Month: February 2021

In 1700 BCE, the city of Hattusa was burned to the ground by invaders who then officially cursed the city to prevent it from being resettled. Soon after, the Hittites made Hattusa their capital. Today, the impressive remains of the ancient Turkish city include huge fortifications, gates, and temples—below which archaeologists have found even earlier levels. In recent years, Turkey used what tactic to pressure Germany into returning an ancient sphinx removed from Hattusa nearly a century ago? Discuss

Thanks to evolution, humans have a number of anatomical structures that today have little or no use. Along with vestigial features such as wisdom teeth and the tail bone—which are thought to hearken back to a time when our ancestors consumed lots of raw plants and balanced with their tails—there are also vestigial reflexes. One example is goose bumps, which would raise our fur, if we still had it, and make us seem more menacing. What purpose might the appendix, long considered vestigial, serve? Discuss

At its peak in 2010, World of Warcraft boasted 12 million players, making it by far the world’s most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Set in the fictional world of Azeroth—a universe so detailed and sprawling that one can get lost—the game allows players to interact within the framework of an intricate social class system. What devastating in-game incident so closely resembled a real disease outbreak that it attracted the attention of research scientists? Discuss