Then and now

RITA ANAND explores how a megacity civilisation of Central American Indians Had survived on natural resource management, and what needs to be …

Elementary order

How did elements come to be tabulated according to their properties?

There is a big discord between the past as it was and as it is constructed in the history of a nation: GN Devy

Down To Earth speaks to scholar, linguist and activist about his latest book on the ‘histories’ of Indians

Lincoln’s fake Facebook

Social Network>> History • The US

Chasing Mercury

Of all the planets in our solar system, Mercury has been the most elusive -- it took astronomers almost 14 centuries to predict its orbit …

Not a blade of grass

...although the now bald pate of Iceland was once resplendent with grass and verdant willow, rowan and birch forests

Relevance of history

History provides important lessons in the management of the environment for administrators, conservationists and their ideologues. But have we …

Spells of sleep

Humans did not always sleep eight hours

Oversight?

Book>> Folklore • Azerbaijan

World will live on

Calendar>> Mayans • Guatemala

Unknown mentor

Statue>> Protests • Russia

History burnt

History>> Fire • Egypt

It’s about freedom

Museum>> Sex • Moscow

Van Gogh’s changing colours

Art>> Ultraviolet Rays • The Netherlands

Living paint

Rock Art>> Bacteria ÔÇó Australia

19th century Indian diet: rice fights wheat

The question of what constituted a balanced Indian diet had the British totally confused

Digging its own grave

Despite its glorious past, the future of the Archaeological Survey of India is jeopardised because of internal wrangling and a lack of a concrete …

Population prompts progress

The experience of a Kenyan community contradicts a traditional theory that population and development are inversely proportional

Nuclear nemesis

Russian scientists confess to dumping atomic waste near major rivers to hide their Cold War sins

Shifting under a colonial past

A Myanmarese shifting cultivation technique, once perverted by British colonisers to maximise teak exploitation, is still valued for its benefits

Close encounters with mummies

Museum>> History • Sweden

Clinical historian

Satellite images>> Archaeology • Egypt/US

Simon Schama’s history of 18th and 19th century disease outbreaks speaks powerfully to the present

At the core of Foreign Bodies is Schama’s understanding that “all history is natural history”

Savage people

Human zoos were aids to anthropologists, scientists and racial theorists in 19th century

Cooking a love story

Rice in Indonesian folklore has the status of the love-hate relationship of a couple