Fixing a 2,500-Yr-Previous Puzzle: How a Cambridge Pupil Cracked an Historical Sanskrit Code

Should you discover your­self grap­pling with an intel­lec­tu­al prob­lem that’s gone unsolved for mil­len­nia, strive tak­ing a number of months off and spend­ing them on activ­i­ties like swim­ming and med­i­tat­ing. That very strat­e­gy labored for a Cam­bridge PhD stu­dent named Rishi Rajpopat, who, after a sum­mer of non-research-relat­ed activ­i­ties, returned to a textual content by…

How an Historic Roman Shipwreck May Clarify the Universe

In a 1956 New States­man piece, the British sci­en­tist-nov­el­ist C. P. Snow first sound­ed the alarm concerning the increas­ing­ly chasm-like divide between what he known as the “sci­en­tif­ic” and “tra­di­tion­al” cul­tures. We might at this time consult with them because the sci­ences and the human­i­ties, whereas nonetheless wring­ing our fingers over the inabil­i­ty of every…

Historic Egyptian Pyramids Could Have Been Constructed with Water: A New Examine Discover the Use of Hydraulic Lifts

Picture by Charles Sharp, by way of Wiki­me­dia Com­mons The com­pelling however less-than-straight­for­ward ques­tion of how the traditional Egyp­tians constructed the pyra­mids has impressed all man­ner of the­o­ry and spec­u­la­tion, floor­ed to differ­ing levels in phys­i­cal actual­i­ty. Sheer man­pow­er will need to have performed a big half, and it’s cer­tain­ly not past the realm of…

Archaeologists Uncover an Historic Roman Sandal with Nails Used for Tread

A recre­ation of the mil­i­tary san­dals. (Pho­to: Bavar­i­an State Workplace for Mon­u­ment Preser­va­tion) Whether or not you’re placing togeth­er a stage play, a movie, or a tele­vi­sion sequence, if the sto­ry is ready in historic Rome, you’re going to must get quite a lot of san­dals on order. This job could sound extra straight­for­ward than…

How Rome Started: The Historical past As Informed by Historic Historians

A lot atten­tion has been paid to the autumn of the Roman Empire, by each­one from august his­to­ri­ans like Edward Gib­bon to mod­ern-day observers wring­ing their arms over the destiny of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. However as each Rome enthu­si­ast is aware of, that lengthy col­lapse con­sti­tutes only one chap­ter — or somewhat, a collection…

How the Historical Greeks & Romans Made Lovely Purple Dye from Snail Glands

A lot has been writ­ten about the lack of col­or within the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. Our envi­ron­ments supplied prac­ti­cal­ly each col­or identified to man not so very way back — and in cer­tain eras, grant­ed, it obtained to be a bit a lot. However now, each­factor appears to have retreat­ed to a nar­row palette of grays…

The Roads of Historical Rome Visualized within the Type of Fashionable Subway Maps

Sasha Tru­wager­skoy, for­mer­ly an beneath­grad at U. Chica­go, has cre­at­ed a “sub­way-style dia­gram of the key Roman roads, primarily based on the Empire of ca. 125 AD.” Draw­ing on Stanford’s ORBIS mod­el, The Pela­gios Mission, and the Anto­9 Itin­er­ary, Tru­wager­skoy’s map com­bines well-known his­toric roads, just like the Through Appia, with much less­er-known ones (in somes cas­es…