if you want to learn more

check out "All the News That's Fit to Print Out," Jonathan Dee's interesting New York Times Magazine article (1 July 2007) about the brains behind Wikipedia and their monastic devotion to their work. Elsewhere in the NYTM (19 August 2007), Mark Lilla, a professor of the humanities at Columbia University, takes on "The Politics of God," arguing that the widespread failure in the West to come to grips with religious fundamentalism is due to our having lost touch with the political theology roots of our own culture.

A number of websites are dedicated to Çatal Höyük, one of the earliest Neolithic cities, discovered in the 1950s. Here and here are links to a couple of the more fun ones. You may also be interested in "Dance of the Cranes: Crane Symbolism at Çatalhöyük and Beyond," Antiquity 77 (2003): 445-455, a prize-winning article co-authored by Cornell's Nerissa Russell (Anthropology) and Kevin J. McGowan (Ornithology Lab).

You can review the long and complicated history of Pharaonic Egypt here.

Sometimes you don't need ultra-filtering molecules to make archaeological discoveries -- just an inept gardener. Such lucky ineptitude recently unearthed a clue to solving one of the mysteries of Stonehenge, Britain's most famous prehistoric site. The builders of Stonehenge, like the ancient Greeks, apparently appreciated that a circle is the perfect form.

Water is good for lots of things. Even building pyramids. Discover more in these dorky humours videos (once the 1st one ends, others will continue to explore the same topic from different angles, so stay tuned).

Finally, you may gain a new appreciation of Babylonian and Greek mathematics, geometry and astronomy by reading of the remarkable adventures of the quadratic equation through the ages.