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Can a shared language promote peace? Some people think so.
Rare and costly paints have shaped art history in unforeseen ways. Mummy brown caused one artist to bury his paint.
In a nod to its addictive qualities, it was first dubbed “Some More.”
Long before Christopher and Magellan, ancient explorers voyaged into the unknown and brought home extraordinary tales.
"The surface is no longer a record of every impact the moon has ever had, because at some point, impacts were erasing previous impacts."
Is "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch a condemnation of sin or a celebration of hedonism? Art historians still aren’t sure.
Mammals have a history stretching back 325 million years. To study that ancient history is to know our own origins.
In the early 1900s, some Americans feared that teddy bears would not instill maternal instincts in girls, thereby causing "race suicide."
Predatory dinosaurs with big skulls tend to have tiny arms. Researchers propose there might be a direct link between those traits.
With its very first deep-field view of the Universe now released, the James Webb Space Telescope has shown us our cosmos as never before.
The role of the Devil’s advocate was to argue against the beatification of mystics. Contrary to popular belief, they did not wear Prada.
Long before tobacco arrived from the Americas, ancient civilizations in the Old World were getting high off hemp smoke and opium.
New research finds that dinosaurs were already adapted to living in cold climates before the end-Triassic mass extinction. But how?
Fossils of Australopithecus in a South African cave are one million years older than previously thought. This challenges the consensus that humans first evolved in East Africa.
The architecture and infrastructure found may well have required the greatest amount of skilled labor of any construction from the same time period in the entire continent.
Unlike other world rulers, Genghis Khan was laid to rest not inside an elaborate mausoleum but an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia. Maybe.
Before gunpowder was introduced to the West, medieval Arabs devised grenades using crockery.
In the Canaan religion, Yahweh was a lesser god, who was assigned the land of Israel. Here's how he became "God Almighty."
Yorkicystis lived during the “Cambrian explosion,” 539 million to 485 million years ago – hundreds of million years before the dinosaurs.
The ancient Maya enjoyed filling their teeth with gemstones. A new study reveals how the procedure was done and how it didn't kill them.
What Odysseus needed from his father was something more important: the comfort of being a son.
The sonnenrad is a Heathen symbol composed of 12 repeated runes.
The long-standing debate over whether dinosaurs were more like birds or lizards is drawing to a close.
An elaborate device called the Mechanical Turk defeated Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte at chess. Edgar Allan Poe revealed the hoax.
For centuries, men prevented women from writing music. These classical composers broke with social norms and made their mark on history.
Robinson v. California helped to established a rehabilitative ideal: addiction should be dealt with as a therapeutic matter.
Before the war, medical experts treated the body as a sum of its parts. Conditions like wound shock and brain damage called for a change in perspective.
Privateers pillaged British merchant ships in the name of liberty — and profit.
Bernini created art for 8 different popes. In the process, he helped reinforce and redefine Christianity’s visual culture.
Now they're pointing the way to future battery technologies.