Central Asia: Did you mean...?

Jang Bogo (aka Chang Pogo or Gungbok) was a powerful Korean warlord, naval commander, and merchant who came to monopolise maritime trade in northeast Asia to such a degree that he was known as the 'King of the Yellow Sea' during the first...

As the 15th century ended, Europeans were still mostly in the dark about the Eastern world. Early travelers like Marco Polo had given the West tidbits of information, but these accounts were too highly colored and fragmentary to provide a...

The Columbian exchange is a term coined by Alfred Crosby Jr. in 1972 that is traditionally defined as the transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the Old World of Europe and Africa and the New World of the Americas. The exchange...

The Neolithic Revolution began between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago at several widely dispersed locations across the world, when our ancestors first began planting and raising crops. Agricultural communities sprang up almost simultaneously...

The First Crusade (1095-1102) was a military campaign by western European forces to recapture the city of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim control. Conceived by Pope Urban II following an appeal from the Byzantine emperor Alexios I...

The Mongols conquered vast swathes of Asia in the 13th and 14th century CE thanks to their fast light cavalry and excellent bowmen, but another significant contribution to their success was the adoption of their enemies' tactics and technology...

The Khmer empire was a powerful state in South East Asia, formed by people of the same name, lasting from 802 CE to 1431 CE. At its peak, the empire covered much of what today is Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and southern Vietnam. By the...

The hypaspists or hypaspistai were a distinct type of infantry soldier who served as a vital part of the Macedonian armies of both Phillip II of Macedon (r. 359 BCE - 336 BCE) and his son and heir Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE). The...

The 'horse-rider theory' is a controversial proposal that Japan was conquered around the 4th or 5th century CE by a culture from northern Asia to whom the horse was especially important. Although archaeological evidence and genetics point...

Romani is an umbrella term used to describe a diverse ethnolinguistic group of people with a historical presence in Europe and West Asia. The historically common term 'Gypsy' is based on the myth that they came from Egypt. In reality, the...