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Ancient Civilizations
Discover the world’s most mysterious ancient civilizations, from lost cities and megalithic structures to forgotten knowledge and unsolved archaeological puzzles.
On the border between the 4th and 5th centuries, after almost 500 years of hegemony in the ancient world, the Western Roman Empire collapsed. Historians have repeatedly tried to systematize…
An untouchable beauty, a devoted lover, she fell victim to the enviers and villains of the strong men she loved. Such is the “canonical” image of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra,…
Babylonian astronomers calculated the motion of the planet Jupiter using an idea that led to integral calculus. This is a mathematical method that Europeans did not reach until the 14th…
Imagine that I ask 5 random people on the street about what the Vikings were like. In my opinion, in most cases, I will hear notions of brutal warriors with…
The Roman Colosseum – one of the most impressive ancient structures known to modern man. When built in antiquity – an arena of cruel entertainment, which took the lives of…
Why do humans deify objects, individuals, or nonexistent subjects of their imagination? Why did ancient cultures create and build impossible structures to commemorate such entities? From the largest ancient monuments…
Chavin was an ancient native culture from the northern mountainous part of present-day Peru, which existed in the period 1200-300 BC. It was named after the archaeological site of Chavin…
Ancient Egyptian obelisks are a hallmark of Rome. There is no other city in the Christian world that boasts as many as 13 monolithic granite obelisks. Eight of them were…
“Sometimes I’ll pick up the “heart of the jungle” fossil on my bookshelf, or pull out my old field notebooks from my desk drawer, warped by Amazonian rains and the…
Across continents, builders used sunrise and sunset as architecture’s simplest ruler. The solstices mark the year’s turning points: the longest and shortest days, when the Sun rises and sets at…
Chiribiquete is not a ruin in the usual sense. It is a living landscape, a vast protected region in the Colombian Amazon where sheer stone walls rise out of the…
For ancient Egyptians, the perpetual cycle of the coming and setting of the Sun is comparable to the cycle of life and death. Thus, each morning the Sun rises in…
Thousands of years ago, cultures around the globe worshipped the sun. This is no surprise since the sun is the brightest object in the sky, rising and setting each day…
How did the ancient civilizations build such grand structures of multiton stones? How did they transport them from hundreds of miles away, and more importantly, how did they lift them…
Mathematics was a cornerstone of ancient Egyptian society, playing a pivotal role in their everyday life and governance. One of the key documents shedding light on Egyptian mathematical prowess is…
The enigmatic legacy of the Incas continues to captivate the world, particularly through their architectural and artistic feats. Among these, the Sayhuite Stone stands out, primarily for its mysterious nature…
Ancient texts and archaeological clues place Thinis near the center of Egypt’s earliest dynastic history, but the city itself has never been securely identified. Long before the pyramids at Giza…
Humans have been creating weapons since time immemorial, but have you ever thought about the strangest weapons in history? When thinking about human history, we generally agree that we live…
Noah’s story of the great flood was assumed to be the earliest story until the Epic of Gilgamesh began to capture people’s interest in the mid-19th century. But although quite…
The territory of today’s Peru is dotted with the two most important things for a tourist – breathtaking nature and countless ancient locations, monuments, and megaliths, whose existence is still…
When people are asked about Mesoamerican civilizations, few mention cultures other than the Aztecs and the Mayans. Especially in the latest decade when the Mayans were one of the major…
When it comes to the impressive and famous monuments of ancient Egypt, Pyramids fascinate everyone, even to the present day. When mentioning Egypt, the first thing that springs to mind…
According to new research, the megaliths’ original configuration amplified the sonance generated inside the stone circle and contained it as a sound insulation wall. This is according to scientists from…
What did Mesopotamians invent? Imagine a city trying to keep track of grain, workers and trade without writing. At Uruk, surviving clay records show why cuneiform mattered: administrators could count…