History

Did the Neanderthals just vanish, or did they blend into us?

Both, at once. As a distinct population, Neanderthals disappeared around 40,000 years ago. But they did not fully vanish:…

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History

Was there really a city older than the pyramids?

Yes, by a wide margin. The Egyptian pyramids are about 4,600 years old, but settlements like Jericho (walled by around 8000…

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History

What is the single oldest thing humans have ever built?

It depends what 'built' means, so there is a ladder of records. The oldest shaped objects are stone tools from Lomekwi,…

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History

Why were Stone Age wolves found on an island they couldn't swim to?

On Stora Karlso, a tiny island off Sweden, archaeologists found the remains of wild wolves that could only have arrived by…

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History

What caused the Black Death?

The Black Death was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, confirmed by DNA taken directly from the teeth of plague…

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History

Why did the Great Fire of London spread so fast?

The fire started in a bakery on Pudding Lane on 2 September 1666 and spread so fast because everything was against London:…

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History

Why did the Maya civilization collapse?

First, the myth: the Maya did not vanish, more than seven million Maya people live today. The 'collapse' means the…

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History

Why did the Titanic sink?

The Titanic struck an iceberg late on 14 April 1912 while racing at about 22 knots through a known ice field. The glancing…

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History

Why was Stonehenge built?

There is no single answer, and that is the honest truth: Stonehenge was used for more than 1,500 years, so it almost…

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History

Why was the Library of Alexandria destroyed?

There was no single great fire. Most historians now think the Library of Alexandria declined gradually across centuries, worn…

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History

How were the pyramids built?

By huge, well-organised teams of skilled, paid Egyptian workers using ramps, wooden sledges and simple physics. They dragged…

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History

Why did doctors once recommend cigarettes?

Because for a while it was good marketing, and later it was good defence. In the 1930s to 1950s cigarette brands wrapped…

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History

Why did the dinosaurs go extinct?

A city-sized asteroid struck Earth about 66 million years ago, at what is now Chicxulub in Mexico. The impact threw so much…

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History

Why did the Roman Empire fall?

There was no single cause: the Western Roman Empire came apart slowly under many overlapping pressures. Economic decline,…

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History

Why did we believe in the four humours?

Because it explained everything. The four humours mapped illness, personality, the seasons and the elements onto one neat…

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History

Why did the Victorians photograph the dead?

Because for much of the Victorian era a photograph was rare, expensive, and often taken only once. With child mortality…

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History

Why do we celebrate the new year in January?

Because a chain of political decisions, not nature, put it there. Rome moved its civil year to 1 January (traditionally in…

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History

Why do we drive on different sides of the road?

There was never a single decision. Riders once kept left to keep a sword arm toward danger, wagon drivers in America kept…

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History

Why does an hour have 60 minutes?

Because the ancient Sumerians and Babylonians counted in base 60, not base 10. Sixty is the smallest number cleanly divisible…

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History

Why is the Fahrenheit scale so strange?

Because the famous numbers are an accident. Fahrenheit built his scale around different reference points (a freezing brine at…

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History

Why did people think the Earth was flat?

Mostly, they didn't. Educated people have known the Earth is a sphere since ancient Greece, and by around 240 BC Eratosthenes…

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History

Why did people wear powdered wigs?

Wigs began as concealment: syphilis and its toxic mercury cure caused patchy hair loss and open sores, and a wig hid the…

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History

Why do we say OK?

OK started as a joke. On 23 March 1839 the Boston Morning Post printed 'o.k.' as a comic abbreviation of the deliberately…

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History

Why is the keyboard QWERTY?

QWERTY was not built to slow you down. Christopher Latham Sholes evolved it in the 1870s to stop frequently-paired typebars…

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History

Why were people buried with a bell?

Because the 18th and 19th centuries were seized by a genuine terror of being buried alive. Medicine could not always tell…

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History

Why were tomatoes thought poisonous?

Because the tomato is a nightshade, botanically kin to deadly nightshade and mandrake, so early herbalists treated it as…

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History

Why did medieval courts put animals on trial?

Because a trial was how a community turned chaos into an answer. From the 1200s into early modern times, European secular…

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History

Why does a week have seven days?

The week is the one unit of time not set by the sky. It traces to the ancient Babylonians, who tracked seven moving lights in…

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History

Why do we say 'bless you' when someone sneezes?

There's no single tidy origin. The famous story, that Pope Gregory I ordered it during a plague in 590 AD, is a legend, not…

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History

Why did 400 people dance themselves to death in 1518?

The dancing plague of 1518 was almost certainly mass psychogenic illness, a stress-driven trance that spread socially. A town…

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History

Why did people used to sleep twice a night?

Before artificial light, the standard pattern was segmented sleep: a "first sleep" of a few hours after dark, then an hour or…

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History

Why does Roman concrete heal itself when ours crumbles?

Roman concrete can heal its own cracks. It's studded with tiny white lumps of lime, long dismissed as sloppy mixing, that…

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