Roman North Africa: This is the amphitheater in ancient Carthage where Romans killed Christians during the Decian persecution. Carthage controls the Mediterranean By the 300s BC, the North African port of [...]
This inscription from Kandahar, in Afghanistan, has Greek writing at the top, translated into the Aramaic alphabet at the bottom. The Mauryan Indian king Ashoka put it up about 258 BC. [...]
Byzantine iconoclasm: an Icon of St. Nicholas (Russia) Byzantine iconoclasm By the early 700s AD, the Roman Empire had seen four hundred years of religious arguments about what or who Jesus Christ was. The Arians believed that [...]
Dante Alighieri, painted by Giotto about 1320 AD Dante wrote in Italian, not Latin Since the time of the Romans, writers who lived in Italy had always written in Latin. Virgil wrote in Latin, Ovid wrote in Latin, [...]
A Late Antique ivory carving Roman art, German art, and Islamic art mixed together in Europe in the Early Middle Ages to create a new form, which we call medieval art. Art historians divide medieval [...]
St. Francis giving away his cloak, from Assisi, Italy, probably by Giotto Who was Giotto? Giotto was a medieval Italian painter. He lived around 1300 AD. Giotto was born in [...]
Iron Age art: Villanovan cremation urn with helmet on top (ca. 900 BC) Is it okay to represent people? In the beginning of the Iron Age, about 1000 BC, people [...]
Iron Age buildings: a Roman bath building in Trier, in southern Germany, about 300 AD Roman buildings in northern Europe By the time of the Roman Empire, about 1 AD, [...]
Early African history: Pyramids at Giza, Egypt The first modern humans About three and a half million years ago, primates like chimpanzees in Africa started to come down out of the trees [...]
