Since the advent of the popular media, pirates have become beloved boys in our culture. As a theme they return in films, amusement park attractions, and childrens parties. The image of the pirate as a villain has been replaced by that in which the pirate is always the hero. Is that idolization somet
Youve probably seen them:ghostly underwater images of the wreck of the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. They were already nice, but better material is on the way. A large expedition is working to visualize the sunken ship completely in 3D. It has been nearly 100 years since the Titanic
They are all set in Poland and Ukraine for the European Football Championship. Our boys play the first group matches in Kharkov. The training camp is in Krakow. Our great rivals Germany and Portugal play against each other in Lvov. Many of these host cities have a bloody, but not always well known h
In some families there is a lot of money, in others much less. The emergence of inequality between groups of people has been a long process. According to a group of British archaeologists, the seeds of this lie in the time when our ancestors first started farming. Then the idea of hereditary wealt
The exams are back in full swing. Thousands of students toil over difficult questions, including history. Monday 21 May it will be the turn of the VWO students. A difficult part of their learning material about the Republic are the Truce disputes. While in the European countries around us the kings
A scrap note has been found in the Leiden university library on which a student from the thirteenth century took notes during a lecture. It is the first time that one has been found in the Netherlands. The note is a strip of 100 mm wide and 50 mm high. That students used these kinds of scraps in th
The cave drawings discovered in 2007 at the southern French site of Abri Castanet are no less than 37,000 years old. This is evidenced by reliable carbon dating. The drawings are therefore considered to be the oldest known expressions of prehistoric art in Europe for the time being. The cave drawin
Agriculture developed in the Middle East about 11,000 years ago. People no longer roamed in search of food, but became self-sufficient and settled. It was not until five thousand years later that the agricultural revolution reached Northern Europe. How the Northern Europeans became farmers has been
For years, UvA archaeologist Joris Kila has been committed to protecting cultural heritage in conflict areas. He visited trouble spots such as Libya and Egypt and he was recently awarded an important international prize – the Art Protection and Security Award 2012. “I try to translate scientific ins
If anyone could talk about physics enthusiastically, passionately and passionately, it was Richard Feynman. The Americans lectures are world famous. As a physicist, he further expanded the newly developed quantum theory with quantum electrodynamics. Kennislink asked the flamboyant physicist if he wa
Galileo Galilei was one of the main pioneers of the Scientific Revolution. Thanks to his discoveries with the telescope, Galileo caused the old world view to be called into question. But his fierce and sometimes untactical demeanor eventually caused him to clash head-on with the Catholic Inquisition
The Kings Tombs of Paphos in southwestern Cyprus recall a special period in the history of this island on the border of the West and the Orient. They date from the time when Cyprus belonged to the Egyptian empire of the Ptolemies, the dynasty of Cleopatra. Paphos is located in the legendary homelan
In the 16th and 17th centuries, artists made many paintings with mythological subjects. At first this raises questions:what did the church think of these pagan conditions? And were the paintings only for the classically trained elite? Or did Jan with the cap also understand which story was depicted?
Old historian Jona Lendering recently wrote the book De klad in de classicen, in which he denounces the sad state of archaeology at Dutch universities. conflict with the laws of nature, so that shouldnt be in a book. Period. In your recent book, The Draft in the Classics, you write that academic ar
Since the credit crisis of 2008 and the economic recession that followed a year later, it has become fashionable to write booklets in which experts explain the crisis accessible to the general public. With the only 118-page Capitalism without brakes, the well-known historian Maarten van Rossem has n
“We apply a political system that does not imitate the institutions of the neighboring peoples. We are an example rather than imitate others. The name? Because power does not rest with a few, but with more, the system is called popular power (dèmokratia). Thus the Athenian leader Pericles spoke in t
In 2011, the tennis final was played at Wimbledon for the 125th time. The traditions that come with the tournament – such as white tennis clothes and strawberries with cream – date from the nineteenth century. But many centuries before that, the popular ball game already existed. The Dutch called
Ask a Dutch person to describe typical cultural traits of his own people and you will often hear words such as tolerance and commercial spirit. According to historian Wijnand Mijnhardt of the University of Utrecht, this self-image from the Golden Age is based on a historical misconception. Our curre
What is keeping top Dutch scientists busy in 2011? This can be read in the Dutch Science Agenda. There are still many unanswered questions in the field of historical and archaeological sciences. For example, who were the earliest hominin inhabitants of the area that is now the Netherlands? And what
Once, in 1918, it was very clear:Germany was solely to blame for the First World War. For more than ninety years, historians have been knocking each other over with the question whether this is true. Wasnt France just as guilty? Or even England? An overview with the most intriguing theories about th
November 1, 1911, Italy was in the midst of the Italian-Turkish war, and Giulio Gavotti , an Italian aviator, on this date at the first light of dawn left aboard his own Etrich Taube monoplane , a German-made monoplane, officially for a reconnaissance operation which, thanks to the individual in
It was Wojciech Jaruzelski who demanded the introduction of the Soviet Army to Poland to fight Solidarity, and the Soviet Union ruled out any intervention and insisted on the declaration of martial law. One of the most famous Russian historians, Rudolf G. Pichoja, explains what it really was like wi
In the program of the Nazi party was the reconstruction and remodeling of the cities of the new Nazi empire. Not many examples of this urban reconversion are visible today. Despite this, in the center of Berlin there is a small example of these Nazi plans to change the physiognomy of dozens of Europ
Bastille, bastion of torture, oppression and evil. A symbol of dynastic terror, the conquest of which made the great French revolution successful. Or is it all ... just plain rubbish? It is July 14, 1789. A crowd of outraged citizens hits the most famous Parisian prison. It has one goal:to free