The years the sun went out

Europe was plunged into darkness and suffered from intense crop failures and famines in the years AD536 and AD1258, after massive volcanic eruptions.

An ancient vice

Australia is suffering from a gambling epidemic exacerbated by blanket advertising for online sports betting as well as omnipresent ‘pokie’ machines, but gambling has been a problem from the first day someone fashioned a pair of bone dice.

A feminist history of witches

A new book by Lucianne Tonti, “Good Witch: In Search of Our Lost Feminine Power” is a deeply personal examination of the witch hunts in Europe and North America written from a feminist perspective.

Reading the runes

AI has proved its worth in seamlessly translating one modern language to another on request, but could it help decipher the lost ancient languages like Etruscan and Minoan Linear?

The mystery of Greek fire

Greek fire was an incendiary weapon used in naval combat in the Eastern Mediterranean from around 673 CE until the 1180s. However, its recipe was lost when the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottoman Empire in May 1453, so what exactly was it?

What killed Simonetta Vespucci?

Botticelli’s muse Simonetta Vespucci died at just 23 in 1476, and while tuberculosis has long been blamed for her death, analysis of her changing appearance in a succession of paintings suggest another cause may be to blame.

Who were the ‘sea peoples’?

The infamous “Sea Peoples” who ravaged the eastern Mediterranean at the end of the Bronze Age were named by a French Egyptologist at the end of the 19th century but their true origins remain shrouded in mystery.

History isn’t bunk

Why are there so few readable, affordable history books written by Australian academics, historians and other authors in the nation’s bookshops?

Generational conflict is as old as time

Mitigating generational conflict between the old and young is an eternal problem and we could learn from the Greeks and Romans approach of reason and rational debate.

Fish and computer chips

Flinders University researchers have taken a revealing look inside the head of one of the first animals to crawl from the water to live on land more than 380 million years ago.

D Day

66 million years ago a 10 km asteroid slammed into the bay of Mexico precipitating the extinction of the dinosaurs and about half Earth’s other species. What would it have been like to experience such a gargantuan impact?

The curious case of Christopher Marlowe

A new biography traces the meteoric rise and tragic early death of one of Britain’s greatest literary talents, the enigmatic Christopher Marlowe.