Ancient Wisdom

In 1258, as Mongol armies razed Baghdad's libraries, Jalal ad-Din Rumi sat in Konya composing stories about fools. His masterwork, the Masnavi, contains over 25,000 couplets, but one pattern repeats throughout: protagonists who publicly commit...

In the clay-rich regions of southeastern Nigeria, Igbo communities once commissioned elaborate structures called Mbari houses—intricate clay buildings filled with painted sculptures depicting deities, spirits, and community scenes. Master artists...

In the scorching Nile Valley between 2500-1500 BCE, Nubian architects faced an engineering challenge that would defeat modern sustainability consultants: build structures that could survive 120°F summers without air conditioning, preserve water in...

In 1200s Korea, when a monk at Songgwangsa monastery demonstrated exceptional progress in meditation practice, mastering sutras and earning respect from peers, their teacher would do something seemingly cruel: assign them a hwadu, an unanswerable...

In the grasslands of Mongolia's Otog Banner, a herding family I met in 2019 still follows a planning rhythm their ancestors perfected over centuries: they make decisions only within a three-season window. Spring plantings consider only summer...

In 1512, Desiderius Erasmus assigned his most promising students at Cambridge an exercise that would horrify modern efficiency experts: translate the same Latin passage into English fifty different ways before attempting any original composition....

In 1191, the Japanese monk Eisai returned from China and established Rinzai Zen at Kennin-ji temple in Kyoto. He brought with him a practice that would perplex Japanese students for centuries: when a master posed a koan, students had to respond...

In traditional Yoruba practice, when someone sought counsel from a babalawo—a priest of Ifa divination—the consultation never began with problem-solving. First came ashe assessment. The babalawo would determine not what was wrong, but whether...

At Nalanda University in 5th century Bihar, scholarly debates didn't end when someone won. They began a stranger obligation: the loser had to spend the next year publicly teaching their opponent's position as if it were their own. Not as a...

In the forests of Hokkaido, before the Meiji Restoration forced their assimilation, the Ainu people performed a ritual that modern professionals would find baffling: they held formal ceremonies to send off worn-out tools. When a hunting knife broke...