Category: Society

  • Our ancestors hunted and gathered far longer than assumed

    Our ancestors hunted and gathered far longer than assumed

    It was long thought that the hunter-gathering lifestyle disappeared when farming was introduced, around 5000 BC. Since farming is a much more effective way of producing food, either by growing plants or livestock, the hunter-gathering lifestyle was obsolete. Moreover, no archaeological evidence was found that hunter-gathering survived. But a new study, focused on archaeological findings…

  • The political history of the cigarette

    The political history of the cigarette

    It’s hard to imagine cigarretes were once promoted by doctors (watch video below). We now know how unhealthy they are, and no political party would use tobacco smoking for propagand purposes. That wasnt the case in the 19th and early 20 century, in an age that cigarette smoking was a common and healthy habit. Researchers…

  • Tape recordings of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials online

    Tape recordings of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials online

    The tape recordings of the Frankfurter Auschwitz Trials can now be heard on the website of the Fritz Bauer institute. These audio  files contain the recordings of the trial, held on December 20th, 1963, against 22 former SS officers and employees of the infamous Auschwitz extermination camp. It was the second process against Nazis who…

  • Adolf Hitler ‘not so bad’

    Adolf Hitler ‘not so bad’

    That’s what nearly half of the population of Austria thinks nowadays. Hitler, Austrian by birth, took power in his home country on the 12th march in 1938. The incorporation of Austria into the German Reich is a much debated issue in Austrian history: was ‘the Anschluss’ a voluntary conjoinment, or was Austria violently annexed? In…