Little People of the Andaman Islands
By Jayanta Sarkar, Anthropological Survey of India
Additional Information Researchers at the Database for Indigenous Cultural Evolution, University of Missouri; Anvita Abbi, Professor of Linguistics,...
Spiritual Skin
For centuries, indigenous tattooists working across Asia have marked human skin with powerful designs and symbols in their quest to signal ethnic identity and render the body sacred. Carried through life and onwards into death, these marks of humanity testify to an ancestral legacy that is in danger of gradually fading away.
Asia’s Age-Old Beauty Trends
Across Asia, women throughout the ages have decorated their faces in pursuit of specific beauty ideals
The serenading suitors of the Philippines
Under a courtship ritual called harana, it was compulsory for Filipino men to sing to their sweethearts
China’s Attempt at Mitigating Plastic Waste
Text: Sitaraah Joshi
Imagine looking over an endless sea of overcrowded, cluttered waste. Such is the plight of the heaps of rubbish that have been...
The Politics of Sports in the Asian Games
Sporting competitions conjure images of athletic prowess and physical feats, with all the fanfare hiding the deft political manoeuvring required to bring these events to life. A closer inspection of the Asian Games reveals a political tapestry reflective of the deeply complex relations of the member states.
Freya Stark, the Passionate Nomad
You should be careful which books you give your daughters, because you never know what irrepressible, adventurous spirit they might engender. For Freya Stark (1893–1993), the desire to escape and explore was sown on her ninth birthday when she was given One Thousand and One Nights, the famous collection of Arabian tales.
Entering the Yali Tribe
Where waters run wild and forests grow free, there are groups of people who live alongside Nature in perfect harmony. Tribes across the world...
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The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
(Photo: Graphicaartis/Corbis)
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon has captured the imagination of historians worldwide for centuries. Yet, its existence remains a debate as years of digging have turned up nothing about the lost Gardens.First described in a book called Babyloniaca by a Chaldean priest named Berossus in 280 BC, the...
Asia’s Sweet Success: The History of Ice Cream in Asia
by Selina Tan
The concept of a frozen dessert is one that goes back thousands of years. By pouring a mixture of salt and ice over containers of liquid syrup, the Chinese were creating a rudimentary form of ice cream as long ago as 2000 BC. The resulting frozen product...
The Pyramid of Gunung Padang
Megalithic site in Indonesia could be the oldest in the world
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PeruGunung Padang is once again making headlines as the first pyramid in Southeast Asia and the oldest megalithic site in the world.Recent discoveries as deep as 90 feet found the hill-pyramid to contain...