Empires may rise and fall, but the impact they have on their conquered subjects and the future may continue beyond their passing, for better or for worse. The Spanish Empire, which began in the 15 th...
For over a thousand years until its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the city of Constantinople was one of the greatest urban centres in the Christian world. At the heart of this city was the Hagia...
In 977 AD, a Persian poet named Ferdowsi began on a grandiose poetic journey that would take him 33 years to complete. He used ancient Persian tales which had been told from generation to generation...
It turns out Caesar Augustus was an undeserving braggart. He claimed, “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.” But new research by a university professor has found that only a...
An extraordinary fossil find in the desert of Ethiopia is pushing back the dawn of humankind by approximately half a million years, and rewriting what we know about the evolutionary branching that...
More than 1.2 million rotations of the Earth on its axis since her death, Queen Hatepshut has not been eradicated from memory by her ancient successors. Far from it. Still today, nearly 3,500 years...
In many ways, the old Norse beliefs of Scandinavia are strange and wonderful. The old pagan religion had gods and goddesses of music and fertility, nature deities, elves, dwarves, giants, magical...
The 12 th century is generally regarded as a period of European decline. In other parts of the world, however, this was certainly not the case. In South East Asia, the Khmer Empire was enjoying its...
Archaeologists have unearthed the skeletal remains of 200 people underneath a supermarket in Paris on the site of an old hospital where victims of the Black Plague had been known to be buried. It was...
Archaeologists have been met with surprise upon surprise as they excavate coffins and remains found at the medieval grave site of England’s King Richard III. The opening of a unique lead coffin found...
The Sagas of the Icelanders have long been preserved as the most comprehensive specimen of the literary culture of the 13 th and 14 th centuries of Iceland. In writing these sagas, many attributes of...
Archaeologists have concluded that pre-agricultural Stone Age hunter-gatherers on the Isle of Wight 8,000 years ago obtained domesticated wheat from farmers on the continent of Europe. That is 2,000...
Scenes depicted in a Chinese medieval travel book gave clues to researchers, helping them locate what is said to be a 13 th century military outpost used by Mongolian conqueror Genghis Khan. As...
Two years ago, an aerial search of the dense jungle of Honduras fuelled by local legends of a lost ancient city, revealed miles of seemingly man-made features. Announcements quickly spread that...
Archaeologists stumbled upon a surprising find in 2009 when they uncovered a preserved brain in a skull, buried in an Iron Age pit in Yorkshire, England. Known as the Heslington Brain, the find has...
During the 7 th and 6 th centuries B.C., the ancient Greek city-states began establishing colonies on the coast of the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea. Panticapaeum, Theodosia and Kimmerikon, for...
Archaeologists in Edinburgh have excavated several skeletons this year, including a discovery last month of bones believed to belong to a medieval Scottish nobleman or knight, now dubbed Sir Eck...
Christopher Columbus is often remembered as the first European to discover the Americas, eventually leading to the colonization of these two continents by European powers. It is undeniable that...
Every year, rural communities in Peru carry out an ancient tradition that stems back to the age of the Incan Civilization. Considered a sacred expression of ritual, history and renewal, Peruvians...
Music has held a special role in human society for thousands of years. In ancient China, for instance, sets of bronze bells were played for entertainment and ritual purposes at court. The...
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the British colonial administrator, is commonly regarded as the founder of modern-day Singapore. Yet, the history of this island nation stretches to well before the...
King Senebkay, pharaoh during the Abydos Dynasty, was brutally killed during a fierce battle, researchers believe, and his remains were returned home to be mummified long after his death. Dr. Josef...
It has been one lucky find after another for an archaeologist from England. A couple of months ago he found what may be an Anglo-Saxon or Viking stonework artifact that was on sale as a garden stone...
The notorious reputation of the Vikings spanned thousands of years and across many lands. Bloodthirsty invaders intent on raiding and plundering is what many still imagine when speaking of Vikings...
