Wondering What 2026 Has In Store? The Mesopotamians Have A Tip, But You Won't Like It

The future. It’s terrifying, right? A seemingly endless expanse of possibility, coming for us if we like it or not. If only there was some way to look ahead, to see what 2026 has in store for us. Well, there are actually plenty of ways to “predict the future”, the only question is if any of them work.

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You may recall that some spookily accurate predictions for 2025 were made 100 years ago, and by a fake professor, no less. It seems the threshold for a mystic is a low bar, and humans have gotten really creative in their quest to predict what’s coming. 

In that spirit, it’s high time you learned about prognostic offal prodding – aka, Sheep Liver Divination.

Predicting the future in Mesopotamia

It could be said that history begins in Mesopotamia, because that's where writing was invented. In fact, this ancient civilization is where we see a lot of humanity’s firsts, from maths and science (yay!) to banking and law (booo).

Trump in 2016 – even before he was the official nominee, I thought, 'Won't this be a hilarious joke?'. Let's ask the sheep livers if he will win the presidency.

Dr Selena Wisnom

Smart folks, it seems, but they weren’t immune to shenanigans, as Assyriologist and author Dr Selena Wisnom should know. In her recently published book, The Library of Ancient Wisdom, she explores an ancient method of predicting the future.

It was a prominent belief among Mesopotamians that the gods sent signs in all sorts of Earthly ways, such as palms growing out of season or a lizard falling on your shoulder. The conversation didn’t have to be one-way, either. Enter: sheep liver divination.

Sheep Liver Divination

“It's their chance to ask direct questions to the gods,” Dr Wisnom told IFLScience. “So, they're not just listening for messages from the gods, but they're directly asking them: Can you tell me if this is going to happen? Should I go to war? Will my mother recover from this illness? Can I trust this letter that's been put in front of me?”

I only do this as a joke, but also to understand how they [were] interpreting it. Although, I have been right a scary number of times.

Dr Selena Wisnom

“They then believe that if they dedicate a sheep to the gods, sacrifice it at the moment they ask the question, the gods will write the answer to their question on the entrails, and then they just have to open it up, take a look inside the sheep.”

Reading the liver involved looking out for little creases, the sort you find on several organs. Much like palmistry, it involves looking for certain lines, seeing if they branch, if there’s damage from parasites (hopefully your palm reader doesn’t see that last one).

We know this because the instructions to the process were written on clay tablets. It’s a historian's dream medium because it's very durable (who among us could forget the oldest customer complaint letter about copper?), enabling them to – oh, I don’t know – try to figure out who will be the next president.

The gods are always right, so if you don't get the answer that you want, it's because you've done something wrong.

Dr Selena Wisnom

“Trump in 2016 – even before he was the official nominee, I thought, 'Won't this be a hilarious joke?'. Let's ask the sheep livers if he will win the presidency,” said Wisnom. “And so, it came to pass.”

“I should emphasize I only do this as a joke, but also to understand how they [were] interpreting it. Although, I have been right a scary number of times, and I can always find a reason when I'm wrong. That itself tells us something very interesting about human psychology, right? I mean, the gods are always right, so if you don't get the answer that you want, it's because you've done something wrong.”

So, perhaps sheep liver divination can tell us more about human psychology than it can the future, but fear not. If you really want to see what’s coming, there’s always asparamancy.