History

How Slavery Really Ended in America

The forgotten story of three “contrabands,” a pragmatic general and a shrug that made history.

Native Intelligence

The Indians who first feasted with the English colonists were far more sophisticated than you were taught in school. But that wasn't enough to save them

The Arrow of Disease

When Columbus and his successors invaded the Americas, the most potent weapon they carried was their germs. But why didn't deadly disease flow in the other direction, from the New World to the Old?

We Should Fix Climate Change — but We Should Not Regret It

Climate change is a huge and urgent problem. It is natural to suppose that it is therefore a terrible mistake. I disagree. We cannot regret climate change without regretting the vastly better world for most people that the fossil-fuel powered technological revolutions of the last 250 years have achieved.

How Humanity Gave Itself an Extra Life

Between 1920 and 2020, the average human life span doubled. How did we do it? Science mattered — but so did activism.

GDP: We Really Don’t Know How Good We Have It

Everyone loves the hockey stick graph of long-run economic growth. For some, it's the basis of an entire worldview. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t add up.

What Have We Learned, If Anything?

The twentieth century is hardly behind us but already its quarrels and its achievements, its ideals and its fears are slipping into the obscurity of

A History of Violence

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How Africa Became Black

Africa's racial history was not necessarily its racial destiny. To unravel the story of Africa's past, you must not only look at its faces but listen to its languages and harvest its crops.

The Search for Adam and Eve

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Restless Genes

The compulsion to see what lies beyond that far ridge or that ocean—or this planet—is a defining part of human identity and success.

The Golden Quarter

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If Not Darwin, Who?

An alternative history of the great ideas of science.

On the Importance of Staring Directly Into the Sun

It's also important to poke the heart of a dead pigeon

The Third Magic

A meditation on history, science, and AI

Easter's End

In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism. Are we about to follow their lead?

The Big Dig

Elif Batuman writes about the historical relics that held up the construction of the Yenikapı station, and about President Erdoğan’s frustration.

What Endures From the Ancient Civilizations That Once Ruled the Central Andes?

To journey here is to roam through almost six thousand years of civilization, to one of the places where the human enterprise began

Why Did Human History Unfold Differently On Different Continents For The Last 13,000 Years?

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The Birth of Religion

We used to think agriculture gave rise to cities and later to writing, art, and religion. Now the world’s oldest temple suggests the urge to worship sparked civilization.