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National Geographic
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- National Geographic
Blowing out birthday candles is surprisingly ancient
If you've been to a birthday party, you've probably seen it: the cake comes out, the candles are lit, the room sings, and the birthday person makes a wish before blowing them out. It's a moment we don't think twice about—but it didn't start as just a party tradition. From moonlit offerings in ancient Greece to protective spells in medieval Germany, birthday candles were once used to invoke blessings, ward off misfortune, and represent the delicate balance between life and death. So, how did a spiritual ritual evolve into a party trick? Here's how cultures around the world have used fire, food, and celebration to mark the passage of time. The history of birthday candles While it's commonly said that the tradition of birthday candles began in ancient Greece, there's no direct historical record of candles being placed on cakes to honor the gods. However, some scholars, such as Marie Nicola, a pop culture historian, say the idea likely stems from rituals associated with Artemis, the Greek goddess of the moon. Marie Nicola Archaeological excavations at the Artemision of Ephesus, one of Artemis's major temples, have uncovered round cakes—known as noûton-gonosupahon—that were used as votive offerings. Some modern interpretations suggest that worshippers may have lit flames to mimic moonlight and carry prayers skyward during each lunar month to honor Artemis. 'The idea of fire as divine presence is incredibly old and cross-cultural. Indo-European belief systems used fire in household altars and public ceremonies,' says Nicola. As Greek customs spread, the Romans absorbed many of these practices, introducing round cakes and candlelit offerings into both temple rituals and private celebrations, including birthdays for the elite. As the Roman Empire spread across Gaul, Germania, and Britannia, so did its customs. 'Alongside that came the symbolic use of candles in birth rites. And later, Christianity,' says Nicola. How candles became a birthday tradition The modern custom of placing candles on birthday cakes is often attributed to the German Kinderfest, a traditional festival celebrating children. According to Margit Grieb, associate professor of German Studies at the University of South Florida, the connection is indirect—but meaningful. 'Margit Griebinasmuch as People back then believed that children were especially vulnerable on their birthdays to succumb to evil spirits,' she explains. Lighting candles may have served as a form of spiritual protection. According to The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, the candles were left to burn throughout the day until the evening meal, and their smoke was believed to carry the child's wishes to heaven. Early Christians rejected birthdays for being pagan and self-celebratory, says Nicola. While candles, used to honor saints, guide spirits, and mark sacred times, were retained in Christian liturgy, cakes were not. But in the late medieval period, cakes reemerged as festive foods, mostly in elite homes, and in non-liturgical, non-pagan contexts. 'In the 1600s, Protestant regions saw a pivot away from saints' feast days and a growing interest in personal milestones,' says Nicola. 'Birthdays, baptism anniversaries, and confirmations became new touchstones for celebration.' One of the earliest references to the birthday candle tradition comes from German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who recounts his 52nd birthday in Gotha as a guest of Prince August of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg in his autobiography, Tage-Und Jahreshefte. He describes a large cake with about 50 flaming candles, leaving no room for candles to represent the coming years, unlike children's birthday cakes. This record, written by a Protestant, reinforced how ingrained the ritual had become by the mid-18th century, says Nicola. While Catholics lit candles for saints, Protestants re-situated it. 'In many traditions, including early Christian mysticism, [breath] was tied to the soul. Blowing out a candle while making a silent intention carries echoes of votive prayer, only here, it's domestic, child-centered, and delightfully secular,' she adds. Before the 18th century, there were relatively few references to birthday cakes and candles, as it was more common at children's birthdays to put lit candles on the cake, says Grieb. 'Even today, a birthday cake with candles is a much more common element of an adult birthday celebration in the U.S. than in Germany.' The symbolism evolved. Lit candles came to represent inner light and personal growth, according to Nicola. Cakes were topped with lit candles, one for each year of life, plus an additional candle said to represent the 'light of life.' Other records describe the surrounding candles as the Light of Life, and the middle candle as the 'one to grow on'. In Switzerland, researchers for The Folk-lore Journal documented the ritual among the Swiss middle class in 1881, although there was no record of prayers or wishes being made. A birthday cake had lit candles around it, with each candle representing a year of the celebrant's life. The celebrant blows out the candles before the cake is eaten. Unlike the Germans, the Swiss did not let the candles burn down; instead, they blew them out before they did. 'The Folk Lore Journal is the earliest reference that documents the full birthday candle ritual,' says Nicola, '… which is proof of a cultural tradition that likely originated from Germany.' She adds that the tradition was likely practiced decades before 1881, but it does not appear in the documentation. How birthday candles became a global tradition In the 19th century, German immigrants brought the birthday candle tradition with them to the U.S., says Nicola. References to the German candle-on-cake custom began appearing in American publications, with German-language papers like the Philadelphia Demokrat, New Yorker Staats-Zeitung, and Milwaukee Herold, which published Kinderfest announcements, serving as the catalyst. The early 1800s witnessed a distinct variation of the tradition. Unlike the Germans and Swiss, guests, rather than celebrants, blew out the candles, which had different meanings in different states. However, by 1909, the ritual had reverted to the host blowing out their own candles. It was believed that the wish only came true if the birthday celebrant successfully blew out all the candles in one breath. Between 1900 and 1920, candles on cakes were the norm among the U.S. and U.K. middle class, says Nicola. By the 1920s, age-appropriate candles, often sold with matching candle holders, had gone mainstream, becoming a universal concept. They were mass-produced and sold by department stores like Sears, Roebuck and Co. The media also played a significant role in the widespread adoption of the birthday candle tradition. In 1931, Disney's short film 'The Birthday Party,' featuring Mickey Mouse, became a cultural memory embedded in greeting cards, birthday songs, and TV shows. After World War II, American consumer culture exported the candle-blowing tradition globally, 'through tourism, kids' media, and brands like Hallmark and Betty Crocker,' says Nicola. Postwar Japan had adopted the tradition by the 1950s, while entertainment exports from the United States spread the tradition to other parts of the globe.
Spectator
16-07-2025
- General
- Spectator
Where did ‘husband' come from?
'Am I housebound?' asked my husband as I was discussing with him the complicated history of the name for his role in life. 'No, darling,' I said. 'You're the one in the house who just is or lives there.' Only later did I tell him that the word bond, behind the -band of husband, sank in worth with the years, following the same path as boor, churl and peasant. Whereas I as a housewife enjoy a comparatively transparent label, any husband's title is obscure. It is simply a house-bond, but the first element of husband, hus-, no longer seems like house, and the -bond element is often mistaken for a form of bond, a separate word to do with binding. The bond in husband derives from words in Norse languages with related meanings 'to live, dwell, to cultivate, to build'. Old English had a connected word, buan, 'to dwell', and these all came from the ancient Indo-European word that gave us be, as well as the Latin fui and the Greek stem phu- (hence physics). The history of the English word be finds cousins in Persian, Russian and Irish. Anyway, before the Norman Conquest, bonda in English meant a freeman, like a ceorl (churl), below a noble thane but above a servile worker. After the Normans came, the churl sank from freeman to a tenant bound to a lord, and bonde in Middle English became equivalent to a villein or serf, and then to a slave. It was at this stage that the word became confused with bond as in bondage. In husband, the fossilised -band was insulated from these developments in meaning. Husbandry meant at first management of a household, an obsolete sense, of which we retain only husbanding of resources. Husbandry was the task of a husbandman, cultivating the soil. The husband as master of the house came to mean the correlative of a housewife, to whom he'd be married. Strangely some men in the Middle Ages, such as Richard Husewif (1192), had the word as a surname; perhaps it was taken as a role independent of sex. My husband certainly couldn't be mistaken for one.
DW
03-07-2025
- Science
- DW
Who were Uralic people? Researchers solve an ancient mystery – DW – 07/03/2025
Genetic research traced the ancestral homeland of Uralic people, whose descendants live in Russia, Hungary, Finland and Etonia. But that's not the full story. Researchers have solved a long-standing mystery about the origins of Uralic languages. They were known to go back thousands of years, but who spoke them originally? To find out, researchers combined genetic and archeological data to trace the ancestral origins of the people who now speak Uralic languages. Their study, published in , describes how they found a 'genetic tracer dye' for the spread of Uralic-speaking populations across Eurasia between 11,000 and 4,000 years ago. This shows how Uralic people migrated from Siberia as far as the Baltic sea and East Asia, bringing with them technological advancements and the Uralic language. It also shows how the ~25 million Uralic language speakers living today can trace this ancestry in their DNA. "This study is incredibly exciting for me as Estonian. We Uralic speakers have this little contribution of Siberian DNA — about 5% [of our total DNA]. Now it seems these genes connect all Uralic people with our ancestral cultures and languages," said Kristiina Tambets, an expert in archaeogenetics at University of Tartu in Estonia, who was not involved in the study. Scientists have previously traced the roots of Indo-European languages. This linguistic root via people migrating from central Asia to Europe and India started 5,000 years ago. Eventually, the language branched out into modern groups like Germanic, Slavic, and Romance. But Uralic languages are completely different — experts don't fully understand the origins of the language, or who spoke it. That's because Uralic languages, such as those spoken in Estonia, Hungary and Finland, all come from a completely different linguistic origin, compared to Indo-European. Linguists believe Uralic languages may have originated from somewhere near the Ural Mountains, in modern-day Russia and Kazakhstan. But it's debated where exactly this was, and how Uralic languages spread through Eurasia. The study authors aimed to solve this mystery by studying the genes of ancient Uralic people. By analyzing patterns and variations in DNA from ancient individuals, they could reconstruct how these populations migrated over many generations. They tested the genomes of 180 ancient Uralic people, who lived 11,000-4,000 years ago across a huge area of Eurasia — mapping closely with the whole range of modern-day Russia and its neighbors. They compared this ancient genomic data to the DNA from another 1,312 ancient people already studied by scientists. Their data showed a complex picture of how Uralic people migrated over thousands of years from multiple original areas throughout Siberia. "This study gives us the origin and mechanism of the spread of Uralic people during the Bronze age," said Tambets. Tracing the genetics of these migrating peoples, the researchers found that early Proto-Uralic people branched off into several different groups over thousands of years. One major group went west to the Baltic — areas like Finland, Estonia, and northwest Russia, where Uralic language speakers live today. Another proto-Uralic group called the Yeniseians branched off around 5,400 years ago to live in central Siberia. There, the only surviving Yeniseian language is Ket. And another branch migrated to East Asia around 4,500 years ago, which the authors say is why many Uralic-speaking people today have some East Asian ancestry. Some of these people then migrated to the Americas and gave rise to Native Americans. Other Uralic groups in the central Eurasian steppe lands migrated westwards into Hungary around 3,000 years ago. This study also supports the idea that the eastern Ural Mountains are the homeland for Uralic languages. "That said, it's not possible to say what languages people spoke based on their genes," said Tambets. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Tambets, who is head of the Centre of Excellence of Estonian Roots, said the study is "the way" to solve questions about ancestry. "It pulls together all these different strands about genetics, language, and archeology. It shows how Uralic-speaking people today can trace how their ancestors followed this [migration] route and spread with super cool technological advancements 4,000 years ago." By "super cool advancements," Tambets refers to metallurgy, particularly with copper and bronze, and the trade networks that early Uralic people developed. Migrating Uralic people heavily influenced the cultures who already lived through the Eurasian lands. "Early [Indo-European] settlers at the Baltic came together with later Uralic-speaking people after this massive migration. I'm a mosaic of this integration," said Tambets. As well as preserving their own languages, Uralic people also influenced the Indo-European languages that most Europeans speak today. For example, linguists believe words like "water", "pot", and "fish" may have originally stemmed from source: Ancient DNA reveals the prehistory of the Uralic and Yeniseian peoples
The Hindu
01-07-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
Sinhalese migrated from South India, mixed heavily with Adivasi post-migration, genome study finds
Analyses of whole-genome sequence data of urban Sinhalese and two indigenous Adivasi clans in Sri Lanka, which live in geographically separated regions in the country, shed light on the migratory history of these populations and their genetic relationship to each other and to many Indian populations. The study published recently in the journal Current Biology found that Sinhalese and Adivasi are genetically closest to each other and to South Indians, but, at a regional and fine-scale level, the two Adivasi clans are genetically distinct. For the study, whole genomes of 35 urban Sinhalese individuals and 19 individuals from two indigenous Adivasi clans were sequenced. Of the 19 genomes of Adivasi clans that were sequenced, five were from Interior Adivasi and 14 were from Coastal Adivasi. The sampling and data generation became possible due to the outreach efforts of Sri Lankan collaborator, Dr. Ruwandi Ranasinghe from the University of Colombo. In addition, the whole genome data of 35 Sri Lankan Tamils sampled in the UK, which were already sequenced as part of the 1,000 Genomes Project, were included in the analyses. Sinhalese chronicles and previous genetic studies had proposed that Sinhalese had migrated from northern or northwest India around 500 BCE, though their exact origins and migratory history are still debated. That Sinhalese speak an Indo-European language, Sinhala, whose present-day distribution lies primarily in northern India further supports the idea of their migration from northern India. But the current study contradicts the findings of the previous studies from a genetic perspective. 'The genetic ancestries and their proportions in the Adivasi and Sinhalese are most similar to Dravidian speaking populations who live in Southern India today,' says Dr. Niraj Rai from Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP), Lucknow and one of the corresponding authors of the paper. Also Read | Genome study: 180 million genetic variants found in 9,772 individuals 'Even among South Indian populations, we find that the Sinhalese are genetically closest to those communities that have higher proportions of the so-called ASI or Ancestral South Indian ancestry. In contrast to many North Indians, these populations generally have lower levels of a genetic ancestry related to ancient groups from the Eurasian Steppe, proposed to have carried Indo-European languages into South Asia and that are today spoken widely in northern regions of India,' says Dr. Maanasa Raghavan, Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago and a corresponding author of the study. But how does one reconcile the fact that Sinhalese speak a language that is classified as Indo-European, which today is spoken mostly in North India? The authors explain that genes do not reflect linguistic affinities, and biological and cultural evolution can have different trajectories. They speculate that this genetic-linguistic discordance may have been caused by the Sinhalese population having migrated from somewhere in North India geographically, but genetically speaking, the migration may have come from a group that resembles more South Indian Dravidian speakers today. An alternative explanation is that a small group of Sinhalese, perhaps representing the elite, might have migrated to Sri Lanka and transmitted the language but not genes. 'If the Sinhalese were derived from a North Indian genetic cluster with higher Steppe-related ancestry, mixing had to have happened with ASI populations to dilute their genetic ancestries and pull them genetically closer to South Indian populations in our analyses. More anthropological studies are needed to fully understand these differing genetic and cultural affinities of the Sinhalese,' Dr. Raghavan says. The time of formation of the Sinhalese genetic pool was dated in the study to about 3,000 years ago, falling within the range of dates displayed broadly by Indian and other Sri Lankan populations and around the time of the proposed migration date of the Sinhalese in the chronicles (500 BCE). 'The date our analysis reveals is interesting. It implies that the Sinhalese ancestors migrated to Sri Lanka fairly close in time to the dynamic genetic mixing events that were occurring about 2,000-4,000 years ago in India that created the ANI-ASI genetic spectrum we see in today's populations,' Dr. Rai explains. Sinhalese chronicles also say that when Sinhalese migrated from India to Sri Lanka about 3,000 years ago, Adivasi were already existing in Sri Lanka. This is also supported by anthropological studies that propose that Adivasi are descended from early hunter-gatherers in the region. The Adivasi are, in fact, traditionally hunter-gatherers and the Indigenous peoples of Sri Lanka. 'At a broad scale, Adivasi today look genetically very similar to the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamil. This must mean that the Sinhalese, Sri Lankan Tamils, or other groups migrating from South India must have met the Adivasi, mixed with them heavily, and contributed to what is the present-day genetic structure of the Adivasi,' Dr. Raghavan says. Sinhalese and Adivasi are close to each other and share broad-level genetic similarities, but on a fine-scale demographic resolution, the study found that the two Adivasi clans are a bit different from the Sinhalese. The Adivasi have slightly higher levels of ancient hunter-gatherer ancestry than the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils, and have maintained smaller population sizes over the course of their history, both of which support their traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle. The Adivasi genomes also display signatures of endogamy, which appear as long stretches of DNA inherited from a common ancestor. The study further reports that a consequence of the low population size and endogamy is that the genetic diversity in the Adivasi is lower than the urban populations, which may have an impact on their health and disease status. While both Adivasi clans maintained lower population sizes compared to the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils, the authors found that the Interior Adivasi clan seemed to have undergone a stronger reduction in their population size compared to the Coastal Adivasi, leading to a greater loss of their genetic diversity. 'We find the two Adivasi clans — the Coastal Adivasi and the Interior Adivasi — also have some differences in their genetic ancestry arising due to distinct geographic separation between them,' says Dr. Rai. This, according to Dr. Raghavan, indicates that the Interior Adivasi clan must have undergone stronger pressures, perhaps societal or environmental, to keep the population size lower compared to their Coastal counterparts. Explaining how the two Adivasi clans are more similar to each other, but still have genetic differences at a fine scale, she says that this basically means that at some point in time, due to geographic separation, the genetic and lifestyle attributes of the two clans started to drift apart. In fact, the fragmented nature of the Adivasi clans also impacted the study sampling strategy. While 35 individuals representing the two large groups — Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils — have been included in the analyses, the numbers for the two Adivasi populations are small — five for interior Adivasi and 14 for coastal Adivasi. Though it would be ideal to keep matched sample sizes of different populations for genetic analyses, the reason for including only small numbers for the two Adivasi clans was because the Adivasi communities today are very fragmented. 'Historical, anthropological, as well as our genetic results all suggest that these communities live in small sizes and practice endogamy,' says Dr. Raghavan. 'Because of endogamy, a lot of these individuals tend to be quite related to one another. Having really high relatedness in a group impacts the genetic analyses because then everybody's going to look like each other. So that's why our sample sizes were lower for the two Adivasi clans.' Despite the number of individuals representing the two Adivasi clans being small, the researchers were able to recapture the entire population history of these two groups. The study was able to address the questions that the researchers set out to do despite the Adivasi sample sizes being small, says Dr. Raghavan. 'Since every individual's genome is a mosaic of their ancestor's genomes, even a small number of individuals can represent their population's genetic histories. Moreover, we didn't find any genetic outliers within the Adivasi clans. So, all the sampled individuals fit into the model that we propose,' clarifies Dr. Rai. 'This is the first time that high-resolution genome data have been sequenced from multiple populations in Sri Lanka, including the Indigenous Adivasi and urban Sinhalese, to understand the deeply rooted ancestries and their population histories,' says Dr. Rai. Broadly, the study has important implications for how humans moved across South Asia and highlights the high degree of interconnectedness between India and Sri Lanka over millennia.
New Indian Express
22-06-2025
- Science
- New Indian Express
The story of language
How did the language you are reading come to exist? The Indo-European family of languages covers most of Europe, the Iranian plateau, northern India and parts of Asia. It is spoken by almost half of all living people, and they all stem from a common source. English, Hindustani, Spanish, Russian, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Norse and more than four hundred others can be traced to their origins. Laura Spinney's new book tells the story of how Proto-Indo-European (PIE) may initially have been spoken as a kind of language of only a few dozen people evolved into the mother tongue of billions. The words we use feel inevitable. We take them for granted. But they began to come alive some six thousand years ago, when copper was being smithed in the lands to the west of the Black Sea. As the traders travelled, the words they shared went with them across the Black Sea and then around the world: from the forests of Romania to the steppe of Odessa, now with the development of larger and larger settlements, with steppe herders becoming global traders, now with roads, with the crossing of the Volga, sped up by the wheel, and on to the edge of China. Laura Spinney draws on recent evidence to tell this story by putting together linguistics, archaeology and genetic research to trace the movement of people and their language. Making these links is not straightforward. PIE was not written down; it has been reconstructed by comparing the languages that evolved from it.
