History

416,000 Years Ago, All Greenland’s Ice Melted and Raised Sea Levels 5-20 Feet: A Warning from the Past

By Paul Bierman, University of Vermont, and Tammy Rittenour, Utah State University | – About 400,000 years ago, large parts of Greenland were ice-free. Scrubby tundra basked in the Sun’s rays on the island’s northwest highlands. Evidence suggests that a forest of spruce trees, buzzing with insects, covered the southern part of Greenland. Global sea […]

Batteries

On this 4th of July we need to Declare a War of Independence from Fossil Fuels and Climate Change

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, kicked off the Revolutionary War in earnest, which the Continental Army only finally won seven years later, in 1882. The Revolutionary War was a rare conflict for the United States, in that it was fought on our own soil, such that every […]

Colonialism

Fascist Italy’s forgotten Concentration Camps in Libya

Middle East Monitor

Mustafa Fetouri MFetouri ( Middle East Monitor ) – On 30 August 2008, Italy and Libya signed their Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, ending their awkward past of feuding and diplomatic tensions over Italy’s colonisation of Libya from 1911 to 1943. Libya was seeking compensation, recognition of suffering of its people and, above […]

African-Americans

Teaching Juneteenth: One Black Family’s Struggle for Freedom Offers lessons for Texas lawmakers trying to Erase History from the Classroom

The Conversation

By Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, Sam Houston State University and Zachary Montz, Sam Houston State University | – (The Conversation) – The news was startling. On June 19, 1865, two months after the U.S. Civil War ended, Union Gen. Gordon Granger walked onto the balcony at Ashton Villa in Galveston, Texas, and announced to the people […]

History

Sudan’s entire History has been dominated by Soldiers and the Violence and Corruption they Bring

The Conversation

By Justin Willis, Durham University | – (The Conversation) – Sudan’s Central Reserve Police (CRP) recently announced it would be deploying officers to the streets of Khartoum to “secure public and private property”. That may sound puzzling in the context of the current violence: what are the police doing in the middle of this? The […]

Archaeology

Egypt in uproar over Netflix’s “Black” Cleopatra, but Race is the Wrong Lens Anyway

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor ( Mustafa Amin at the Akhbar al-Yawm [News Today] reviews the controversy in Egypt over Jada Pinkett Smith’s African Queens series of documentaries on Netflix. The first installment focused on Njinga, ruler of an early modern West African kingdom in what is now northern Angola. The second treats Cleopatra, and the trailer insists […]

Africa

DNA Study Sheds Light on Arab Expansion in Africa, Axum and other Empires

The Conversation

By Nancy Bird, UCL | – Pre-colonial African history is alive with tales of civilisations rising and falling and of different cultures intermingling across the continent. We have now shed more light on some of these societies using the science of genetics. In a study published in Science Advances, my co-authors and I used DNA […]

Archaeology

DNA Study: Medieval Iranian Merchants account for Half of the Ancestry of Swahili People of East African Coast

The Conversation

By Chapurukha Kusimba, University of South Florida and David Reich, Harvard University | – The legacy of the medieval Swahili civilization is a source of extraordinary pride in East Africa, as reflected in its language being the official tongue of Kenya, Tanzania and even inland countries like Uganda and Rwanda, far from the Indian Ocean […]

African-Americans

Was Charles Austin Beard a Racist Historian?

Richard Drake

( Counterpunch ) – Controversy about Charles Austin Beard began in 1913 when he published An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. He turned thirty-nine that year. Until then, his books had appeared to widespread praise within the profession and to the benign neglect of the general reading public. A highly successful […]