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The Secret History of the Mongols
The Secret History of the Mongols is a chronicle written in the 13th century CE (with some later additions) and is the most important and oldest medieval Mongolian text. The book covers the origins of the Mongol people, the rise to power...
Video
Hanno African Voyage
A documentary based on the journal of the 5th century BCE Carthaginian explorer Hanno.
Definition
The Description of Africa
The Description of Africa is the first comprehensive book about Africa, written by Leo Africanus, an African scholar trained in the Islamic intellectual tradition, in 1526, during the Italian Renaissance. A skillful mixture of anthropology...
Article
Slavery in Plantation Agriculture
The first plantations in the Americas of sugar cane, cocoa, tobacco, and cotton were maintained and harvested by African slaves controlled by European masters. When African slavery was largely abolished in the mid-1800s, the center of plantation...
Article
Roman Expeditions in Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa was explored by Roman expeditions between 19 BCE - 90 CE, most likely in an effort to locate the sources of valuable trade goods and establish routes to bring them to the seaports on the coast of North Africa, thereby minimizing...
Article
A Brief History of Tobacco in the Americas
The history of tobacco use in the Americas goes back over 1,000 years when natives of the region chewed or smoked the leaves of the plant now known as Nicotiana rustica (primarily in the north) and Nicotiana tabacum (mostly in the south...
Article
North Africa’s Place in the Mediterranean Economy of Late Antiquity
The Mediterranean Sea was the economic focal point of the Roman Empire. Rome's armies first established an empire across these waters beginning back in the times of the Roman Republic. In 200 CE, the Mediterranean was still the channel that...
Article
10 Years of World History Encyclopedia
Our CEO Jan van der Crabben writes about the organization's history for its 10th anniversary in 2019 (when it was still called Ancient History Encyclopedia). Ancient History Encyclopedia just turned ten! On 25 August 2009, we officially...
Definition
James Armistead Lafayette
James Armistead Lafayette (l. c. 1748-1832) was an African American Patriot who served the Continental Army as a spy during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). During the Siege of Yorktown, he infiltrated the British camp to bring...
Video
History of the Holidays: History of Thanksgiving | History
Although Thanksgiving celebrations dated back to the first European settlements in America, it was not until the 1860s that Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday of November to be a national holiday.