chain of Being can lead people to misunderstand evolution and humanity’s place in the web of life.
Your expectations form the way you experience the world.
Gods and angels have been replaced with hi-tech extraterrestrials.
John Templeton Foundation
Evolutionary pressures drove the formation of tribes who encoded their values in myths and symbols. Was this cooperation cursed?
Piano Sonata No. 23 offers a window into the way culture became an instrument of Soviet state policy.
Far from being a “dead” pursuit that focuses on old ideas, modern philosophy proposes and debates important, new concepts. All of us can learn from it.
How humans came to feel comfortable among strangers, like those in a café, is an under-explored mystery.
John Templeton Foundation
Mongol forces never fully conquered the continent, but they played a key role in its historical development.
Most people care what others think of them. In many situations, that can be leveraged for the common good.
Fortune cookies emerged from one of America’s darkest moments.
In order to figure out how English might evolve in the future, we have to look at how it has changed in the near and distant past.
