Early modern Europe: Did you mean...?

The Nebra Sky Disk is one of the most fascinating, and some would say controversial, archaeological finds of recent years. Dated to 1600 BCE, this bronze disk has a diameter of 32cm (about the size of a...

For well over 1,000 years, sacred stories and heroic epics have made up the mythology of Hinduism. Nothing in these complex yet colourful legends is fixed and firm. Pulsing with creation, destruction, love...

Runes are letters in the runic alphabets of Germanic-speaking peoples, written and read most prominently from at least c. 160 CE onwards in Scandinavia in the Elder Futhark script (until c. 700 CE) and the Younger Futhark - which illuminated...

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 of the Human Body, which contains over...

On 20 April 1792, King Louis XVI of France (r. 1774-1792) stood before the Legislative Assembly and, with a faltering voice, read a declaration of war against Austria, to the ecstatic delight...

Galen (129-216 CE) was a Greek physician, author, and philosopher, working in Rome, who influenced both medical theory and practice until the middle of the 17th century CE. Owning a large, personal library, he wrote hundreds of medical...

The prosperity of Phoenician cities such as Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos was based on trade, and it was the search for new commodities and new markets which resulted in the Phoenicians branching out from the narrow coastal strip...

The Kappel Wars (also known as the Wars of Kappel) were armed conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in Switzerland during the Swiss Reformation. The First Kappel War ended before it began in 1529, while the second, in 1531...

Samoset (l. c. 1590-1653, also given as Somerset) was the Abenaki Native American who first approached the English settlers of Plymouth Colony (later known as pilgrims) in friendship, introducing them to natives Squanto (l. c. 1585-1622...

The transatlantic slave trade (also given as the Atlantic slave trade, circa 1492 to 1860) was the practice of enslaving the citizens of African states and transporting them across the Atlantic Ocean to...