Ancient Civilizations
The Mycenaean Collapse: A Massacre in the Palaces?
Bronze Age Greece is seen as a golden age. This is Homer’s Greece, the Greece of the Iliad and the Trojan War, of city states and island kingdoms, of great heroes and…
The Oxus Civilization, the Kingdom that Vanished
The high Bronze Age saw the first emergence of complex cultures. Successive innovations in agriculture had produced a food surplus, perhaps the first meaningful one in history, and these foodstuffs could support…
Ancient Aliens: Loads of Time, Zero Evidence
The idea of being visited by aliens is an appealing one, and it is not hard to see why. It would allow those who believe to feel that they are part of…
Chernobog and Belobog, the Slavic Gods who Don’t Exist?
There are many forgotten gods in the world. Though the great pantheons of history endure along the crumbling ruins of the empires that spawned them, there are many lesser deities who run…
A Cut Above: Agoge, the Ancient Spartan Entry Test
Of all the city states of ancient Greece it is Sparta who stands out as the home of the most formidable fighting force. Athens may have been more powerful and more prosperous,…
Tell Qaramel and the Neolithic Cult of Severed Heads
Some would argue that human history begins in detail with the Iron Age. Although records survive in some particular locations from the earlier Bronze Age and there is much archaeology to pick…