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Cultural Memory
Scientists found a massive underwater wall off the coast of France that might help explain the origin of the legend of Ys.
From Einstein to Twain, Garson O’Toole investigates the truth behind your favorite — and often misattributed — quotes.
Historians Alexandra Churchill and Nicolai Eberholst reexamine the pivotal conflict from a grassroots perspective.
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
The burial spot was found in one of the Herculaneum scrolls charred by Mt. Vesuvius.
Archaeologist Bernard Frischer spent decades uploading the ruins of the Eternal City to the cloud. Here’s what it looks like.
Along with obsidian that dazzled scientists in Canada.
From Æthelred the Unready to Halfdan the Bad Entertainer, these strange epithets colored the legacy of four rather unlucky historical figures.
The clash of academic archaeology and what might be called folk archaeology comes into stark focus at Stonehenge.
"Time Warp" all the way back to 1800s spiritualism, magic performances, and spook shows.
In war zones, aggressors steal art to eradicate the cultural heritage of others. Victims, meanwhile, sell stolen art in order to survive.
The Pan-American Highway began a century ago with a vision of unfettered motor-vehicle access between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego. What happened to the dream?
His crime was so great, he was not only sentenced to death but his name was to be erased from memory.
Dive into seven texts that continue to shape Western philosophy, from ancient Mesopotamia to Greece's brightest minds.
Sixty years later, will anybody have heard of COVID?
Grief never ends. There is no closure, but there are things we can do to mitigate the feeling of loss.
Diogenes engaged in shocking behavior to demonstrate the contradictions, small-mindedness, and sheer absurdity of prevailing social conventions.
These composers channeled the horror of the Holocaust and Hiroshima while honoring those who lived through it.
Billy was a local celebrity in the early 1900s. And he might have been a murderer.
What is Captain America doing in ancient Mesopotamia?
With almost every shovel of sand shifted in Egypt, another artifact comes to light.
Because Dylan “samples and digests” songs from the past, he has been accused of plagiarism. But imitatio isn't the same.
Many were expecting extremism survivor and free speech advocate Salman Rushdie to take home the Nobel Prize in Literature, but Annie Ernaux beat him to it.
Queen Elizabeth II has died. How is this loss different from that of a loved one?
Some artifacts drown in shipwrecks, others are taken by the tide. Many others will vanish as a result of climate change and rising sea levels.
Some of the coastal areas were not repopulated for millennia afterward, showing that there was a long-lasting memory of this tragic event.
Is there victory in defeat?
There have been some 6,000 Great Lakes shipwrecks, which have claimed an estimated 30,000 lives. These maps show some of them.
We have a morbid curiosity about nautical disaster stories. The Irish "Wreck Viewer" offers a window into centuries of marine misfortune.
A study proposes that an ancient trading network, called the Hopewell tradition, may have been wiped out by what is known as a cosmic airburst.