history

More than 1,000 years ago, Mesoamerican societies conducted one of history’s most interesting experiments in commodity money.

Venerated astrophysicist Carl Sagan entertained the possibility.

Japan just opened to tourists for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began, echoing the island country’s isolationist policies during the feudal era.

There were many other species of human on the planet. Svante Pääbo discovered one of them.

The monsoon rains were not always so reliable.

“Salvator Mundi” sold for a record-breaking $450 million in 2017, but is it really as valuable as people were led to believe?

Reading between the lines of Dorothy’s adventure to the Emerald City.

Modernism has lasted longer than any art movement since the Renaissance.

Sigmund Freud developed the decidedly unscientific principles of psychoanalysis in a time when most psychologists were trying to join the ranks of chemists and medical doctors.

Scallop shells have accompanied pilgrims to and from Santiago de Compostela for centuries, for more than one reason

Three reasons why a radically better future is more likely than we think.

The artifacts were often made from found objects – an Ivory dish-soap bottle transformed into an earthenware figure.

On New Year’s Eve 1899, the captain of this Pacific steamliner sailed into history. Or did he?

How drugs, demons, and the search for immortality gave us words we use everyday.

Successful forgers are remembered as great conmen, not artists. This is strange, considering their forgeries fooled even the most seasoned critics.

If you don’t mourn in North Korea, you risk being executed.

Progress got derailed somewhere between indoor plumbing and the flying car. Why?

Televising the coronation was thought to be an affront to the dignity of the event.

Literature’s first utopia shows how far we’ve come.

For decades, the Communist Party of China has relied on reeducation camps to reform “parasites” and persuade people to support the communist cause.

Recent research suggests that Earth’s magnetic field bounced back just as complex life was starting to emerge on our planet.

Was our distant ancestor a biped or not – i.e., human or not human?

“Spanish Stonehenge” contains 526 giant stones, three circular burial sites, a quarry, and four necropolises.

The separation of conjoined twins is fraught with stomach-churning biomedical and ethical challenges.

The East India Company issued stocks to minimize the risk on their unpredictable but highly lucrative voyages. The rest is history.

Advances in ancient DNA analysis gave researchers a new way to trace the movements of peoples across Eurasia.

There are nearly 100 towns named “Troy.”

On the morning of June 30, 1908, an explosion of more than 10 megatons occurred above the sparsely populated Siberian Taiga. What caused the so-called Tunguska event?

The Industrial Revolution changed music forever, thanks to a combination of technological advances and clever entrepreneurs.

From Ramses II to Alexander the Great, these leaders helped shaped the world we know today.