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Category: History/Archeology

Water level behind Russian-controlled Kakhkovka Dam was at historic high before it was destroyed

Water level behind Russian-controlled Kakhkovka Dam was at historic high before it was destroyed

The Washington Post reports: A critical dam in southern Ukraine was heavily damaged after a reported explosion early Tuesday, sending water gushing toward dozens of communities, including some occupied by Russia, and prompting officials to evacuate thousands of people at risk of catastrophic flooding. Russia seized the dam, which is part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, on the first day of its invasion in February 2022 because of its crucial role in supplying fresh water to Crimea, the Ukrainian…

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White resistance to federal power

White resistance to federal power

Eric Foner writes: Earlier this year, Randy McNally, the speaker of the Tennessee Senate, issued a proclamation declaring April 2023 Confederate History Month. He urged ‘citizens from across this state’ to remember their ancestors’ ‘heroic struggle’ for ‘individual freedom’. Observers outside Tennessee may find it incongruous to identify a war fought to preserve slavery with the ideal of freedom, but Jefferson Cowie, who teaches history at Vanderbilt University, in the heart of the state, wouldn’t be surprised. His new book…

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America is headed toward collapse. History shows how to stave it off

America is headed toward collapse. History shows how to stave it off

Peter Turchin writes: How has America slid into its current age of discord? Why has our trust in institutions collapsed, and why have our democratic norms unraveled? All human societies experience recurrent waves of political crisis, such as the one we face today. My research team built a database of hundreds of societies across 10,000 years to try to find out what causes them. We examined dozens of variables, including population numbers, measures of well-being, forms of governance, and the…

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Archaeologists discover the oldest known blueprints

Archaeologists discover the oldest known blueprints

Smithsonian Magazine reports: Stone Age hunters in the Middle East and Central Asia used giant stone structures to trap wild animals. Today, archaeologists refer to these massive constructions as desert kites because of how they look from above—like a kite with several long tails. Now, in a study published last week in the journal PLOS One, researchers say they have found stone engravings that are accurate, to-scale depictions of desert kites that date to between 7,000 and 8,000 years ago….

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Long-hidden ruins of vast network of Maya cities could recast history

Long-hidden ruins of vast network of Maya cities could recast history

The Washington Post reports: Beneath 1,350 square miles of dense jungle in northern Guatemala, scientists have discovered 417 cities that date back to circa 1000 B.C. and that are connected by nearly 110 miles of “superhighways” — a network of what researchers called “the first freeway system in the world.” Scientist say this extensive road-and-city network, along with sophisticated ceremonial complexes, hydraulic systems and agricultural infrastructure, suggests that the ancient Maya civilization, which stretched through what is now Central America,…

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Democracy suffers when citizens are uninformed

Democracy suffers when citizens are uninformed

A high school student in California holds a sign in protest of her school district’s ban on critical race theory curriculum. Watchara Phomicinda/The Press-Enterprise via Getty Images By Boaz Dvir, Penn State The Florida Department of Education announced on April 10, 2023, that it had rejected 35% of the social studies books publishers submitted for approval and use in the state’s public schools. The move was based on a determination the books contain references to social justice issues “and other…

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Imran Khan accuses Pakistan’s military of ordering his arrest

Imran Khan accuses Pakistan’s military of ordering his arrest

The Guardian reports: Pakistan’s former prime minister Imran Khan has escalated his criticism of the country’s powerful military, accusing the head of the army of harbouring a “personal grudge” against him and ordering his arrest and a crackdown on his party. “It is personal. It’s got nothing to do with national interest,” Khan told the Guardian in an interview at his home in Lahore, after a dramatic week in which he was arrested at Islamabad’s high court by almost 100…

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UN commemorates Palestinian Nakba for first time on 75th anniversary

UN commemorates Palestinian Nakba for first time on 75th anniversary

The National reports: For the first time in 75 years, the UN has officially commemorated the Nakba — the plight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes upon the formation of Israel. The UN passed a historic resolution in 2022, despite Israel’s vehement opposition, to recognise the Nakba, which roughly translates as “catastrophe”. The day brings painful memories of displacement and widely documented reports of torture and mass killings by Israeli forces against Palestinians…

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America’s lowest standard for its highest office

America’s lowest standard for its highest office

Charles Sykes writes: In one of his rare moments of naivete, Alexander Hamilton imagined that the Electoral College would afford “a moral certainty” that the office of the presidency would not “fall to the lot of any man, who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” He hoped that the electors would be a bulwark against men who had a talent “for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity.” “It will not be too strong…

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This Supreme Court is slow to issue rulings — glacially slow

This Supreme Court is slow to issue rulings — glacially slow

NBC News reports: Back in 1923, the Supreme Court had issued 157 rulings by May 1 in a term that started the previous fall. On the same date a century later, the current justices, facing a firestorm of scrutiny on multiple fronts, have disposed of just 15 cases, fueling speculation about why they are falling behind. In fact, the court has decided fewer cases at this point of the term — which begins each October and ends in June —…

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Sinn Féin to attend King Charles’ coronation in sign of changed times

Sinn Féin to attend King Charles’ coronation in sign of changed times

Politico reports: The Irish republicans of Sinn Féin — who once supported Irish Republican Army attacks on British royals — announced Wednesday they will send senior representatives to the coronation of King Charles III in a sign of radically changed times. Michelle O’Neill, the party’s deputy leader and first minister-designate for the mothballed Northern Ireland government, said she would represent Sinn Féin at the May 6 ceremony at Westminster Abbey. O’Neill, who wants the Democratic Unionists to end their year-long…

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Forced assimilation of Native American children: ‘Our history has been hidden — the attempted genocide of our people’

Forced assimilation of Native American children: ‘Our history has been hidden — the attempted genocide of our people’

Brandi Morin writes: “The U.S. has some internal searching inside that we have to do as a collective,” says Deborah Parker. The CEO of the Native American Indian Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) — a network of Native academics, researchers, tribal leaders, boarding school survivors and their descendants working to establish a Congressional Truth Commission — Parker, 52, is at the helm of the efforts to expose the damages inflicted by the insidious 150-year program. The purpose of the commission,…

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Gun violence is actually worse in Republican states. It’s not even close

Gun violence is actually worse in Republican states. It’s not even close

Colin Woodard writes: Listen to the southern right talk about violence in America and you’d think New York City was as dangerous as Bakhmut on Ukraine’s eastern front. In October, Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis proclaimed crime in New York City was “out of control” and blamed it on George Soros. Another Sunshine State politico, former president Donald Trump, offered his native city up as a Democrat-run dystopia, one of those places “where the middle class used to flock to…

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AI will soon become impossible for humans to comprehend – the story of neural networks tells us why

AI will soon become impossible for humans to comprehend – the story of neural networks tells us why

Shutterstock/Valentyn640 By David Beer, University of York In 1956, during a year-long trip to London and in his early 20s, the mathematician and theoretical biologist Jack D. Cowan visited Wilfred Taylor and his strange new “learning machine”. On his arrival he was baffled by the “huge bank of apparatus” that confronted him. Cowan could only stand by and watch “the machine doing its thing”. The thing it appeared to be doing was performing an “associative memory scheme” – it seemed…

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Archaeology and genomics together with Indigenous knowledge revise the human-horse story in the American West

Archaeology and genomics together with Indigenous knowledge revise the human-horse story in the American West

Horses are an active part of life for the Lakota and many other Plains nations today. Jacquelyn Córdova/Northern Vision Productions By William Taylor, University of Colorado Boulder and Yvette Running Horse Collin, Université de Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier Few places in the world are more closely linked with horses in the popular imagination than the Great Plains of North America. Romanticized stories of cowboys and the Wild West figure prominently in popular culture, and domestic horses are embedded in…

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The many myths of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’

The many myths of the term ‘Anglo-Saxon’

Mary Rambaran-Olm and Erik Wade write: The few uses of “Anglo-Saxon” in Old English seem to be borrowed from the Latin Angli Saxones. Manuscript evidence from pre-Conquest England reveals that kings used the Latin term almost exclusively in Latin charters, legal documents and, for a brief period, in their titles, such as Anglorum Saxonum Rex, or king of the Anglo-Saxons. The references describe kings like Alfred and Edward who did not rule (nor claim to rule) all the English kingdoms. They were specifically referring to…

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