Mining: Did you mean...?

Society in the Kingdom of France in the period of the Ancien Regime was broken up into three separate estates, or social classes: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. These classes and their accompanying power dynamics, originating...

Salt from the Sahara desert was one of the major trade goods of ancient West Africa where very little naturally occurring deposits of the mineral could be found. Transported via camel caravans and by boat along such rivers as the Niger and...

West Africa was one of the world's greatest producers of gold in the Middle Ages. Trade in the metal went back to antiquity but when the camel caravans of the Sahara linked North Africa to the savannah interior, the trade really took off...

Freeborn Roman children, ingenuiae, born of Roman citizen parents lived a life that was dictated by the level of society into which they were born; a day in the life of a child from the lower level of society and one from the more affluent...

Jade (nephrite) was regarded as the most precious stone in ancient China, and it symbolised purity and moral integrity. Prized for its durability and magical qualities, the stone was laboriously carved and polished into all manner of objects...

Elves and dwarves represent minor divine figures in Norse mythology. Elves (álfar) and dwarves (dvergar) have in common their talent for creating precious objects, skill, agility, and moral ambiguity. Dwarves appear in several important stories...

Soviets, often called Soviets of Workers' Deputies, were worker councils first formed during the Russian Revolution of 1905 when a general strike was called against the Tsarist regime. Factory and other types of workers across the newly industrialised...

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (16-18 October 1859) was carefully planned and, at first, perfectly executed – until he made the mistake of letting the physician John Starry go (who then raised the local militia) and allowing...

Sometime around 330 BCE, Pytheas, a little-known Greek merchant, embarked on an astonishing voyage. It was a voyage that would take him far beyond the known boundaries of the Mediterranean, into lands thought to exist only in myth and legend...

Colchis (western Georgia) and Kartli/Iberia (eastern and southern Georgia) were important regions in the Caucasus area of Eurasia from the Bronze Age of the 15th century BCE. Prospering through agriculture and trade, the region attracted...