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We’re building a guide for everyday life, where experts will educate you about our world.
Author Spotlight
Derek Gow is a farmer, nature conservationist, and author.
Ed Simon is the Public Humanities Special Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and editor-in-chief of Belt Magazine.
Katherine Dolan is a writer, editor, and researcher at the Independent Media Institute from Dunedin, New Zealand. She has held previous posts as a senior writer for Fairfax Media Custom Publishing in New Zealand and Lifestyle Magazine in Moscow, and as a copy editor for the U.S. news site NSFW Corp.
Isias Hernandez aims to improve environmental literacy through content creation, storytelling, and public engagement.
Delcianna Winders is an associate professor of law and the director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School.
Lorenzo Hofstetter is a cultural/world history researcher and co-creator/COO of the Phersu Atlas database.
Josh Klemm is co-director of International Rivers.
Simran Agarwal is a researcher and writer based in Mumbai.
Nnimmo Bassey is a Nigerian architect, environmental activist, author, and poet. He is the executive director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation.
Alexia Angeli is the founder of the company Prehistory Travel, which educates people of all ages on topics relating to human prehistory.
Guides
With new anthropological, biological and scientific findings, we are increasingly able to trace the outlines and fill in the blanks of our human evolutionary story. This can help us better understand the social and cultural processes that produced the world we live in now. This guide to Human Bridges explores the work of experts from the fields of human biology, human origins, and anthropology who want to contribute their individual expertise to a wider accessible body of information, and enlist in the cause to make this material a staple of education at all stages of life.
editorApril M. Short
sourceHuman Bridges Project
areaThis guide explores the evolutionary origins of aesthetics in humans, otherwise known as bioaesthetics. Bioaesthetics is an interdisciplinary field that bridges biology, psychology, philosophy, and art to investigate aesthetic perception and how we perceive certain forms. Emerging research underlines the fact that our sense of beauty isn't purely cultural and has biological underpinnings.
editorIrina Matuzava
sourceHuman Bridges Project
areaFood production shapes the health of ecosystems, communities, animals, and the climate. Yet many modern agricultural systems rely on practices that contribute to soil degradation, biodiversity loss, water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and animal suffering. As concerns about the environmental and social costs of industrial agriculture continue to grow, farmers, researchers, Indigenous communities, and advocates are developing and refining alternative approaches.
This guide explores a range of alternatives to industrial agriculture, including organic farming, small-scale farming, regenerative agriculture, carbon farming, veganic farming, Indigenous land stewardship practices, and emerging innovations such as agrivoltaics. Together, these approaches offer different pathways toward producing food while protecting ecosystems, improving soil health, supporting biodiversity, reducing environmental impacts, and building more resilient agricultural systems for future generations.
editorReynard Loki
sourceEarth Food Life Project
areaOur financial system originated in Mesopotamia, where it was designed to ensure economic stability for a community. Over time it has transformed into something much more predatory.
editorKatherine Dolan
sourceHuman Bridges Project
areaThe Observatory’s '''Guide to Companion Animals and Human Responsibility''' explores the complex relationships between humans and the animals who live alongside us. It examines how pet ownership, breeding, and the global pet industry affect animal welfare, biodiversity, and ecosystem balance. From the ecological impact of free-roaming cats to ethical questions about domestication and dependency, the guide highlights both care and consequence. It also considers how human choices—from feeding practices to habitat encroachment—shape the lives of companion animals and wildlife alike. By bringing these perspectives together, the guide encourages more responsible, informed, and compassionate relationships with animals in human care.
editorReynard Loki
sourceEarth Food Life Project
areaThis guide explores the promise and perils of renewable energy. Can renewable energy achieve the emissions cuts we need to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis? Can we avoid an energy crisis if we abandon fossil fuels? What is the dark truth behind bioenergy? Is hydropower a real or false solution? Is the renewable energy transition succeeding or failing?
editorReynard Loki
sourceEarth Food Life Project
areaEnvironmental health explores how the natural and built environments influence human well-being. Factors such as air and water quality, climate change, toxic chemical exposures, food systems, and ecosystem health can all affect physical and mental health. Pollution, environmental degradation, and hazardous substances contribute to a wide range of health risks, while healthy ecosystems help provide clean water, nutritious food, disease regulation, and other essential services. Understanding these connections can help societies develop policies and practices that protect both human health and the environments on which life depends.
editorReynard Loki
sourceEarth Food Life Project
areaA true republican political system operates without a monarchy or concentrated political power in any office, branch, or individual. And a thriving republic observes the fundamental principles of equality, consensus, transparency, and reform (rather than institutional abandonment). If a republic strays from these values, political collapse can occur. This guide compares past republics, including the Roman and Venetian Republics, to republican states of today. By examining the successes and failures of early republics, we can gain a deeper understanding of the challenges in our current political environment.
editorJohn P. Ruehl
sourceHuman Bridges Project
areaHumans have long used language, writing, and storytelling to make sense of the world—and to shape how it is understood. Writing takes many forms, extending from literature and journalism to scholarship, personal reflection, and everyday communication. Together, language and writing help develop our critical thinking, awareness, and curiosity.
The '''Observatory Guide to Language Arts and Writing''' explores how language and storytelling shape the human mind, foster empathy, and serve as tools for understanding ourselves, connecting with others, imagining new possibilities, solving problems, and questioning the status quo. Drawing on literature, history, psychology, neuroscience, and the social sciences, the guide highlights how writing and narrative shape not only expression, but perception, meaning, and action.
editorDanica Tomber and Madeline VanArsdale
sourceThe Observatory
areaThis guide explores the concept, models, and examples of the peace economy: the giving, sharing, thriving, caring economy without which none of us would be alive. A peace economy is the sharing of resources, a culture of care, and the remembrance that there is enough abundance for all of us on this planet. It is the return to a culture that understands true value and wealth come from nurturing life, love, and joy. We call it a "local" peace economy because it operates at the local level, beginning in the commons. This guide also offers ways to divest from the war economy that is destroying life and well-being on this planet.
editorApril M. Short
sourceLocal Peace Economy Project
areaNew Additions
Experimental archaeology proves Easter Island's moai were 'walked' to coastal platforms, confirming Rapa Nui oral traditions about their ancestral monuments.
By: Dig Labs Contributors
The surveyed dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza exhibit mathematical relationships that have fascinated scholars since the nineteenth century. The ratio of the pyramid's perimeter to its height closely approximates 2π (6.2832...), and the ratio of the slant height of a face to half the base length closely approximates the golden ratio φ (1.6180...). These relationships are mathematical consequences of each other: if the π ratio holds, the φ ratio follows (and vice versa), because the two constants are linked through the pyramid's specific geometry — a seked (slope) of approximately 5½ palms per cubit.
By: Dig Labs Contributors
Genomic evidence reveals Neanderthal extinction resulted from competitive exclusion, interbreeding, climatic stress, and inbreeding in tiny populations.
By: Dig Labs Contributors
The Fourth Dynasty of Egypt's Old Kingdom (c. 2613–2494 BCE) produced the most massive and precisely constructed stone monuments in human history. Within approximately 120 years, three generations of pharaohs — Sneferu, Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure — erected the Giza pyramid complex and the Dahshur monuments, consuming an estimated 25 million tonnes of stone. Yet by the Fifth Dynasty, pyramid construction had already diminished dramatically in scale, and by the end of the Sixth Dynasty, it had effectively ceased. No subsequent Egyptian civilization — not the Middle Kingdom, not the New Kingdom at the height of its imperial power — attempted to replicate the Giza achievement. Understanding why requires integrating evidence from political economy, environmental history, administrative records, and architectural analysis.
By: Dig Labs Contributors
The stone spheres of the Diquís Delta in southern Costa Rica constitute one of the most visually arresting and least understood monumental traditions in precolumbian Mesoamerica and lower Central America. Numbering over 300 documented examples, these near-perfectly spherical objects range from a few centimetres to over two metres in diameter, with the largest specimens weighing approximately 16 tonnes. They were produced by peoples ancestral to the modern Boruca and other Chibchan-speaking groups, primarily during the Aguas Buenas (300–800 CE) and Chiriquí (800–1550 CE) periods. Four archaeological sites containing stone spheres — Finca 6, Batambal, El Silencio, and Grijalba-2 — were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014.
By: Dig Labs Contributors
The base platform of the Great Pyramid of Giza is level to within approximately 2.1 centimetres (5/8 of an inch) across its entire 230-metre perimeter — a relative precision of approximately 0.009 per cent. This achievement, on a foundation that covers an area of approximately 5.3 hectares (13 acres), is remarkable by any standard: maintaining such flatness over such an area required either an extraordinary levelling instrument or an extraordinary levelling method applied with extraordinary patience. The builders had neither modern laser levels nor precision spirit levels; they accomplished this feat with water, string, and careful observation.
By: Dig Labs Contributors
The Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE) are the hypothetical speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language, the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European language family — the world's largest, encompassing languages spoken by nearly half the global population, from Hindi and Bengali to English, Spanish, Russian, and Greek. The PIE themselves left no written records; their existence is inferred entirely from the systematic comparison of their descendant languages, supplemented in recent decades by archaeological evidence and, most decisively, by ancient DNA analysis.
By: Dig Labs Contributors
Stonehenge stands as England's most iconic prehistoric enigma, a circle of massive sarsen stones and smaller bluestones that has puzzled observers for millennia
By: Dig Labs Contributors
The Colossus of Rhodes, a monumental bronze statue of the sun god Helios erected c. 280 BCE and toppled by earthquake c. 226 BCE, presents a distinctive archaeological problem: the complete disappearance of an enormous quantity of worked bronze from the historical and material record. Ancient sources attest to the statue's continued presence in ruins on Rhodes for centuries after its collapse, but no physical trace of the bronze has ever been identified. The traditional account of its removal by Arab forces in 653/654 CE — mediated through Theophanes the Confessor's early 9th-century chronicle — has been substantially challenged by recent scholarship.
By: Dig Labs Contributors
Classics
A survivor’s perspective on what it was like to be on the ''Titanic'' as it sank, with detailed accountings of his and other passengers’ accounts.
By: Archibald Gracie IV
The famous novel about government and business corruption in the early 20th century by muckraker author Upton Sinclair.
From Wikisource:
- “''The Jungle'' is a 1906 novel written by author and socialist journalist Upton Sinclair. It was written about the corruption of the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century. The novel depicts in harsh tones the poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the ‘have-nots,’ which is contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption on the part of the ‘haves.’”
By: Upton Sinclair
This is a speech by Frederick Douglass given on Monday, July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York. The oration was published as a pamphlet the same year. Annotations were provided by the Wikisource community.
By: Frederick Douglass
This two-volume book is an “exposé about the Standard Oil Company, run at the time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest figure in American history.” More from [[wikipedia:The_History_of_the_Standard_Oil_Company
By: Ida M. Tarbell
In this memoir, Frederick Douglass chronicles life as an enslaved boy in the American South, his eventual escape, and his new beginnings as a free man and abolitionist.
''Note: This historical memoir may include outdated and offensive language.''
By: Frederick Douglass
This 1847 memoir was written by prominent activist and writer William Wells Brown to support the abolitionist movement. It chronicles Brown’s cruel treatment as an enslaved man, the horrors that he witnessed, and his multiple escape attempts for freedom.
''Note: This book is part of a historical collection and may include offensive language.''
By: William Wells Brown
This article on the German philosopher [[wikipedia:Johann_Gottlieb_Fichte
By: Ellen Bliss Talbot
“''The Shame of the Cities'' is a book written by American author Lincoln Steffens. Published in 1904, it is a collection of articles which Steffens had written for [[wikipedia:McClure's
By: Lincoln Steffens
From [[wikipedia:Woman_in_the_Nineteenth_Century
By: S. Margaret Fuller
From Wikisource:
- “''Ten Days in a Mad-House'' is a book written by newspaper reporter Nellie Bly and published by Norman Munro in New York City in 1887. The book comprised Blyʼs reportage for the New York World while on an undercover assignment in which she feigned insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Womenʼs Lunatic Asylum on Blackwellʼs Island.”
By: Nellie Bly