Mitoe Matsumoto was three years and four months old when an atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki at 11.02am on 9 August 1945. Eighty-one years later, the 84-year-old Japanese survivor says the experience
The following excerpts are adapted from the author’s book The Kings of Algiers: How Two Jewish Families Shaped the Mediterranean World During the Napoleonic Wars and Beyond, published by Princeton University Press.
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Numeracy or numerosity, the ability to think about and use numbers, varies among human cultures and within populations, much like intelligence does. Many known languages, for example, have no words for numerals
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The following excerpts are adapted from the author’s book Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery, published by the University of Chicago Press. We are living in a moment in which
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Shalom Nagar, the Israeli prison guard who oversaw the execution of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, has passed away at the age of 86. His death marks the end of an era,
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According to The Times (UK), tensions in the illustrious Mewar dynasty of Rajasthan reached a boiling point during the ceremonial anointing of Vishvaraj Singh Mewar as the 77th Maharana on Monday. The Paghdi Dastoor,
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There is a great deal of attention in modern societies to inequality and the social problems it causes. Often inequality is considered to be the unavoidable consequence of how society operates in many cultures,
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It is worth considering, in light of humanity’s profound struggle against the world’s climate and matters of elemental justice, how the onset of the Biblical tale of Noah is relevant today. According
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Prehistory is a modern idea. The word was “coined” only in the 1830s. Before the 19th century, we didn’t know much about dinosaurs or cavemen, and fossils remained a scientific curiosity. When
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Is the order of the modern alphabet connected to how our shared ancestors counted the phases of the moon and its effect on tides 50,000 years ago? Did the first stirrings of
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The concept of “pagan” has an Old Testament origin. In Russian, “gentiles” were called peoples. The ancient Jews used the term “am” (עם) to describe themselves, and “goy” (גוי) to describe other
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When I met Dr. Malini Dias almost ten years ago at the Royal Asiatic Society in Colombo(RASSL), I was in my last stage of university life as an undergraduate with sanguine expectations
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Following excerpts adapted from the author’s book, On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice, published by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc “For many who are tuned in to what Walter Benjamin
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A bizarre geopolitical thesis in the Indian media last week characterised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent 7-hour trip to Ukraine via Poland as part of an effort “to plug a missing link — Central
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