Read it.

Liberalism forces the immense existential burden of self-invention, a power disclosed at best to the mere handful of Elon Musks in this world, onto the great mass of humanity. To the self-regarding few, Locke’s understanding of the human person as an autonomous individual, a free agent whose identity is chosen rather than inherited, will taste like liberation. To the humble majority, it will be felt as a crippling weight—akin to the kind of choice-oversaturation we are liable to feel at an obscenely varied all-you-can-eat buffet. Except that in this case, the saturation is writ large, applying not only to food but to life’s most fundamental questions.

Such considerations have prompted a notorious right-wing internet meme: “Liberalism but exclusively for 130+ IQ Anglos.” A society that consisted solely of Lockes and Musks, the idea runs, would unquestionably benefit from a liberal ethos in which all were free to think, act, and innovate for themselves, each man doing so in accordance with a self-fashioned conception of the good life. But since no such society has ever existed, the next best option is to make do with the less impressive species we have before us: a human race that naturally organises itself into tribal collectives and craves the security of order and tradition. If only the wary 99% were cut from the same cloth as their intrepid superiors in the 1%, the conservative brakes on liberalism might be relaxed without danger. In the event, prudence dictates that they cannot be.

The rarer move is to doubt whether this celebrated 1% in fact exists. To be sure, intelligence and other forms of natural hierarchy are very real. But, albeit to varying degrees, are we not all prone to tribalism? Is there any man who does not stand in need of the innumerable funds of social knowledge greater than himself?

The Foundry.

I’ll give you the key:

It starts with a “D”.

Read it.

For millionaires and billionaires, it sure seems like money can buy happiness.

New research shows that ultra-wealthy individuals are more content than those earning six-figure salaries, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. That’s according to Matthew Killingsworth, a senior fellow at the Wharton School who studies the causes of human happiness. Killingsworth worked on a similar study last year, and he has now updated his findings to include the super-rich.

“The results suggest that the positive association between money and well-being continues far up the economic ladder, and that the magnitude of the differences can be substantial,” Killingsworth writes in his abstract.

Money means freedom, and if freedom doesn’t bring you happiness, you’re a lost cause.

I can never tell them apart.

The Atlantic, a Voice of the Crust.

Anthony Bourdain was beloved for his openness to new experiences, for his willingness to eat anything—brains; shark; cobra heart, still beating—with anyone. But he did reserve one bias: The man hated vegetarians. “Serious cooks regard these members of the dining public—and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans—as enemies of everything that’s good and decent in the human spirit,” he wrote in The New Yorker in 1999. “To live life without veal or chicken stock, fish cheeks, sausages, cheese, or organ meats is treasonous.”

For which a good case could be made–humans evolved to be omnivores, and vegetarianism will sooner or later subtract you from the gene pool.

Read it.

The “Rulers of the Ancient World” is a metrology/design/production project, based around producing a range of period correct rulers from various ancient empires.

Stemming from a personal fascination with the creation and development of systems of measurement, this project seeks to highlight the artfulness of handmade tools and the capability of handwork and CNC milling to complement one another and create a unique, novel product.

The original series of four rulers (Egyptian Span & Cubit, Roman Cubitus and Japanese Kanejaku) are each locally sourced Hard Maple, hand planed, French polished and waxed, and etched by CNC with a 0.1 mm engraving bit, which is then inked with India Ink, applied by hand. The Limited Edition ruler set, an Egyptian Span, Roman Cubitus and Japanese Shaku, were made with local and historically accurate woods for their respective cultures, and created by similar means. The French “Roubo” Fathom was made with flamed maple, and similarly polished and finished, though etched by hand. Lastly, like the Limited Edition ruler set, the French “Roubo Pied du Roi” ruler is made of European Sycamore, a geographically correct and culturally relevant wood.

The goals of this project are far-reaching- to illuminate the use of these ancient measurement systems, to enable a physical, tactile engagement with a piece of history, and highlight the possibility of beauty and novelty in toolmaking in the presence of traditional techniques and CNC machinery.

The Spot, New Haven, Connecticut. Finest kind.

Read it.

Among both the right and the left and the right, there is a common (semi-) conspiratorial narrative. As lamented in works such as Joel Kotkin’s The Coming of Neo Feudalism, Yanis Varoufakis’s Techno Feudalism, and Shoshanna Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, the world is entering into a period in which all artificial intelligence will manage a mass of deracinated, heavily medicated slaves whose entire lives will be tracked and recorded. Such an idea, once the work of science fiction, now appears to be an increasing reality. At the same time, opponents of this view argue that contemporary bureaucracy is so inefficient and incompetent, and technology seems to increasingly function worse and worse. Artificial Intelligence, moreover, is simultaneously near magically powerful as well as incompetent, and, quite frankly, dumb.

However, the growth of the state, which, oddly, used to be critiqued but is now celebrated by the Left, has been increasing for some time. Moreover, the archiving of information, which, again, was once documented and critiqued by left-wing figures such as Michel Foucault, Alain Badiou, and Giorgio Agamden, is something that has been a perennial part of human government, long before AI, but especially began to increase in the Early Modern era. In his recent work, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World, University of Massachusetts historian Asheesh Kapur Siddique presents a chronicle of the formation of the early British Empire, paying special attention to how the British utilized archival bureaucracy to manage populations.

Read it.

Federal prosecutors revealed that Nicholas Roske, the California man who pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022, had planned to kill up to three Supreme Court justices to “single-handedly alter the constitutional order” over Roe v. Wade. The motive appears political and leftist in nature, and other court documents obtained by The Daily Wire revealed that the would-be assassin identifies as transgender.

ALSO: We’re All Shocked — Shocked! — to Learn That the Democrat Who Tried to Murder Brett Kavanaugh Is a Psychotic Tranny (The Other McCain)

Read it.

Today, we are overwhelmed—and even desensitized—by illogical and nauseating rhetoric about equality at all costs, which fuels a practice whereby criminals are protected while law-abiding citizens are crushed. Simple common sense should suffice to see that the modern penal system in the West is profoundly unjust. It is not justice to sentence someone to decades in prison, because it means forcing citizens—including the victims’ own families—to pay for the criminal’s upkeep with public funds collected through taxation.

The West must relearn that the role of the judiciary is not to redeem the wicked, but to deliver justice to the victims and restore the order disrupted by crime. The purpose of punishment is expiation proportionate to guilt.

When guilt is extreme and undeniable—as in the gratuitous and brutal murder in Charlotte—no form of expiation is adequate except capital punishment. In this, Donald Trump is right. Those who reject this principle are not merciful; they are simply unjust, because they deny victims and their loved ones the recognition of their suffering and deprive society of a necessary barrier against the advance of barbarism.

Read it.

In the first major state elections since the new government, North Rhine-Westphalia went to the polls, with the Christian Democrats (CDU) coming out on top while the Social Democrats (SPD) crashed in support. Meanwhile, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now the third-strongest party in the state, more than tripling its support from the last elections.

Read it.

Scientists used techniques from the field of gravitational wave astronomy to argue that the Antikythera mechanism contained a lunar calendar.

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Quillette.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars (“IAGS”) recently announced that 86 percent of their members had concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. This was extremely misleading. First of all, only around 28 percent of their members voted on the resolution and a mere twenty percent of total members approved it. And this was not the only problem with the resolution. It also misrepresented the crime of genocide.

Genocide is an act undertaken with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, as such. If you cannot establish a specific intent to commit this crime (such an intent is known in legal parlance as dolus specialis), you cannot establish genocide.

The IAGS resolution did not even attempt to establish such an intent, relying instead on statements made by other entities and by extrapolating from what the organisation B’Tselem has described as a “broader analytical framework.” However, legally, genocide requires a fully conclusive finding, meaning that no other explanation exists for the event or events in question other than the intent to commit the crime of genocide. This does not apply here, as there are alternative explanations for the casualties in Gaza that the IAGS fails to recognise.

“It’s always better with a cat on your lap.” — Scott Adams, September 13 2025

Read it.

Researchers from a large health care system in Michigan found that vaccinated children were more likely to develop a chronic health condition, but never published the findings, according to a copy of the study obtained by The Epoch Times.

Dr. Marcus Zervos, an infectious disease specialist at the Henry Ford Health, and colleagues studied 18,468 children born between 2000 and 2016 who were enrolled in the health system’s insurance plan, drawing data from medical, clinical, and payer records and supplementing with information from Michigan’s immunization registry.

After 10 years, 57 percent of the vaccinated children had a chronic health condition such as asthma, compared to just 17 percent of the unvaccinated children.

“This study found that exposure to vaccination was independently associated with an overall 2.5-fold increase in the likelihood of developing a chronic health condition, when compared to children unexposed to vaccination,” the authors wrote. “This association was primarily driven by asthma, atopic disease, eczema, autoimmune disease and neurodevelopmental disorders. This suggests that in certain children, exposure to vaccination may increase the likelihood of developing a chronic health condition, particularly for one of these conditions.”

Newsbusters.

The federal government owns about a third of America.

Since we’re on a path to bankruptcy, it would be smart to sell some unused property.

President Donald Trump’s Interior Secretary says it may be worth as much as $200 trillion. Selling just a fraction of it would reduce our enormous debt.

Not just that — since government doesn’t manage things well, selling or leasing some would leave it in better condition.

Federal bureaucrats have been slow to do controlled burns and remove deadwood that becomes fuel for fires.

“Fires on federal lands accounted for more than half of the acres burned,” says the Congressional Budget Office.

But whenever a politician suggests selling any land, environmental activists freak out.

Read it.

New refrigerators, ovens and dishwashers come with all sorts of novel features — you can see your vacation photos on a screen on your fridge door, remotely monitor food temperature or connect your dishwasher to the internet. They’re also less expensive and more efficient than in decades past.

But many of the latest models of kitchen appliances have shorter life spans than those of yesteryear. Thanks to how complex they are, they require maintenance sooner, and the cost of repair often rivals the price tag of a new appliance altogether. Plus, it turns out a lot of people simply aren’t using most of the newfangled features.

Probably nobody knows the particular limitations of new appliances better than the people tasked with repairing them.

“We used to be able to tell people a dishwasher could last 15 years. And now you’re lucky to get five to seven out of a dishwasher,” says David Costanzo, owner of Appliance King of America in Boynton Beach, Fla.

Read it.

Do androids dream of executing routines?

We are stuck in a world of routines: Wake up, answer email, go to a meeting, then another meeting, check off an item from a todo list, and repeat. The “hustle culture” of the internet tell us to add even more to the routine: Grind more hours, wake up at 5am and do yoga, remember to meditate, work out an hour a day, and so on. There’s endless tips on what successful CEOs do with their mornings, making us feel bad for not executing core loops with machine-like efficiency.

You’ll get none of these ideas here. This is the anti-routine essay, in which I refute the paradigm of fitter, happier, more productive routines as the secret to success. Our careers are defined by the highest moments of its biggest upside swings. The question is how to create the most opportunities at achieving that, not how to execute perfect little habits. That is: Reject the core loop, the checklists, and all the email. Embrace serendipity!

The Hill, a Voice of the Crust.

Is there anything more dangerous to America than political extremism? The answer is yes — and that would be extremism disguised as moderation.

Every commonsense Democrat knows that socialism and antisemitism have no place in the party — not if they want it to win, let alone serve the public interest. Why, then, are some moderates focused less on rejecting these ideas than on finding ways to camouflage them?

I am truly astonished that The Hill allowed this to be published.

Watch it.

Amy Dangerfield is a commentator well worth following.

Australia was a great disappointment during the Pandemic Panic. They always seemed like Americans under the skin, but COVID revealed in them a totalitarian streak that was very disturbing. But as with the UK, the worm appears to have turned.

Read it.

Chimpanzees, along with bonobos, are humans’ closest living relatives. In fact, you may have heard that humans and chimps share 98.8% of their DNA.

But is this actually true? And what does “similar DNA” actually mean?

The truth is that the frequently cited 98.8% similarity between chimp (Pan troglodytes) and human (Homo sapiens) DNA overlooks key differences in the species’ genomes, experts told Live Science.

Read it.

“They give you a chance to leave. If you don’t leave, they give you another chance. If you don’t leave again, they just run your name.”

He said if the information shows there is an outstanding warrant, handcuffs come out.

Matthew, who did not want to share his last name, said police have been more visible in a neighborhood that has struggled with crime, homelessness, and drug use for a long time.

The display of force by law enforcement is anything but accidental.

Read it.

Live by the study, die by the study.

The New Neo.

Just today I discovered this essay written in December of 2023 by Benjamin Kerstein. It’s entitled “The rise of barbaric progressivism,” and subtitled “Antisemitism, racial hierarchy, violence, and an alliance with radical Islam have seized the commanding heights of the movement.” The phenomenon has only become clearer and more intense since then, but it was already apparent. What sounds as though it might be an oxymoron – “progressivism” allied with “barbarism” – is nothing of the sort. Instead, it is perhaps inevitable, a built-in feature of the former.

No, I have no idea what the slice of blueberry pie is doing there.

Dom Corriveau.

Do you want to sign up for text alerts? No, I want to be left alone.

Do you want to get a phone call reminder before your appointment? No, I want to be left alone.

Do you need help with self-checkout? No, I want to be left alone.

Do you want to sign up for our rewards program? No, I want to be left alone.

Do you want to provide your email address to read the rest of the article? No, I want to be left alone.

Do you want to turn on notifications? No, I want to be left alone.

Do you want to see what I’m selling door-to-door? No, I want to be left alone.

Do you want to use our A.I. text prediction? No, I want to be left alone.

Do you want to go to our seminar? No, I want to be left alone.

Do you want to set up a meeting with one of our sales ninjas? No, I want to be left alone.

Do you want to scan a QR code? No, I want to be left alone.

Do you agree to our terms? No, I want to be left alone.

Read it.

A new report covered by the BBC projects Scotland’s wild boar population will rise by over 60% in fifty years, from a precise 1,472 to about 2,400. This startlingly specific number—1,472—raises an obvious question: how can anyone count these elusive, nocturnal animals so exactly?

The answer is that it’s not a direct headcount. The figure is a scientific estimate derived from a population model. Researchers combine data from field surveys—tracking signs like rooting damage, droppings, and tracks—with footage from camera traps and information from organised culls. This data helps scientists build a robust statistical picture of the population, with the precise number representing the most likely estimate within a probable range.

This modelling is essential because wild boar are famously secretive, spending their days hidden in dense forestry. Without these methods, gauging their numbers would be pure guesswork.

The report’s projection also hints at a deeper story. Given that a sow can produce two litters of up to ten piglets annually, a rise of only 1,000 animals over 50 years seems surprisingly low. This modest increase suggests that significant population control is already a key factor in the forecast. The model anticipates that current management efforts will continue to temper the boar’s explosive reproductive potential.

This is where organisations like the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) play a vital role. They argue that supported, active management is crucial to keeping populations stable and mitigating damage to agriculture and the landscape. They promote the humane culling of boar and offer Wild Boar Certificate courses to train hunters in safe, ethical, and effective practices, ensuring culling is conducted responsibly.

Furthermore, BASC advocates for greater promotion of wild boar meat as a nutritious, sustainable byproduct of this necessary management, creating a incentive for keeping numbers in check.

The core takeaway is that the number 1,472 is less about a perfect count and more about establishing a baseline for a necessary conversation. The real focus is on ensuring structured, humane management continues to balance the presence of this iconic species with the needs of the Scottish countryside.

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In a recently published essay, famed British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins notes the parallel between today’s pseudoscience regarding gender, and 1940s-era Soviet pseudoscience regarding genetics. In our own era, activists demand that we reject scientific principles of biological sex insofar as they prevent men from announcing themselves as women. In the USSR, similarly, Joseph Stalin’s scientists were instructed to reject principles of biological inheritance that contradicted the communist dream of remaking the natural kingdom (humans included) according to Marxist-Leninist dogma.

The scale of the damage wrought by these two movements is vastly different, of course. (Stalin’s junk science—championed by a crackpot autodidact named Trofim Lysenko—resulted in disastrous agriculture policies and widespread famine that killed millions.) But the overall pattern of ideologically programmed delusion is the same: Where scientific reality and fantasy are in conflict, it is the science that must be sacrificed, not the fantasy.

In a contribution to a new collection of essays on the misuses of science, Dawkins details the fate of Soviet scientists who initially resisted Lysenko’s program. They were publicly denounced at an infamous 1948 session of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences, where Lysenko and others railed against “reactionary” (which is to say, ideologically non-compliant) theories of biology. In keeping with the strange Soviet practice of categorising dissident ideologies with lengthy hyphenations (the “Zinoviev-Kamenev deviationists,” etc.), the preferred communist slur for heretics in the field of genetics was “Mendelist-Morganist-Weissmanist” (a term referencing legendary scientists Gregor Mendel, Thomas Hunt Morgan, and August Weismann)—roughly analogous to “TERF” in the idiom of modern gender ideology.

Rory Sutherland:

One great thing about Donald Trump: He’s not a lawyer. He’s not an economist, and he’s not a lawyer. I know that sounds like fairly faint praise, but actually the extent to which the legalistic mind or the economic mind have dominated political decision-making and government policy is completely disproportionate. It’s created, as I said, you know, this kind of HR-ification of the Democratic party, where it’s all about codification and internal consistency. Now, this value of consistent theory, that’s kind of a middle-class educated shibboleth. You know, the idea that you absolutely have to be consistent. This is going back to the beginning of the conversation, you can’t be completely consistent because what is actually rational is very very context-dependent. Sometimes you should actually back down, sometimes you should be highly concilatory, sometimes you should get angry.

The Telegraph (UK).

The late Queen oversaw a change to the law of succession in 2013 that ensured the firstborn child of a monarch would be next in line to the throne regardless of gender.

However, a government source quoted on the subject in a new book has suggested that the monarch was lukewarm about making the change.

According to Power and the Palace, by Valentine Low, neither Queen Elizabeth nor her aides at Buckingham Palace showed any great eagerness when David Cameron, the then prime minister, set his sights on delivering a package of constitutional reform.

A lot of the damage done to British society has been done by nominally Conservative administrations, whom one would think would resist such changes; all to be Hip and Trendy.

The Spectator.

Here follows a non-exhaustive list of my genetic flaws. I am short-sighted, more so as I age. I have bunions, dodgy knees and even dodgier shoulders. I have asthma. My skin blisters easily. My hair started going grey when I was in my late teens. I have zero talent for foreign languages, running or music. I am prone to nightmares, as well as to depression and anxiety.

Relatively mild flaws, as they go. But still, these aren’t traits I’m eager to pass on. Our three-year-old already shows a tendency for nightmares that sometimes makes me wince with guilt. Not that it’s my fault, of course. We don’t get to choose which of our genes we pass on. Every conception is a roll of the dice.

But soon that will no longer be true. In fact, it’s already not quite true, at least for those who have the means and determination to load the dice. Emerging technology is about to present parents with a set of ethical questions that make the usual kinds of debates – breast milk or formula? Nanny or daycare? – seem trivial. We have always had the power (more or less) to control our children’s nurture. Before long – perhaps in just a few years – any parent who can afford to will have control over the minutest details of a child’s nature too.

The reason eugenics is trash-talked by the Usual Suspects is that they are an infernal intersection between those who believe that eugenics inevitably means “government mass murder of the alleged inferior” and those who believe that We Are All Equally Good In Every Respect If We Just Wish It So and are congenitally opposed to anything that suggests something different.

As we grow more and more knowledgeable about our genetic code, we will become more and more able to fix the things that we consider to be wrong, ranging from the obvious (like a tendency to come down with a debilitating condition) to the less obvious (want you kids to have blonde hair and blue eye? Not a problem!)

The crucial change set to turn our lives upside-down is called ‘preimplantation genetic testing for polygenic disorders’ (PGT-P), hereafter ‘polygenic screening’. Testing a foetus or embryo for some conditions is now a routine part of the modern pregnancy experience. Prenatal Down’s Syndrome tests, for instance, are so widespread that in some Scandinavian countries almost 100 per cent of women choose to abort a foetus diagnosed with the condition, or – if using IVF – not implant the affected embryo. The result is a visible change to these populations: there are simply no more people with Down’s to be seen on the streets of Iceland and Denmark.

I’m sure somewhere there are hand-wringers who think that’s a bad thing, even among those who do not flinch at aborting a fetus or an embryo.

New Atlas.

Plant-based microbeads made from everyday ingredients like green tea and seaweed have helped mice shed weight by trapping fats in the gut, reports a new study published in Cell Biomaterials. Researchers see these microbeads as a potential “structured, drug-free therapy” to treat obesity, with fewer side effects than the current medications.

Wake me up when these are available as a commercial product.

Daniel Klein & Zachary Yost.

All libertarians will agree that government exists in the United States. Thus, they will agree that governmental evil is afoot. They will also agree that that evil may be greater or lesser. Since it is fanciful to hope to eradicate governmental evil entirely, the conscience calls libertarians to mitigate governmental evil.

To do one’s part, one must formulate and assess rival evils. America has a two-party system, Democrat and Republican. That contest is not the only one; there are contests between rival evils that cut across the two parties and that divide either or both of the parties. But the choice between Democrats and Republicans remains highly salient. Given these choices, we contend that libertarians should usually favor Republicans over Democrats.

My problem with libertarians is the same as my problem with Marxists:

(1) They think that politics is downstream of economics; if you get the economics right, the politics will follow. This is horseshit. Politics is upstream of economics, as it is downstream of culture. Culture will determine your society’s politics, and politics will determine your society’s economics. Politics is about morality, and your culture’s morality will determine your attitudes toward property, profit, and taxation, not the other way around.

(2) They focus on an artificial person, who is neither a reflection of real people, nor (if it were) accounts for the whole of a population. Libertarianism is built on the assumption that everybody in the society is a rational adult, and can make rational adult choices. This is obviously absurd to anybody who spends any time out among people, much less reads the news. Marxism is built on the assumption that society consists of two mutually exclusive classes, bourgeois capitalists and proletarian workers, and the purported class struggle between them. This takes no account of the progress from manual worker to financially independent investor that millions have traveled since Marx started scribbling.

Both ideologies are a triumph of a-priori reasoning over actual experience. I have no time for either, or their proponents.

Read it.

How strong are the constraints against nuclear use? Experimental studies find that a majority or near majority of citizens in multiple major powers approve of their own governments’ nuclear strikes if they create military advantages or protect co-national soldiers. But what if the nuclear taboo only begins at the water’s edge when individuals evaluate the use of nuclear weapons by a foreign government? Many policymakers believe that the international reaction to nuclear use would be severe, especially among allies. Yet prior studies have not tested this assumption. An identity-based theory of support for nuclear weapons use proposes that this argument is incorrect. The public will display favoritism toward allied and partner countries because it views them as members of the in-group. Four survey experiments in the United States and India provide evidence for this theory. In contrast to many policymakers’ expectations, public approval of nuclear use is not significantly lower for allies or strategic partners than for one’s own government. As expected, however, approval is lower for out-groups, such as non-allied and non-partner countries. Absolute support for nuclear attacks is also high, even when it is foreign countries pushing the button. On balance, these findings are inconsistent with the existence of a nuclear taboo or strong non-use norm.

The New York Times, a Voice of the Crust.

On a wisp of land in the Indian Ocean, two hops by plane and one bumpy speedboat ride from the nearest continent, the sublime blue waves lapping at the bone-white sand are just about all that breaks the stillness of a hot, windless afternoon.

The very existence of low-slung tropical islands seems improbable, a glitch. A nearly seamless meeting of land and sea, peeking up like an illusion above the violent oceanic expanse, they are among the most marginal environments humans have ever called home.

And indeed, when the world began paying attention to global warming decades ago, these islands, which form atop coral reefs in clusters called atolls, were quickly identified as some of the first places climate change might ravage in their entirety. As the ice caps melted and the seas crept higher, these accidents of geologic history were bound to be corrected and the tiny islands returned to watery oblivion, probably in this century.

Then, not very long ago, researchers began sifting through aerial images and found something startling. They looked at a couple dozen islands first, then several hundred, and by now close to 1,000. They found that over the past few decades, the islands’ edges had wobbled this way and that, eroding here, building there. By and large, though, their area hadn’t shrunk. In some cases, it was the opposite: They grew. The seas rose, and the islands expanded with them.

Read it.

Scientists have finally uncovered direct genetic evidence of Yersinia pestis — the bacterium behind the Plague of Justinian — in a mass grave in Jerash, Jordan. This long-sought discovery resolves a centuries-old debate, confirming that the plague that devastated the Byzantine Empire truly was caused by the same pathogen behind later outbreaks like the Black Death.

This is the first recorded pandemic, the Plague of Justinian, which occurred roughtly 550-660 AD. It devastated the Eastern Roman Empire and paved the way for the subsequent Muslim conquests.