Archaeologists in England Tackle Mystery of Prehistoric Village’s Rapid Demise
Stephen Castle | The New York Times
“No one knows why a catastrophic fire tore through the small settlement that rose by a river channel, incinerating the homes of several families and sending burning timbers crashing into the marsh below. It might have been an accident, an attack by enemies or even some sort of ritual.
Yet answers are emerging, piece by piece, some 3,000 years later.”
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Life and Death Inside an ISIS Prison
Mike Giglio and Munzer al-Awad | Buzzfeed
“The prisoners were kept in small rooms. ... They scratched and penciled cryptic phrases onto the concrete walls. Some had written their names. ... Others left only phone numbers. … Now most of the lines are dead. But on a recent night, a soft-voiced man answered one. ‘How did you get this number?’ he asked.”
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A Rainy Anniversary in Tahrir Square
Peter Hessler | The New Yorker
“Sometimes I feel like the most useful thing that I’ve learned about Egypt can be summed up as: It doesn’t have to make sense. Or perhaps it’s better to say that many different and apparently contradictory things can be true at the same time. It’s possible that Egypt’s economy and political life have been badly damaged in the post-Tahrir era, but that the majority of citizens still, for whatever reason, respond positively to a survey about the aftermath of the revolution. It’s possible for a man to travel three hours to celebrate the fifth anniversary of a revolution, and yet speak fondly of the leader who was toppled by that movement.”