Minaret at Samarra, 847 AD The Abbasids built Baghdad When the Abbasid dynasty moved the capital of the Islamic Empire to Baghdad from Damascus in 762 AD, of course they needed a lot of [...]
Alexander the Great Did Alexander the Great really conquer India? In 326 BC, Alexander the Great conquered the Persian part of northern India. Alexander was a Macedonian king. So he was an Indo-European, like the Persians. [...]
Ancient India trade: Indian herbal medicines What did most people do for work? Most people in ancient India were farmers. That's the same as in other parts of Asia and Europe at this [...]
Archaic Greek economy: A black-figure vase showing a blacksmith at work (Athens, about 550 BC) Not much trade in the Dark Ages During the political collapse of the Greek Dark [...]
Earliest science in Europe A Neanderthal stone awl - early European inventions For a long time, northern Europe was a scientific backwater: new ideas came from other places to northern [...]
Abrigo del Ciervo, Spain, ca. 6000 BC: Early European economy Hunting and gathering The first people in Europe lived by hunting and gathering; they probably had both dogs and bows [...]
What is quartz? A chunk of white quartz What is quartz made of? Quartz is an igneous rock made out of molecules of silicon and oxygen atoms held together in [...]
Obsidian spear point, one of many obsidian tools from New Mexico (National Park Service) Where does obsidian come from? Obsidian is a kind of volcanic glass. It is shiny and [...]
Charcoal history Why use charcoal? Charcoal is a certain kind of half-burnt wood. People use charcoal for fires because it burns hotter and cleaner than wood (less smoky), and more [...]
Silk Road trade: Chinese coin of the Han Empress Kuo Empires and the Silk Road Starting in the 500s BC, governments started to come together into empires. Travel got safer. [...]
