It is an ambitious project:ChronoZoom. It allows to travel into deep time, but also in recent history. ChronoZoom is to become an endless database containing scientific knowledge over a period of billions of years. The project was set up by Berkeley University and Microsoft. But Dutch scientists are
The history of Dutch dictionaries goes back to the Middle Ages. Despite revolutionary changes due to the printing press and digitization, collecting and describing our vocabulary remains indispensable. The very first word lists we know are more than 4000 years old and written in cuneiform. They hav
The genome of a 700,000-year-old fossil horse bone has been mapped, breaking the record for ancient DNA reading. The question is which species we will soon be able to read from long extinct species. Until this week, the oldest genome fully mapped came from a 110,000-year-old polar bear jaw. But aft
One hundred and fifty years ago, slavery was abolished in both the Dutch colonies and the United States. This was not without fear:what would be the social and economic consequences? The Netherlands was particularly concerned about a labor shortage on the Surinamese plantations. America saw the spec
In the seventeenth century regents often had poets praise themselves. But in times of political crisis, pamphleteers ridiculed the elite by revealing their very vices and misdeeds. That could go far, but had a self-correcting effect. As soon as a satirist went too far, according to his colleagues, a
Nearly 2,000 years ago, several Jewish groups, fleeing Roman legions, hid their sacred texts in caves near Qumran, on the shores of the Dead Sea. Its discovery in the last century radically changed our view of this turbulent time, when Jesus was also alive. The Dead Sea Scrolls can be seen in Assen
Sometime between 1440 and 1450, the German Johannes Gutenberg put individual metal letters together for the first time in Europe in order to be able to print texts faster than ever. The technology soon caused a true revolution. But Gutenbergs life had a lot of setbacks. “Perhaps I am more of a creat
Hygiene conditions were not particularly prosperous in the Middle Ages, with all the associated consequences. Recently studied crusader droppings show that they suffered from intestinal parasites. These hungry guests made extra victims in times of food shortage. The research area was fortress Saran
It is often thought that free and active citizenship as we know it has its roots in the very first democracy:that of Athens. But active citizenship among the ancient Greeks had much more of the characteristics of a cultic religion, as it had been in use for centuries. In the year 508 BC, Kleisthene
The old cultural-historical landscape of the Drentsche Aa was declared the most beautiful landscape in the Netherlands in 2005. Using seven picket posts, Jan Bakker shows how the landscape has changed over time. The old cultural-historical landscape of the Drentsche Aa is part of the National strea
The precious pigment ultramarine has been found in the tartar of a German woman who lived in the 11th century. How did that get there, researchers wondered and started experimenting. Lapis lazuli is a rock that was more precious than gold a thousand years ago. The bright blue pigment obtained from
History books about the slavery past in Suriname usually deal with the plantations. Historian Karwan Fatah-Black, on the other hand, examined the city of Paramaribo. It is relatively unknown that an ever-growing community of free Afro-Surinamese arose here, long before the abolition of slavery in 18
Mind-reading, bionic materials, cheaper medicines and a visit to the Kuiper belt. In the week between Christmas dinner and New Years reception, the editors of NEMO Kennislink once again take a cautious look ahead:what scientific breakthroughs will 2019 bring us? Last year, right around this time, w
2018 finally brought us cultured meat, the North/South line and the return of the wolf, but also gas earthquakes and the first genetically modified twins. In the penultimate week of the year, the editors of NEMO Kennislink look back on the science of the past year. Why the lower educated die more of
The market for fair trade products also grew strongly in 2018. But how did the fair trade concept actually become so big? The book World Improvers provides a fascinating insight. Getting some fair trade coconut oil or honest chocolate from the supermarket is quite common these days. In fact, the nu
West Frisian farmers in the Bronze Age were a lot more stable than thought. Farmers lived together in the same area for generations and as a community they took care of the common drainage. This is apparent from doctoral research by Wouter Roessingh. Farms in the south of the Netherlands were widel
Hundreds of new burial mounds have been discovered in the Veluwe, using new aerial images. This makes the Veluwe one of the busiest areas in Europe during prehistoric times. Migrants from the Russian steppe region came in large numbers to the west in the third millennium BC. They buried their dead
In honor of the Rembrandt Year, linguists from the Institute for the Dutch Language in Leiden reconstructed Rembrandts language. This served as the basis for the Rembrandt Tutorials:a series of YouTube painting lessons by the master himself. This year it is exactly 350 years ago that painter Rembra
The moon landings in the 1960s and 1970s were a monumental achievement in space travel. Now, exactly fifty years after the first Apollo 11 landing, it is still unmatched. Were the Americans that far ahead of their time? And will there be new steps on the moon? A roaring Saturn V rocket shot Neil Ar
War is devastating and disruptive. This was also true for Northwest Europe, but according to new research, the long-term impact here was limited. Roaring guns, looting soldiers and violence against clerics. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was great political and religious unrest in
Rousseaus social thought was one of the most influential of modernity, having had a great impact on events such as the French Revolution. By Me. Cláudio FernandesThe thought of the French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was one of the most commented and, therefore, most
At least 48 operations, over 330 soldiers lost, 7,000 enemies killed or wounded, hundreds of plane wrecks left behind. In this style the soldiers of one of the most elite commando units today - SAS - were accelerating in their childhood (World War II). The beginnings were difficult - defective parac
The Military Information Services became infamous. They inherited it from their predecessor, the military intelligence of the Peoples Republic of Poland. Nothing unusual. For years, communist spies have been doing business with the worlds most wanted and ruthless terrorists. Dozens of people died as
In the late Middle Ages, one country met up to 80% of European gold demand. A country co-ruled by a Polish woman. And which unexpectedly became an undisputed superpower. At the turn of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Hungary was a poor country, torn apart by internal conflicts, and even