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" Penitenzàgite! (Do penance) ", shouted Gherardo Segarelli, a young and eccentric peasant, with flaming, hallucinated eyes and a long beard, as he wandered barefoot, wrapped only in a cloak, in the...
The modern-day Java Island of Indonesia now boasts diverse ethnic and religious communities, but the island was once divided by the bitter Battle of Bubat, when a royal wedding turned into a blood...
On July 12, 2020, Pope Francis stood silently in a pulpit placed in the large window overlooking St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican in Rome. He had just delivered the weekly Angelus prayer given each...
The standard definition of an obelisk is a monolithic stone monument whose four sides, which generally carry inscriptions, gently taper into a pyramidion at the top. These massive, pointed shafts of...
Of all the mysteries and forgotten wisdom of lost civilizations, perhaps the most profound examples are to be found in their study of the heavens. It is not that modern man lacks information about...
Alchemy is a word almost everyone has heard of, but few have ever committed more than a handful of hours trying to grasp what this heavily loaded symbolic word actually means, in its entirely. So...
“ Sì come schiera d'ape, che s'infiora / as a host of bees, which blooms” said Dante Alighieri in Paradiso , XXXI, v.7 The Popol Vuh , the sacred book of the mythology of the Maya, tells how the bee...
Classic works such as Odyssey by Homer, The Tempest by William Shakespeare and Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe tell about mysterious distant islands. These islands are usually exotic and inaccessible...
Amphipolis is situated upon the eastern bank of the River Strymon about five kilometers (3.10 miles) inland from the northern shore of the Aegean Sea. In the time of Alexander the Great and his...
The world is under the impression that the scourge of witch hunts came to an end in the 18th century. Cory was among the seven women and one man hanged as witches on September 22, 1692 in America and...
Humans are the most successful predator on the planet and stand sentinel at the spearhead of the planetary food chain, but this was not an achievement that came easy. Mankind’s ancestors had to fight...
A strange mystery baffled Egyptologists when opening the tombs of kings who had been laid to rest in The Valley of the Kings. In 1816 explorer Giovanni Belzoni had reached the far end of the valley...
Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital and largest city, is a sprawling mass of cars, trucks, motorcycles and street vendors that can take hours to drive through. Jakarta is the gateway to the small town of...
During the Archaic period in the eighth century BC, a tipping point was reached in Greece. Perhaps as a result of better nutrition and of changes in marriage practices, so that women married younger...
“ Let her be banished for life ,” Augustus (63 BC-14 AD) is recorded as saying about the harsh exile of his only biological child, Julia, to the barren and windswept penal island of Pandateria (...
The beginnings of what archaeologists often call ‘true civilization’ are most often attributed to the Neolithic Revolution, which began at different places around the world from around 10,000 BC. It...
Eucleia, the ancient Greek female personification of glory and good repute, is the youngest of the Charites. She was the daughter of Hephaestus and Aglaea, the goddess of splendor and adoration...
In 1881, a German engineer by the name of Karl Sester was surveying transport routes through what was then the Ottoman Empire. Some local people who lived in the area and worked for him shared some...
The history of the military conquests of the ancient Romans has often neglected to highlight some characteristics, which are still typical of the citizens of the Urbs Aeterna ( Eternal City ) . The...
On the night of October 27, 312 AD at Saxa Rubra, Rome, Emperor Flavius Valerius Constantinus, (Constantine) son of Constantius I Chloros and Helena, was set to engage with the armies of Maxentius, a...
Could the Ark of the Covenant be hidden in plain sight, where thousands of pilgrims congregate at a Holy Site, unaware of the significance that this may hold for world religions? A study of ancient...
From dinosaurs to entire continents to civilizations affecting millions of people, the mechanics of evolution is to construct and then to destruct. One of the key precursors in the collapse of...
Commodus, the son and heir of the distinguished ‘ philosopher emperor’ Marcus Aurelius , was a failure as a Roman emperor. He was appointed co-emperor of Rome and ruled alongside his father when he...
On the fourth floor of the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC, there is a permanent exhibit that many thousands of people have gladly paid more than $20 to visit in order to gaze with rapt...
