Linguist Peter-Alexander Kerkhof, together with Rotterdam archaeologists, made an animation film about the settlement Rotta in the year 1020 that went viral. In it you not only see how people lived at that time, but also hear how people spoke. How do you make such a reconstruction of language? Duri
Not only now during the corona crisis is a contagious disease disrupting life. This also happened in the seventeenth-century Netherlands. Plague, a deadly and highly contagious disease, dominated here for almost the entire century. How did people react at the time? A stranded sperm whale! This coul
The yellow vests have been in the news for weeks with their protests against tax increases. Ordinary life is becoming more and more expensive and wages are not rising. The comparison with the French Revolution of 1789 is easily made. But also in 1934 the French people took to the streets, which led
After the Second World War, many German cities lay in ruins. Noud de Vreeze analyzes urban planning in our eastern neighbors in a new, interesting book. Almost everyone in the Netherlands knows that the center of Rotterdam was largely destroyed during the Second World War. It is also known that Dre
Women often committed half of the crimes in early modern cities. Only the German city of Frankfurt showed very different crime figures. Historian Jeannette Kamp has now found the explanation. We would be having a role today if women accounted for half of the crime. A few hundred years ago, on the o
Exactly seventy years ago, on December 10, 1948, the United Nations accepted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then, human rights have improved significantly worldwide. A record number of journalists were murdered in 2017. There are millions of refugees because of the war in Syria, w
A sunken ship from the eighteenth century that lies on the seabed off Finland and is chock full of Dutch art treasures. This Vrouw Maria is the main character about which political science professor Gerald Easter (Boston College) and travel book author Mara Voorhees wrote a very exciting book. “A s
The rudiments of music were taken from nature by prehistoric man, and over the years they have become more and more woven into our genes, says musicologist Michael Spitzer. He shows how we did that in his interesting book The Musical Man by means of a journey through time. Music is an important par
It is not always clear how exactly to translate or interpret ancient Hebrew Bible texts. There are therefore countless translations and commentaries of every Bible passage. According to theologian Christiaan Erwich, the computer can help to arrive at an objective analysis. A pastor who wants to int
In ten years, Evert Jan Prins visited all 61 Wadden Islands in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. He even set foot illegally on forbidden islands and wrote a beautiful book about it that reads like a voyage of discovery. “Islands are not meant to be walked around on, but to long for,” writer Bou
As of this week, the propaganda films of the NSB are public and can be viewed online for everyone. They are not very inflammatory:the films mainly show the zeitgeist and the ideals of the NSB. Before the Second World War, the National Socialist Movement (NSB) already had its own film department. Th
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the discharge of our faeces into the ever-expanding cities caused serious illness and stench. Natures self-cleaning power simply couldnt handle these amounts. The history of our current sanitation is therefore mainly a story about poo and pee. The Romans
How can racism and equality go hand in hand? Philosophers of the eighteenth century argued for equality between people. But at the same time they divided man into races for the first time. However, new research shows that they had very different intentions with race than what it turned out to be in
Are you missing something in our secular society? It is natural for people to want to believe in something, according to philosopher and Spinozist Ton de Kok. Recently his book on the God of Spinoza was published. In this you will be introduced in an understandable way to Spinozas rational alternati
Today marks the 70th anniversary of the declaration of the Jewish State of Israel in Palestine, despite the country being largely inhabited by Arabs. The realization started with the help of the British, in the form of the Balfour Declaration from 1917. As the British government cabinet meeting on
Two hundred years ago, a progressive project started in Drenthe:people were put to work on the land to help them out of poverty. It didnt work, any more than many later initiatives against poverty and crime. Jan Libbenga described the history. For little Jan, hoeing prisoners in the garden were qui
In The whole soup mess, science journalist Floor Bal, together with illustrator Sebastiaan van Doninck, explains the entire history of the earth to toddlers. From the big bang to now. The drawings are beautiful, but explaining this subject to small children turns out to be quite difficult. Get on
We leave physical and digital traces in the world in countless ways and in this way create data. What data and information do we consist of? “People should be a little more frugal with their data.” Footprints in the mud look like insignificant prints, but they contain more information about you tha
The idea that the rich west came to civilize with the abolition of slavery is wrong. There is still a strange idea of ownership in it, say historian Karwan Fatah-Black and anthropologist Markus Balkenhol. Today (December 2) is International Day for the Abolition of Slavery. Slavery is often descr
The time when the United States and the Soviet Union trumped each other on powerful (nuclear) weapons seems to be a ghost from the past. But many weapons from that era still exist, and new ones are being added at a rapid pace. Is a new conflict looming? “You can absolutely say that there is an arms
It is not surprising that the descendants gave him the nicknames Helpless, Clumsy and Lazy. He was ready to pay a gigantic tribute, so as not to fight. He led to a bloody massacre on defenseless settlers. In the end, through his cowardice and fatal orders, England fell into the hands of warlike visi
On November 20, 1947, 21-year-old Princess Elizabeth, heir to the English throne, married 26-year-old Prince Philip. The young man did not seem to be a good candidate for a husband for the future monarch:he did not own land, he did not have a penny to spare, and his mother-in-law did not trust him.
For many people, the term skewed myths can bring thoughts of cross-border conspiracy theories or unrealistic stereotypes. In this case, the term is meant in a historical sense. Ancient Greece has gained some reputation in recent years for societys relationship to homosexuality. Same-sex relationsh
The dream of being the perfect race was not only about the Germans. The Russians also wanted to be invincible. The illustration shows a fragment of a Soviet propaganda poster. The concept of eugenics was coined in 1869 by the British scientist Francis Galton. He understood by this word actions t