Early boats: A person in a boat (Barramiya, Upper Egypt, ca. 4000 BC) Early boats: When did people invent boats? African sailing has a long history. People were probably using [...]
The Persians came from the Central Asian steppe The Persians and the Medes Around 1200 BC, some Indo-European people from Central Asia moved south into West Asia. These people were [...]
Scythian history: A Scythian milking a sheep (Tolstaja Mogila kurgan, Ukraine, 400 BC) Scythians lived in Central Asia The Scythians were a large group of loosely connected people who lived in [...]
Etruscan tomb sculpture: the Etruscans liked fancy tombs From Villanovans to Etruscans Around 700 BC, the Bronze Age people we call the Villanovans started to get ideas from the Greeks and Phoenicians who were sailing around the [...]
A page from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, from Herat, Afghanistan, about 1444 AD. Now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Islamic historians began by translating Greek historians like Herodotus and Thucydides into Arabic. But soon historians wrote in [...]
Thales of Miletus might have watched plays in this theater at Miletus (before it had stone seats) Biography of Thales Thales was born in what's now Turkey, in the city [...]
The earth in Greek astronomy: The Greeks never saw this view of the earth from space! Gaia and the Earth Early Greeks thought of the Earth as the goddess Gaia, the mother of [...]
Kleobis and Biton Kleobis and Biton: examples of happy lives The Greek historian Herodotus tells a story about two young men named Kleobis and Biton (KLEE-oh-biss and BYE-ton) who lived near [...]
Arion and the dolphins: a lyre player and his helper (probably enslaved) (Greece, about 680 BC, now in the Getty Museum) Arion was a great singer Herodotus tells us that in [...]
A Greek depiction of an Amazon (Athens, ca. 420 BC; Wikimedia) The Greek story of the Amazons The Amazons, in Greek mythology, were a group of warriors who were all women [...]
