Featured
Definition
William Still - Father of the Underground Railroad
William Still (1819-1902) was an African American abolitionist known as the "Father of the Underground Railroad" for his efforts in helping to free between 600 to 800...
Featured
Image Gallery
A Gallery of 40 Portrait Paintings Through History
Capturing in paint for all time the faces of particular people has been an endeavour of artists for millennia. In this gallery, we present in chronological sequence...
Featured
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Mongol Warriors in Deel Robes
An illustration of Mongol warriors carrying out an execution. They are wearing the traditional Mongol deel robe. 14th century CE. (From Rashid-ad-Din's Gami' at-tawarih)
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Nok Sculpture
A terracotta figurine produced by the Nok Culture of southern West Africa (500 BCE - 200 CE). (Louvre Museum, Paris)
Latest Content
Definition
Seven Years' War - The 18th-Century World War
The Seven Years' War (1756-1763) was a global conflict fought between the great powers of Europe in the mid-18th century. The culmination of several decades of conflict...
Article
Top 10 Roman Sites in Bulgaria
Roman Bulgaria occupied an important position in the heart of the Balkans, between the Black Sea, the Aegean, and Asia Minor. In the north, the Danube River formed a heavily...
Definition
Millard Fillmore - The Forgotten US President
Millard Fillmore (1800-1874) was the thirteenth president of the United States. A member of the Whig Party, he was elected vice president in 1849 and assumed the presidency...
Article
The Eternal Life of Gilgamesh - Literary Immortality
The Epic of Gilgamesh is among the most popular works of literature in the present day and has influenced countless readers, but for the greater part of its history...
Article
The Ideal of Christendom in the Middle Ages & Beyond
The ideal of Christendom in antiquity joined separate nations into one single community carrying out the precepts of the God of Israel. Constantine's conversion...
Definition
Gilgamesh - The Historical and Mythical King
Gilgamesh is the semi-mythic King of Uruk, best known as the hero of The Epic of Gilgamesh (circa 2100 to circa 1200 BCE), the great Babylonian poem that predates Homer's...
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Map of North Africa and the Western Mediterranean c. 1065 - Almoravids, Zirids, Hilalian Migrations & Norman Sicily
Around 1065, North Africa and the western Mediterranean were undergoing political fragmentation, migration...
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Map of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu, c. 1438–1533) - Expansion Across South America, Cities and Roads
The Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu, c. 1438–1533) grew from a highland kingdom centered on Cusco into the largest empire in...
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Map of the Middle Kingdom Egypt (c. 2050–1800 BCE) - Reunification, Nubian Frontiers & Trade Networks
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt (c. 2050–1650 BCE) was a period of political reunification, renewed royal authority, and cultural...
For You
Definition
Greek Alphabet
The Greek Alphabet developed from the Phoenician script at some point around the 8th century BCE. The earlier Mycenaean Linear B script, used primarily for lists and inventories, had been...
Article
Ten Great Slave Revolts in Colonial America and the United States
There were 250-311 slave revolts in Colonial America and the United States between c. 1663 and c. 1860 as defined by scholar Herbert Aptheker (l...
Definition
Set (Egyptian God)
Set, also known as Seth and Suetekh, was the Egyptian god of war, chaos, and storms, brother of Osiris, Isis, and Horus the Elder, uncle to Horus the Younger, and brother-husband to Nephthys...
Definition
Ancient Sicily
The Mediterranean island of Sicily, with its natural resources and strategic position on ancient trading routes, aroused the intense interest of successive empires from Carthage to Athens...
Book Reviews
Book Review
The Army of Alexander the Great
The Army of Alexander the Great (2025) is a highly detailed and insightful examination of one of the most influential military forces in history. Rather than presenting Alexander...
Book Review
The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae
When one thinks of historical military fiction, the mind perhaps turns to the great works of established authors like Michael Shaara, Bernard Cornwell, and C.S.Forester, to name...
Book Review
Organizing Workers in the Shadow of Slavery: Global Inequality, Racial Boundaries, and the Rise of Unions in American and British Capitalism, 1870–1929
Racism is often considered a question of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. The...
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| 1,764 | articles |
| 19,847 | illustrations |
| 2,642 | videos |
| 415 | 3D images |
| 16,298 | translations |
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Ancient Period
Article
Lakota Sioux Creation Story
The Lakota Sioux, like other tribal nations, had many versions of a creation story but all involved Wakan Tanka (Great Mystery or Great Spirit), the supreme creative power in the...
Article
Maya Writing
The Maya hieroglyphic writing system was a sophisticated combination of pictographs directly representing objects and ideograms (glyphs) expressing more abstract concepts such as actions, ideas...
Definition
Mahabharata
The Mahabharata is an ancient Indian epic where the main story revolves around two branches of a family - the Pandavas and Kauravas - who, in the Kurukshetra War, battle for the throne of Hastinapura...
Definition
Horus
Horus is the name of a sky god in ancient Egyptian mythology which designates primarily two deities: Horus the Elder (or Horus the Great), the last born of the first five original gods, and Horus...
Definition
Asia Minor
Ancient Asia Minor is a geographic region located in the south-western part of Asia comprising most of present-day Turkey. The earliest reference to the region comes from tablets of the Akkadian...
Definition
Djed
The djed is an ancient Egyptian symbol for stability which features prominently in Egyptian art and architecture throughout the country's history. `Stability' should be understood to mean not only...
Definition
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
In the 2nd century CE, as Christianity was in the process of becoming an independent religion, a body of literature emerged that scholars classify as apocrypha and pseudepigrapha...
Definition
Hippolyta
Hippolyta, or Hippolyte, was a queen of the Amazons in Greek mythology. A daughter of Ares, the Greek god of war, and Otrera, queen of the Amazons, she is a significant figure in the legends...
Medieval Period
Article
The Japanese Invasion of Korea, 1592-8 CE
The two Japanese invasions of Korea between 1592 and 1598 CE, otherwise known as the 'Imjin Wars', saw Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598 CE), the Japanese military leader...
Article
Battle of Brunanburh
The Battle of Brunanburh, fought in the autumn of 937 at an unknown location, saw the English king, Aethelstan (r. 924-939), defeat a coalition of invading armies led by Constantine...
Definition
Anastasios I
Anastasios I ruled the Byzantine empire from 491 to 518 CE. Although his tax and monetary reforms were both popular and successful, the emperor could not repair the damaging split in the Christian...
Article
Harald Bluetooth & the Conversion of Denmark
In Scandinavia, Christianity spread due to the support and encouragement of political rulers at the top of the society above all else. Conversion, defined here as...
Definition
Redbad
Redbad, the king of Frisians (c. 680- c. 719) was known in early medieval history for his contribution to keeping the ardent nature of the Frisian culture alive. He refused to convert to the new...
Definition
Chaco Canyon
Chaco Canyon was the center of a pre-Columbian civilization flourishing in the San Juan Basin of the American Southwest from the 9th to the 12th century CE. Chacoan civilization represents...
Definition
Henry VII of England
Henry VII of England ruled as king from 1485 to 1509 CE. Henry, representing the Lancaster cause during the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487 CE), defeated and killed his predecessor the...
Article
Saladin's Conquest of Jerusalem (1187 CE)
Jerusalem, a holy city for the adherents of all three great monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) was conquered by the armies of the First Crusade...
Early Modern Period
Definition
Puritans
The Puritans were English Protestant Christians, primarily active in the 16th-18th centuries CE, who claimed the Anglican Church had not distanced itself sufficiently from Catholicism and sought...
Article
Loyola's Spiritual Exercises
The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola (1548) is a manual of disciplines formulated by Ignatius Loyola (l. 1491-1556) to prepare one spiritually for Christian service. They...
Definition
Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings (1732-1818) was appointed the Governor of Bengal by the British East India Company (EIC) in 1772 and became its first Governor-General in India from 1774 to 1785. Under his...
Definition
Chunkey
Chunkey (tchung-kee) is a Native American game involving a rolling disc (or ring) and two teams of players who score by throwing their sticks to land as close to the disc as possible. The game...
Definition
Louis XIV of France - The Sun King
Louis XIV (1638-1715) reigned as King of France from 1643 to 1715. Known as Le Roi Soleil ('the Sun King'), he fervently believed in the concept of the 'divine right' of kings...
Article
The Portuguese in East Africa
The Portuguese first took an interest in East Africa from the beginning of the 16th century as their empire spread eastwards across the Indian Ocean. Trade in the region was already...
Definition
Andreas Vesalius
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) was the most celebrated anatomist in Europe during the 16th century and a key figure of the Scientific Revolution. Vesalius' great work was his On the Fabric...
Article
Weapons in the American Revolution
The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) was a long and bitter conflict fought between Great Britain and its thirteen North American colonies over the Americans' liberties...
Modern Period
Image Gallery
A Gallery of Fabergé Eggs
The tradition of giving miniature Easter eggs was not a new one but when Tsar Alexander III (r. 1881-1894) commissioned Peter Carl Fabergé (1846-1920) to make one for Easter in 1885...
Article
Slave Hunters in Boston - The Failed Attempt to Capture Ellen & William Craft
In 1848, Ellen and William Craft escaped from slavery in Georgia by Ellen posing as a Southern gentleman and William as 'his' slave (since...
Article
Wallace Turnage - The Slave Who Freed Himself
Many enslaved African Americans in the United States escaped bondage with the help of the Underground Railroad, but many others took it upon themselves to seize their...
Definition
Denmark Vesey
Denmark Vesey (c. 1767-1822) was a free Black man living in Charleston, South Carolina, as a carpenter and community leader. A former slave himself, Vesey became involved in the antislavery...
Definition
Homestead Act - Settling the American West
The Homestead Act was a policy enacted by the United States government on 20 May 1862 to encourage westward expansion. Passed during the American Civil War (1861-1865...
Article
Second Battle of the Marne - The Beginning of the End for Germany in WWI
The Second Battle of the Marne took place in July and August 1918 and saw Germany's last advance of the Spring Offensive rebuffed by a strong...
Article
Rosalind Franklin - Equal Co-Discoverer of DNA?
The structure of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was discovered in 1953 by two molecular biologists, James Dewey Watson (1928-2025) and Francis Harry Compton Crick (1916-2004...
Article
Clarissa Davis & Woman Escaping in a Box - No Happy Slaves and Two Great Escapes
Slaveholders in the United States frequently claimed that Blacks were 'happy' to be slaves and could, in no way, function as free people...
Prehistoric Period
Definition
Lindow Man
The Lindow Man (officially Lindow III) is the top half of a male body, found preserved in a peat bog in Cheshire, England. The peat bogs at Lindow Moss date back to the last ice age and were...
Article
Prehistoric Alpine Stilt Houses
Alpine stilt houses are a unique and fascinating aspect of prehistoric architecture in the Alps, which provide valuable insights into the lives and culture of the ancient communities...
Definition
Longmen Grottoes
The Longmen Grottoes, a Buddhist cave complex located 13 kilometers south of Luoyang in China's Henan province, form some of the most significant and exquisite representations of ancient...
Definition
Denisovan
The Denisovans are an extinct group of fossil humans who, along with their sister group the Neanderthals, also share an ancestor with Homo sapiens. Thus far, they are known only from Denisova...
Definition
Venus Figurine
The term Venus figurine is used to describe the more than 200 small statuettes of voluptuous female figures that have been found at Upper Paleolithic sites across Europe and some parts of...
Article
Lost Civilisations of Anatolia: Göbekli Tepe
Göbekli Tepe is the world's oldest example of monumental architecture; a 'temple' built at the end of the last Ice Age, 12,000 years ago. It was discovered in 1995...
Article
Origins of World Agriculture
Agriculture arose independently at several locations across the world, beginning about 12,000 years ago. The first crops and livestock were domesticated in six rather diffuse areas...
Article
The Megalithic Funerary Art of San Agustín
Beginning approximately 2000 years ago, in a rugged stretch of southwestern Colombia where the Andes split into multiple ranges and the mighty Magdalena River is born...
