Videos

Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic evolved a unique way to write vowels... with consonants! See how in this episode of Thoth's Pill: an Animated History of Writing. You're back in the ancient Middle East, where seemingly everyone's...

Not a syllabary. Not quite an alphabet. Totally Indian. Watch Ashoka discuss his land's exotic script and tell you his plans for this unique alphasyllabary. This episode traces the invention of the Indic alphasyllabary, the parent of so...

The Korean alphabet is better than yours. Meet the king who invented it and watch him work his linguistic magic in this chapter in the history of writing. You wake up in another palace. This time you're in Korea. The first face to greet...

My animation takes you through the birth and evolution of writing. Watch the story of the world's scripts unfold, from the early cave days to modern writing systems. But only if you choose to take Thoth's Pill... This animated documentary...

Classical Latin went extinct, yet we still know how to pronounce it. Proof! Take a trip with me back to Catholic school, then back even further to old Rome. We'll see what Latin pronunciation did - and did NOT - sound like in the mouths...

My favorite example of how odd Cuneiform became as it was passed from civilization to civilization. Thanks, rampant Sumerianization! Cuneiform languages took Sumerian very seriously, even after it was long dead. That’s how Akkadian and...

In this lecture presented at The Explorers Club in New York, BAS Director of Educational Programs Sarah Yeomans examines a recently excavated, as-yet unpublished archaeological site that has substantially contributed to our understanding...

Courtney Ann Roby, PhD, from the Dept. of Classics at Cornell University presents, "Gladiatorial Medicine in the Roman Empire." In this lecture, Dr. Roby examines the career of Galen of Pergamum, a celebrity physician of Rome whose patients...

This video is a brief description and overview of ancient Roman medicine.

Did one original language shatter into many? The Tower of Babel, the evolution of languages and the quest for Proto-World. The Tower of Babel is one of humankind's early attempts to explain the variety of languages spoken across the earth...