Featured series 
Tag: History
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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 billion and 2.22 billion years ago, a span of about 230 million years. The new findings narrow that window dramatically – to about 130 million…
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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 connect the dots between them. In this way, it can broaden the scope of scholarship, but also sharpen the scholar’s ability to probe deeply into…
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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 son-in-law William of Orange, fled to France and exile. But what if James fell, not because he was arrogant and obtuse, but because he held…
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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 Goelet Professor of Medieval History. “Ancient DNA has proven to be remarkably tough and, even though it is usually no longer completely intact, enough can…
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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 of the encounter between native peoples and their Spanish conquerors. “Indigenous people weren’t winners, and, with few exceptions, they didn’t write histories,” Cummins said. “But…
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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, moon, planets, and stars could be explained if the earth orbited the sun — a revolutionary idea. Starting in the 1970s, researcher Owen Gingerich began…
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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. He advocated for civilization, represented by European modernity, and railed against barbarism, typified by the rural, uneducated masses and the populist leaders they embraced. The…
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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 site deep inside the Guatemalan jungle. The arduous two-day trip there to document carved Mayan hieroglyphics had been in vain. The palace complex held 80-foot-tall…
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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 melody, harmony, and rhythm – has been almost completely lost to us. Almost, but not quite. A number of clues remain, and one scholar believes…
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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 texts that cast new light on early Confucianism. The texts were discovered in 1993 near a river in Guodian, China, not far from a farmhouse…
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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 observer. A simple way of life was rapidly changing in the 1930s and ’40s behind the walls of China’s Forbidden City. Morrison’s photographs of Peking…
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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. They were found 1,000 feet down in June 1999 by a team made up of Harvard archaeologists led by Lawrence Stager, Dorot Professor of the…
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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 longer than archaeologists first expected. A stone spear tip indicated the spot was inhabited by humans as long as 10,000 years ago — just 1,000…