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Happy Valentine's Day, with much love from me to all of you out there who visit this site and follow my posts! Check out the history of Valentine's Day here: it may [...]

In the years right before European slave-traders started to visit Africa in the 1400s AD, most of the people in Africa were living in large, powerful kingdoms, farming and trading with people [...]

Ancient Egyptian model of a brewery. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Two main points to make today: What people eat changes a lot over time, even in relatively isolated parts [...]

You might get the impression from colonialist accounts that people in Africa were all living in mud huts when the Europeans started to enslave them in the 1400s. But the world's first [...]

Standing stones at Nabta Playa (modern Sudan), ca. 6000 BC There are plenty of ideas and inventions that clearly come from sub-Saharan Africa, like astronomical stone circles, domesticated donkeys and [...]

Welcome to Black History Month! We've got lots of material here for teachers to be able to do daily Black History Month presentations and assignments. First, there's a long section on African [...]

The patriarchy is forgetful: when women do get into power, which happens pretty often, we often manage to convince ourselves that it's the first time, over and over. Like Biden saying there [...]

I can't do better today than to repost this great blog post from Michael Press at Hyperallergic: The Perennial Problem with the Excavation of Ancient Sites Indeed, there is a staggering amount [...]

A general overview What's our beef with Iran? Why do we think of Iran as such a powerful and terrible enemy? Well, Iran has been a strong, powerful country since the Bronze [...]

An early image of the Gifts of the Magi, following the star and bringing presents to Jesus, from a 3rd century catacomb in Rome. Today's January 6th, which makes it [...]