Ancient Wisdom

In the Khumbu region of Nepal, before dawn each climbing season, a small team of Sherpas enters the Khumbu Icefall—the deadliest section of the Everest route—to set ladders and fix ropes. These "Icefall Doctors," chosen by Sagarmatha...

In 1413, Polish chronicler Jan Długosz visited the sacred oak groves of Samogitia, in what is now Lithuania. He expected to document the pantheon of Baltic deities, but the žyniai—the ritual specialists who tended these groves—frustrated him...

In the 1920s, anthropologist Knud Rasmussen documented something peculiar among the Netsilik Inuit of King William Island. When a young hunter made a dangerous mistake—failing to read ice conditions, mishandling a kayak in rough water—elders...

In 13th-century Iceland, chieftain Snorri Sturluson compiled stories of blood feuds, political maneuvering, and family betrayals. Yet something is conspicuously absent from the sagas: psychological explanation. When Egil Skallagrímsson murders a...

In the 1870s, when George Sword, an Oglala Lakota warrior, described the akicita societies to anthropologist James Walker, he emphasized something that confuses modern readers: these warrior societies spent most of their time not fighting enemies,...

When a traditional Navajo hataalii—a medicine person—encounters someone seeking help, they don't immediately prescribe a solution. Instead, they engage in what anthropologist Gary Witherspoon documented in the 1970s as an exhaustive...

In 1259 BCE, Hittite King Hattusili III faced a problem that would seem familiar to any modern project manager: the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II kept reopening settled negotiations. Peace talks had dragged on for years. Then Hattusili's scribes...

In the sixth century, Benedict of Nursia wrote a rule for monasteries that included something peculiar: the vow of stabilitas loci—stability of place. Unlike other monastic orders that allowed transfers, Benedictine monks swore to remain in one...

In the mountains of the French Alps, the Grande Chartreuse monastery has maintained an unusual practice since 1084. Every Carthusian monk, regardless of experience or position, observes what the order calls renovatio—a full month each year where...

In 124 BCE, Emperor Wu of Han established the Imperial Academy with an unexpected curriculum requirement: students had to study failure as rigorously as success. Alongside the exemplary ministers and sages, scholars memorized the "Xiao...