Featured series 
Tag: History
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Campus & Community
Investigating canals across time, from space
The view from space of an ancient canal network is recasting archaeologists’ understanding of the Assyrian capital of Nineveh and of the farming economy that supported it at its height of power almost 3,000 years ago.
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Campus & Community
Countway reveals ‘buried’ treasures
There is something about the physical manifestations of history that communicate both intellectual heft and inspirational authority. Which is why Longwood’s Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine — the largest…
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Campus & Community
Two University Professors appointed
Two members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) have been appointed to University Professorships. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, currently the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, known for her work on daily life in late 18th and early 19th century America, has been appointed the 300th Anniversary University Professor. Peter Galison, the…
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Campus & Community
Three weeks in tiny tunnel pay off
After three weeks in a tiny tunnel 50 feet below an ancient Maya pyramid in the Guatemalan jungle, Peabody Museum researcher Bill Saturno finally got to view his prize. Fine…
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Science & Tech
Ancient humans brought bottle gourds to Americas from Asia
Thick-skinned bottle gourds widely used as containers by prehistoric peoples were likely brought to the Americas some 10,000 years ago by individuals who arrived from Asia, according to a new…
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Campus & Community
Beckert tracks cotton trail
Sven Beckert, a professor of history with an expertise in 19th century America, is hoping to understand the roots of the global economic ties that bind the world today by…
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Campus & Community
Armenia’s remarkable alphabet
Armenians pride themselves on being the first nation to adopt Christianity, an event that is supposed to have occurred in the early fourth century when St. Gregory the Illuminator succeeded…
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Arts & Culture
Portraits of dissent on view at Davis Center
Norton Dodge is an economist, a Harvard alumnus, and a savior of smuggled Soviet art. Smuggler is not usually a moniker that one would choose, but for Norton Dodge it is a badge of honor. Concerned with the plight of artists living under Soviet rule, many of whom found their work prohibited by the regime,…
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Science & Tech
The inside scoop on the Apostle Paul
Laura Nasrallah’s newest book, “An Ecstasy of Folly: Prophecy and Authority in Early Christianity,” argues that, in early Christian communities, dreams, visions, and prophecies were often central to communication and…
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Campus & Community
Researchers close in on date of critical rise in Earth’s oxygen
Findings by Harvard researchers and colleagues narrow the range of possible dates for a critical change in the Earth’s atmosphere. Scientists had previously believed oxygen first appeared sometime between 2.45…
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Campus & Community
Scholars resuscitate dead languages
The goal of a Harvard academic research project is to develop advanced computer technology that will help scholars mine myriad scientific texts in a variety of languages, but also to…
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Science & Tech
Graduate student Scott Sowerby finds surprising side to King James II
In 1688, in the “Bloodless” or “Glorious Revolution,” King James II of England, abandoned by many of his supporters and facing an invading army from the Netherlands led by his…
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Science & Tech
Spotlight on the Dark Ages
“Medievalists are just beginning to be aware of the implications of the revolutions now occurring in the life sciences for the knowledge of the past,” says Michael McCormick, the Francis…
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Science & Tech
In their cups
Thomas Cummins, Dumbarton Oaks Professor of the History of Pre-Columbian and Colonial Art, has made a career of finding and interpreting objects that hold the key to a fuller understanding…
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Science & Tech
Harvard science historian publishes results of unprecedented 30-year census of Copernican masterpiece
First published in 1543, Nicholas Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium introduced the world to the concept of a sun-centered universe. In it, Copernicus detailed how the motions of the sun,…
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Science & Tech
Pendulating “between euphoria and despair”
In his landmark 1845 essay, “Facundo, Civilización y Barbarie,” Argentinean author and statesman Domingo F. Sarmiento, the nation’s second president, sharply contrasted the forces at work on his young nation.…
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Science & Tech
Jungle ordeal leads to surprise treasure
William Saturno was hot, frustrated, low on food, low on water, and low on patience when he sought shade in a trench dug by looters at the San Bartolo archaeological…
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Science & Tech
Bringing back the ancient muses
The epic verse of Homer, the love poems of Sappho, the tragedies of Sophocles, and the comedies of Aristophanes – all were accompanied by music. Yet that music – its…
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Science & Tech
Ancient Chinese script rewrites history
“This is like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” says Tu Weiming, director of the Harvard Yenching Institute, who has played a key role in the preservation of ancient…
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Science & Tech
New electronic tools reveal forgotten China
German-born photographer Hedda Hammer Morrison (1908-1991) could often be seen bicycling through Peking with a Rolleiflex camera around her neck, capturing her times through her lens as both participant and…
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Science & Tech
Archaeology team helps find oldest deep-sea shipwrecks
About 2,700 years ago, two Phoenician ships sank to the Mediterranean’s muddy bottom, where they lay upright, preserved in the relative stillness and tremendous pressure of the deep, dark waters.…
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Science & Tech
Harvard students uncover Martha’s Vineyard history
Some significant details emerged from the items uncovered by Harvard archaeology students at a dig on Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. For instance, the site has been used by humans much…