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Edward III did not appear in the 1623 first folio collection of Shakespeare’s plays. Loughnane edited it for the 2016 New Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Works, acknowledging that a couple of scenes had probably been written by him, and the play had also appeared in a 2005 volume. Loughnane also co-authored the Canon and Chronology study in the New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion, which made the case for Shakespeare’s part-authorship... Rather than attributing particular lines to either author, the study focused on linguistic features and the distribution of certain “marker” words, such as “martial”, which are typically present in Marlowe’s plays...

On a cold, drizzly day in July 2026, Nate Lewand and his fleet of whitewater rafters passed by Black Canyon, an obsidian-colored gorge on the Main Salmon River in Idaho. As they rounded the bend, they spotted a woman standing on a narrow sandy beach far too small to hold a tent. She wore clean linen clothing, military-style boots, and carried a burled walking stick. Despite being right at the water’s edge in the rain, the woman was bone dry. She had no gear—no ropes, no backpacks, and no raft. “She was just standing there,” Lewand told Outside. “We hollered...

Filmed inside the British Museum, this episode features renowned Assyriologist Irving Finkel, exploring the Library of Ashurbanipal -- the earliest known library in human history. Built in the 7th century BCE in Nineveh, this extraordinary library preserved thousands of clay tablets covering law, science, medicine, astronomy, religion, and literature -- including the Epic of Gilgamesh. Without Ashurbanipal’s vision, much of ancient Mesopotamian knowledge would have been lost forever. King Ashurbanipal, one of the few ancient rulers who could read and write, gathered the knowledge of the known world and created humanity’s first true archive -- laying foundations for modern civilisation....

You may know King Harold II for one thing: losing the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But is this Harold's whole story? In 2023 a remarkable coin hoard was discovered in Yorkshire, England, that shows Harold in a different light. This is the first recorded hoard of coins which can definitely be dated to the year 1066. Containing only coins struck during Harold’s brief reign of 282 days, the hoard reveals a king whose authority was recognised across England, and whose government could produce new coins with great speed. Join Elina Screen, Curator of Medieval and Modern Coin Collections at...

Ancient Greek papyri show that people used diagrams to solve and understand practical math problems nearly 2,000 years ago. A study led by Thomas Kelly finds that the drawings helped readers organize numbers, follow calculations, and check results. The research examines Greek mathematical papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt, mainly dating from the first four centuries A.D. The texts contain practical geometry problems involving land, buildings, and three-dimensional objects. Unlike formal proofs, these problems usually provide measurements followed by steps for calculating an answer. They offer another view of mathematics in ancient Greece, showing how geometry could be applied to practical calculations....

Human beings tend to be anthropocentric. That is, we often see ourselves as evolution's magnum opus despite the fact that, as biomass goes, we're insignificant compared to plants and other animals. For instance, scientists estimate that there are more than three trillion trees on Earth—a number that even dwarfs the amount of stars in our galaxy. And when you add the populations of the more than 380,000 other plant species, the total becomes mind-boggling. Nonetheless, many of us assume that we're the smartest, most conscious beings on Earth. But what if consciousness isn't a feature limited solely to humans—and what...

Today we cover the Indictment of Madduwatta: a 3,400-year-old Hittite legal complaint that happens to contain the oldest named Greek warrior in the historical record. Long before Homer ever put pen to paper on the Iliad or the Odyssey, a warlord named Attarissiya crossed the Aegean with a hundred chariots, tore through western Anatolia, unseated a Hittite-backed ruler, and fought the empire's own army to a standstill before sailing home. We also trace the wider collapse-era: the Hittite Empire at Hattusa, the Lukka coastal peoples, the Assuwa confederation, and Ahhiyawa. The Invasion That Inspired Homer's Iliad | 18:55 Bronze to...

Ever since Benjamin Franklin wielded his fluent French to persuade Parisian elites to support the War of Independence, foreign language knowledge has enabled American diplomats and representatives—not to mention spies—to promote the nation’s interests. During World War II and throughout the Cold War, colleges provided education in languages deemed essential for national defense. Those programs were a great success. In the 1940s, Harvard, Michigan, and Berkeley founded secret schools in Japanese, often led by Japanese-Americans. Other institutions opened foreign language programs thereafter. In the wake of Sputnik in 1958, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act. In recent years, however,...

LINGUISTS TEND to say that all languages are valuable, expressive and complex. They usually attribute negative attitudes to prejudice and politics. That is probably why no one has carefully studied the touchy question of which ones are seen as beautiful or ugly. That is until three scholars—Andrey Anikin, Nikolay Aseyev and Niklas Erben Johansson—published their study of 228 languages last year*. They hit upon the idea of using an online film about the life of Jesus, which its promoters have recorded in hundreds of languages. Crucially, most recordings had at least five different speakers, as the film has both exposition...

While digging in their backyard, an accidental archaeologist in Denmark unearthed 18.5 kilograms (40.7 pounds) of silver treasure. The chance discovery is the largest known silver hoard from the Viking Age in the country and could prove invaluable in understanding this chapter of history. The treasure trove consists of 700 silver objects, including silver bars, bracelets, dozens of coins, a small Thor's hammer, and various cut objects. These kinds of silver artifacts were often used as a means of payment and a store of value... Around 320 of the objects were found within the original clay vessel, while the rest...

Newspaper artist Howard Brodie enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942, soon joining the combat artist program. He was sent by Yank magazine to capture his impressions of the war with a pencil during the Guadalcanal campaign and then the fighting in Europe. One observer of his work wrote, “By capturing emotions on the field with fluid lines and attention to detail, Brodie’s work is honest and at times, harrowing, but this honesty established him as one of the top news artists of his time. In February 1945, he had been assigned by Yank to accompany K Company, 406th Regiment,...

The people who live and breathe politics often talk as if the upcoming election is the most important election of all time. As they see it, we are in an unprecedented historical moment and the choices we make today will determine the fate of the nation. I understand their perspective and a younger version of me occasionally slipped into that mindset. However, far from being unprecedented, the core challenge facing America today was described more than 2,000 years ago by an ancient Greek philosopher. Plato, a student of Socrates and teacher of Aristotle, imagined prisoners chained inside a dark cave,...

Wilhelm Dörpfeld was a German architect and archaeologist, a pioneer of stratigraphic excavation and precise graphical documentation of archaeological projects... In 1877, Döerpfeld became an assistant at the excavations of Ancient Olympia, Greece, conducted under Richard Bohn, Friedrich Adler, and Ernst Curtius. He later became the technical manager of the project. The group uncovered, among other artifacts, an intact statue of Hermes by Praxiteles. The excavations revived the memory of the ancient Olympic Games and contributed toward the establishment of the modern Olympic Games, in 1896. In 1882, Dörpfeld joined Schliemann, who was then excavating Troy... The two eventually became...

A thousand years ago, almost nobody would have bet on Europe. China was richer, more advanced and more powerful. So how did a poor, divided backwater end up dominating the world? This is the strange story of Europe's unlikely rise, and the accidental advantage that may have changed history forever... Something Went Very Wrong With Human History | 17:26 Michael Button | Patterns of History | 21.5K subscribers | 53,344 views | August 16, 2026

Nolan’s Odyssey is a massive boon to those who care about literature and the written word. Book versions of Homer’s epic poem have been selling like hotcakes in the wake of the film’s release. Just days after the film premiered, translations of the story had reached Nos. 4, 8, and 49 on Amazon’s bestsellers list, with a translation of the Iliad at No. 61. Nolan’s film “boosted sales” of the book enough to net a sales increase of 76% “across all editions,” including both text and audio versions of the tale, as Spotify revealed that listens to the audiobook on...

Likely prompted by the runaway success of a certain classically oriented movie in theaters this summer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has returned the oldest preserved fragment of The Odyssey to one of its galleries, where it can be seen and appreciated after a long time out of view. The relic is now on display in Gallery 162 in the museum’s section devoted to Greek and Roman Art. In a round-up of Odyssey-related collection treasures on its website, the Met describes the relic as the first early Ptolemaic fragment of the text ever discovered and notes: “Dating from around 285–250...

A book borrowed 150 years ago has finally been returned to an Australian library, with the culprit linked to the Houses of Parliament in London. Antiquities of Athens was borrowed from a local library in Kiama, a seaside town about 120km (75 miles) south of Sydney, some time in the mid-1870s. The book on classic Greek architecture was stored in a tea chest hidden behind a boarded-up fireplace for decades before it was recently discovered by a family member. Ross Simmons, 77, thinks his great-grandfather, John Simmons, might have borrowed the book to help with his career, having worked as...

In this video, we explore the history of Arabia before Islam, starting with the prehistoric period when the region was far greener than today, filled with lakes, rivers, and wildlife. We follow the transformation of this landscape into desert and how early communities adapted to it. What Was Arabia Like Before Islam? | DOCUMENTARY | 38:22 Para Bellum | 140K subscribers | 1,362,096 views | March 29, 2026

Archaeologists have identified the oldest known library on the Iberian Peninsula inside a Roman villa in southern Spain, overturning decades of belief that the room was a sanctuary dedicated to the Roman god Mithras.The discovery was made at the Roman villa of Fuente Álamo in Puente Genil, in Spain's Córdoba province. Researchers concluded the room served as a space for reading, study, and preserving written works, making it the westernmost known library in the Roman Empire and one of its best-preserved private examples.The room contains several architectural features typical of Roman libraries, including an apse, rectangular niches that likely held...

Painting depicting Odysseus and his crew at their ship (Odysseus tied to the mast), while Sirens are around them. John William Waterhouse, Ulysses and the Sirens (1891). Did this voyage take Odysseus to America? Credit: Public Domain For centuries, scholars and enthusiasts have debated where Odysseus truly traveled during his legendary journey back to Ithaca. Among the most intriguing theories is the notion that the hero ventured beyond the Mediterranean, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and reached the shores of what is now known as America. But what evidence supports this extraordinary claim, and does it truly align with Homer’s descriptions...