Finding ways to make work easier has been part of the human experience for a very long time. In fact, innovation is one of the major traits that make us stand out from the rest of the animal kingdom. And just like we phased out certain aspects of manual labor with horses, and then phased…
Author: Adrian Chirila
The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and later the three Hobbit movies, translated the work of JRR Tolkien to the big screen with… well, mostly great success. But in adapting such expansive works of fiction to the silver screen means you’re going to miss some of the richest character development for anyone outside of the primary…
Protests can take many forms. They can be peaceful, or they can turn violent. They can be made up of just one individual, or they can comprise millions. Protests can happen in just one place, or simultaneously around the globe. They also take on a wide variety of names, depending mostly on what the issue…
The old gods in their many shapes and sizes are as diverse as the people who worshiped them. Before the arrival of monotheism on the world stage, tribes and or other pagan kingdoms were bowing down to an entire pantheon of deities, some good, and some bad and all responsible for everything that’s happening around…
As anyone who as ever experienced it can tell you, war is a nasty business. And whoever tells you otherwise either hasn’t experienced it firsthand or profits from war in one way or the other. In any case, the tides of war are almost never certain and things can turn around at a moment’s notice.…
Mapping things is an incredibly useful tool for humanity. By analyzing a given situation or development and then putting the results on a map, scientists and researchers can better understand and predict future trends around the world. And more detailed that map is, the more accurate the predictions are. Now, maps don’t even need to…
History is far more complicated that we would like to believe. Even in our schools today, different versions of events are being taught to students, depending on the country they’re in and how those events in history affected that country. “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,” right?…
With the almost insane amount of pictures taken on a daily basis around the world these days, it’s quite hard to say that there’s such a thing as a rare one. That same thing certainly doesn’t apply for past photos. But regardless of whether they’re past or present, there are some rare pictures out there…
Like it or not, resources are finite. If we don’t use them carefully, we’ll run out. But while we’ve all heard the scary stories about peak oil, we’re guessing you had no idea that we’re running the risk of hitting peak banana. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXufGIqkTns Read the full list.
The usual candidates for this kind of list would be things like the highest mountain, or the longest river, or the biggest forest, or canyon, or other obvious stuff like that. But you probably already learned those things in school, and we here at TopTenz aren’t about the obvious and instead focus on bringing you…
Planet Earth is an amazing place, to say the least. And even though we’ve been living on its surface our entire life, there are still a lot of things we don’t know about it. Many things that we do know are awe-inspiring. What’s even more interesting about some of these is the fact that they…
There’s a stark difference between societies today and those in the past, mostly coming in the form of rituals. Today’s societies, or the “modern age” has very few of them, while in the past rituals were an integral part of everyday life. Rituals, in broad terms, are a form of invitation by the society to come…
Native American tribes were plentiful and varied, with different cultures and ways of life. Some were more sedentary and with a focus on agriculture, while others were more nomadic, hunting bison and pronghorn antelope on the vast expanses of the Great Plains. But even though they are often seen as noble savages, driven back from…
With archaeology, we are able to take a peek into the past. Ancient texts, though revealing, often times are subjective, written by conquerors and victors, skewing the facts to make themselves appear in a more positive light. But ancient relics, buried deep in the ground by time or people, tell a more complete story of…
Made popular by the famous video game series Assassin’s Creed, the Order of Assassins (on which the games are based) has a far darker and more mysterious history than many of the game’s fans would even believe. Few in number and geographically dispersed throughout the Middle East, this holy sect of Islamic extremists from the Middle…
According to some new research done by the scientists at the University of California, it seems that life on Earth developed some 4.1 billion years ago, almost the instant the planet formed and 300 million years earlier than previously believed. And once it did, life slowly but surely took over the entire planet. As time…
It’s time for some good, old-fashioned speculation. What would happen if aliens visited earth? Now, the speculation and assumptions we’re about to make are based on logic, philosophy, educated guesses, probabilities, nature, and of course, our own history. After all, our frame of reference is quite limited when it comes to possible encounters with extraterrestrial life.…
The jungles are, and always have been mysterious. People can and have gone in them, never to be seen again. And even if they make up just 7 percent of the Earth’s land surface, with that number going down year after year, they are home to half of all living creatures on the planet. And…
Ancient manuscripts, written in some old and forgotten languages, can offer truly insightful glimpses into the distant past. Many such tomes were written hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, and their grammar can still pose a serious impediment to scholars today in understanding them completely. While some are still a complete mystery, others offered…
Our story begins some 65 million years ago, just after the dinosaurs perished and the age of mammals began. Hurtling at each other at a “whooping”, one inch per year, the Americas were still separated by a marine connection between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Before they eventually came together, these continents were completely isolated…
In a sense, the Jedi and the Sith are different sides of the same coin. They are the extremes of what some may say is the same ideology. The Jedi believe in control over themselves, their emotions, and control in everything else in the Galaxy through peace. The Sith, on the other hand, believe in…
Who were Attila and his Huns? Well, as Europe was slowly transitioning from the Classical Era to more medieval times, the Roman Empire was witnessing its last years as a dominant force on the continent. Well, the western half, at least. In the east, the Byzantine Empire would endure up until the 15th century. In…
If you’re unfamiliar with Star Wars, The Jedi are an Order whose origins span back for more than a thousand generations. They are Force-sensitive beings of all races, shapes and sizes found throughout the entirety of the known galaxy and who have vowed to uphold peace and justice within the Galactic Republic. From a very young…
The word “prehistory” refers to the earliest period of human development, up until the start of recorded events. But since the world evolved differently in terms of its humanity, prehistory starts and ends at different times, in different regions. Europe is no exception to this rule. This, however, doesn’t mean that humanity hasn’t made many strides in…