Language

The silver amulet contained a thin foil scroll.

Archaeologists Say This Tiny Amulet Is the Oldest Evidence of Christianity Found North of the Alps

Discovered in central Germany, the 1,800-year-old silver artifact held a tiny scroll, which researchers have now deciphered using high-resolution scans

Merriam-Webster has been printing English dictionaries since 1831.

'Polarization' Is Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2024

The winning word beat out finalists such as "demure," "pander," "totality," "fortnight," "allision" and "democracy"

Smithsonian magazine’s top science titles this year.

The Ten Best Science Books of 2024

From a deep dive on a fatal space shuttle disaster to a study of a dozen iconic trees, these are our favorite titles this year

"Brain rot," which is now linked to social media overload, first appeared in Henry David Thoreau's Walden in 1854.

'Brain Rot,' the Scourge of the Chronically Online, Becomes Oxford's 2024 Word of the Year

The term refers to "the supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state" that's linked to spending extensive stretches of time scrolling through low-quality content

The York Theatre Royal says Richard III has been given a voice so he can finally "speak for himself."

Listen to the Resurrected Voice of Richard III—Who Speaks With an Unexpected Accent

A team of experts has created a digital avatar of the maligned monarch, who speaks with a Yorkshire accent. The 15th-century king was born in Northampton, but he spent much of his life in northern England

Jools Lebron's viral social media video about being "very demure, very mindful" while getting ready for work led to a massive increase in the use of the word "demure."

'Demure' Is Dictionary.com's Word of the Year for 2024

The term's popularity skyrocketed after content creator Jools Lebron used it in a now-viral TikTok video, in which she described being "very demure, very mindful"

The clay cylinders were found in a tomb containing six skeletons.

Archaeologists Say These Mysterious Markings Could Be the World's Oldest Known Alphabetic Writing

Found etched into clay cylinders in Syria, the strange symbols date to around 2400 B.C.E.—500 years before other known alphabetic scripts

A cylinder seal (left) engraved with symbols that was used to press markings into wet clay (right)

The World's Earliest Writing System May Have Been Influenced by Older Symbols Found on Stone 'Cylinder Seals'

Thousands of years ago, our ancestors used symbols to track the sale of textile and agricultural products. New research suggests that these markings informed the development of writing

Researchers translated the cuneiform writing, which is characterized by symbols gouged into moist clay.

Researchers Decipher Cuneiform Tablet—and Discover It’s a Furniture Receipt

The small clay rectangle is engraved with an ancient Semitic language known as Akkadian

Two chimpanzees at the Budongo Conservation Field Station in Uganda

Chimpanzees Take Turns in Fast-Paced Conversations, Just Like Humans Do

A new study finds the average chimpanzee response time in gestured conversations is 120 milliseconds, which isn’t that far from the human average of 200 milliseconds

The origins of the word "OK" have long been a subject of scholarly debate.

How One Man Discovered the Obscure Origins of the Word 'OK'

From Civil War biscuits to a Haitian port town, theories about the word's beginnings abounded

Elephants at Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, on May 3, 2024. Elephants use low, rumbling vocalizations to call to others and while caring for their young.

African Elephants May Call Each Other by Name

In a new study, a computer model was able to identify the recipient of an elephant's call more than a quarter of the time, which scientists say is significantly greater than chance

Measuring more than five and a half feet long and three inches thick, the fragment represents almost an entire wall of the sarcophagus.

Ramses II's Long-Lost Sarcophagus Has Finally Been Identified

An Egyptologist recently concluded that a fragment of an overlooked granite coffin bears the great pharaoh's name

Latyr Sy, a Senegalese percussionist and singer, was one of 75 researchers who played music for the study.

Why Do Humans Sing? Traditional Music in 55 Languages Reveals Patterns and Telling Similarities

In a global study, scientists recorded themselves singing and playing music from their own cultures to examine the evolution of song

The stone has inscriptions on three sides.

Geography Teacher in England Finds Stone With 1,600-Year-Old Inscriptions in His Garden

The rock is covered in ogham, an alphabet made up of parallel lines used for writing in the Irish language

Elephants use different greetings depending on whether the other animal is looking at them.

How Do Elephants Say Hello? Reunions Lead to Ear Flapping, Rumbling and Trunk Swinging in Greeting

New research explores how African savannah elephants use vocalizations, gestures and secretions when they meet up with companions

Sperm whales communicate by making clicks.

Scientists Discover a 'Phonetic Alphabet' Used by Sperm Whales, Moving One Step Closer to Decoding Their Chatter

Researchers used artificial intelligence to spot patterns in recordings of the marine mammals' vocalizations, uncovering the "building blocks of whale language"

In Scrabble Together, players work as a team to solve challenges.

Scrabble Introduces a Less Competitive Version of the Classic Word Game

Scrabble Together, now available in Europe, is the first major update to the game in more than 75 years

Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, the real Baron Münchhausen, was a retired German officer who fought with a Russian regiment in two campaigns against the Ottoman Empire.

The 18th-Century Baron Who Lent His Name to Munchausen Syndrome

The medical condition is named after a fictional storyteller who in turn was based on a real-life German nobleman known for telling tall tales

The Crosby-Schøyen Codex is part of the Schøyen collection, one of the largest private manuscript collections in the world.

One of the World's Oldest Surviving Books Is for Sale

The rare early Christian text was written in a monastery in Egypt between 250 and 350 C.E.

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