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The title of “emperor” is commonly seen as superior to that of “king”. But that has not always been the case. Ironically, what is now translated as “emperor” started out not as a title at all but as...
Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca was a Spanish explorer, born in 1490 in the town of Jerez, a place famed for its sweet wines. Although his name, which meant ‘Cow’s Head,’ was amusing to some, it placed...
One need not search too long ago into South American history to identify a range of consumable drinks that would challenge and defeat, hands down, any of their modern derivatives - which are mostly...
The continents of Europe and Asia shake hands across Istanbul’s Bosporus Strait, connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara which in turn connects to the Mediterranean Sea through the Dardanelles...
Britain's Iron Age landscape conceals many secrets and has many tales to tell and few stories are more dramatic than that of the Brigantes and their queen Cartimandua, when the Romans arrived in...
When word of his younger brother’s life-threatening illness reached him, Roman General Tiberius (later Emperor Tiberius Caesar Augustus) who was in Pavia at the time, crossed the Alps like a man...
Today, overachievers are often called “giants in their field" and “giants among men”- terms which define talent, ability and zeal. However, in the ancient world, the word “giant” applied to the...
The Medieval Crusades were a series of important historical events largely told through the perspective of men. Almost all the contemporary commentators, crusader knights, and Christian generals and...
Sargon the Great of Akkad (fl. c. 2370-2314) is one of the greatest heroes of ancient Mesopotamian history , the one who founded the Akkadian Empire (c. 2370-2190), the very first world empire. The...
Towering over Istanbul atop one of its highest hills, Hagia Sophia has stood for over 1,500 years as an architectural wonder, one of the largest and most remarkable Christian churches ever built. Its...
Ukraine has always been a complicated place, with one foot in the West and the other in the East, resulting in a unique tension as a constantly contested borderland, a battleground, pitting the...
The dictionary description of a ‘henge’ as “ a circular area, often containing a circle of stones or sometimes wooden posts, dating from the Neolithic and Bronze Ages ,” fails to depart that these...
Centuries before Versailles, Buckingham Palace and the Kremlin Palace, on the shore where the Western world meets the East, cupped by the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus Strait and the Golden Horn,...
Unless having been to sea, far enough out to lose sight of land on an open wooden craft, no-one would quite understand the terror endured by ancient seafarers braving the unknown oceans. Mariners...
Within the pantheon of great empires, the Kingdom of Denmark has received very little attention, yet this small European civilization was one the most enterprising of its day following its...
It is beyond many people to even consider the killing of an animal, the sacrifice of the innocent in the name of a deity, but this was not the case in ancient times, and even in some parts of the...
Awarded the accolade as “one of England’s most picturesque castles”, the manor of Sudeley Castle lies just to the east of the picturesque River Isbourne, a few miles from Cheltenham, on the edge of...
In the western-central arid heartland of ancient Anatolia, the river Sangarios snaked through the ancient Iron Age Kingdom of Phrygia , once a rival to Assyria in the south-east and Urartu in the...
Christmas is for obvious reasons a thoroughly Christian holiday, that overlies the darkest time of the year around the Winter solstice, which is the shortest day of the year with the least light in...
How would one describe Gōbekli Tepe, and all the other Tepe sites in the Şanlıurfa Province, south-eastern Anatolia? One might opine that these ancient sites contain a cluster of circular enclosures...
Cristobal Colón was born in mid-1460 as the illegitimate son of Prince Carlos (Charles IV) of Viana, Spain, and Margarita Colón, of a prominent Jewish family in the ghetto of the Island of Mallorca,...
Was World War I inevitable? If so, when did it become so, and why? Contrary to general belief, the war could have been averted or prevented altogether had two of the crowned heads involved had more...
The Villa of Mysteries was one of the most luxurious villas unearthed during the 1909-1911 excavations of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii , which was buried in volcanic ash with the eruption of...
The Christopher Columbus that everybody learns about in school may have been an entirely different person than is generally being taught. Columbus was a fascinating person, and the more one studies...