On Orkney, the archipelago of the north coast of Scotland, ancient temple sites such as the Ness of Brodgar and Barnhouse Settlement, stone circles like Ring of Brodgar and Standing Stones of Stennes...
According to legend, about 3160 years ago, in the Levant, there was an enormously strong man, who tore the jaws of an adult male lion with his bare hands. Samson’ name was derived from the word semes...
According to the Bible, in the Book of Joshua , the Israelites encountered the city of Jericho as the first Canaanite stronghold they had to conquer in order to settle in their promised new land. In...
Creating abstractions of reality, art has been a part of human expression for hundreds of thousands of years. Prehistoric stone and bone sculptures, and cave art are ideas and emotions expressed...
Few gods achieved the fame that the lion-dwarf Bes managed to garner. He was not only a popular god among the elite in ancient Egypt, but in time was worshipped by people of every strata of society...
Few ancient cultures rivaled the Egyptian pantheon of gods and goddesses. Virtually every known creature was represented and venerated as they were believed to possess magical qualities of different...
The Greek Dark Age fits between the Late Bronze Age Collapse - often alternately referred to as the Mycenaean Civilization Collapse, around 1200 BC - and the Greek Archaic Period, around 800 BC. The...
It is Halloween and what better than a story about a sinister Scottish castle, its ghosts, its legends, and its blood-soaked history? Not referring to Glamis Castle with its notorious secret chamber...
‘The paths he would take were strange, With little cheer to glean, And his hopes would often change Till that chapel could be seen.’ Sir Gawain and Green Knight is a late 14th-century poem, set in an...
When the word ‘shaman’ is mentioned, it is common for one to visualize semi-naked cat-skin clad witchdoctors, wheeling around fires in mild southern climates. Less often does one picture holy men...
Scribes were counted among the elite in ancient Egypt and led charmed, yet challenging, lives. They influenced virtually every sphere of the public and private affairs of the citizenry to an...
The rich scribal tradition of ancient Egypt was one of the foremost pillars of the development of that culture. At a time when much of the world could not read or write; these resourceful and erudite...
In 1898, a group of German archaeologists working in the Demeter sanctuary at Priene unearthed a peculiar set of Hellenistic female figurines. The head of each of these figurines sits directly on her...
In Quantum Physics, the First Law of Thermodynamics - The Law of Conservation - states says that: “Energy is never created, energy is never destroyed, energy can only ever be transferred or...
Through history, at least 32 elephant species have existed on planet earth, some became extinct as early as the Miocene epoch (23.03 to 5.333 million years ago), but most species were exterminated by...
Mankind is familiar with the narrative surrounding the construction of the Tower of Babel, passed down through the generations and across multiple cultures. The most well-known version is chapter 11...
Western culture has a relatively shallow relationship with gemstones. Most people place great value on diamonds as being symbolic of commitment and only a few know this entire ritual began in a 1947...
Ancient cultures around the world saw the sea as a dangerous place, filled with beings who preyed upon people - especially men. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, whose Natural History would serve...
Luck is a way of understanding or judging how chance events affect our lives. Chance may be a mixed bag of marshmallows and razor blades, a flowing river of good and bad experiences; positive,...
Even though Napoleon Bonaparte had tasted a series of successes within weeks of setting foot in Egypt, including an important victory against the dreaded Mamluks, his plan to conquer the entire...
At the end of the 18th century, Great Britain and France were vying to dominate one another by colonizing several territories across the globe. The English were already ahead in this race – but only...
In his book Lost Horizon (1933) James Hilton created the legend of Shangri-La, a peaceful Himalayan valley of long-lived people. Where the northern border of the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan...
Of all the saints of the Christian church, one of the most anomalous must surely be St Cyprian who, after his martyrdom in the early 4th century AD, became known as the patron saint of sorcerers...
Mercenaries are soldiers who are paid for their martial services from the pocket of their employer and from the spoils obtained in war. Most mercenaries once fought in professional armies before...
