History
The past, recovered through archaeology, archives, and oral history.
Travel · The Big Story
The Silk Road on foot — walking the old trade routes
From Samarkand to Kashgar across the Pamir plateau. A journey that takes weeks and covers ground that took caravans months.
By Elena Sørensen · 2 min read
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Science
The ancient DNA rewriting the story of the first Americans
New sequencing pushes human arrival on the continent back by millennia.
By Dana Whitcombe
History
The lost library of Timbuktu
Hundreds of thousands of manuscripts survived conquest, occupation, and fire. The scholars who saved them are still counting.
By Dana Whitcombe
History
The oral histories of the Great Plague
New analysis of survivor accounts from the Black Death reveals how communities described — and made sense of — an event that killed half of Europe.
By Marcus Ito