History


July 15, 2025

Discover 4,000-Year-Old Recipes in the Oldest-Known Cookbook From Ancient Babylonia

Mesopotamia has long been considered as the โ€œcradle of civilization,โ€ housing some of the worldโ€™s earliest complex societies, such as the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Persians, and Babylonians. Though weโ€™ve since developed a sophisticated understanding of these ancient civilizations, their food menus remain quite obscure, beyond โ€œold worldโ€ staples like barley, wheat, sheep, goat, cow, and pig.

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June 30, 2025

How the Coloring Book Boomeranged From Adults to Children and Back Again

In recent years, adults have gravitated toward some more youthful means of relieving stress: fidget cubes, slime, life simulator and sandbox games like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, and, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, coloring books. Though typically leaning into abstract themes like math, these adult coloring books are still nostalgic reminders of our childhoodsโ€”and when we vied for the crayon box with more confidence.

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June 21, 2025

Fascinating Cross-Section Shows Over 4,000 Years of an English Highwayโ€™s History

A stratified cross-section of a highway in the United Kingdom tells a fascinating history of the country. The image, which has been circulating online for several years, shows millennia of material from a Bronze Age trackway to modern asphalt. All the more interesting is the fact that the road represented is the A303, which runs through the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.

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