Early modern Europe: Did you mean...?

Ancient Mesopotamian literature developed circa 2600 BCE after scribes, who had formerly been record-keepers, began composing original works in the region of Sumer. The Sumerians invented writing...

Goa, located on the west coast of India, was a Portuguese colony from 1510 to 1961. The small coastal area was conquered by Afonso de Albuquerque (c. 1453-1515) and became an important trade hub for the Eastern spice trade. Goa...

Writing is the physical manifestation of a spoken language. It is thought that human beings developed language circa 35,000 BCE as evidenced by cave paintings from the period of the Cro-Magnon Man...

The Kingdom of Benin, located in the southern forests of West Africa (modern Nigeria) and formed by the Edo people, flourished from the 13th to 19th century CE. The capital, also called Benin, was the hub of a trade network exclusively...

Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was a Russian pianist and composer best known for his piano concertos and symphonies. He overcame an early ravaging by critics and several years of depression to create works which are today...

Aethelstan was the first King of England, ruling from 927 to 939. The son of Edward the Elder (reign 899-924) and grandson of Alfred the Great (reign 871-899), he inherited the southern-based Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons in 924 before...

The Second Crusade (1147-1149) was a military campaign organised by the Pope and European nobles to recapture the city of Edessa in Mesopotamia which had fallen in 1144 to the Muslim Seljuk Turks. Despite an army of 60,000 and...

The Despotate of Epirus was one of the successor states of the Byzantine Empire when it disintegrated following the Fourth Crusade's capture of Constantinople in 1204 CE. It was originally the most successful of those successor...

A belief in an afterlife was central to every major civilization of the ancient world and this encouraged the recognition of the reality of ghosts as the spirits of the departed who, for one...

Abbeys were a striking feature of medieval urban and rural landscapes. Their layout and architecture reflected their purpose as cut-off monastic retreats which, conversely, also served and inspired their local communities...