On Flag Day, a historian of religions in America explains how the Pledge of Allegiance, which honors the American flag, is part of American civil religion.
There is no comprehensive system for recording hate graffiti in the UK.
Stephen Barnes/Social Issues/Alamy
Through the power of rituals, inanimate objects can be understood to transform into agents who can see, hear, taste and respond to the concerns of those who worship them.
Queensland is the latest state bring in laws banning neo-Nazi and far-right symbols, but no one knows yet precisely what will be banned. Here’s how the laws differ across the country.
Humans have been making symbols for numbers for thousands of years. Different cultures developed their own symbols, but all use addition and multiplication, suggesting arithmetic is a universal truth.
Nebraska Cornhuskers mascot Herbie Husker pumps up the crowd during a 2015 football game.
Michael Hickey/Getty Images
In several other parts of the world, people used the bones of animals that were important within their respective cultures to make tools.
‘Portrait of a Woman of the Hofer Family,’ Swabian artist, c. 1470, and a picture showing a fly on U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence during the Oct. 7 debate at University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
(Wikimedia Commons/AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
Flies have long held symbolic meaning in the history of art. In portraits made in Renaissance Europe, the presence of a fly symbolizes the transience of human life.
Two illustrators for the CDC created an iconic image that would become ingrained in the minds of millions.
Alissa Eckert, Dan Higgins/CDC
Far from alarmist, images of the coronavirus seem to communicate patience and trust in science – both of which will be needed in the coming weeks and months.
A man holds a sign with an image of Negro Matapacos, in Santiago, Chile.
MARTIN BERNETTI/AFP via Getty Images
Negro Matapacos became famous in Chile in 2011 for joining student protests. His image has now popped up around the world.
A rock surface containing a circular pattern with a central depression. The scale bar = 10 cm.
Images modified from: Helm, C.W.; Cawthra, H.C.; De Vynck, J.C.; Helm, C.J.; Rust, R.; Stear. W. Patterns in the Sand: A Pleistocene hominin signature along the South African coastline? Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association (2019)
Given that we know humans moved across these landscapes, we wondered whether there might also be evidence of other forms of human activity on these surfaces of sand.
Maybe the differences between human and non-human animals are not as great as we might previously have thought.
from www.shutterstock.com
The swastika, an ancient and innocent symbol in many cultures for hundreds of years, now represents racial hatred. Should the swastika be banned in North America as it is in Germany?
India’s tricolour (which actually has four colours) hides a complex subaltern history that originates with Mahatma Gandhi.
Adam Jones/Flickr