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The Norwegian forest cat (or scogkatts in Norwegian) originated between 1500 and 4,000 years ago, as a result of natural selection. Though they almost went extinct during World War II, the ancient cats are making a comeback in Norway, Sweden, Iceland and even France. Their exact origin is up for debate. One theory is the […]

The Indonesian drawing is not the oldest in the world. Last year, scientists said they found “humanity’s oldest drawing” on a fragment of rock in South Africa, dated at 73,000 years old. Sulawesi art: Animal painting found in cave is 44,000 years old

Raouché (Arabic: الروشة‎, romanized: ar-Rawše) is a residential and commercial neighborhood in Beirut Central District, Beirut, Lebanon. It is known for its upscale apartment buildings, numerous restaurants, and cliff-side cafés that line Avenue de Paris, a seaside promenade which forms part of the Corniche Beirut. Corniche Beirut has its foundation in the Avenue des Français, […]

Every year millions of children around the world anxiously wait for the arrival of Santa Claus. Parents tell stories of the man with the white beard, red coat and polished boots who travels the world with his reindeer bearing gifts for all those who were well-behaved. Perhaps one day, parents will also tell the story […]

There is a small community of Armenians in Ethiopia, primarily in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. Armenians had traded with Ethiopia from as early as the first century AD. The Armenian population peaked in shortly before the Italian invasion in 1935 at around 2,800. By the fall of the Ethiopian monarchy in 1974, it was […]

Petra (Arabic: ٱلْبَتْرَاء‎, romanized: Al-Batrāʾ; Ancient Greek: Πέτρα, “Stone”), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu, is a historical and archaeological city in southern Jordan. Petra lies on the slope of Jabal Al-Madbah in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of the Arabah valley that runs from the Dead Sea to […]

Batroun (Arabic: البترون‎ al-Batrun; Aramaic: בתרון‎; Syriac script: ܒܬܪܘܢ Bitron) is a coastal city in northern Lebanon lying 50 km north of Beirut and 30 km south of Tripoli. It is the capital city of Batroun District. It has a history of human occupation going back to at least 5,000 years. It was once one […]

Mary was a first-century BC Galilean Jewish woman of Nazareth, and the mother of Jesus, according to the New Testament and the Quran. The gospels of Matthew and Luke in the New Testament and the Quran describe Mary as a virgin. The Catholic teaching on this subject is expressed in the papal encyclical Ad Caeli […]

Christianity began as a Second Temple Judaic sect in the 1st century in the Roman province of Judea. Jesus’ apostles and their followers spread around Syria, the Levant, Europe, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Transcaucasia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, despite initial persecution. Christianity developed during the 1st century CE as a Jewish Christian sect of Second Temple Judaism. An […]

It was Iraq’s ‘Garden of Eden’; unique wetlands in southern Iraq where a people known as the Ma’dan, or ‘Arabs of the marsh’, lived in a Mesopotamian Venice, characterised by beautifully elaborate floating houses made entirely of reeds harvested from the open water. The Floating Basket Homes of Iraq: A Paradise Almost Lost to Saddam

Çukurova, alternatively known as Cilicia, is a geo-cultural region in south-central Turkey, covering the provinces of Mersin, Adana, Osmaniye and Hatay. Çukurova in Turkish means roughly “Low Plain”, çukur for “hollow, depression”, ova for “plains”. Extending inland from the southeastern coast of modern Turkey, Cilicia is due north and northeast of the island of Cyprus […]

“For there were among them such innumerable horns and trumpets, which were being blown at the same time from all parts of their army, and their cries were so loud and piercing, that the noise seemed to come not from human voices and trumpets, but from the whole countryside at once”. (Polybius, Histories, II, 29) […]

Shala was an ancient Sumerian goddess of grain and the emotion of compassion. The symbols of grain and compassion combine to reflect the importance of agriculture in the mythology of Sumer, and the belief that an abundant harvest was an act of compassion from the deities. She is associated with the constellation Virgo and vestiges […]

The earliest known swastika is from 10,000 BCE – part of “an intricate meander pattern of joined-up swastikas” found on a late paleolithic figurine of a bird, carved from mammoth ivory, found in Mezine, Ukraine. It has been suggested that this swastika may be a stylized picture of a stork in flight. As the carving […]