Source: Wikipedia
Medieval chronicles contain a great deal of material that is obviously not literal. Portents, marvels, signs and wonders appear regularly, and historians read them as they were meant —…
Source: Wikipedia
Writing is rarer than it looks.
Almost every script in use today descends from a small number of original inventions, spreading and adapting rather than being independently devised. Real…
Source: Wikipedia
Decipherment is a statistical exercise before it is anything else.
Every script that has been successfully read was cracked because there was enough of it. Enough text for repeated…
Source: Wikipedia
Some archaeological claims are interesting because they are true. Others are interesting because of what happens to a suggestion once it escapes into general circulation.
The object usually called…
Source: Wikipedia
The Mona Lisa is the most famous painting on the planet by a distance that is hard to overstate. It draws millions of visitors to the Louvre annually, and…
Source: Wikipedia
Mount Rushmore is among the most photographed monuments in the United States: four presidential faces, each roughly 60 feet tall, carved into granite in the Black Hills of South…