Water supply: Did you mean...?

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 reason or another, either returned from the realm...

The passage of time has always been a preoccupation of human beings, whether it be a question of satisfying basic needs such as when to eat and sleep, the importance of seasons for migratory and agricultural purposes or a more sophisticated...

Steam power was one of the most significant developments of the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) in Britain. First invented as a pump in the 1690s, a host of inventors tweaked designs and tinkered with machinery until an efficient and powerful...

The diet of the Mongols was greatly influenced by their nomadic way of life with dairy products and meat from their herds of sheep, goats, oxen, camels, and yaks dominating. Fruit, vegetables, herbs, and wild game were added thanks to foraging...

The pantheon of the Maya is a vast collection of deities worshipped throughout the regions of Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas in Mexico and southward through Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. These gods informed...

The camel caravans which crossed the great dunes of the Sahara desert began in antiquity but reached their golden period from the 9th century CE onwards. In their heyday caravans consisted of thousands of camels travelling from North Africa...

The desert campaigns in North Africa during the Second World War (1939-45) provided soldiers on all sides with a set of particular challenges. Scorching day temperatures, freezing night temperatures, sand and flies getting everywhere, the...

How the World Was Made is a creation story of the Cherokee nation, which, like many such tales of the Native peoples of North America, begins with a world covered by water from which dry land is formed and natural order created by beings...

Ûñtsaiyĭ', the Gambler is a legend of the Cherokee nation, known as a Wonder Story, which features supernatural characters, sometimes interacting with mortals, sometimes with each other. In Ûñtsaiyĭ', the Gambler, all the characters are supernatural...

Napoleon's invasion of Russia, also known as the Second Polish War or, in Russia, as the Patriotic War of 1812, was a campaign undertaken by French Emperor Napoleon I (r. 1804-1814; 1815) and his 615,000-man Grande Armée against the Russian...