A totem is a stipulated ancestor of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe. Totems support larger groups than the individual person. In kinship and descent, if the apical ancestor of a clan is nonhuman, it is called a totem. Normally this belief is accompanied by a totemic myth. Although the term is of Ojibwe …

The Cyrus Cylinder is a clay cylinder on which a declaration issued by the emperor Cyrus II of Persia is inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform. It has been described as the world’s first charter of human rights, predating the Magna Carta by more than one millennium.

A camel uses its hump as a portable storehouse of fat from which to draw nourishment when food is scarce. A chemical process enables the camel to covert some of this fat into water, an advantage which enables it to survive for up to 17 days in the desert without drinking. The Arabian camel or dromedary, found in Arab countries …

Each year does cast a piece of time, One human step for us to climb. Twelve months of counted nights and days, Completes us through a yearly phase. One thing’s for sure while we do live, We’ll never know what life will give. Anticipation’s just a view, For what may happen, could come true. So many times we’re filled with …

Almost every sailor has a tale to tell about strange beasts he has seen in the waters of the sea, and some have told of mermaids, creatures which are half human and half fish. Fairy stories have grown out of these tales, including the most famous of all, The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. But are there really such …

Gtor-ma cakes are sacrificial cakes used in Tibetan Buddhist ceremonies as offerings to deities. The unbaked cakes are prepared by kneading parched barley flour and butter into cones, decorated with pats of butter. The cakes form part of the phyi-mchod, or eight offerings of external worship, as well as part of the offerings of the five senses, which are considered …

You should admire their work from a distance. Spiders eat up to 100 times their weight in insects and worldwide consume about 80% of all insects. Snakes keep rodents and rabbits under control among other prey, saving agriculture from attack in fields and also storage. Both snakes and spiders are quiet and shy and avoid human contact.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient sleepless eremite, The moving waters at their priest like task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors; No yet …

Around 2,000 years ago in ancient Rome, spectators flocked to the Colosseum to watch public “games” featuring fight between hungry animals and human gladiators, chariot races, and mock battles. It was 160ft (49m) high and its arena held 45,000 people. Its ruins are still standing telling its story.

It must have been a very intelligent human who looked at a sheep walking past and thought of the use its fleece might have! Although the oldest surviving textile made out of wool is around 3,500 years old, the oldest fine woolen fabric dates to the fifth century BC (about 2,500 years ago) and was found in an ancient Greek …