empire

The soldiers of the Roman Empire crushed Hannibal and Viriatus, but they were unable to defeat a fearsome enemy: diarrhea.

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If there is a civilization to which the Spanish collective imagination dedicates festivities and various events, that is the Roman empire. Nevertheless, they were more than six centuries in the Iberian Peninsula thanks to its magnificent expansion work. In its heyday, Rome It covered three continents: from Great Britain to the Carpathians in Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor. To carry out such an extension, his legions had great conflicts in the form of the Punic Wars, the battle of Cannae or the Battle of Pydna. The tough battle for intestinal well-being. As if life on the front was not hard enough, the soldiers guarding the northwest border of the Roman Empire had to confront a tough guerrilla war that is not epic enough to appear in the history books but that also caused casualties: that of intestinal parasites. More specifically, in the north of England, near Hadrian’s Wall. Because a team of researchers from the University of Oxford and Cambridge has discovered After analyzing the sewage system of the Roman fort of Vindolanda three types of intestinal parasites: intestinal worms, whipworm and giardia duodenalis. In fact, it is the first time that the giardia in Roman Britain. The three intestinal parasites, under the microscope. Intestinal worms, the whipworm or whipworm and the protozoan known as giardia lamblia, intestinalis either duodenalis They are three parasites of the digestive system that are spread by poor hygiene or by contact between infected human feces with food, drinks and hands. The intestinal worms They are a helminth that measures between 20 and 30 centimeters in length and lives in the intestine. The most common among humans are pinworms and ascariasis. Its presence in the intestine can cause abdominal pain, fever and diarrhea. The whipworms They are nematodes that are about five centimeters long. An adult whipworm can consume 0.0005 ml of blood per day, so a high presence of this parasite can translate into severe anemia. Likewise, they can cause rectal prolapse, appendicitis and diarrhea if accompanied by a bacterial invasion. A whipworm infection is more common in children and in warm, humid locations, as well as in places with poor sanitary and/or hygiene conditions. The giardia intestinal parasites is a type of microscopic parasite that still causes serious outbreaks of diarrhea today. Symptoms of a giardia infection are abdominal cramps, bloating, upset stomach, and loose stools. According to the Mayo Clinicgiardiasis is one of the most common causes of waterborne illnesses in the United States. The least they had was malnutrition and diarrhea. The three types of parasites, which today are easily diagnosed and treatable for a complete recovery, were not so so in ancient Rome. As explains Study co-author and University of Cambridge archaeologist Marissa Ledger: “Although the Romans were aware of intestinal worms, their doctors could do little to eliminate these infections or help those suffering from diarrhea, so symptoms could persist and worsen. These chronic infections likely weakened soldiers and reduced their ability to serve.” Vindolanda Fort is a true gem for history and archeology professionals. Located between present-day Carlisle and Corbridge, in Northumberland, it was built at the beginning of the 2nd century AD to protect the province from attacks by northern tribes and monitor the imposing Hadrian’s wallwhich extends from the North Sea to the Irish Sea, with forts and towers distributed along its length. In the fort there were infantry, archer and cavalry units from all over the Empire. Beyond the magnificence of the construction, the most interesting thing is the juice that Vindolanda has offered to history lovers because thanks to its water-saturated soil a large number of organic objects have been preserved: thousand wooden slats that served as a kind of logbook, more than 5,000 leather sandals and also fecal remains. Sediments from a 3rd century drain from a latrine in the thermal complex have been the source of this research. The wall watchers They defecated alive. From 50 sediment samples taken along the conduit, about nine meters long, they found everything from Roman beads to ceramics to animal bones. And under the microscope, a whole intestinal fauna. Approximately 28% of the samples had worm or whipworm eggs, and one of them had both. Using the biomolecular technique ELISA they detected the giardia. Likewise, they analyzed a sample from another fort built in 85 AD and abandoned in 92 AD, where they found worms and whipworms. Thus they deduced that the soldiers suffered from dehydration and became ill with outbreaks of giardia in summer, normally associated with contaminated and rapidly expanding water. It could be worse. The high load of intestinal parasites detected in Vindolanda is not an isolated fact, as they are similar to other Roman military enclaves such as Valkenburg (Netherlands), Carnuntum (Austria) or Bearsden (Scotland). And they even had to give thanks, because in urban sites like London and York the parasite diversity was greater, including tapeworms. It wasn’t as pretty as it looks.. While there may be preconceptions and romanticisations about what it was like to be a Roman soldier, Dr Andrew Birley, chief executive of the Vindolanda Charitable Trust is clear “Excavations at Vindolanda continue to uncover new evidence that helps us understand the incredible difficulties faced by those posted to this northwestern frontier of the Roman Empire almost 2,000 years ago, challenging our preconceptions about what life in a Roman fort and frontier town was really like.” In Xataka | The death of one empire is the birth of another: the graph that reviews the history of civilizations from 4,000 years ago In Xataka | We have been calling Christians ‘thieves’ for decades for taking Christmas from the Romans. But the story wasn’t exactly like that. Cover | Photo of 709am in Unsplash

Rome turned North Africa into its great oil fountain. And we have found the mega-oil mills of the Empire

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He Roman empire He founded the foundations of Western civilization both socially and in the most functional part: the infrastructure. Its roads are famousbut wherever they passed, They also founded industry. And an international group of archaeologists has found one of the most significant discoveries related to the roman industry. The second largest oil pressing complex in the entire Empire. Mega-oil mill. In the Tunisian region of Kasserine is the archaeological site identified as ‘Henchir el Begar’. Specifically, there are two settlements found to the north and west of Kasserine (the ancient Roman Cillium), and archaeologists are clear that they are part of the same industry dedicated to oil. They estimate that both were operational between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD, demonstrating that they were incredibly valuable to the Empire, and the data reflects the productive ambition of the area: The settlement has 33 hectares with two main sectors: Hr Begar 1 and Hr Begar 2. Hr Begar 1 has twelve beam presses, being the largest mill in Tunisia and the second largest in the entire Roman world. We are talking about beams and counterweights capable of exerting tons of pressure. It has cisterns and a water collection basin. HR Begar 2 has another eight presses of the same type, as well as another water collection basin and cisterns. Context. In addition to the two “oil mills”, georadar has identified a network of settling tanks for oil, warehouses, a dense fabric of housing for workers and the site’s population, and road tracks for the ‘trucks’ of the erato, trains that transported the amphoraethey will reach the coast and places of distribution. Apart from making it clear that the site was an oil megafactory, they have also found stone mills. They estimate that production was mixed: oil and also cereals, which points to the strategic importance of this region around Kasserine. Strategic good. In it releasearchaeologists highlight that the territory is characterized by high steppes and a continental climate with modest rainfall that would have been collected in wells, all of this favoring ideal conditions for the cultivation of olive trees. This border area of ​​Africa would have been a point of exchange between cultures, but a discovery of these dimensions shows that this Proconsular province of Africa would have been the great supplier of oil to the Roman Empire both for consumption (the highest quality oil) and for fuel and other consumables (oil for lighting, bases for medical ointments and cosmetics). Perspectives. That powerful Henchir el Begar oil industry is not the only thing the team has found. They have also found pieces such as a bracelet decorated in copper or brass, a stone projectile and some architectural elements that had later been reused in a Byzantine wall. The mission in Kasserine began in 2023 as a project co-led by the Ca’Foscari University of Venice, the University of La Manouba in Tunisia and the Complutense University of Madrid and, according to Professor Luigi Sperti, one of the project coordinators, it allows “an unprecedented perspective on the agrarian and socioeconomic organization of the border regions of Roman Africa.” We will see what they find in future prospecting, but the investigations of this third campaign have borne fruit in understanding the importance of the region in issues such as the production, marketing and transportation of oil on a scale not seen until now in that area. Images | UCM, Unive In Xataka | Modern tunnel boring machines are real monsters compared to those of 1950. The paradox is that they are just as slow

Google’s TPUs are the first big sign that NVIDIA’s empire is faltering

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It was 2013 and Jeff Dean, one of the directors of Google, he realized something along with your team: if each Android user used their new voice search option for three minutes a day, the company would have to double the number of data centers to cope with the computational load. At the time, Google was using standard CPUs and GPUs for this task, but they panicked and realized they needed to create their own chips for those tasks. This is how it was born Google’s first Tensor Processing Unit (TPU)an ASIC specifically designed to run the neural networks that powered its voice services. That grew and grew and in 2015, before the world knew it, those first TPUs accelerated Google Maps, Google Photos and Google Translate. A decade later, Google has created TPUs so powerful that they have almost unintentionally become a surprising and unexpected threat to the almighty NVIDIA. There it is nothing. Blessed panic. Google TPUs keep their promise Until now when an AI company wanted to train its models, turned to advanced NVIDIA chips. That has changed in recent times, and in fact we have seen two recent signs that certainly pose a turning point. Missing from that timeline is the last and most striking member of this family, Ironwood, presented in April 2025. Source: Google. The first is the release of Claude Opus 4.5, an exceptional modelespecially in programming tasks. Those responsible for Anthropic already they explained that this new model does not depend only on NVIDIA, but combines the power of three different proposals: that of NVIDIA, but also Amazon’s Trainium and Google’s TPUs. But it is also that Google has given the bell because your brand new AI model Gemini 3 He has been exclusively trained using the new Ironwood TPUs that were presented in April and have become a real sensation. As we said, Google started that project in 2013 and launched its first TPU in 2015, but that internal need became a blessing, because what Google I couldn’t know is that these TPUs would end up arriving at the right time: the launch of ChatGPT turned them into a fantastic opportunity to strengthen your AI infrastructure, but also to be used for training and inference of your AI models. From there we end up reaching the current Ironwood TPUs, which in their seventh generation are exceptional both in inference as in training (as its use has demonstrated for Gemini 3). Google has managed to squeeze even more out of its chips and has doubled the peak FLOPS per watt compared to its previous generation. Source: Google. The efficiency and power of these chips gives a very notable jump compared to their predecessors, and for example they achieve double FLOPS performance per watt which was achieved with Trillium chips. If we compare them with the TPU v5p of 2023, the chips manage to reach 4,614 TFLOPS, 10 times more than the 459 TFLOPS of those models from two years ago. It’s an extraordinary leap in performance (and efficiency). The key to 2025: Google now lets others use its TPUs But in the evolution of TPUs there is another differentiating element in 2025. This has been the year in which Google has stopped “being selfish” with its TPUs. Before only she could use them, but in recent months she has reached agreements with OpenAI —which also seeks make your own chips— and especially with Anthropic. The performance of Ironwood is already comparable to that of the GB200 and even the GB300 from NVIDIA. Source: SemiAnalysis. That second alliance is especially monumental as part of that outsourcing strategy. Google is not only renting capacity in its cloud, but facilitating the physical sale of hardware. The agreement covers one million TPUs: 400,000 units of its TPUv7 Ironwood sold directly through Broadcom, and 600,000 rented through Google Cloud (GCP). In a deep report in SemiAnalysis It is revealed how from a technical perspective, the TPUv7 Ironwood is a formidable competitor. The performance gap with NVIDIA is closing, and Google’s TPU is practically the same as NVIDIA’s Blackwell chip in FLOPS and memory bandwidth. However, the real advantage lies in the cost. The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of an Ironwood server is estimated to be 44% lower for Google than for an NVIDIA GB200 server, allowing the search giant to offer very competitive prices to clients like Anthropic. To help even more in that race, they point out in SemiAnalysis, Google has another ace up its sleeve. This is Google’s Inter-Chip Interconnect (ICI), a network architecture that allows up to 9,216 Ironwood chips to be connected using a 3D torus topology. Google also uses optical circuit switches that allow optical data to be routed without electrical conversion, reducing both latency and power consumption. This allows you to reconfigure the topology of that network on the fly to avoid (or mitigate) failures and optimize different types of parallelism. NVIDIA’s “moat” with CUDA is narrowing We have often repeated that although semiconductor manufacturers already have flashy chips —tell AMD– In fact the true strength from NVIDIA is in CUDAthe software platform that has become the de facto standard for AI developers and researchers. Google also wants to change things here. During the last few years the company tried to focus on Python libraries such as JAX either XLAbut in recent times has started prioritizing native PyTorch support —a great competitor of TensorFlow— in its TPUs. That’s crucial to making it easier for engineers and developers to start migrating to their TPUs instead of NVIDIA GPUs. Before it was possible to use PyTorch on TPUs, but it was cumbersome, as if one had to speak a language using a dictionary in real time, while for NVIDIA GPUs that was the “native” language. With XLA Google used an intermediate library as a translator to be able to use PyTorch, but that was a nightmare for developers. Native support allows Google TPUs to behave just like NVIDIA GPUs in the … Read more

We have found the oldest living tree in the EU. It is on Teide and almost coincided with the Roman Empire

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Spain is a tourism monster, and one of the most visited points is Teide. The territory of the volcano is imposing, and Bárbol hides on one of its slopes. As the character of ‘The Lord of the Rings‘, Treebeard, a Canary Islands cedar that was the oldest living tree in the European Union. And we say “was” because it has just been surpassed by one of its own species. One that is estimated to be 1,544 years old. Clonal or non-clonal, that is the question. Before we get into the discovery, let’s clarify an important concept when talking about the oldest living trees. There are two categories main: clonal and non-clonal. And understanding them is quite simple: A non-clonal tree is an individual, the traditional concept of a tree that grows from a seed. It is a unique individual with its root system and a main trunk. A clonal tree is one that is born from a root system. For example, some roots can give rise to a tree that grows and dies, and from those same roots, another tree is then born, being a “clone” of the original. Another Canary cedar. Found by researchers from the School of Forestry, Agronomic and Bioengineering Industry Engineering at the Duques de Soria Campus and by experts from the University Institute of Sustainable Forest Management at the University of Valladolid, the newly discovered specimen is a whopping 1,544 years old and is, like Bárbol, a Canary Islands cedar. He overcomes it by several years, since esteem that Bárbol is 1,481 years old, and fortunately for these two specimens, they are very far from tourist areas and human influence. This has allowed them to spend a millennium and a half in the same place where they were born, without worrying about the deforestation of the area caused by humans, and they have not been affected by the eruptions of the volcano. To access the new specimen, the researchers had to be assisted by local climbers to access these remote areas of the Teide National Park to be able to take the samples. This is how they found Treebeard Importance. Thus, they have been able to carry out an inventory of ancient cedars located in these areas that are difficult to access. Of the 25 specimens analyzed with the carbon 14 techniquethe existence of eight millennia has been evidenced, three of them exceeding 1,500 years. They are the witness of an ancient population of cedars that would have covered a large part of the park. The team has commented that it is one of the most important concentrations of ancient trees in the European Union and, furthermore, that “its persistence is due to the inaccessibility of the rocks in which they live.” Lucky. Its scientific value is also enormous, since it is like a historical record of the climate. Studying rings of ancient trees allows us to reconstruct the climatic history of the region, obtaining data on rainfall and drought patterns, tracing an evolution of temperatures and, in the case of Teide, identifying the frequency of volcanic events. It all depends on the “portage”. Those responsible for this discovery are the same ones who already dated to Treebeard in 2022, and it must be said that in Finland they found a juniper with a century more on its bark. Baptized as Utsjoki, in a first analysis in 2021 it was given 1,242 years, but after the discovery of Bárbol, they repeated the analysis and they found with which he was many more: 1,647 years old. But since technicalities have their importance in these things, it must be said that… everyone is right in stating that “theirs” is the longest-lived. The difference is in the arboreal habit of each subject. Both are non-clonal, but while the Finnish juniper had a bushy appearance, the canary has an arboreal appearance. And… well, it must also be said that the juniper died in 1906, so the two canaries are the longest living trees. That’s how they found Utsjoki. | Photo: UTU, Marco Carrer Legends. It is evident that there is a “competition” to find the oldest tree, but this is not a race to turn it into something touristy, as if it can happen with other finds, but rather to have new specimens that allow us to obtain a historical x-ray of the land on which they are. Apart from the specimens studied with methods such as carbon 14 belonging to this classification of non-clonal trees, we have specimens such as Old Tjikko Swedish 9,560 years old. The “trap” is that it is a clonal specimen, so the root system is almost 10,000 years old, but the trunks that appear from time to time only last a few centuries. And finally, those that belong to “folklore”, such as the yew Llangernyw in Wales which, located in the cemetery of a church, is estimated to be about 5,000 years old or the yew tree Fortingall in Scotland between 3,000 and 9,000 years old. Too wide a range. Images | Jens SteckertUVa In Xataka | Even when Spain does it well, it goes wrong: becoming the third most forested country in Europe has become a problem

If the question is how to keep an empire together, the ancient Wari were clear: with psychedelic beer

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Archaeologists have found a key to better understand the Waria pre-Inca civilization that flourished among the 6th and 11th centuries AD and expanded throughout much of what is now Peru and areas of Argentina and Chile. The most curious thing is that the findings do not tell us about its architecture, military practices, social structure or economy, but about something apparently much simpler but crucial for the prosperity of the empire: the love of its bosses for psychedelic beer. Psychedelic beer? Exact. The concept is not new. We know that thousands of years ago The Egyptians already made cocktails with wine and hallucinogens (among other ingredients) and the hobby of the cultures pre-Inca cultures by psychoactive plants or the use of psychotropic substances in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican societies. The curious thing about the Wari is not so much what drugs they used but who did it and (above all) why. Its use would not be limited to priests in rituals, but would be used for political purposes. “We see this type of hallucinogen use as a different context than previous civilizations, which seem to have jealously reserved the use of hallucinogens for a select few, or the late Inca Empire that emphasized mass consumption of beer but did not use psychotropic substances such as vilca,” explains Professor Matthew Biwerwho in 2022 already published with other colleagues a study on the subject based on excavations in Quilcapampa (Peru). What did they consume? A mixture of chicha and vilca. To be more precise, an alcoholic drink made from the berries of the plant. Schinus molle and a psychedelic called Anadenanthera colubrina. Archaeologists are aware for a long time that the consumption of this last substance (vilca) dates back to at least 4,000 years ago, especially through pipes or inhaled such as monkfish. This is suggested by remains located in the Inca Cave, an Argentine site. In the Wari site of Quilcapampa, however, archaeologists have found vilca seeds near remains of chicha made with Schinus mollewhich leads them to think that the Wari not only consumed it with the help of pipes, but that they mixed it with chicha to drink it in psychedelic cocktails. Why is it important? Among other things, these concoctions served Wari leaders to show their power. By offering the mixture to their guests they were not only showing off their hospitality, they were also offering a luxury that was not available to everyone. Archaeologists located remains of vilca in Quilcampampa, but in reality the plant grows at hundreds of kilometers from there, in Ayacucho and Cusco. “The Wari added vilca to chicha to impress guests at their feasts, who could not repeat the experience. This created a relationship of debt between the Wari and their guests, probably from the surrounding region,” pointed out Professor Matthew Biwer years ago, when he published his first research. Was it useful for something else? Yes. And that’s what’s really interesting about a new study Posted by Jacob Keer and Justin Jennings in Magazine of American Archeologywhere they focus on another function of the psychedelic concoction based on chicha and vilca. According to their analysis, the cocktail helped the Wari leaders to consolidate their power. As? Organizing communal celebrations in which drinks were offered, fraternization feasts that were held in almost closed patios. “Except for a small patch of sky, they were isolated from the rest of the world in a high-walled interior space,” they relate researchers in your article. “This was the place where they spent hours together, drinking, eating, talking and praying. The hours that the participants spent together must have represented an unforgettable collective experience that forged strong bonds between those who attended.” What was it for? To strengthen ties. These feasts served Wari leaders to force alliances and consolidate their power. And not only because of the staging. Researchers have studied the effects that the psychedelic concoction may have had on attendees, increasing their empathy, facilitating the creation of long-term bonds and smoothing out rough edges in an expanding empire. “Although archaeologists are paying increasing attention to the role of psychedelics in past societies, they devote little time to their long-term psychological effects. One of these effects is neuroplasticity, which can lead to long-lasting prosocial feelings,” the study points outwhich highlights that the “glow” after consuming vilca (an effect that lasted for days) could help unify communities, “playing a fundamental role in the Wari government.” The combination of vilca and beer would in fact help to partially reduce the psychedelic effects, but prolong them over time. Do you all agree? The researchers suggest that people who consumed the psychedelic cocktail showed “greater openness and empathy”, an advantageous attitude in an empire in which “people who had been strangers or even enemies” coexisted. However, not everyone sees it equally clearly. Live Science recently interviewed to several experts, outside the study, who do not hide their skepticism. Among other reasons because they do not see enough evidence that the Wari mixed vilca and beer. It is true that remains were found nearby and there was no trace of pipes or any other indication that the vilca was consumed in the traditional way, but they are missing overwhelming evidence, such as ceramic fragments that preserve both compounds. Images | Wikipedia In Xataka | The Incas did not need writing to forge an empire. And we are closer to solving the key object in your organization

Marcus Licinius Crassus was the richest man in the Roman Empire thanks to an old business: real estate speculation

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Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison are the richest people in the world. Your personal assets It exceeds the annual GDP of many countries, which gives an idea of ​​the size of their wealth. However, that proportion of wealth is not exclusive to modern fortunes. Marcus Licinius Crassus was one of the richest men of the Roman Empire and his fortune was estimated to be equivalent to the entire annual budget of the Roman treasury. The most curious thing about the history of this Roman millionaire is that the way in which he amassed his fortune would not be out of place in Spain in the 20th or 21st century. Millionaire on father’s side The historian Plutarch was responsible for recording the life and work of Crassus in different chapters of ‘Parallel lives‘. Thanks to this work we know that Crassus amassed one of the most formidable fortunes in Ancient Rome. Marcus Licinius Crassus was born around the year 115 BC in Rome, into the Licinia gens, a family of plebeians with roots in the early days of the Roman Republic, so, although they did not enjoy a great fortune, let’s say that their economic situation was comfortable. His family had already held important consulates during the Republic, so they had a certain presence in Roman political life. His father, Publius Licinius Crassuswas consul in 97 BC, but during the civil war between the supporters of Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla (which took place between 88 and 82 BC), his father and brother were killed in those clashes, and the family lost their property. Bust of Marcus Licinius Crassus After the death of his family, Crassus inherited a small fortune, but had to flee to Hispania, where he hid for months. Later, he joined the side of the general and dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a Roman general and dictator who defeated his rival Gaius Marius and ruled Rome from around 82 BC. Sulla supervised the entry of Marcus Crassus into the Senate and thus opened a way for Crassus to start building your wealth from a position of power and began to be known as Dives“the rich one.” According to his biographer Plutarch, Crassus began his political career with a fortune of 300 talents. According to the inventory of his fortune on the eve of his last campaign, his fortune reached 7,100 talents. Real estate speculation is not a modern invention The basis of Crassus’s extraordinary wealth was the massive purchase of property confiscated from political enemies during Sulla’s rule. When Lucius Cornelius Sulla took control of Rome, those who opposed him lost their properties, and these were sold at very low prices. Crassus bought almost all of them for prices well below the market price. In Rome it was common for the insulaebuildings built of wood and cement crowded together on several floors, they would burn to make fire inside, and it would jump from building to building burning entire neighborhoods. Remains of a Roman insulae As his fortune grew, Marcus Crassus bought more and more slaves that he would use to make his fortune grow even more, forming a small army of more than 500 highly qualified slaves such as architects, bricklayers, carpenters, etc. The Roman millionaire, aware that the fires of the insulae They used to extend to several buildings, he created a brigade of slaves who acted as firefighters and, it was rumored, also arsonists. As and how did he count The CountryCrassus arrived at the fires and offered the owners of the burning buildings and their neighbors ridiculous amounts of money for the property. Faced with the imminence of being left with nothing left over from the flames or having it collapse, they could at least recover part of their investment, so many accepted the sale. Only at that moment, his army of slaves went into action and put out the fire. Afterwards, the rest of the slave architects and builders restored the building, and then resold it, making an enormous profit from its sale because, after all, slave labor was free. As and how do they count In National Geographic, his slaves were even more valuable than the silver mines and land he also owned. According to Plutarch’s story, this strategy helped the skillful negotiator Crassus to gain a good part of the insulae from Rome. Plutarch said that Crassus always built for speculation, never for his own enjoyment. Crassus’ excessive ambition led him to negotiate with Julius Caesar and Pompey the creation of the First Triumvirate, although in reality Crassus’ aspirations were more about obtaining the granting of public contracts and perks for his businesses than the good government of Rome. In fact, hated Pompey. His downfall: exchanging ambition for envy However, as his fortune and political position increased, Crassus yearned for more than wealth. He sought military glory. In 72 BC he received command to end the slave rebellion led by Spartacuswhich had the support of an army made up of between 70,000 and 120,000 slaves who rose up. Marcus Crassus managed to defeat a large part of the rebels and crucified 6,000 slaves along 200 km of the Appian Way as punishment and warning to the rest of the rebels. However, many of them managed to escape, and it was his hated political partner Pompey who managed to hunt them down, putting an end to all the work that Crassus had done. By giving the final blow to the revolt, Pompey took all the credit for the victory, being received in Rome with all the honors of the laurel crown, while Crassus had to settle for a discreet owatta minor recognition. Orodes II, king of the Parthians Crassus did not give up in his attempt to demonstrate his superiority against Pompey and tried to expand his conquests and fortune by facing Pompey. to births in Syriabut his defeat in the Battle of Carras (53 BC) was catastrophic on a strategic level. There he died along with … Read more

the architect of the chinese electrical empire

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On November 20th our Xataka NordVPN Awards 2025which you can follow from our website. In them we will reward, as always, the most important devices and technologies of this year. And of course, in its fourth edition, we will present the Xataka Leyenda award. This recognition, achieved by Pedro Duque in 2021, Margrethe Vestager in 2022 and Matt Mullenweg in 2023recognizes the journey and career of someone of great relevance in science and technology. Today we have the honor of announcing the fourth winner of this award: Stella Li, global executive vice president of BYDthe company that has transformed the automotive industry. Stella Li will join us during the Xataka NordVPN 2025 Awards gala in a few weeks (you can still get a ticket) and we will do an interview that you can see and read on Xataka. You can follow it live with us. Almost three decades of total transformation Li has been with BYD for almost thirty years. He joined when it was a battery manufacturer with two dozen employees that supplied Motorola. Today he directs operations in 88 countries of a company that is approaching a million workers and exceeds $100 billion in revenue. In 2024, BYD manufactured 4.27 million electric vehiclesmore than any other manufacturer in the world. At the beginning of the year she was appointed World Car Person of the Year 2025the first woman and the first Chinese to receive this recognition. His philosophy is direct: “Our common enemy is the internal combustion engine.” He does not see competitors in Tesla or Volkswagen, but rather allies against oil. A rare bird. The industry has been betting on specialization for years, but Li has promoted the opposite: BYD manufactures everything in-house, from screws to chips. When the 2021 semiconductor crisis paralyzed competitors, BYD accelerated. This integration allows BYD to sell the Seagull for 9,000 euros and a luxury Yangwang for 300,000 both models being profitable. With 110,000 engineers, the company registers 32 patents daily. Solid state batteries, your great future betare confirmed for 2030, with 10,000 engineers dedicated exclusively to its development. Execution speed The Brazil plant was announced in December and was already operational in March. The Spanish network has gone from zero to 65 dealers in a year and a half months. When Europe imposed 17% tariffs, BYD pivoted to plug-in hybrids within weeks and sales skyrocketed 892%. Pure speed. Li has not focused his strategy on exporting Chinese cars, but on something very different that explains his success: creating local ecosystems. Hiring in California, development of specific flex hybrids for Brazil, software adapted for each European market… One of its latest movements has been the announcement of 20,000 million euros in European investments and the creation of 10,000 jobs in Hungary. You still have time to get your tickets for the gala Xataka NordVPN Awards 2025 on November 20 in Madrid! Join us and discover the best technological products of the year in a free event full of gadgets, humor and surprises. Advice offered by the brand Despite his growing importance, Li does not have social networks. He gives interviews, but not many. Her public profile is inversely proportional to her impact: she has opened 230 stores in Europe in 12 months, she already has a presence in 88 countries and has multiplied the value of BYD by 20,000 since 2003. She herself was personally in charge of the openings of the first offices in Hong Kong, Rotterdam and Chicago. Three decades of institutional memory converted into the greatest competitive advantage. Stella Li has transformed the global automotive market without having to make media noisecombining strategic patience Zen and very high speed of execution. For all this journey she is the winner of the Xataka Leyenda 2025 award. In Xataka | Stella Li, vice president of BYD: “In five years we will be one of the three main manufacturers in the world, I am convinced” Featured image | Xataka

Bathing in Rome was not a priority. Until the elites of the empire discovered the luxury of the Termas de Trajan

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At present, daily hygiene is (or it should beat least) something we assume with total normality. But in the times of the Republic of Rome, the bathroom was not considered as A priority. The Personal hygiene It consisted of little more than washing your arms once a day and the rest of the body every nine or ten days. At the end of the 1st century, a new trend inspired by classical Greece was gaining importance among the privileged classes of Rome, which began to build spaces dedicated to the pleasures of the bathroom in its lavish villas. The ones were born Balnea that worshiped to the Salutem per Aquam or health through water. Submerging in water bathtubs at different temperature went from being a mere practical requirement to wash, something more playful that fit as a glove with the enjoyment of the patricians and other wealthy class. The challenge: get the greatest and most luxurious hot springs of the empire Marco Vipsanio Agrippa was the first ruler of Rome to which it occurred to build a huge Balneum in the Mars field as a meeting and entertainment place for the citizens of Rome. However, unlike Balneumwhich were deprived, these public water baths will receive the name of Themaereaching Our days like Termas. Agrippa, without knowing it, had started a career with its predecessors in which each new ruler wanted to leave their mark with some larger, more luxurious and most ostentatious hot springs than those of his predecessor. Trajan, as a good Sevillianhe knew the benefits of a good bath to cool off the heats and relax at the end of the day, so he entered the rag in the competition by building an authentic architectural and technological wonder of the ancient world. Ruins of the Termas de Trajan If we could Travel in time to ancient Romewe would meet the sumptuous Trajan Termas. Considered as An architectural wonder delivered to the luxury and well -being of those who visited it. These places offered numerous attractions for the entertainment and health of citizens: saunas, bath pools, Palestras, libraries, porches and gardens decorated with everything luxury of detail. However, although in most cases the cost of the entrance was available to the majority of citizens of Rome, only the wealthiest and powerful could pay all the pleasures and luxury offered by these facilities. The hot springs were inaugurated in the Oppio hill in 109 AD covering the void of public bathrooms left by the fire of the Domus Aureaof Emperor Nero. The Trajan Termas They were a real display of architectural innovation that Integrated the latest in Roman air conditioning technology and opulence in the decorations and mosaics. Mosaic with sandals in hot springs. “Salvom Lavisse”, a bath is good for you In the structure of its construction it was innovated with the development of lighter materials to achieve a equally resistant concretebut much lighter and permissive with heat based on volcanic rock either Tufo Giallo. The wooden structures, which served as fuel for the previous hot springs, were replaced by slender advocated ceilings and large interior spaces. The whole occupied the triple of the surface that its predecessor with some 111,000 square meters of luxury dedicated to body cult. The water supply was guaranteed by a complex aqueduct that brought the water from different sources of the Bracciano lake located 40 km from Rome, and was stored in huge deposits near the theater enclosure with a capacity of eight million liters of water. Trajan thermal complex plant Enjoy a bath in that sumptuous temple dedicated to hygiene and health was A luxurious and relaxing experience. The thermal complex was designed with an impressive architecture and offered a wide range of services and comforts to enjoy. The operation Upon entering, he passed by the NATATIO A large pool with which the first visual contact with the water was had, but that was visited until the end. Before, it should be passed through the APODYTERIA or common dressing rooms. From that point, the visitor passed to the Palestra Fully naked or smeared in essential oils to worship the body exercising the muscles or participating in ball games. Moment that many used to achieve political favors or influences between high society. Columns on which the ground rested. Eustolian house. Cyprus Then, the Thermal circuit It continued through heated rooms with an elaborate system in which the exposure of the sun’s rays was combined through large double windows, and a system of “radiant soil” raised on a series of columns that was heated by the circulation of hot air under the ground, the walls and the vaults. The wealthiest could enjoy massage services with scented oils and ointments and even body hair removal executed by slaves Hot water pools (Caldolarium) and temperate (Tepidarium) were conditioned using the same underground boilers with which the air that acclimatized the entire enclosure was heated. These boilers warmed a large bronze container with inverted turtle shell that came into contact with the base of the bathtub Caldolarium and circulated hot water by convection until The whole pool had the same temperature. Maximum resources optimization, with the same fire air and water heated. The thermal circuit ended with a bathroom in the four cold water pools of the huge central basilica of the Termas de Trajan. In them you could share the bathroom, the conversation (or what arises) with the rest of the hot springs, it was already allowed entry of both men and women. The route ended in the NATATIO who welcomed the visitor. This was one outdoor pool With an approximate depth of one meter, with which the visitor left his luxury and well -being reverie to return to his routine, which Rome did not do in one day. Unfortunately, fate wanted all this wonder of ancient Rome to succumb under a fire. An even greater project emerged from its ashes: the hot springs of Emperor Caracalla … but that is another story. In Xataka … Read more

The blue eyes were about to disappear under the Roman Empire. Now we know why

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About 35,000 years ago, in Buran-Kayato the north of the mountains of Crimea, the first person who knows that he had blue eyes died. Since then, the story of the Iris clear has been complex, violent and very interesting. Today, thanks to the improvement of genetic analysis techniques, we know many things. In recent years, it has been said that effectively The Vikings had blue eyesthat the eyes of the steppe peoples were surprisingly dark and that, during the Roman Empire, the clear eyes almost disappeared. How do we know all this? Davide Piffer used 4,133 old genomes (They covered 44,000 years) to explain when the blue eyes arose, how they were selected generation after generation and why today there are people who still have them. Why do we have blue eyes? At the genetic level, which is what interests us in this case, the explanation is simple: As Piffer himself explained“Blue eyes genetics focuses on two neighboring genes on chromosome 15: OCA2 that controls the production of melanin in the iris, and Herc2 which contains a regulatory element “. In the case of brown eyes, “Herc2 ‘active’ OCA2 effectively to produce enough pigment.” With blue eyes, the situation is different: a mutation in RS12913832 weakens HERC2 control and the least amount of melanin is perceived as bluish or greenish eyes. That is, there is a genetic ‘trace’ that allows us to dive in ancient DNA to know how (with a certain degree of variability) the eyes of our ancestors. What did you discover? This is how Piffer confirmed That the Vikings had mostly blue eyes, the steppe peoples had them darker than expected and that the current prevalence of clear eyes is due to fairly recent factors. He also discovered something curious: that the story of Rome is much more complicated than it seems. While in ancient Rome the blue eyes appear in 22.2%of the population and in medieval Rome in 21.4%, during the empire that figure fell 4.2%. What happened here? The best known explanation. For Pifferthis agrees with the increase in European northwestern descent during those periods. During the first period, although the genetic base is mostly anatolia, there was a high influence of Yamnas groups. During the last one, the arrival of Germanic groups “such as longobardos and ostrogods” would change the general genetic mix. On the other hand, during the years of Roman hegemony, the most purely Latin features had disproportionate prestige that caused a boom of brown eyes. For years, this has been part of the consensus of populations genetics. However, it is not so clear. The demograph Lyman Stone He analyzed exhaustively The Roman genomes of those 4,133 samples to determine if we really had sufficient data to talk about the eyes of the Romans. Their conclusions, between failures in dating and historical confusion, are that we do not have them. According to Stone, there are reasons to think that in the metropolitan area of ​​Rome the blue eyes were reduced (as a consequence of the increase in immigration). In the same way, it is very likely that in the empire there were more people with brown eyes in 200 d. C. that in 300 d. C. (After all, the Empire grew hugely). This is true even if Bologna’s genetics did not change at all. What about blue eyes, then? It is a question that, for the first time, we have technology to answer. However, we have no samples to do so. As Lyman saidold DNA is a fantastic tool, but it is still difficult to interpret correctly. So the answer to the initial question (why (do we believe) the Romans did not have blue eyes?) It is simple: because we do not have enough data. And this configures our world vision much more often than we are willing to admit. Image | Amanda Dalbjörn | Clemens van Lay In Xataka | Every time you think about everything the Romans managed to do, remember that they did it intoxicated with lead

China has built a space empire in 30 years after being expelled from ISS. Your revenge is about to complete

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If the space race of the last century was decided on the moon, that of this century could be a few years after its final act. The space is again the great theater where the two greatest economies in the world demonstrate their technological muscle, and China He has been preparing a master function to close your arc of redemption. A little paint in the face. This story has a clear origin: 1994. That year, China requested to join the International Space Station program with the other partners, But the United States vetoed its entrancearguing that the Asian country was not trustworthy. China developed its own manned space program, but in 2011, the United States Wolf amendment was a second blow, prohibiting NASA from any type of cooperation with Chinese counterparts. In parallel, China suffered the consequences of a world increasingly dependent on navigation satellites. In 1993 he had a first affront when the United States deliberately turned off GPS satellites on the Chinese ship Yinhe, leaving it drifting for 33 days. In 1996, a new blackout made the GPS guidance of a Chinese missile fail. In 2003, China invested 230 million euros to join the Galilean satellite navigation system of the European Union, but also ended up being expelled from this project. Of isolated to self -sufficient. Instead, China started a long -term plan to build, piece by piece, everything they had denied. In 1999 he launched the Shenzhou ship 1. In 2003, it became the third country, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to independently send a man to space: Yang Liwei aboard the Shenzhou 5. In 2007, China undertaked at the same time its lunar career and its own navigation network. The Chang’e 1 probe began to orbit the moon, and the Beidou-1 satellite meant the first stone of an alternative system to the American GPS. Similarly, in 2011 he launched Tiangong-1, the embryo of what would be his future space station. In 2022 he was no longer interested in ISS: China put the Tiangong Space Stationthat since then It is permanently inhabited. Even in areas such as planetary defense, China is replicating and improving Western missions. After the success of NASA’s dart mission, will launch its own mission to divert an asteroidwith a key improvement: a second ship that will observe the impact in real time and measure the live result. The first milestones. China’s space exploits have been growing in complexity. In 2020, the Chang’e 5 probe brought samples of the visible face of the moon for the first time in 44 years, and of a geologically younger area than the samples of the Apollo missions, so that They also interested NASAdespite the law that prevents them from collaborating. It was not until 2024, with the Chang’e-6 mission, which China achieved an impressive unpublished feat: bring to Earth The first samples of the hidden face of the moona tremendous effect in the new space race that now seeks to repeat on Mars, going for the first soil samples of the red planet. While NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is in a limbo, China plans to launch its Tianwen-3 probe in 2028 and bring samples of Mars in 2031, foreseeably advanceing NASA. He could do it alone, but in a brilliant geopolitical movement, he has invited agencies around the world to join with their own instruments, which leaves the United States in an awkward position. Sorpasso in sight. Beyond the robotic missions, the most important milestones at stake are the missions manned to the moon. While the NASA Artemis program accumulates numerous delays and cost overruns, China advances firmly towards its objectives of stepping on the moon and establishing a lunar base. NASA has already arrived six times to the surface of the moon between 1969 and 1972, but the new lunar race does not go to put a flag, but to control resources. The one who arrives first and establishes a base in the South Lunar Pole It will have a key advantage to select areas with ice water and establish the communication protocols of the cislunar space. Nervousness in Washington. The United States reaction to China’s spatial advances show that the Sorpasso It is possible. The Wolf amendment has fallen short, and now NASA has hardened its position, prohibiting Chinese citizens Access to all its facilities, programs and even zoom meetings. The agency alleges reasons for “cybersecurity.” At the same time, NASA’s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, has adopted A belligerent rhetoric against China: “We are in a second space race. We will win the Chinese on the moon.” You can intuit the fear of a defeat, and one of the strategic movements of the United States to avoid it will be to install a nuclear reactor on the moon before China does, to be able to declare an “exclusion zone”, de facto controlling the most valuable areas. In 30 years, China has gone from being a spatial outcome to an undisputed leader who marks the rhythm in the exploration of the 21st century. The veto that had to stop her became the fuel of her ambition. His space empire is no longer a promise; It is a reality that orbits our heads and perches on other worlds. Revenge, patient and meticulous, is already served. Image | Xinhua In Xataka | While NASA faces the cancellation of 41 missions, China is making authentic virguerías in space

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