Empires: Did you mean...?

The thing about European History is that it tends to leak out of Europe. Europeans haven't been great at staying put in Europe. As human beings do, the people of Europe were very busy traveling around to trade, to spread religion, and in...

In eastern Europe, in the 17th Century CE a couple of "great powers" were coming into their own. The vast empire of Russia was modernizing under Peter the Great, and the relatively tiny state of Prussia was evolving as well. Russia (and Tsar...

European exploration had a lot of side effects. When the Old World and the New World began to interact, people, wealth, food, animals, and disease began to flow in both directions. In the New World, countless millions were killed by smallpox...

In which John Green teaches you about the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the largest of the ancient civilizations. John teaches you the who, how, when, where and why of the Indus Valley Civilization, and dispenses advice on how to be more...

The conflicts between the Empires of Iran and Rome started as soon as their borders collided and continued for many centuries starting with the Parthian triumph over the triumvir Crassus at Carrhae all the way to the bloody war of 602-628...

This brief video explains the origin of the terms "Persia" and Zoroastrianism. It also puts the Median, Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian and Sassanian Empires in context.

To many historians, the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century CE has always been viewed as the end of the ancient world and the onset of the Middle Ages, often improperly called the Dark Ages, despite Petrarch's assertion. Since...

Mesopotamian inventions include many items taken for granted today, most of which were created during the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2334 BCE) or developed from achievements of the Uruk Period (4100-2900 BCE). The Sumerians are credited...

West Africa was one of the world's greatest producers of gold in the Middle Ages. Trade in the metal went back to antiquity but when the camel caravans of the Sahara linked North Africa to the savannah interior, the trade really took off...

The Iberian conquistadors ("conquerors") were the first military men to explore, attack, and conquer territories in the Americas and Asia that would then become a part of the Spanish or Portuguese Empire. Indigenous peoples could not match...