The ecliptic is so named because the ancients noted that eclipses only occurred when the Moon crossed it.
Dr Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum and an authority on ancient games, notes that archaeologists have found evidence that board games have existed since 7,000BC, during the Neolithic period.
There is now "evidence of mixture with even more ancient lineages," notes paleoanthropologist Milford Wolpoff of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who has long championed the idea of such mixture throughout human evolution.
A few ancient interpreters noted the irony built into Noah's introduction in the Biblical account: "Noah was a righteous, pure man in his generation".
Four Juilliard musicians — the violinists Beth Wenstrom and Liv Heym, the cellist Beiliang Zhu, and the harpsichordist Aya Hamada — played Purcell's Sonata VI in Four Parts, a brilliant ground-bass piece drawing on an ancient four-note descending motif of lament.
Over the summer, the classicist Mary Beard defended a cartoon that featured a black Roman soldier in ancient Britain, noting, on Twitter, that "there's plenty of firm evidence for ethnic diversity in Roman Britain".
The Indian syllables ṣa, ṛi, ga, ma, pa, dha, ni are similar, as are the Balinese ding, dong, deng, dung, dang; the ancient five-note Chinese scale kung, shang, chiao, chih, yü; and the Korean tŏng, tung, tang, tong, ting; and rŏ, ru, ra, ro, ri (the two sets being used for different instruments).
Tolkien's central hero is an Everyman – a humble hobbit, of an ancient people noted for loving "peace and quiet and good tilled earth".
When turning to treatment, the ancient author noted, "(There) is none".
Gerðr responds with a welcome to Skírnir and tells him to take a crystal cup containing ancient mead, noting that she thought she would never love one of the Vanir.
