While shooting a documentary at Göbeklitepe, I encountered strikingly different historical interpretations of the site. An international group of New Age seekers seemed to be searching for extraterrestrial connections there, but when I pointed out that the enclosures had originally been roofed, they recast...

The oldest known engravings consist of zigzag patterns and parallel lines, carved into freshwater mussel shells at Trinil on the island of Java, Indonesia. These grooves, made by Homo erectus, date to roughly half a million years ago. By around 100,000 years ago, early...

As democracies around the world face mounting challenges and pressures, discussions about autocracy often focus on personalities and ideologies or tend to link governance practices to differences among specific cultural traditions. Yet a growing body of comparative historical research has provided evidence that a more...

A nominal ceasefire reached in April 2026 has done little to halt the escalation in the Persian Gulf. After Iran’s “attempted surprise attack” against US forces on July 28, the US retaliated by launching a “heavy wave” of airstrikes on July 30, according...

When was the last time you wrote something by hand? Was it a stylus signature at a checkout stand, a kitchen calendar reminder, or a note jotted down on a scrap of paper? These days, writing largely lives in the digital realm. Despite its advantages,...

How we view the world and each other is often influenced by learned patterns ingrained in the social hierarchies we are forced to conform to from an early age at home and in school. In most societies, beliefs about appearance, gender, and color influence behavior...

Humanitarian education refers to educational initiatives developed or supported by humanitarian organizations to reduce suffering, protect vulnerable populations, and help communities recover from conflict and disaster. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees defines humanitarian education as an initiative that “is implemented in a...

Since the early 1990s, the Russian city of Blagoveshchensk, located on the Amur River, has steadily reemerged as one of Russia’s most important “border trade hubs.” Sitting directly across from the Chinese city of Heihe, migration for work, commerce, and education has become...

The deeper we explore humanity’s past, the harder it becomes to sustain some of the most powerful political myths of the modern world. ...

In a March 2026 paper published in the journal Science Advances, which focused on variability in governance along the autocratic-democratic axis, my coauthors and I found that one of the strongest associations for the 40 case observations, which were part of our study, was...