Trail of Tools Reveals Modern Humans’ Path Out of Africa

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A 55,000-year-old partial skull found in Manot Cave in western Galilee in January 2015 suggests that modern humans were in the Levant around the same time as Neanderthals. PHOTOGRAPH BY MENAHEM KAHANA, AFP, GETTY IMAGES  

Where did our species come from, and how did we get from there to everywhere?

Genetic studies have supplied a convincing answer to the first question: Our modern human ancestors evolved in Africa, then swept across Eurasia beginning some 60,000 to 50,000 years ago. Now, a pair of American archaeologists claim to have uncovered the route those early Homo sapiens took on their way to populating the planet.

By following the broken trail of stone tools that modern humans left behind like bread crumbs marking their path, researchers propose that our ancestors took a circuitous path through Arabia, pausing there for some 50,000 years when it was a green oasis. Then they journeyed on to the Middle East, where they first encountered Neanderthals.

Most Valuable Companies in History, Adjusted for Inflation

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1. The Dutch East India Company in 1637
Value then: 78 million Dutch Guilders // Adjusted to 2012 dollars: $7.4 trillion

HOW IT GOT SO BIG: Founded in 1602, the world’s first publicly traded company on the world’s first stock exchange started off as a spice trader. Its competitive edge: The largest fleet shipping goods between Europe and Asia. In the 17th century, it grew tremendously thanks to rampant speculation on the value of tulip bulbs. The so-called tulipmania craze foreshadowed the Internet dot.com bubble, and, like its modern equivalent, it eventually burst. But not before making the company the most valuable in world history.

The Blood Soaked Ceilings of Kyoto

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Warrior’s blood will be above your head when you visit a small number of Kyoto’s temples. It is nearly four hundred years old, blackened with age, but those ceilings are awash with it.

You can find the imprints of faces, hands, and feet. It is macabre, and that might be enough of a motivation, but if you take a tour of these temples, you will encounter some exquisite and uniquely Japanese art, and paradoxically, become acquainted with a gentler side of the Japanese persona. What follows is a guide for that tour, but first let me tell you how the blood got to those ceilings in the first place.

Original Magna Carta Copy Found in Scrapbook

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An original copy of the Magna Carta has been discovered in a scrapbook in Kent, England.

The tattered document dates back to 1300, 85 years after King John of England was compelled to sign the first agreement limiting the rights of kings. This version was issued by King Edward I (King John’s grandson), who was under pressure from the church and the barons to reaffirm good governance, said Sophie Ambler, a research associate with the Magna Carta Project.

“Nobody knew it was there,” Ambler said of the damaged document. “This Magna Carta had been stuck into a scrapbook by a Victorian official from the British Museum at the end of the 19th century.”

Magna Cartas United at British Library to Celebrate 800th Anniversary

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The four surviving 1215 Magna Cartas will be seen at the British Library by winners of a public ballot

The four surviving original copies of the 1215 Magna Carta have been brought together for the first time in London.

Magna Carta is one of the most important, well-known documents in history and this year marks its 800th anniversary.

When Chocolate was Medicine: Colmenero, Wadsworth and Dufour

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Chocolate has not always been the common confectionary we experience today. When it first arrived from the Americas into Europe in the 17th century it was a rare and mysterious substance, thought more of as a drug than as a food. Christine Jones traces the history and literature of its reception.

Poseidon taking chocolate from Mexico to Europe, a detail from the frontispiece to Chocolata Indaby Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma, 1644 – Source.

n the seventeenth century, Europeans who had not traveled overseas tasted coffee, hot chocolate, and tea for the very first time. For this brand new clientele, the brews of foreign beans and leaves carried within them the wonder and danger of far-away lands. They were classified at first not as food, but as drugs — pleasant-tasting, with recommended dosages prescribed by pharmacists and physicians, and dangerous when self-administered.

Tweaking Soliders: the Nazis and Methamphetamine

History For Free

As leader of the Third Reich, it is commonly known Adolf Hilter advocated for Lebensreform (life reform).  Chief among this belief was that members of the Aryan Race should abstain from drug and alcohol use in order to create a pure and strong race.  However, at the same time Lebensreform was being advocated by Hilter and party officials like Heinrich Himmler, Nazi military men were nonetheless being fed the methamphetamine Pervitin in massive quantities during World War II.

Referred to as “pilot’s salt” or “tank chocolate” by members of the Wehrmacht (German armed forces), Pervitin was seen as a wonder drug by officials who freely distributed it to military men.[1] The drug increased German soldiers’ alertness and endurance, and gave them confidence and euphoric feelings   No member of the Wehrmacht was immune from the drugs effects: pilots, infantrymen, and civil defense soldiers, were consuming large quantities of methamphetamine by…

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Ages of Revolution: How Old Were They on July 4, 1776?

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It’s a simple question — perhaps so basic that it’s been overlooked. How old were the key participants of the American Revolution?

Authors often reveal the age of a particular soldier, politician or other main character in books about the Revolution, but I routinely find myself wondering about their peers at the same time. As it turns out, many Founding Fathers were less than 40 years old in 1776 with several qualifying asFounding Teenagers and Twentysomethings. And though the average age of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was 44, more than a dozen of them were 35 or younger!

Life at the Drive-In: Photos of a Vanishing American Pastime

Faces of the American Revolution