Advances in painting in early modern Europe were the product not just of artistic innovation but of changes in mining and manufacturing technology.

Well-researched stories from Smithsonian Magazine, Slate, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Our understanding of the Neolithic city of Çatalhöyük continues to evolve as archaeologists challenge inherited biases in the face of new material evidence.

A century after the publication of the first Surrealist manifesto, the role played by film in the movement is still unfolding.

A psychoanalyst and physician, Reich fled the Nazis only to be detained by the US as an “enemy alien” during World War II. And then came the sexual revolution.

Descendants of those trafficked from Southeast Asia to South Africa by the Dutch, Cape Malay Muslims use surviving kietaabs to connect to their heritage.

Edmonia Lewis, a sculptor of African and Native American descent, gave Cleopatra “white” European features in her 1876 representation of the Egyptian ruler.

The intersection of intimate partner violence and firearms is extremely dangerous for American women.

The mythic stories of the Spanish conquest of Mexico seem to have been largely taken from earlier tales of the Muslim conquest of southern Spain.

These are the genes responsible.