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During the Elizabethan Era (1558-1603 CE), people of all classes greatly looked forward to the many holidays and festivals on offer throughout the year. The vast majority of public holidays were also religious commemorations, and attendance...

Physicians in ancient Rome manufactured a wide variety of pharmaceuticals used to treat health concerns. Roman medicine was highly sophisticated, and Roman medical literature describes early antiseptics, narcotics, and anti-inflammatory medicines...

Raising sugar cane could be a very profitable business, but producing refined sugar was a highly labour-intensive process. For this reason, European colonial settlers in Africa and the Americas used slaves on their plantations, almost all...

The many Roman walls still visible today throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, be they defensive walls such as the Servian Wall or house and monument walls, tell us a great deal about the evolution of Roman construction techniques. Roman...

Heraclitus of Ephesus (l. c. 500 BCE) famously claimed that “life is flux” and, although he seems to have thought this observation would be clear to all, people have continued to resist change from his time to the present day. Heraclitus...

The Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Palestrina (ancient Praeneste) in Italy was built in the 2nd century BCE to honor the goddess Isis and the goddess Fortuna. The massive site spans a mountainside, built with Roman cement or pozzolana...

One of the most famous objects in Norse mythology, Mjölnir was the hammer wielded by Thor, god of storms and thunder, and was his most potent weapon in battles against the enemies of gods and humans. But Mjölnir represented more than severe...

Pliny the Younger's (61-112 CE) letter (Epistulae X.96) to Roman Emperor Trajan (r. 98-117 CE) is one of our earliest sources on Christianity from an outsider's point of view. It highlights the Christian movement's impact on the old Roman...

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. The houses were built by prehistoric communities living...

A columbarium is an underground chamber, which the Romans used for preserving the ashes of the dead. During the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, hundreds of columbaria lined the consular highways leading out of Rome, although now only some two dozen...