Meghan Henning & Candida Moss / The Conversation With the spread of the coronavirus , the world is becoming pointedly aware of the extent to which human beings are interconnected. The rapid...
The coronavirus is concentrating our minds on the fragility of human existence in the face of a deadly disease. Words like ‘epidemic’ and ‘ pandemic ’ (and ‘panic’!) have become part of our daily...
The Black Death was one of the greatest disasters in recorded history. New discoveries in a medieval hospital burial ground are revealing new insights into its impact on rural England. It shows that...
The recent global spread of a deadly coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China, has led world leaders to invoke an ancient tradition to control the spread of illness: quarantine. The practice is first...
The world is asking “ are we on the edge of the next pandemic?” as the new coronavirus looks set to go global and case numbers rise. But looking back at ancient pandemics, what have we learned about...
Medieval history is seldom kind. The decades and centuries slumbered onwards, each one bringing its own share of wars, crime , poverty...and disease. Happiness and prosperity were rare and almost...
Researchers say that claims of the Justinianic plague as a “mass killer” are wrong. It certainly had some impact, but they assert that plague outbreak, which began in the 6th century, didn’t bring...
An international team of researchers have analysed human remains from 21 archaeological sites to learn more about the impact and evolution of the plague-causing bacterium Yersinia pestis during the...
The Pax Mongolica (translated from Latin to mean ‘Mongol Peace’) refers to a period in history when a large part of Europe and Asia was under Mongol control as a result of the military campaigns of...
To learn about the rise and fall of ancient European civilizations, researchers sometimes find clues in unlikely places: deep inside of the Greenland ice sheet, for example. Thousands of years ago,...
When it comes to archaeological discoveries, very few countries can measure up to the wealth of Egypt. From the Rosetta Stone , to the Valley of the Kings, to the great ancient pyramids at Giza,...
The Malagasy people of Madagascar have built a way of life around death – during the dry winter months, famadihana ceremonies, known as “the turning of the bones” and “dancing with the dead”, take...
There were quite a few methods of offing rivals available to criminals in ancient Rome, but poisoning became a popular one by the early imperial period. Perhaps the first widespread ring wreaking...
Ankhesenamun, wife of the boy-king Tutankhamun , is portrayed in many ways; as a terrified and hapless youngster; a power-hungry murderess; or a loathsome vixen who will stop at nothing to achieve...
The Times of Israel reports that a 1,600-year-old wine press has been discovered in a vast Byzantine building along the incense trade route in the southern Negev desert in Israel. Experts suggest...
One of history’s most intriguing ancient mysteries remains the elusive and legendary Ark of the Covenant, also known as the Ark of the Testimony. According to Biblical sources, it was constructed...
We can only guess about the life and times of a young mother and two children buried with her, possibly felled by the first wave of the bubonic plague in the 1340s in Italy. They were all buried in a...
Imagine a 2- to 3-foot long (0.6- to 1-meter) worm slowly working its way out of your body… with the possibility of other worms doing so in the future. Such is the horror of the guinea worm, which...
New facial reconstruction of a man buried in a medieval hospital graveyard discovered underneath a Cambridge college sheds light on how ordinary poor people lived in medieval England. The audience of...
The Fourteen Holy Helpers are a group of saints venerated together in the Roman Catholic Church. Veneration of this group of saints (known also as auxiliary saints) began during the 14th century, as...
The Ipuwer papyrus, also known as the ‘Admonitions of Ipuwer’, is a controversial text that describes starvation, drought, death, and violent upheavals in ancient Egypt, with some maintaining that it...
When people think of climate change, most think of rising temperatures, drought, and an increase in storms—the type of climate change Earth is undergoing now. A lot has also been written about how...
It is undeniable that Michel de Nostredame (more commonly known as Nostradamus) is most renowned for his published collection of prophecies known as Les Prophéties , or in English as The Prophecies...
The Plague is far older than previously known and later changed to become much more virulent—so virulent that it may have contributed to the decline of Classical Greece and the Roman and Byzantine...
