Education6 min read
How African History Is Dated Without Written Records
Oral tradition, radiocarbon, historical linguistics, king lists and Arabic manuscripts each date African history differently. Here is how they fit together.
Page 24 of 42
All articles, page 24
Articles 553–576 of 990, newest first. To read by subject instead, start from a category or a topic hub on the blog’s front page.
- Education5 min read
How Decolonisation Happened After 1945
Empires did not simply hand over power. How decolonisation actually proceeded after 1945, the routes it took, and what outlasted the formal transfers.
- Education5 min read
How an IQ Score Is Calculated: Deviation Scores, Not Raw Right Answers
An IQ score is not a count of correct answers. It is a rank inside a norm sample, rescaled so the average is 100. Here is each step of that conversion.
- Education5 min read
How Long a Brain Training Session Should Be
Five to fifteen minutes covers most practice sessions. Here is the evidence on dose, why long sessions stop paying, and how to build one from short drills.
- Education6 min read
How Long People Have Lived in Australia, and How Archaeologists Know
Published figures range from 40,000 to 65,000 years. Here is what each number measures, how optical dating works, and what is not in dispute.
- Education5 min read
How the Mughal Empire Expanded, and Why It Came Apart
Mughal expansion ran on conquest revenue, mobile courts and violent successions. What drove the growth, and why the decline story is still contested.
- Education5 min read
How to Analyse a Primary Source, Step by Step
A repeatable five-step method for working with a historical document: source it, place it, read its assumptions, corroborate it, then state what it cannot show.
- Education5 min read
How to Build a Timeline of One Country's Past
A research method for one country's timeline: where to start, how to cross-check outside the national frame, and how to record contested dates honestly.
- Education7 min read
How to Check a Historical Superlative
First, largest, oldest, deadliest: a superlative is a claim about a measure. Four questions that let you check one before repeating it.
- Education5 min read
Century Counting: Why the 1400s Are the 15th Century
One rule converts any year to its century, forwards or backwards. Here it is, where the off-by-one came from, and how to read sources that use both.
- Education6 min read
Concentration: The Conditions That Beat Willpower
Concentration is mostly a matter of conditions, not effort. What interruption research shows, and how to set up a session you can actually finish.
- Education5 min read
How to Memorise Numbers: Four Methods Compared
Grouping, meaning, phonetic encoding and spatial placement each cost something different. A side-by-side comparison so you can pick the right one.
- Education5 min read
How to Spot Bias in History Writing Without Dismissing the Book
Bias is not the same as disagreement. Separate perspective, selection, framing and distortion, and learn the specific checks that catch each one.
- Education6 min read
How to Track Practice Progress Without Fooling Yourself
Most practice records flatter you. Hold the mode and difficulty fixed, read accuracy before score, use the median time, and run one cold check each week.
- Education6 min read
How to Structure a History Essay
History essays fail on argument, not facts. A working structure: the question, the thesis, claim-evidence-warrant paragraphs and footnotes.
- Education7 min read
How We Know What Historical Figures Actually Did
The evidence behind any pre-modern biography: what survives, how long after the events, who wrote it, and why famous quotations are so often misattributed.
- Education7 min read
Ibn Battuta and the Rihla: Reading a Medieval Travel Account
Ibn Battuta's Rihla was dictated decades after the journeys and edited by a court scribe. What it reliably shows, and where specialists doubt it.
- Education6 min read
How Indian History Got Divided Into Periods, and Why Scholars Rejected It
The Hindu, Muslim and British scheme still in circulation traces to a colonial history written by a man who never visited India. What replaced it, and why.
- Education6 min read
The Indian Ocean Trade World Before Europeans Arrived
How the monsoon, credit instruments and merchant diasporas built a maritime trade world from East Africa to Malacca long before Portuguese fleets arrived.
- Education6 min read
Indigenous Resistance to Colonial Rule, From the Pueblo Revolt to Maji Maji
Three documented risings against colonial rule — Pueblo 1680, Maji Maji 1905, Kenya in the 1950s — and what comparing them reveals and what it flattens.
- Education6 min read
Inductive Reasoning and the Leap It Always Takes
Inductive arguments make a conclusion probable, never certain. The four common shapes, what makes one strong, and a sequence that punishes early confidence.
- Education7 min read
The Indus Valley Civilization and Its Unread Script
A thousand-site urban civilization left a script nobody can read. What the material record shows, what ancient DNA settled, and what remains genuinely open.
- Education6 min read
Interference: Why New Numbers Push Out Old Ones
Forgetting is often competition rather than decay. What proactive and retroactive interference are, how big the effect is, and how switching content helps.
- Education6 min read
Interleaved or Blocked? The Order You Practise Problems In
Blocked practice groups one problem type together; interleaved practice mixes them. Mixing usually feels worse during the session and tests better afterwards.