Ancient history: Did you mean...?

The ancient Near East was home to a multitude of civilizations, across Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Levant, each with unique views on medicine, conception, and women’s role in society. Attitudes towards contraception...

Elephants were thought of as fierce and frightful monsters in antiquity, very real though rarely seen until the Hellenistic period. They were deployed on the battlefield to strike terror into the enemy, however...

The Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) on the border between Germany and the Czech Republic is a region rich in history and culture connected to the mining industry. For centuries the cities on both sides of the...

In ancient Greece, dance had a significant presence in everyday life. The Greeks not only danced on many different occasions, but they also recognized several non-performative activities such as ball-playing or rhythmic physical...

Scotland is a country which, today, comprises the northern part of Great Britain and includes the islands known as the Hebrides and the Orkneys. The name derives from the Roman word "Scotti" which designated an Irish tribe who...

Persia (roughly modern-day Iran) is among the oldest inhabited regions in the world. Archaeological sites in the country have established human habitation dating back 100,000 years to the Paleolithic Age with semi-permanent settlements...

The spices clove, nutmeg, and mace originated on only a handful of tiny islands in the Indonesian archipelago but came to have a dramatic, far-reaching impact on world trade. In antiquity, they became popular...

Ancient Persian religion was a polytheistic faith which corresponds roughly to what is known today as ancient Persian mythology. It first developed in the region known as Greater Iran (the Caucasus, Central Asia, South...

Syria is a country located in the Middle East on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea and bordered, from the north down to the west, by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon. It is one of the oldest inhabited regions in the world...

The Solomonic Dynasty ruled Ethiopia from the 1270s to the 1970s, and the 14th-century work, the Kebra Nagast (The Glory of the Kings) famously tells of how the dynasty of Ethiopian kings descended from King...