Social structure: Did you mean...?

Structure known as Temple 1 at Maya site of Chacchoben c. 700 CE. The temple is astronomically aligned to focus the first rays of dawn on the summer solstice down onto an area where once a statue or stele would have stood.

Mycenaean society was strictly hierarchical, valued family lineage, and awarded higher social status to those involved with religious or military activities and palatial administration. The lower classes contained craftsmen and artisans who...

Herod's Harbor was a giant port built between 22 and 15 BCE by Herod the Great (r. 37-4 BCE), Rome's client king. Situated on the lower eastern Mediterranean coast north of Alexandria and south of Tyre, with Rome's largess and building skills...

The popular view of life in ancient Egypt is often that it was a death-obsessed culture in which powerful pharaohs forced the people to labor at constructing pyramids and temples and, at an unspecified time, enslaved the Hebrews for this...

The Middle Kingdom (2040-1782 BCE) is considered ancient Egypt's Classical Age during which it produced some of its greatest works of art and literature. Scholars remain divided on which dynasties constitute the Middle Kingdom as some argue...

The threshing floors of the Bible were outdoor stone floors, usually circular in fashion, used by farmers to process the grain of their crops. For the larger community, like watermills of the recent past, they could be gathering places bustling...

The Jade Museum (Spanish: Museo del Jade y de la Cultura Precolombina) in San José, Costa Rica houses the world's largest collection of ancient jade from the Americas. With nearly 7,000 pieces in its collection, the artifacts at the Museum...

The 1851 Great Exhibition was held in the purpose-built Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London, to showcase the latest developments in engineering, science, and the arts, as well as objects of cultural significance from Britain and abroad. Running...

The Greek Dark Age (c. 1200 to c. 800 BCE, overlapping with the Iron Age, c. 1200-550 BCE) is the modern-day term for the period in Greek history following the Bronze Age Collapse when the Mycenaean Civilization fell and the Linear B writing...

A stupa is a reliquary containing the remains (relics) of an individual associated with great spiritual power and insight, most often (since the 3rd century BCE) with the Buddha (l. c. 563 - c. 483 BCE). The form, a hemisphere topped by a...