Charles Mann tells us How the Potato Changed the World, an extract from his estimable book 1493. Great potato picture, huh? Get the book.
A paleoanthropologist from up the road in Boulder is performing wear analysis and isotope analysis on fossil teeth to determine australopithecine diet.
Read this review of a new book on Columbus’ forgotten voyages.
I was delightfully surprised by this piece on the world’s oldest museum built by a Babylonian princess 2500 years ago and excavated by British archaeologist Leonard Woolley in 1925. I remember reading this story in one of my first books on archaeology when I was 8 or 9 years old and hadn’t heard it since. The whole article is very well done with a bonus picture of Woolley with his younger colleague, T.E. Lawrence.