Humanities History

Lingnan University's Alumni Relations Team of Office of Institutional Advancement and Public Affairs (OIAPA) has organised its first-ever month-long themed café at the Jao Tsung-I Academy (JTIA) in Lai Chi Kok from 24 August till 23 September. With the aim of “Sharing Lingnan History with the community”, the “Lingnanian pop-up café” features unique characteristics of Lingnan's culture, heritage, and development milestones, along with “Red Grey Special Menu” and “Reading Corner” with historical publications. This initiative aims to enable the public to gain insights into the university’s storied history and remarkable achievements while fostering connections among alumni and Lingnanians, inviting everyone to savor the Lingnan legacy while enjoying the aroma of coffee.

In operation from 1863 to 2016, Bourne and Shepherd was one of the first commercial photography studios in India, known for architectural, landscape and topographical photographs, as well as portraits of Indian nobility, British officials and European travellers. While these images found traction as souvenirs, the studio’s photographs were also widely utilised in the scientific community for the topographical and sociological study of the Indian subcontinent.

These figurines from more than 4000 years ago, provide insights into the material culture of one of the oldest Bronze Age Civilizations, the Indus Valley Civilization.

Derived from the Gujarati word saras, meaning "beautiful", Sarasa cloth is believed to have been introduced to Japan as a trade textile by the Dutch during the Muromachi period (1336–1573).

Collecting Chinese porcelain as emblems of wealth and taste has a long and rich history. From the Balkans to Iraq and Iran through South Asia and East Africa, nobles and emperors of the 16 century collected Chinese ceramics to showcase them.

Researchers analyzed how the specific components of peace and environmental sustainability — concepts known to be intrinsically related but often investigated separately — influence each other to better inform policy and decision-making.

A genre of sculpture developed in the northwest region of the ancient Indian subcontinent in the form of reliefs and freestanding work as expressions of the Buddhist faith.

The history of extracting chay root dye — a natural red colourant — from the chay plant (Oldenlandia umbellata) dates back to at least the seventeenth century. Read on to know more about the relevance of the dye in the textile dyeing practices of southern India.

Scientists from Hokkaido University have reconstructed the climate of Hokkaido over the past 4400 years and have revealed that changes in the climate influenced changes in historic cultures during that time.

A team of scientists has found that women’s football was common across Japan between the Meiji restoration and the start of the Second World War. In the process, they also uncovered the oldest known photograph of women playing football in Japan, from 1916.

Springer Nature and UNESCO have signed an agreement to publish open access books on a range of issues cutting across major research areas such as education, culture, the natural sciences, the human and social sciences and communication and information

Umetaro Suzuki (7 April 1874 – 20 September 1943) was a Japanese scientist best remembered for his research on beriberi, a disease caused by vitamin B1 deficiency, characterized by limb stiffness, paralysis and pain.

Abdus Suttar Khan (c. 1941 – 31 January 2008) was a Bangladeshi engineer who spent a significant part of his career conducting aerospace research with NASA, United Technology and Alstom.

Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie (25 June 1936 – 11 September 2019) was an Indonesian engineer who was President of Indonesia from 1998 to 1999.

Salimuzzaman Siddiqui (19 October 1897 – 14 April 1994) was an artist and chemist from Pakistan whose research focused on natural products from plants.

Gregorio Y. Zara (8 March 1902 – 15 October 1978) was a Filipino engineer and physicist best remembered for inventing the first two-way video telephone.

A team of Japanese and Italian researchers, including from Tohoku University, have evidenced mechanically delivered projectile weapons in Europe dating to 45,000-40,000 years - more than 20,000 years than previously thought. This study, entitled "The earliest evidence for mechanically delivered projectile weapons in Europe" published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, indicated that the spearthrower and bow-and-arrow technologies allowed modern humans to hunt more successfully than Neanderthals - giving them a competitive advantage. This discovery offered important insight to understand the reasons for the replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans.

Do you have new research to share about anthropology, archeology, paleontology, sociology, climate change or endangered species? You could win the opportunity to highlight your research in Asia Research News 2020.

Dr Stefano Vanin was part of an international team working on discoveries at the Holocene age hunter-gatherer site at Takarkori in south-western Libya.

The Argentine scientist and TWAS Fellow shed new light on the origins of one of the world’s most prolific mountain ranges, and is continuing to research the complex history of South America’s ancient landscapes.