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Babylon Had No Religion Class, but Its Future Officials Still Had to Learn Nearly 2,000 Gods

Some 2,500 years ago, Babylon trained the sons of its wealthiest families without a single weekly hour devoted to the gods. There was no textbook that worked as a Bible either. Religion was everywhere and in no particular subject, spread through sign lists, writing exercises and arithmetic drills. A study published in the journal Iraq […]

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Two dozen children vs Pablo Escobar’s hippo: The legal battle to get to a Colombian school

A hippopotamus in Colombia on September 23.

Twenty-three children make their way to school with their eyes glued to the murky water of the Nare River to see if they can see the hippopotamus. The school route has become a kind of safari with the kids scanning the horizon. Everyone in the municipality has a story to tell about the hippopotamus; that his feces scare away the fish, that he eats the banana crops, that his footprints are the size of three palms, that he will capsize a canoe... The Puerto Nare hippopotamus is all that’s talked about here. For Luis and his brother Diego, he is not a stranger. They call him Selmo. Their mother shakes her head and asks them not to get too attached because the judge has allowed just 60 days for the hippo to be removed from the vicinity.

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Aerial view of the Samana River, on September 22.Luis Ángel Arango and Luis Felipe Pérez walk to their home on the Samana River.Giovanny Contreras on the Magdalena River, on September 3.

© Luis bernardo Cano

Said Adrián Bustos rests in a boat on the Magdalena River.

© Luis Bernardo Cano

This lake is located in one of the sections of the Nare River.

© Luis bernardo Cano

The presence of wild hippos in Colombia poses a risk to the region's entire ecosystem.

© Luis bernardo Cano

Jorge Bustos and Juan Aguirre in Puerto Triunfo on September 21.

© Luis bernardo Cano

Diego Tabares steers a boat on the Samana River.

© Luis Bernardo Cano

Hippos in Colombia have begun to migrate to other areas, such as the Isla del Silencio on the Magdalena River.
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TELL US: Who's to blame for Spain's housing crisis?

Tourist rentals? Vulture funds? Greedy landlords? Have your say on the issues affecting housing in Spain - let us know who you think is to blame and what solutions there are to the problem of sky-high rents in the country.

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A 1,600-Year-Old Roman Mosaic Just Turned Up in a Buried Roman Town Beside Europe’s Only Undammed Major River

In the small village of Qesarat, in southern Albania‘s Tepelenë district, an Italian-Albanian excavation team has just finished a summer season that turned up something unusual: six decorated floors from a Late Roman building, right at the edge of the Vjosa Wild River National Park. Declared in March 2023, the park protects the last stretch […]

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Maricarmen, elderly woman evicted from home in Spain, becomes a global symbol for housing activists

Nadz Vogel, an activist with the London Renters’ Union, at the Puerta del Sol encampment on September 27, 2026.

They came to Madrid to counterprogram one of Europe’s largest real estate fairs, The District. What they found was an 87-year-old woman who was about to be evicted from their home — and was, before their eyes. Around 200 housing activists from more than 20 countries across Europe decided to join the demonstrations against the eviction, and later joined a spontaneous encampment in front of the Madrid regional government headquarters at the historic Puerta del Sol plaza.

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Members from different countries of the European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing and the City hold an assembly at Puerta del Sol.Teresa Mamede, of the Lisbon Renters’ Union, at the Puerta del Sol encampment on September 27, 2026.Ronja Senkpiel, urban geographer and German researcher specializing in urban development, at the Puerta del Sol encampment on September 26, 2026.
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Descubren en Ucrania la tumba de un guerrero de la estepa del pueblo que inspiró el mito de las amazonas

Cuando los arqueólogos abrieron aquel túmulo cerca del mar de Azov esperaban encontrar, sobre todo, tumbas de la Edad del Bronce. Y las encontraron, treinta y una en total. Pero entre ellas apareció algo que no cuadraba con el resto: un hombre de entre 25 y 35 años, tendido boca arriba con los brazos estirados […]

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El centro de la Vía Láctea huele a ron y sabe a frambuesa, pero también hay olores menos agradables en el espacio

En abril de 2009, varios periódicos de medio mundo publicaron a la vez un titular que parecía sacado de un cóctel, según el cual el centro de la galaxia sabe a frambuesa y huele a ron. La frase salió del Guardian, que la construyó a partir de un comunicado del Instituto Max Planck de Radioastronomía, […]

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Archaeologists Find a 2,000-Year-Old Grave of the People Who Inspired the Amazons

The archaeologists were not looking for a Sarmatian. When they opened the burial mound near the Sea of Azov, they expected Bronze Age graves — and found plenty: thirty-one of them. But one grave didn’t fit. Inside lay a man in his late twenties or early thirties, stretched out on his back with his arms […]

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The Center of the Milky Way Smells Like Rum and Tastes Like Raspberries, But There’s Also Other Smells, Not So Pleasant

In April 2009, newspapers around the world ran a headline that read like a cocktail menu: the center of the galaxy tastes of raspberries and smells of rum. The line came from the Guardian, which built it from a press release by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn. The release was much […]

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Teotihuacan Could Write Like the Maya and Aztecs — New Cave Glyphs to Honor its War Dead Prove It

For decades, one question has nagged at specialists in ancient Mexico: did Teotihuacan — the city that dominated central Mexico from roughly the first to the sixth century AD, with a population that may have reached 125,000 — actually have a writing system, or were its symbols just decorative emblems? The stakes of that question […]

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Tres glifos pintados hace 1.500 años en una cueva mexicana confirman que Teotihuacan tuvo un sistema de escritura como el de los mayas o los aztecas

Durante décadas, los expertos discutieron si Teotihuacan —la ciudad que dominó el centro de México entre los siglos I y VI d. C., con una población que pudo alcanzar los 125.000 habitantes— poseía un sistema de escritura verdadero o si, por el contrario, sus signos eran simples emblemas decorativos. La pregunta no era menor: los […]

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Last Great Cavalry Charge Wasn’t Led by Europeans — It Was Won by Indian Lancers in WWI

India calls it Haifa Day. The regiments that get the credit are the lancers of Jodhpur, Hyderabad and Mysore — cavalry units raised not by Britain directly, but by India’s semi-autonomous princely states, which supplied their own troops to the British war effort. Grouped into the 15th Cavalry Brigade and led into the final charge […]

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