Topic description and stories

Ancient weight excavated from the east coast of Italy

Adventures of a palaeolinguist

20 Sep 2011

The curious bronze, knuckle-shaped object pictured is an ancient weight excavated from the east coast of Italy. The inscription scrawled along its...

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Extract from the New Testament in Syriac from the sixth century

The riddle of the Syriac double dot: it’s the world’s earliest question mark

21 Jul 2011

Manuscripts written in Syriac, an ancient language of the Middle East, are peppered with mysterious dots. Among them is the vertical double dot or...

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Athens acropolis

The Athenians: Another warning from history?

02 Oct 2009

The collapse of Greek democracy 2,400 years ago occurred in circumstances so similar to our own it could be read as a dark and often ignored lesson...

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