Antike
20 cards from across every topic, each citing a source. Tap one to open it in the feed.
- A 2,000-year-old computer made of bronze.
In 1901, sponge divers pulled a corroded bronze device from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera. Built in …
- A 3,700-year-old law code carved in stone.
Around 1750 BC, the Babylonian king Hammurabi had roughly 282 legal rules carved into a basalt stele 2.25 metres tall …
- A Greek measured Earth's circumference in 240 BC using shadows.
Eratosthenes, librarian in Alexandria, knew that in Syene the Sun shone straight down a well on 21 June. In Alexandria …
- A tax decree cracked the hieroglyphs.
In 1799, French soldiers near Rosetta in the Nile Delta found a granodiorite slab bearing the same priestly decree of …
- An hour used to be longer in summer than in winter.
Until the late Middle Ages, Europeans divided the time between sunrise and sunset into twelve hours, however long the …
- Ancient statues were brightly painted, not white.
Greek and Roman marble statues were originally painted: red lips, blue robes, gilded hair. The colour weathered away …
- Cleopatra lived closer to the Moon landing than to the pyramids.
The Great Pyramid of Giza was built around 2560 BC. Cleopatra VII died in 30 BC, roughly 2,530 years later. From her …
- How Egyptians dragged multi-tonne stones across the desert.
The blocks of the Great Pyramid weigh over two tonnes on average and were hauled on wooden sledges. A wall painting in …
- How Roman aqueducts moved water without pumps.
An aqueduct is essentially a channel many kilometres long with a tiny gradient: the line to Nîmes drops only 12.6 …
- How to get 1.4 grams of dye out of 12,000 snails.
Ancient purple comes from a gland in sea snails such as Bolinus brandaris. You either milk the animals or crush them …
- Kaiser and Tsar are the same man: Caesar.
After Julius Caesar, Roman rulers carried 'Caesar' as part of their title; from Diocletian onwards it marked the …
- Pompeii probably did not die in August.
The 24 August date comes from a Pliny letter printed in 1508 after 1,400 years of hand-copying. Excavated autumn fruit …
- Roman toilet paper: a sponge on a stick.
In Roman latrines, people sat side by side on long stone benches with holes. For cleaning they used a xylospongium, a …
- The Colosseum is named after a statue that is long gone.
The building went up between roughly 70 and 80 AD and held 50,000 to 80,000 spectators. In antiquity it was simply …
- The vomitorium was not a room for vomiting.
The story that Romans threw up in special rooms during banquets so they could keep eating is a modern invention. A …
- The word 'muscle' literally means 'little mouse'.
Latin 'musculus' is the diminutive of 'mus', mouse. Roman physicians thought a flexing biceps under the skin looked …
- Thermopylae wasn't fought by 300 Spartans alone.
In 480 BC, a Greek army of about 7,000 held the pass of Thermopylae for three days against a far larger Persian force. …
- Thumbs down was invented by a painter in 1872.
Roman sources only say "pollice verso", with a turned thumb – which gesture meant which outcome is unclear. Our mental …
- Why Roman concrete still stands after 2,000 years.
The Pantheon in Rome has carried an unreinforced concrete dome 43 metres across since the year 125. In 2023, an MIT …
- Why September means 'seventh month' but is the ninth.
The early Roman calendar began in March and had only ten months; winter was left unnamed. September, October, November …