Medieval African history – Timbuktu and Great Zimbabwe
Mansa Musa of Mali After the 400s AD, the Bantu expansion slowed down. They had already settled most of the good farmland in southern Africa. What was left was mainly desert [...]
Mansa Musa of Mali After the 400s AD, the Bantu expansion slowed down. They had already settled most of the good farmland in southern Africa. What was left was mainly desert [...]
The constellation Orion What did Mesopotamians invent? From the Stone Age through the Islamic empires, great scientific discoveries have streamed out of West Asia. West Asia is one of the places where farming got started, [...]
Iron Age economy: Phoenician glass - a face pendant of an African man. 400-200 BC Traders in the Mediterranean The rise of the Assyrian empire (in modern Iraq) and of the Phoenicians (in modern [...]
Core-formed Phoenician glass bottle (400s BC) The Phoenicians, from as early as 1500 BC, were mainly known for producing glass bottles and jars, especially for perfume. The Phoenicians sold these jars to Egypt and to the Assyrians. [...]
(Tomb of Rekhmire, Egypt, ca. 1450 BC) Who invented the first bellows? About 14,000 BC, potters in China started to use kilns to fire clay pots. By about 3500 BC, people in West Asia were beginning to [...]
Medieval glass: Islamic glass (probably Iraq, 800s AD, now in the Metropolitan Museum, New York) Medieval glass-making By the 1100s, glass-making was expanding again from West Asia; there were glassworks further [...]
Who invented blown glass? A Roman man blowing glass Glass-makers and the Silk Road Increased trade on the Silk Road in the 200s BC forced traders to try to come up with new things [...]
Obsidian: naturally occurring glass History of glass: Glass beads from Old Kingdom Egypt, about 2700-2500 BC People have been using naturally occurring glass since the Stone Age, when they wanted an [...]
Spoons made out of bronze and animal bone from ancient Rome Most people in ancient Rome ate most of their food with spoons. A lot of it was soups and [...]
The Roman economy: a Roman olive press mosaic (200-250 AD) now in St. Germain en Laye, France Farming in the Roman economy Most people in the Roman world were farmers. Some [...]