Reading time: 7 minutes
We know that some modern human genomes contain fragments of DNA from an ancient population of humans called Denisovans, the remains of which have been found at only one site, a cave in what is now Siberia.
Two papers published in Nature today give us a firmer understanding of when these little-known archaic humans (hominins) lived.
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Reading time: 6 minutes
For most of the human history of Australia, sea levels were much lower than they are today, and there was extra dry land where people lived. When people first arrived in Australia as early as 65,000 years ago, sea levels were around 80m lower than today.
Reading time: 8 minutes
Most school kids can describe in detail the life cycle of butterflies: eggs hatch into caterpillars, caterpillars turn into cocoons and cocoons hatch. This seemingly basic bit of biology was once hotly debated. It was a pioneering naturalist, Maria Sibylla Merian, whose meticulous observations conclusively linked caterpillars to butterflies, laying the groundwork for the fields of entomology, animal behaviour and ecology.
Reading time: 6 minutes
Our knowledge about the people who lived in Roman Britain has undergone a sea change over the past decade. New research has rubbished our perception of it as a region inhabited solely by white Europeans. Roman Britain was actually a highly multicultural society which included newcomers and locals with black African ancestry and dual heritage, as well as people from the Middle East.
Reading time: 9 minutes
During the battle of Pinios Gorge, which took place in April 1941, Anzac troops played a pivotal role in delaying the German advance to Larisa in central Greece, a town of significant strategic importance. Once youâve visited the battlefield area, there are plenty of reasons to hang around. This brief guide will get you started with recommendations about what to see and do.
Reading time: 8 minutes Girolamo Savonarola, an Italian preacher and reformer, led an interesting...
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Reading time: 1 minute
His is the true story of a young Australian soldier whose life of opportunity was challenged by trauma and salvaged by strength.
Nelson Ferguson, from Ballarat, was a stretcher-bearer on the Western Front in France in World War I. He survived the dangers of stretcher-bearing in some of Australiaâs most horrific battles: the Somme, Bullecourt, Ypres and Villers-Bretonneux. In April 1918, at Villers-Bretonneux, he was severely gassed. His eyes were traumatised, his lungs damaged. Upon his return home, he met and married Madeline, the love of his life, started a family, and resumed his career teaching art. But eventually the effects of the mustard gas claimed his eyesight, ending his career. Courageously enduring this consequence of war, he continued contributing to society by assisting his son and son-in-law in their stained-glass window business. Advances in medicine finally restored his sight in 1968, allowing him to yet again appreciate the beauty around him, before his death in 1976.
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Reading time: 7 minutes
The North African campaigns during the Second World War have a reputation for being âcleanâ wars, free from the atrocities we see when studying the Eastern front or the Pacific theatre. However, when we look a little more closely, we can see this romanticized image is a little tarnished in places; weâll take a look at what the historical record can tell us, as well as some details shared by Australian veterans of the conflict.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes Archaeology at the site of the former Pontine Marshes has...
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Regular Contributors These writers do a fantastic job of crafting interesting, accesssable...
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Reading time: 4 minutes
Most scientists agree modern humans developed in Africa, more than 200,000 years ago, and that a great human diaspora across much of the rest of the world occurred between perhaps 60,000 and 50,000 years ago. In new research published in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, we have uncovered dozens of distinctive historical changes in the human genome to reveal a new chapter in this story.
A SHORT HISTORY OF RUSSIA – AUDIOBOOK By Lucy Cazalet (1870 – 1956) A Short...
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Reading time: 7 minutes
answers to questions sheâd never considered what would a school day be like in 313 CE? What games would children play? What would a 10-year old girl wear? What medicine would a child be given for a cough?
Reading time: 6 minutes
Those who study Reconstruction and its aftermath know the U.S. has deep experience with political and electoral violence. Reconstruction was the 12-year period following the Civil War when the South returned to the Union and newly freed Black Americans were incorporated into U.S. democracy.
The news media, it turns out, have often been key actors in U.S. electoral violence. This history is explored in a chapter one of us â Gustafson â wrote for a book the other â Forde â co-edited with Sid Bedingfield, âJournalism & Jim Crow: The Making of White Supremacy in the New South,â which comes out later this year.
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Reading time: 7 minutes
Among the hand-written documents, books, and ancient artefacts in the Vatican Library is a 13th century manuscript on falconry written in Latin by or for the Holy Roman Emperor – King Frederick II of Sicily.
Frederickâs De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds) dates from between 1241 and 1248. In its margins are nine hundred drawings of falcons, falconers and other animals kept by the emperor at his palaces.
COULD THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE HAVE WORKED? Reading time: 6 minutes Middle East tensions....
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Reading time: 4 minutes In her new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson...
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THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN MEDICINE – AUDIOBOOK By Sir William Osler (1849 – 1919)...
Read MoreThis lesson we will be learning about the Peloponnesian war which provided a dramatic end to the 5th century BCE.
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By Thomas Suddendorf, The University of Queensland and Michelle Langley, Griffith University...
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