3rd Century BCE Soup and More

Ashoka or Ashok (the more appropriate pronunciation of his Indian name) has mentioned the word "soup" in one of his edicts.

 Ashok was the 3rd Mauryan emperor who ruled in India during the third century BCE and under him the Mauryan empire rose to its peak. Ashok is best-known for the edicts he inscribed. In one of his edicts he has mentioned the word "sooparthaya" which translates into English as "for the purpose of soup" and he has also mentioned in the same edict that the soup is "now only made of 2 peacocks and 1 antelope compared to before when hundreds of animals were slaughtered in his kitchen." He also says that "the antelope is also only sometimes killed." This shows that he was becoming more conscious.

People knew the world was round since the Greeks!

It is popularly believed that people discovered that the Earth is round and not flat in the Middle Ages, but people knew about the Earth being round since the time of the Greeks. The Greeks were a very sophisticated and cultured civilization and many of them were philosophers, mathematicians and scientists like Socrates, Aristophanes, Archimedes and Plato. So, as the Greeks had such intelligent philosophers, and resources like star charts, they were able to discover that the Earth was round.

Illustration by- Pronoy Mukherjee

Earth is the only planet that isn’t named after a Roman god or goddess!

Illustration by- Pronoy Mukherjee

All the planets in our solar system are named after Roman gods and goddess’. English has many borrowed words from several languages. It evolved from Anglo-Saxon (English German), when Germanic tribes migrated to Britain in the 5^th century AD. The Anglo-Saxon word “erda” and the Germanic word “erde” means land or soil. As English evolved, the word got transformed “eorthe” or “ertha” till it finally became “earth”.

Illustration by- Pronoy Mukherjee