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There was some amusement as well as surprise when somebody walked into Helsinki’s Oodi Central Library on Monday 27 with a book that was overdue. 84 years overdue It’s not unusual to be a little delayed in returning a library book but this one was unusual in as much as it was due back on December 26, 1939 making it just over 84 years late! The person who returned it isn’t the person who first took out the book The Refugees (Pakolaiset in Finnish) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and it is not known whether there was a fine and...

...The decoration and texts of this sarcophagus demonstrated that it had been used twice, the second time by a high priest of the XXI dynasty, Menkheperre (around 1000 BC). Its first owner, however, remained a mystery, although the quality of the object indicated that it belonged to a very high-ranking figure in the Egyptian New Kingdom. By examining the newly engraved hieroglyphic texts, Frédéric Payraudeau was able to establish that they contained the cartouche of Ramesses II himself.Until now, we knew that the tomb of this pharaoh in the Valley of the Kings (Luxor) had been completely looted and his...

🎥 Who are the indigenous Ainu people of Japan, where did they come from, what do they look like, and where do they stand in the world today? 🇯🇵 Welcome to our deep dive into the fascinating world of the Ainu, the indigenous people of northern Japan. In this video, we explore the unique aspects of Ainu culture, from their ancient history to their contemporary resurgence… 00:26 - 🌿 Indigenous Heritage: Explore the history of the Ainu, the original inhabitants of Hokkaido, and their presence in Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. 01:54 - 📜 Unique Language: Discover the endangered Ainu...

They'll probably look more impressive when they're clean. Image credit: ARCHEOLOGICKÝ ÚSTAV AV ČR ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you’ve been trying to convince yourself to exercise more lately, consider the recent case of a woman in the Czech Republic who went out for a walk one day and accidentally found a treasure trove of more than 2,150 silver coins dating from more than 900 years ago. It’s a discovery that “can be compared to winning a million in the jackpot,” said Filip Velímský, an archaeologist from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague, in a statement translated from the...

The number of people using Gaelic has increased across Scotland despite a decline in the language's heartland, according to the latest census data. Experts say the increase in Gaelic medium education (GME) accounts for the rise. However, Gaelic is now a minority language in the Western Isles - while 52% reported speaking Gaelic in 2011, the figure in 2022 was 45%. Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes told BBC Scotland that Scottish Gaelic was part of a "modern, diverse Scotland". Ms Forbes – who is also minister for Gaelic – said she was “extremely optimistic” about the future of the language....

Nearly half of the world's language families are found in the Americas. Although many of them are now thought extinct, historical linguistics analysis can survey and compare living languages and trace them back in time to better understand the groups that first populated the continent.In a study published March 30 in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, Johanna Nichols, a historical linguist at the University of California Berkeley, analyzed structural features of 60 languages from across the U.S. and Canada, which revealed they come from two main language groups that entered North America in at least four distinct waves.Nichols surveyed...

Egypt’s National Center for Translation has just released an Arabic translation of the Torah. To be precise, they converted Rav Saadia Gaon’s 10th century translation of the Torah to Judeo-Arabic into Arabic itself. (Judeo-Arabic is mostly Arabic with Hebrew letters.) The Egyptian scholars who published the book emphasize that R’ Saadia was born in Egypt (in Fayoum, identified by R’ Saadia himself as the Biblical Pitom), and that his philosophy and translations were heavily influenced by Islam. They even claim that he borrows Quranic texts in some of his translations to Arabic. They don’t emphasize that R’ Saadia moved to...

The Antikythera Mechanism, widely believed to be the world’s first computer, was among wreckage retrieved from a shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island Antikythera on May 17, 1901. A year later, it was identified as containing a gear by Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais. Since then, the Mechanism has had a lasting impact on scientists and thinkers across the world. The seven largest fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism, A-G, both sides. Courtesy Tom Malzbender and Hewlett Packard. The Tablet, or the Antikythera Mechanism “Tablet” was probably the name ancient Greeks gave the Antikythera Mechanism, which dates from the second...

Arguably no period in European history is as misunderstood as the Middle Ages, which stretched from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century CE to the rise of the Renaissance roughly 1,000 years later. The myths surrounding this fascinating period of kingdoms and peasants are so prevalent that they led medieval historian Winston Black to write, “The first thing to understand about the Middle Ages… is that they do not actually exist.” The popular perception of life in feudal Europe (exacerbated by Hollywood depictions) is that it was prudish, brutish, and excessively foul, but society was...

Two Just Stop Oil protesters have been arrested after damaging the case around the Magna Carta at the British Library. Reverend Sue Parfitt, 82, and Judy Bruce, 85, a retired biology teacher, targeted the glass enclosure around the historic document on Friday. The pair then held up a sign reading "The Government is breaking the law" before gluing themselves to the display, footage posted online shows. The British Library said security had "intervened to prevent further damage". The Metropolitan Police said two people had been taken into custody having been arrested on suspicion of causing criminal damage. The British Library...

Reading for fun sharply declines around age nine in an alarming trend that coincides with years of learning loss since the pandemic, data shows. Only 35% of nine-year-olds are reading at least five days a week compared to 57% of eight-year-olds, according to the latest Scholastic survey on the issue. “The number of kids who say they love reading drops significantly from 40% among eight-year-olds to 28% among nine-year-olds,” the Scholastic report notes. The trend, dubbed the “decline by nine” has concerned researchers, who note that reaching reading proficiency by third grade is a good predictor of academic success. [snip]...

Two supporters of the climate activism group Just Stop Oil have smashed the glass protecting the Magna Carta, an iconic British manuscript from the 13th century, on Friday. According to Just Stop Oil, Reverend Dr. Sue Parfitt, 82, an active Anglican priest and author, and Judy Bruce, 85, a retired biology teacher, entered the British Library in London on Friday morning and “smashed the glass enclosure that surrounds the Magna Carta.” After this, the pair glued themselves to the document’s enclosure and held up a sign that said “The government is breaking the law,” Just Stop Oil said.

A curious-looking stone inscribed with a mysterious ancient language uncovered by a teacher near Coventry, England, has revealed a rare window to the region’s ancient history. While working in his garden, geography teacher Graham Senior discovered a peculiar rock amidst the overgrown weeds in his flowerbed. Removing it from the surrounding earth revealed a rectangular wedge of sandstone bearing a series of unusual markings along its face. Unable to decipher the strange set of inscriptions along the face of the artifact, Senior reached out to a local archaeologist for assistance with the unique find. Soon, experts were able to determine...

Read to your children from Aesop’s Fables. Read them the story of The Goose That Laid The Golden Eggs. This will teach them about greed and how the Democrat Party is killing The USA. Read them the story of The Dog With The Bone. This will also teach them about greed and envy and how the Democrat party is killing The USA. We had a copy of Aesop’s Fables in our house when I was a child. The stories are thousands of years old. They teach you that the nature of humans hasn’t changed much over that time. There have...

The burial spot was found in one of the Herculaneum scrolls charred by Mt. Vesuvius. Greek philosopher Plato played a huge role in shaping Western thought, particularly around politics, and even though he died more than 2,300 years ago, his “Republic” is still one of the most studied books at top US colleges. Despite Plato’s wide and lasting influence, though, there’s still a lot we don’t know about him, including his final resting place. Historians had been able to narrow it down to the garden of the school he founded in Athens, but where exactly in the expansive gardens was...

Sir Dermot Turing, renowned historian and nephew of Alan Turing, delivered a lecture based on his book "X Y & Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken" on 29 March, 2023, in Trinity College Dublin.Drawing on recently declassified archives Sir Dermot Turing told in full the real story how Enigma was broken. He fully acknowledged the groundbreaking work of Polish mathematicians produced as early as 1930s which subsequently led to the joint efforts of the French, British and Polish secret services (X, Y and Z) during the Second World War.Who really broke Enigma? - lecture by Sir Dermot...

...In addition to the amphorae, archaeologists found ropes, shoes, a wooden drill and organic "dunnage" or matting, made from vine shoots and grass, that was used to protect the ship's hull from the cargo, Cau said...Many of the amphorae contained the remnants of fish sauce, while others held oil from plants — likely olives, wine, and perhaps olives preserved in vinegar. The distinctive amphorae for different products were labeled with painted inscriptions known as "tituli picti" in Latin, he said...Previous studies found that many of the oil amphorae had seals stamped with a "Chrismon," or Christian monogram — similar to...

X is for... In 1895, the physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays, a groundbreaking moment in medical history which would lead to myriad improvements to people’s health. Perhaps one overlooked benefit though was in relation to mental health, specifically of those tasked with making alphabet books. How did they represent the letter X before X-rays? Xylophones, which have also been a popular choice through the twentieth century to today, are mysteriously absent in older works. Perhaps explained by the fact that, although around for millennia, the instrument didn't gain popularity in the West (with the name of “xylophone”) until the early...

Newly deciphered passages from a papyrus scroll that was buried beneath layers of volcanic ash after the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius may have shed light on the final hours of Plato, a key figure in the history of western philosophy. In a groundbreaking discovery, the ancient scroll was found to contain a previously unknown narrative detailing how the Greek philosopher spent his last evening, describing how he listened to music played on a flute by a Thracian slave girl. Despite battling a fever and being on the brink of death, Plato – who was known as a disciple of...

The papyrus had been buried under metres of ash at the house, believed to have belonged to Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, after Vesuvius erupted in AD79 and scholars have spent the last 250 years painstakingly trying to find a way to read its contents, The Times reports. Now Professor Graziano Ranocchia of the University of Pisa and his colleagues have used techniques, including shortwave infrared hyperspectral imaging, which picks up variations in the way light bounces off the black ink on the papyrus, to decipher the document. Professor Ranocchia described the scroll as 'the oldest history of Greek philosophy in our...