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Asian History

Writer and photographer Paul Koudounaris' new book, A Cat's Tale, finds his pet kitty, Baba, channeling famous and little-known felines from history.

A History of Felines, as Narrated and Illustrated by a Cat

Baba the cat is both storyteller and photographic model in what is perhaps the most unique cat history book ever published

The burial site is located inside of Makpan cave on the Indonesian island of Alor.

8,000 Years Ago, a Child in Indonesia Was Buried Without Their Arms and Legs

Ancient humans often modified the bones of their dead as part of funerary rituals

Three 3,000-year-old balls discovered at the Yanghai cemetery complex in Xinjiang

Cool Finds

These Hair-Filled Leather Pouches Are the Oldest Balls Found in Eurasia

Some 3,000 years ago, Chinese horsemen may have used the objects to play a team sport involving hitting a ball

The stolen items' owner estimates their value at around $645 million.

A Stolen Mao Zedong Scroll Was Found Cut in Half

Prior to the defacement, the nine-foot-long calligraphy work was valued at an estimated $300 million

Heian Period Cats

Japan’s Love-Hate Relationship With Cats

From shapeshifters to demonic corpse eaters, supernatural cats have roamed for centuries in the country’s folklore

A man wheels his bicycle through Hiroshima days after an atomic bomb leveled the city.

Nine Harrowing Eyewitness Accounts of the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

More than seventy-five years ago, the atomic blasts killed an estimated 200,000 people

This diagram shows the different kinds of animal bones used to make the 48,000-year-old tools.

Cool Finds

Evidence of Early Bow-and-Arrow Hunting Discovered in Sri Lanka

If confirmed, the 48,000-year-old find will be the oldest known instance of bowhunting outside of Africa

A large sandstone turtle unearthed at last week at the Angkor Wat temple complex

Cool Finds

Archaeologists Discover Ancient Stone Turtle in Drained Angkor Reservoir

The reservoir houses the remnants of a centuries-old temple now undergoing excavation

An 18th-century ink rendering of Hua Mulan on silk

Researchers Uncover New Evidence That Warrior Women Inspired Legend of Mulan

Nearly 2,000 years ago, women who rode horseback and practiced archery may have roamed the steppes of Mongolia

The National Museum of Asian Art's Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room, from the Alice S. Kandell Collection

Education During Coronavirus

Unwind With These Free, Museum-Led Meditation and Mindfulness Sessions

The Rubin Museum of Art and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art offer an array of relaxing experiences

According to traditional Japanese folklore, Amabie predicts good harvests and protect against disease.

Covid-19

Amid Pandemic, Artists Invoke Japanese Spirit Said to Protect Against Disease

Illustrators are sharing artwork of Amabie, a spirit first popularized during the Edo period, on social media

A roughly 20,000-year-old engraved, pocket-sized rock that may depict a sun, eye or flower

Cool Finds

Portable, Pocket-Sized Rock Art Discovered in Ice Age Indonesian Cave

The findings further refute the outdated notion that humans’ capacity for complex artistic expression evolved exclusively in Europe

Saddle up! Donkeys can do much more than carry sacks of food: They can hoist around sporty, polo-playing humans, too.

Cool Finds

After a Lifetime of Donkey Polo, This Chinese Noblewoman Asked to Be Buried With Her Steeds

New research reveals a Tang Dynasty woman’s love for sports—and big-eared, braying equids

Angkor Wat in Cambodia

Angkor Wat May Owe Its Existence to an Engineering Catastrophe

The collapse of a reservoir in a remote and mysterious city could have helped Angkor gain supremacy

Among the artifacts believed to be lost are letters written by Chinese immigrants, photographs of Chinatown and an 1883 document on the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Fire at Museum of Chinese in America Caused Less Damage Than Initially Feared

Around 200 boxes recovered from the building have been deemed “very much salvageable,” but they represent only a “fraction” of the museum’s collection

This concretion, recovered from the Hoi An shipwreck, alludes to the fate of artifacts left underwater.

Who Owns the Art Recovered From Shipwrecks?

A thought-provoking exhibit at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco draws on artifacts from two centuries-old shipwrecks

In the 1600s, the Arakan empire's capital, Mrauk U, had 160,000 inhabitants. The 200-foot spire of Ratanabon temple attests to eclipsed glories.

The Hidden City of Myanmar

The ancient kingdom of Mrauk U welcomed Buddhists and Muslims. Now efforts to uncover its mysteries are threatened by ethnic hostilities

Illustration from woodblock-printed text on the life of Gautama Buddha

Library of Congress Digitizes Taiwanese Watercolors, Rare Chinese Texts

The library’s rare Chinese book collection includes 5,300 titles, 2,000 of which will ultimately be included in the online portal

Empress Dowager Cixi by Katharine A. Carl, 1903

New Scholarship Is Revealing the Private Lives of China’s Empresses

Lavish paintings, sumptuous court robes, objets d’art tell the stories of Empress Cixi and four other of the most powerful Qing dynasty women

All of the Denisovan specimens found to date originated from a cave in Siberia

The Hominins We’ve Been Calling Denisovans Are More Diverse Than Previously Thought

Researchers have identified three distinct Denisovan lineages, including one that could constitute an entirely separate species

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