SAN FRANCISCO — A 200-year-long drought 4,200 years ago may have killed off the ancient Sumerian language, one geologist says. Because no written accounts explicitly mention drought as the reason for ...

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This is the first episode of a two-part series on the origin of jokes and humor. Listen to part two here. This episode originally aired on August 5, 2022. In the late 1800s, archeologists in Iraq ...

Miguel Civil, a scholar and researcher at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, was a leading expert on the Sumerian language, the earliest known written language. “No one has known Sumerian ...

A Turkish expert on ancient Mesopotamia has dedicated more than half a century of his life to unearth history, culture and language dating back to over five millennia in the cradle of civilization. In ...

It’s important to use the right words when writing about writing. Scholars studying the history of it distinguish between pre-writing symbols used to mark objects and more precise marks that establish ...

SAN FRANCISCO — A 200-year-long drought 4,200 years ago may have killed off the ancient Sumerian language, one geologist says. Because no written accounts explicitly mention drought as the reason for ...

This is the first episode of a two-part series on the origin of jokes and humor. The story appears in podcast feeds under the title, "Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not." Listen to part two here.