The mountain dominates the western coast of New Zealand’s North Island, also known as Aotearoa. Its peak is like the center point of a sundial, the shadows on its slopes telling time. The cloud formations drift in and out, shaping the weather. ...

While there are rare (and very cute) exceptions, cats and birds do not get along. Cats are predatory by nature; their hunting instinct never goes away. Birds are one of their primary targets—and the fatality statistics are staggering. “There are now over 100 million...

Although there is no evidence that the European bison (Bison bonasus), known as wisent, ever roamed the islands of the United Kingdom, its genetic heritage suggests that it is attuned to the environment. The European bison is a hybrid that descends from the

The plant Cannabis sativa is an herbaceous flowering annual that was originally native to central and eastern Asia. It has been cultivated throughout recorded history as a source of fiber for fabric and rope, seed oil, animal feed, and medicine. Evidence exists that some ancient...

When Babur, the great conqueror and founder of the Mughal Empire, first entered India with his armies in the 16th century, he was not impressed by how people dressed. The climate and landscape of the Indian subcontinent were very different to that of Samarqand (in...

The late 19th century saw economists, mainly German and Austrian, create a mythology of money’s origins that is still repeated in today’s textbooks. Money is said to have originated as just another commodity being bartered, with metal preferred because it is nonperishable (and hence amenable...

Archaeologist and scholar Giorgio Buccellati’s book At the Origins of Politics describes how Mesopotamia’s urban revolution in the late fourth millennium BC shaped a new mentality. The segmentation and specialization of industrial production required written recordkeeping, standardization of weights and measures, and surveying and allocation of...

Rigid thinking has been linked to social and professional problems, difficulty in adapting to societal change, and mental health issues that can lead to suicide and mass shootings. ...

While in Delhi late one evening, on the drive back to the hotel after a terrific meal in a Kashmiri restaurant, our taxi stopped at a traffic light in the middle of a congested and major intersection. The air is less than salubrious, thick with...

For the nonhuman animal cause, the 19th century’s end would bring to a close a defining period—a transformative 30-year era beginning in 1866, with the founding of the first animal welfare society. It is a story of activism and activists like George Thorndike Angell,...