During the Axial Age, in the mid-first millennium BCE, some of humanity’s most influential teachers lived, mental horizons in the West, the Middle East, India,
Some historians of thought have called it humanity’s most influential period. The philosopher Carl Jaspers called the time between 800 BCE and 300 BCE the
Sumerians created a system of writing that was robust enough for literature more than 5,000 years ago. It was initially used to record inventories and
A recent article here began to explore ways that ideas of truth can vary in different cultures. A common theme I’ve found has been constancy.
The first kings in Thailand’s new Chakri Dynasty grounded Bangkok in Thai traditions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries by erecting monuments in
Thais needed to rebuild their world after Burmese armies traumatized them by sacking Ayutthaya, the capital of their largest kingdom, in 1767. The first king
The archaeologist Paul MacKendrick wrote a book about ancient Italy called The Mute Stones Speak. But for First Americans in California, stones aren’t mute; they
Wat Pho is the second of the three monuments that the first Chakri kings established in Bangkok’s center to reaffirm traditional Thai ways of perceiving
The horrors of the sack of Ayutthaya in 1767 made old Thai traditions seem like a lost haven. The siege dragged on for more than