Selena Wisnom /The Conversation I’m standing in a basement kitchen prodding at a sheep’s liver, looking for marks on its smooth surface. People crowd around to film the proceedings, since I’m here to ask a question that everyone wants to know the answer to: will Donald Trump win the US election? I’m following instructions that were first written down by the ancient Babylonians 4,000 years ago, and still survive today. Every crease on the liver has a meaning, and cuneiform tablets discovered in modern-day Iraq explain how to interpret them. Armed with this knowledge, it’s possible to calculate the answer to any question, so long as it is yes or no, by adding up the number of positive or negative
