Petra, in southern Jordan, is not an obscure site. It was the capital of the Nabataeans, a trading people who carved and built a city into rose-coloured sandstone at a…
Rice is the most widely eaten staple on the planet, and the interesting thing is how differently it gets treated. Some traditions want every grain separate, some want it deliberately…
Travel advice tends to assume everything goes to plan. In practice, the useful skill is knowing what to do when it does not — and most of that skill is…
The Colosseum is the most recognizable building surviving from the ancient world, and one specific claim about it has proved unusually durable: that the Romans filled it with water and…
Most inherited traits are messy. Height involves hundreds of genetic contributions. Most physical characteristics are the product of many genes interacting with environment and chance, which is why family resemblance…
The Taj Mahal was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, and it has become the world's most recognizable monument to grief.…
