The Golden Age · NB! · The East · Archive · Ethnography
Family portrait with reindeer, photograph from the 1910s
Portrait of a family with reindeer, 1910s
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The East · Science · Society
How silver became the basis of the Ming tax system and why its shortage destroyed the dynasty
The emperors of the Ming dynasty, which ruled China from 1368 to 1644, were in dire need of silver in the sixteenth century. It went chiefly on prestige projects such as the Forbidden City in Beijing and the repair of the Great Wall. The historian Mark Cartwright writes in the
NB! · The East · Society · Pop Culture · Humour
The Voronezh meme recurs in Trump's remarks on Iran and Los Angeles
The Voronezh meme finds a new incarnation, this time in a country of the First World
NB! · Aristocracy · Archive · The East · People
Orientalist Grigory Kozakov with relatives and children at a picnic near the village of Zhikharevka in 1903
The Orientalist Grigory Alexandrovich Kozakov, surrounded by his relatives, his daughter-in-law Countess Anna Nikolayevna Tolstaya, the children and their tutor, at a picnic near the village of Zhikharevka in 1903
Archaeology · Archive · The East · Museums · Science
Signs of violent death found on skulls from burials beside the royal tombs at Abydos
An American archaeologist has carried out a forensic analysis of skulls of people who were buried beside the tombs of Egypt's first kings at Abydos, and has found on many of them traces of violent death. Abydos in Upper Egypt served as the burial place of the kings
The East · In the Press · Science · Society
Professor Mie Oba proposes Japan as ASEAN's third partner alongside the US and China
Professor Oba Mie of Kanagawa University writes that Japan could become a third partner for the ASEAN countries alongside the USA and China. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations preserves its independence under the slogan of "centrality": the bloc's members seek to remain the principal forum
The East · NB! · Archive · People
Félix Bonfils, photographs of a dragoman and guide for travellers in Syria
From a guidebook to Syria. Photographs by Félix Bonfils (1831-1885)
The East · Archaeology · Geography · Maps · Science · Rome
Marco Galli on Ancient Rome's Trade with India and China from the 1st to 3rd Century AD
I have read an interesting article by the Italian archaeologist Marco Galli of Sapienza University of Rome, "Beyond the Borders: Ancient Rome and Eurasian Trade Networks". Galli examines the Roman Empire's part in trade with India and China in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd centuries AD,
Archaeology · The East · Books · Science
The Babylonian Poem “The Dialogue of a Master and His Slave” and Scholars’ Debates on Its Meaning
The Babylonian poem "The Dialogue of a Master with His Slave", which English-language scholarship calls the "Dialogue of Pessimism", has come down to us in copies from Assyria and Babylonia, written in Akkadian. It is assigned to wisdom literature, that is, to instructive texts like
The East · Science · Society
Weizmann Institute creates AI model that reconstructs images people saw from fMRI data
At the Weizmann Institute in Israel, researchers have created an AI model that, from a scan of brain activity, reconstructs the image a person was looking at during the scan. The researchers used data from functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. This method tracks the flow of oxygen-rich blood
The East · Geography · Science · Society · Nature
The 2026 Himalayan flood and proposals for sharing flood warnings between countries
Analyst Arvind Kumar and Him Lal Gautam, Chief Surveyor of Nepal's Department of Survey, have published an article on the Himalayan flood of 26 August 2026. A rock-and-ice avalanche broke away that day from the northern slope of Langtang Lirung and turned into a debris flow,
The East · Archaeology · Faith · Observations · Ethnography
Petroglyph at Misida in northern Sudan possibly depicting a ruler of Kush
A Case in Which the Image of an Ancient Nubian Ruler Could Be Mistaken for a Figure of Christ. The petroglyph from Misida (2) in northern Sudan, near the Third Cataract of the Nile, consists of a male figure about two and a half metres tall and two goats. The