The Royal Game of Ur, also known as the Game of Twenty Squares, is another ancient game which dates back to the First Dynasty of Ur, in 2600 BC Mesopotamia. It was played with two sets of seven counters, one black and one white, and three four-sided dice(骰子). Although the ancient...
Serious scientific excavations didn't commence at the La Brea Tar Pits until the beginning of the 20th century, but the history of the pits stretches back long before that. It all started millions of years ago when the area we know of today as Los Angeles was submerged underwater. Marine ...
Its first speakers, the Arameans, were desert nomads. (The Bible describes the mythic forebear of the Hebrews as “a wandering Aramean.”) Spreading out from ancient Syria, they so blanketed Mesopotamia that when the Assyrians conquered the Middle East in the eighth century B.C., they ado...
The wheel may date from as long ago as3500 BC, with the development of a wheel used in pottery making in Mesopotamia. But the wheel as a transportation device came some 300 years later, after humans met the challenge offitting a cylinderthat couldrotate freely, to an axle, a stationary,...
It was a long and violent process to make Britain into a state where the Industrial Revolution could occur. The Tudor dynasty began in 1485, after the defeat and death of Richard the 3rd, who had pushed aside his nephews and is believed (though a minority dispute this) to have murdered ...
Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights, is known for its use of candles, which have played a role in this holiday since its inception around 165 B.C. The emperor Constantine was said to have used candles in an Easter celebration in the 4th century A.D., and there are also refere...
While human civilization developed in many places around the world, it first emerged thousands of years ago in the ancient Middle East. “We see the first cities, the first writing and first technologies originating in Mesopotamia,” saysKelly-Anne Diamond, a visiting assistant history professor at...
When I opened the email, I was excited as I had read about his work. At the time, I was trying to carve out an academic pathway so I jumped at the opportunity. We met at a Thai restaurant near the UNSW campus with a couple of Nura Gili staff members. The professor seemed taken a...
A little soap and suds go a long way in keeping us clean, but how did humans wash themselves before the invention of modern soap? Soap has a pretty simple formula and a long history. But for centuries, water was the primary means of bathing. For example, in the Indus Valley ...
The Babylonian Empire was preceded by the Akkadian Empire and was established by the Amorite city-state of Babylon. As Babylon conquered more and more city-states along the Tigris and Euphrates River, the Babylonian Empire was formed in Mesopotamia....