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Articles

How did the chess pieces get their names?

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Notes from a Sun Tzu Skeptic (2019)

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Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries

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Vikings went to Mediterranean for ‘summer jobs’ as mercenaries, left graffiti

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Ibn Battuta: A Scholar's Epic Journey (2018)

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The Kalevala (Crawford Translation, 1888)

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Alexander the Great in Firdawsi's Book of Kings

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An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms – 723 CE

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How A Bedouin Tracker Sees the Desert

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The Koh-i-Noor diamond, and why the British won’t give it back (2017)

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Common tech jobs described as cabals of Mesoamerican wizards

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Book Review: 1587, a Year of No Significance

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A Chinese woman wrote millions of words of fake Wikipedia history

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A Visual Guide to the Aztec Pantheon

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Women Who Ran Genghis Khan’s Empire

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Tolkien's Paintings

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Heavy Wears the Crown and the Kohinoor

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The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part I: Bargaining for Goods at Helm’s Gate

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Reading a Pacific navigator’s mysterious map may require a shift in perspective

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List of games that Buddha would not play

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Egyptian Gods – The Complete List (2016)

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Unsong, a fantasy novel where the universe is programmable with Hebrew (2015)

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Sri Lanka’s ancient, almost lost martial art

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Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks

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How Indian Zoroastrians helped shape modern Iran

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Persian legends and their Western counterparts (2020)

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What a tiny masterpiece reveals about power and beauty

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Ismail al-Jazari – the medieval 'Father of Robotics'

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That Dothraki Horde, Part III: Horse Fiddles

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That Dothraki Horde, Part I: Barbarian Couture

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The Persian Art of Etiquette (2016)

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Tolkien’s Mythic Plan for England

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Bhūribhirbhāribhirbhīrābhūbhārairabhirebhire

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Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Tolkien Elves

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Emma Willard's Maps of Time

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Who Was the Buddha?

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Mourning the End of Paper Maps

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“Robots” Guarded Buddha's Relics in Ancient India

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Arabic and Islamic Themes in Frank Herbert's “Dune” (2004-2017)

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Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks

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The Notion of “Trolling” in Ancient Sanskrit

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King Alfred and India

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Tibetan musical notation

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Tolkien was right: Scholars conclude Beowulf likely the work of single author

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The Voyage of the Kon-Tiki Misled the World About Navigating the Pacific (2014)

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Fact vs. Fiction: Truths from Inside the Shaolin Temple

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Crossing the Sahara in the Fourteenth Century

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How Writers Map Their Imaginary Worlds

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The Masterless People: Pirates, Maroons, and the Struggle to Live Free

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Who Were the Mamluks?

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The greatest paper map of the United States, made by one guy in Oregon (2012)

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The Art of Not Dying: the First Emperor’s Pursuit of Immortality

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The secret maps used in World War II

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The Board Game at the Heart of Viking Culture

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How Tolkien created Middle-earth

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The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant (2005)

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A Vast, 430-Year-Old World Map

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Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

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Uncovering Somalia's forgotten music of the 1970s

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Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: A Cartographic Narrative (2012)

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Why Genghis Khan’s tomb can’t be found

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Subutai – Primary military strategist of Genghis Khan

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The legend of the Legion

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Listen to rare recordings of J.R.R. Tolkien reading ‘The Lord of the Rings’

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Portolan Charts 'Too Accurate' to Be Medieval

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NY Public Library Releases 670k Images

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Tolkien's annotated map of Middle-earth discovered in copy of Lord of the Rings

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How the 'Kung Fu Fighting' Melody Came to Represent Asia

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The History of Mana: How an Austronesian Concept Became a Video Game Mechanic

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The woman who saw beneath oceans

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Road-map wristwatch from 1920

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There Is No Planet B (For Worldbuilding)

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"Dune" and the delicate art of making fictional languages

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New Aztec Codices Discovered: The Codices of San Andrés Tetepilco

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Artificio de Juanelo

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The Reign of Alexander III of Macedon

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Benjamin Thorpe translated almost all Old English texts (2016)

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