A 1748 Diagram of a CHamoru Flying Proa

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Today’s stories run east from central Mexico to the Iranian desert, and backwards in time as they go: 1494, then AD 310, then 2300 BC.

 

📜 TONALÁMATL DE AUBIN — TLAXCALA, MEXICO A tonalámatl is a book of days: a priest’s almanac for the tonalpohualli, the 260-day divinatory calendar, used to read the fate attached to the day a person was born. This one is painted on amate bark paper coated with chimaltizatl, 18 sheets surviving of an original 20.

 

Its authenticity has been genuinely disputed. It was suggested to be a colonial-era copy, or even a forgery modelled on the Codex Borbonicus. Radiocarbon dating by Mexico’s National Library of Anthropology and History with the University of Colorado Boulder now places manufacture after 1450, most likely around 1494, ±30–40 years, with the raw amate harvested around 1424. It is pre-Conquest.

 

Announced by BNAH head Baltazar Brito Guadarrama and published in Tonalámatl de Aubin. Nuevos estudios sobre un códice adivinatorio, presented 29 August at FILUNI — sixteen specialists across physics, chemistry, biology, archaeology and history.

 

The manuscript’s own history is remarkable. Confiscated from the Boturini collection in the 1740s, sold to Alexis Aubin in 1841 for 2,000 francs, donated to the National Library of France in 1898, and returned to Mexico in 1982.

 

🛁 ŠARKAMEN — EASTERN SERBIA Serbia’s Institute of Archaeology and the Museum of Krajina, co-directed by Dr Marija Jović and Gordan Janjić, have excavated a bath complex in the lowest level of the southwest tower of a fortified palace at Vrelo-Šarkamen.

 

The palace belonged to Maximinus Daia, Roman emperor 310–313 and one of the four rulers of Diocletian’s Tetrarchy. He was born of peasant stock in Illyricum — this same region — and, like Diocletian at Split and Galerius at nearby Gamzigrad, built his palace in his homeland.

 

The bath contains three pools, a steam room, a furnace, a remarkably preserved hypocaust, and the mounting for the copper vessel that heated the water. The chamber had a domed ceiling pierced by six windows.

 

What makes it unusual is the plan. Roman baths are linear — rooms in a sequence. This one is circular, because it had to fit inside a defensive tower. The excavators state it has no known architectural parallel anywhere in the Roman Empire.

 

The same site produced an imperial mausoleum with an exceptional set of gold jewellery thirty years ago.

 

🎲 SHAHR-E SUKHTEH — SISTAN-BALUCHESTAN, IRAN A 273-hectare UNESCO-listed city on the Iranian-Afghan border, occupied from the late 4th millennium BC. The 21st excavation season under Rouhollah Shirazi has produced a previously unknown type of board game, an engraved bone comb, exceptionally preserved organics including eggshell, textiles and leather, and burial practices not previously documented at the site.

 

The game matters because this city already produced the oldest complete board game ever found — from grave 731, with four dice and 27 pieces, dated 2600–2400 BC. A second, different game suggests they were not playing one game but several.

 

The name is worth explaining. Shahr-e Sukhteh is modern Persian for “Burnt City” — a name archaeologists gave it because the site burned at least three times. Nobody knows what its own inhabitants called it. It belongs to the Helmand culture, sharing material culture with Mundigak in Afghanistan, and the only writing recovered there is Elamite — someone else’s script. It sat on the lapis lazuli route carrying stone from Badakhshan to Mesopotamia, and was abandoned around 2300 BC when the water shifted.

 

This city also produced the world’s oldest known artificial eye, made of bitumen and gold.

 

Which adventure would you like to hear more about? The book that survived the burning, the bath in the tower, or the city with no name. Or something else entirely. Tell me below.

 

The next expedition drops in 24 hours.

 

 

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https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8TvY8FOhakE?feature=share

Inside the Barabar caves, sound gets amplified.

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The Pyramids of Alabama

 

Moundville was one of the largest and most important Native American centers in the ancient Southeast. Located in present day Alabama, this remarkable site was once home to a thriving Mississippian society built around enormous earthen pyramids, a massive central plaza, and a complex social and religious system. In this video, Ed Barnhart explores the history of Moundville, from its beginnings as a small Woodland period village to its transformation into a major Mississippian center. He looks at the enormous pyramid mounds, the homes and palisade that surrounded the city, and the communities that grew around it. Archaeological discoveries at Moundville have also revealed a great deal about the people who lived there, including evidence of social hierarchy, burial practices, trade, and the lives of the elite and ruling class. But Moundville's story also has a mystery. After reaching its peak, the population began to decline, and the city was eventually abandoned for reasons that are still not fully understood. Ed also explores the modern rediscovery of Moundville, the early excavations that damaged much of the site, and the archaeological work that helped reveal the story hidden beneath its mounds. Today, Moundville remains one of the most important archaeological sites in the Southeast, offering a remarkable glimpse into the civilizations that flourished in ancient North America.

 

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Paris drops Mercator projection: France now looks smaller on world maps

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright MAE

 

By Alexander Kazakevich

 

Published on 05/09/2026 - 17:16 GMT+2•Updated 21:12

 

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Paris drops Mercator projection: France now looks smaller on world maps

 

 

 

 

 

 

France is redrawing its world map: deeming the Mercator projection misleading, the foreign ministry will drop it in favour of a map that better reflects actual continental sizes, especially Africa.

A shrunken Africa, a Greenland and a northern Russia that seem to stretch into infinity: that is about to disappear from the maps used by French diplomacy.

Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced on Friday that his department is abandoning the so-called Mercator projection, which artificially enlarges polar regions and visually downplays the size of equatorial areas. France will now use instead the Eckert IV projection, which reflects the true proportions of the continents more accurately.

As a result, France will appear smaller on the map compared with countries close to the equator, just like the United States or Russia.

'A map is never entirely neutral'

In a speech at the Sorbonne university during the public event "La Fabrique de la diplomatie" or "The making of diplomacy", the French minister said that "the time has come" to "correct" how the world is perceived through maps inherited from 16th-century Western navigators.

 

 

In a speech delivered at the Sorbonne for the public event "La Fabrique de la diplomatie", the French minister said that "the time has come" to "correct" how the world is perceived through maps inherited from 16th-century Western navigators.

"A map is never entirely neutral. Take the Mercator projection, the one every one of us has known since childhood. The areas we see on it do not correspond to actual areas: (...) The United States, Russia, China take on a disproportionate visual importance compared with Africa, Latin America or South-East Asia," the French foreign minister said.

Jean-Noël Barrot also cited the example of Greenland, which is roughly the same size as the Democratic Republic of Congo or Algeria, even though it "seems almost as vast" as the entire African continent.

 

"Changing the map obviously does not change the world. But correcting a representation that distorts it is already an act of truth," he stressed.

The ministry began reducing its use of the Mercator projection in 2021

Meanwhile, French diplomatic maps will not change overnight but the process is already underway, Euronews has learned from a diplomatic source. The ministry began reducing its use of the Mercator projection in 2021, "with the aim of providing a more accurate geographical representation of the world."

The projection has been "gradually phased out" across all public diplomacy websites, the source said.

"The advantages and biases associated with each type of representation are presented at various events attended by the ministry's cartographers," the Quai d'Orsay added, citing the European Heritage Days and the International Geography Festival in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges.

"France will continue this work, prioritising map projections suited to different purposes and providing a more accurate reflection of geographical realities in its diplomatic communications."

French diplomats nevertheless acknowledge that the Mercator projection remains relevant "in a limited number of cases", including regional or local uses around the equatorial zone, as well as for navigation charts.

At the UN, a cartographic victory for Africa

The announcement in Paris comes as, in New York, the world map is also being redrawn. A few hours later, the United Nations General Assembly officially abandoned the Mercator projection in favour of a projection based on the Equal Earth model, created in 2018 and closer to the real proportions of the continents.

The non-binding resolution, entitled "Correcting the map"and sponsored by Togo, was backed by 164 member states. The African Union had already adopted Equal Earth in March, and the text now encourages countries to do the same.

Only the United States voted against, denouncing what it called a "radical ideological project", notably because of a passage in the resolution stating that "correcting cartographic distortions relating to the size of continents constitutes an act of cognitive justice and memorial reparation".

Six countries – Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine – abstained.

The UN stresses that the resolution does not ban the Mercator projection, "nor does it impose a single map". The resolution "encourages governments, educational institutions, international organisations and technology companies to make use of the Equal Earth projection, or of other so-called 'equal-area' maps that preserve the true proportions of surface areas.

France has therefore joined this movement, but has opted to adopt the Eckert IV projection, created in 1906. It is similar to the Equal Earth projection recommended by the UN, though not identical. Both represent the size of the continents much more faithfully than the Mercator projection, but they differ slightly in the shapes they give to the landmasses.

As the UN points out, Mercator mapping will not disappear altogether. Digital platforms such as Google Maps also currently use a version of this projection.

In French schools, most world maps are still in Mercator. "You can find Eckert or Peters* in some textbooks, but that is very rare," says Grégory, a senior history and geography teacher in Rennes, speaking to Euronews.

It remains to be seen whether the maps used in schools will also follow the shift launched by the foreign ministry.

 

*another equal-area projection, which provides a better representation of the continents' true surface area – Euronews.

 

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Paris drops Mercator projection: France now looks smaller on world maps | Euronews