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...

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...

Story, a spoken or written account of connected events, is one of the main ways we communicate with other people. Whether it’s reading a picture book with a child, watching a movie, listening to a podcast, gossiping over a cup of coffee, or daydreaming about...

Few ideas command more universal agreement than the belief that children must be protected. Across cultures, religions, and political traditions, they are regarded as uniquely deserving of care, safety, and opportunity. Yet a glaring contradiction emerges when we look closely at the conditions under which...

Phrases like “public benefit,” “impact,” “responsibility,” or “sustainability” are routinely used by universities, nonprofits, corporations, and public agencies to describe their work, summarizing complex activities in ways that are easy to communicate to donors, policymakers, journalists, and the public. ...

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

The theme for an exhibition that opened on June 4, 2026, at Ankara University’s Faculty of Political Science (Mülkiye), World’s First City Plan/Map, as part of my Arkeopolitics initiative, was met with reservations by a group of students from the Middle East...

Many people are overwhelmed by the fast-paced evolution of mass communication in a world increasingly shaped by the internet and artificial intelligence (AI). Yet ideas have not always circulated across the globe at lightning speed. ...