The paternity of mathematics is traditionally attributed to the Greeks, and in particular to Euclid, Thales and Pythagoras. However, the theorem that bears the name of the latter was already known and used by the Mesopotamians in order to draw up maps and organize the land. According to Daniel Man
Excavations carried out in the south of the Allier department have led to the discovery of a fortified settlement dating from the Bronze Age and hoarded artefacts, partly lifting the veil on a mysterious practice. For the first time in France, archaeologists were able to analyze the arrangement of
With the capture of Kabul on August 15, 2021, the international community is also concerned about the fate that awaits the historical and archaeological heritage of Afghanistan. The greatest dangers today for archaeological sites and objects are their abandonment and the risk of looting. Afghans w
Genetic analyzes make it possible to reveal migratory phenomena and social customs that had hitherto gone unnoticed in traditional historiography. The populations that lived in Central Europe at the end of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Age are thus much more mixed from an ethnic poin
Alain Corbin is a historian, specialist in the history of the senses, honorary professor at the University of Paris I Sorbonne. He answered questions from Sciences et Avenir. Alain Corbin This article is from the magazine Sciences et Avenir - Les Indispensables n°206, dated July/September 2021.
A stele found during the Egyptian campaign. .. and a young scholar who lives only to decode the mysterious inscriptions. His triumph will allow Egyptology to take off. Portrait of Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832), French Egyptologist, decipherer of hieroglyphs. Painting by Léon Cogniet (1794-
A specialist in Afghanistan, a country he has traveled since 1988, Gilles Dorronsoro is a professor of political science at the University of Paris-1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. At the head of a European research program on the dynamics of civil wars, he returned, at the time of the withdrawal of Western tro
An embracing couple has been discovered in a 1,500-year-old tomb in China. A moving discovery… And unprecedented in the country! Illustrative image provided by the studys lead researcher, depicting the embrace of the couple discovered in China. While the scene had already been observed in other co
We mostly know it as white, blonde, red or brown… But 9,000 years ago, it was a “rice beer” that was consumed in China, and this, in a very specific context. The analysis detected beer residue in eight containers out of the twenty that were studied. The production of beer dates back to the begin
On the site of Tell Banat, in northern Syria, the mound called the White Monument housed a vertical cemetery dating from the third millennium BC. Bringing together fallen soldiers, it could have played a highly symbolic role:asserting the dominance of a powerful state. The White Monument, on the s
Spectacular carvings of camels and equines discovered in northern Saudi Arabia are believed to be at least 7,000 years old, much older than estimated when they were unearthed a few years ago. Sculptures discovered in the Al-Jouf desert, Saudi Arabia, on February 22, 2018 The set of 21 relief scul
The unearthing of a treasure not far from the city of Jelling, Denmark, suggests that a powerful lord lived in the Jutland peninsula in the 6e century of our era. Among the objects found are gold bracteates bearing as yet unknown runic designs and inscriptions, which may represent early versions of
The AFRICA PRESS REVIEW resumes this week. In summary, the announcement of the very first underwater museum on the continent in Kenya, biometric technologies perceived as the guarantee of transparent elections and the difficult access to vaccines against Covid which endangers Africa and the whole wo
Six years were needed by an international group of researchers to analyze this exceptional 13th century manuscript containing an unpublished account of the life of Saint Francis of Assisi written just a few years after his death. Six years were necessary for an international group of researchers t
Archaeologists are on the trail of one of the most terrible battles that followed the D-Day landings in Normandy in June 1944, that of Côte 112. With discoveries referring to the violence of the fights, but also to the funerary practices of the battles. A subject little discussed in the context of t
ASIA PRESS REVIEW. Contents:three distinct populations, not two, are at the origin of the very first population of ancient Japan; this country, now undermined by its rapid aging, has every interest in developing the autonomous car; and finally Facebook, overtaken by American justice and ordered to c
The recent discovery, in Sidon, in Lebanon, of mass graves of crusaders dating back to the 13th century - extremely rare vestiges - confirm the reality of the brutality of the period of the crusades. Combat details of the raid of Sidon (Lebanon) dating from the 13th century. These illustrations a
The discovery of a 3,500-year-old cobblestone, considered the ancestor of Mediterranean mosaics and resting in the remains of a lost city in central Turkey, sharpens knowledge about the daily life of the still mysterious Hittites from the Bronze Age. Archaeologists work on the remains of a Hittite
Two amateur divers found by chance at the bottom of the Mediterranean, in the bay of Portitxol, in Spain, an exceptional treasure made of gold coins dating from the end of the Roman Empire. It is one of the largest sets of this type ever discovered. Three of the 53 gold coins found in a small cavi
New DNA analyzes look back on the origin and legacy left by the Etruscans (10e -1er century BC. J.C), the brilliant civilization that flourished in the Iron Age in central Italy. The Sarcophagus of the Spouses is a monumental Etruscan funerary urn in terracotta, representing two spouses reclining
It is very common to find images of birds in the art of Ancient Egypt. We see them in paintings and sculptures with species of all kinds, from the ducks that were hunted in the Nile to the ibis that contributed its head to the god Toth, to the vulture that finished off the white crown of the high ki
Sometimes it happens that an old text it can be transcribed but understanding it correctly is already a little more difficult. In fact, it is something that is not limited to past times; anyone who has read or attempted to read Ulysses by James Joyce knows that it is not exactly an easy book. But th
A team of archaeologists has managed to precisely date the construction of a paved street discovered under Jerusalem:it would have been traced around the year 30, during the mandate of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. View of the Temple Mount, within the walls of Jerusalem. In almost half a cen
One of the first British geologists was John Williams, author of Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom. It was he who first described some strange ruins in 1777, of which more than a hundred examples have subsequently been found throughout Europe, mainly in Scotland. He called them vitrified fortr