Early Vietnam History of Vietnam: Fishermen's wicker boats on the beach at Danang, in Vietnam The first people, with their dogs and baskets, probably reached Vietnam around 45,000 BC, coming along [...]
Early medieval timeline: Dome of the Rock mosque, Jerusalem (600s AD) Europe in the Early Middle Ages In the Early Middle Ages, many empires around the world collapsed into smaller [...]
Manichaean painting (Turfan, western China, ca. 900s AD) - Who were the Manichaeans? The prophet Mani in the Sassanian Empire In the 300s and 400s AD many Christians turned to believing in [...]
Court attendants (Takamatsuzuka Tomb, ca. 600s AD) Now that Japan had declared independence from China, Empress Suiko and her successors built a new government for Japan. They wanted Japan's government to be just [...]
Heian Japan: Godai Kokuzo Bodhisattva (Jingo-ji Temple, Kyoto), ca. 800-900 AD Women shut out of power After Empress Koken died in 770 AD, there was a major change in how Japan's government worked. [...]
Minaret at Samarra, 847 AD The first Abbasid caliphs In 750 AD, the Abbasid caliphs murdered all of the surviving Umayyad men but one. Who were the Umayyads? All our medieval Islam articles [...]
An early playing card (Ming Dynasty, ca. 1500 AD) People in T'ang Dynasty China made the first playing cards, about 800 AD. They used their new material, paper, to make [...]
History of gunpowder: Fireworks Who invented gunpowder? Like the idea of zero, gunpowder developed gradually over time. In 142 AD, during the Han Dynasty, a man named Wei Boyang was [...]
Chinese medicine: a Chinese village doctor treating a man by burning herbs on his back (Song Dynasty, ca. 950 AD., now in National Palace Museum, Taiwan) What's the earliest Chinese [...]
Chinese astronomy: A Chinese star chart possibly dating from the 600s AD, during the T'ang Dynasty The Chinese zodiac Chinese scholars began by thinking of the stars, the sun, and [...]
