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Dictionary of the Oldest Written Language–It Took 90 Years to Complete, and It’s Now Free Online, The Greek Mythology Family Tree: A Visual Guide Shows How Zeus, Athena, and the Ancient Gods Are Related
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William Gibson famously observed that the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed. That line is often thought to have been inspired by Japan, which was already projecting a thoroughly futuristic image, at least in popular culture, by the time he made his debut with Neuromancer in 1984. But as anyone who’s spent enough…
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It took 90 years to complete. But, in 2011, scholars at the University of Chicago finally published a 21-volume dictionary of Akkadian, the language used in ancient Mesopotamia. Unspoken for 2,000 years, Akkadian was preserved on clay tablets and in stone inscriptions until scholars deciphered it during the last two centuries.
In the past,…
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It was long ago that polytheism, as the story comes down to us, gave way to monotheism. Humanity used to have many gods, and now almost every religious believer acknowledges just one — though which god, exactly, does vary. Some popular theories of “big history” hold that, as the scale of a society grows larger,…
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Are we truly in the midst of a human-caused sixth mass extinction, an era of “biological annihilation”? Many scientists and popular science writers say yes, using terms like “Holocene” or “Anthropocene” to describe what follows the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Triassic, and Cretaceous periods. Peter Brannen, the author of extinction history The…
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Each culture has its own sayings about the uniqueness and transience of the present moment. In recent years, the English-speakers have often found themselves reminded, through the expression “YOLO,” that they only live once. (The question of whether that should really be “YLOO,” or “You Live Only Once,” we put aside for the time being.)…
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