Ancient

Most people in the West have never heard of the Sidr tree. That's strange when you think about it. This tough, thorny desert tree has fed people, bees, birds, and camels for thousands of years. It appears in Islamic tradition. Its honey sells for astonishing prices.

Why is wombat poop cubed? Plus great photos.

16,000 boxes of archaeological finds are stored in the Valkhof Museum at Nijmegen, the Netherlands. They contain a wealth of Roman artifacts left undisturbed...

In the study, the scientists didn’t just test one plant compound at a time. They tested two traditional Chinese medicine compounds together — luteolin (from flowers like honeysuckle and chrysanthemum) and astragaloside IV (from astragalus root, Huang Qi). These plants have been combined in Chinese herbal formulas for centuries to help the body recover from injury and inflammation.

Two thousand years ago, someone scratched a web of lines into stone in a Roman settlement on the empire’s northern edge. Soldiers, traders, or locals passing time in Coriovallum—now Heerlen in the Netherlands, moved small counters across those lines in a tactical duel of blockade and entrapment.

Christ’s thorn jujube (Ziziphus spina-christi) also known as the sidr tree is a real, identifiable tree native to the Middle East, and it appears—directly or indirectly—in Islam, Judaism, and later Christian tradition. The connections between the three faiths are not theological agreements but overlapping uses, names, and symbolic associations rooted in the same landscape.

Flying centuries-old trees across continents via specialized cargo burns enormous fossil fuels. Replanting them in a desert climate—no matter how advanced the irrigation or “heritage preservation techniques”—places immense stress on organisms that evolved for Mediterranean seasons, soils, and rainfall patterns. And we've seen that the UAE is not capable of taking care of trees so survival rates are uncertain.

Environmental activists in Iran often face significant personal risk when speaking out about illegal land grabs, deforestation, or the destruction of protected areas. In recent years, several high-profile environmentalists have been detained, interrogated, or imprisoned on broad national-security charges, sometimes without transparent legal proceedings.

It's full of rare and endemic species, and it's a UNESCO heritage site. Iran's natural treasure, a 1000-kilometer forest, the Hyrcanian forest has been on fire for several days. It stretches from the Caspian Sea and into neighboring Azerbaijan and is home to more than 3,200 kinds of plants. 

Two thousand years ago, all roads led to Rome. Now, thanks to modern data science, they finally do again — this time in high...

In Rimini, the performance drops away. Nobody wins Ecomondo with a pledge or a photo op. You win if your system works, if your process scales, if a municipal department or multinational buyer signs a deal to decarbonize their operations.

The Sumarians’ brewing methods developed over the ages into the beer we know today. Yet making alcohol from bread mashed into liquid has never left people’s minds. We have a funny note on that: jailbird booze.

“This discovery adds a rich new layer to our understanding of Roman funerary culture in the eastern Mediterranean,” noted Dr. Helen Goldstein, classical art historian at Tel Aviv University. “The depiction of Dionysus and Heracles is not only artistic—it reflects the spiritual and cultural values of the elite in late antiquity.”

Mersu is energy-dense and sweet—think of it as a Bronze Age power snack.

The striking red-painted jug was found in a cave that had once been an underground olive press before being repurposed as a dwelling. Researchers believe the cave was in use during the Abbasid period (9th-10th centuries CE), when camels dominated trade routes, helping to move goods across vast distances.