Gilgamesh is one of the greatest heroes of the ancient Middle Eastern world. The epic named after him has become one of the greatest literary works of all ages. There is, however, one aspect of...
The Agricultural, or Neolithic (New-Stone Age) Revolution , marks the birth of modern civilization. Traditional wisdom says that is when we started to become us. That is when we began to grow crops,...
In Greek mythology, Melissa was a nymph who discovered and taught the use of honey and from whom bees were believed to have received their name. Regarded as nectar of the gods, honey is obviously as...
Counting from December 25, using the Julian calendar , Twelfth Night – January 6 – takes place on the last night of the ‘ Twelve Days of Christmas’ , marking the coming of the Epiphany, celebrating...
The historical existence of the Garden of Eden ( Genesis 2:4-3:24) remains a mystery. The Hebrew text depicts the Judaic Deity, Adam, Eve, and the villainous Serpent interacting within an intimate...
A peculiar pyramid with a ‘fan structure’ stands as an ancient stone solstice marker in Icod de los Vinos, a municipality on the island of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands (Spain). The precolonial...
In normal times (and the year 2020 is definitely not normal times) the Christmas holiday season is the point in the year when, in the United Kingdom, the annual pantomime theatre shows get underway...
In Canada the term ‘First Nations’ represents the aboriginal communities who draw their origins from the pre-contact era (before the arrival of Europeans) up to the present day. Historians generally...
The first Christmas day was on February 26 in the year 6 BC for new evidence suggests it was the date when Jesus was born. The key to unlocking the mystery of Christ’s birth lies within the...
Just as with the appropriation of Pagan sacred sites by Christian authorities, as recommended by Pope Gregory I to St Augustine in the late sixth century, there was a natural tendency in the late...
According to the Gospel of Matthew , Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea at the time of King Herod and some Magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem to inquire where the new-born King of the Jews was...
Bronze was a prized metal in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. It is an alloy of copper and tin and its production requires smelters at temperatures above 1 500 degrees Celsius. It is unlikely to have...
In 1493, the invention of the Gutenberg printing press dramatically amplified the gathering and dissemination of news. However, this innovation came with a dark side as it later delivered the Great...
For at least 150,000 years, if not much longer, small groups of human hunters adorned themselves with the skins, horns and oils of the beasts they tracked to better conceal their presence and to...
A century before Columbus , at the zenith of Venice's splendour, two brothers, Nicolò and Antonio Zeno embarked an extraordinary journey to the far north following Viking trade routes on the shores...
One day in October 1994 Professor Klaus Schmidt, an archaeologist working with the German Archaeological Institute and the University of Heidelberg, made the trek out to a bleak limestone plateau,...
As in many other areas of endeavor, the Egyptians had a very good reputation for their medical skills - diplomatic letters often made requests for remedies, including the seemingly miraculous, when...
Teotihuacan was by the fifth century AD the largest city in the American continent and one of the largest and most populous in the western hemisphere. Often called the ‘Rome of America’, its cultural...
During the mid-to-latter years of the 12th century respected chroniclers working in cathedrals and monasteries across England began writing, in all seriousness, about corpses rising from their graves...
In modern times, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 - 43 BC) is remembered as the greatest Roman orator. A prolific thinker, his writings include books on rhetoric, orations, philosophical and political...
A deep mystery haunts the origins and rituals of the Jewish Fall Festivals: Rosh Hashanah (New Year), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and Sukkot . Representing more than individual holidays, these...
The remains of an ancient female skeleton with an elongated skull , dating back to 400 – 600 AD, has been found during recent excavations at the Gamurzievsky settlement in the city of Nazran,...
Horses have lived on earth for more than 50 million years and they were first domesticated in Asia between 3000 and 4000 BC. According to the American Museum of Natural History at this time they were...
The term ‘American folklore’ encompasses the stories, myths, tall tales, music, proverbs, fairy tales, demons, giants and legends that arrived on the shores of North America with the first Europeans...
