Social structure: Did you mean...?

Chichen Itza, located at the northern tip of the Yucatán Peninsula of modern Mexico, was a Maya city which was later significantly influenced by the Toltec civilization. Flourishing between c. 750 and 1200 CE, the site is rich in monumental...

Uxmal, in north-west Yucatán, Mexico, was an important Maya city which flourished between the 6th and 10th centuries CE. The city, following an extensive restoration programme, is the best preserved of all Maya sites, and it possesses some...

The Knight’s Revolt (1522-1523) was a military action led by the German imperial knight Franz von Sickingen (l. 1481-1523) and encouraged by the knight and writer Ulrich von Hutten (l. 1488-1523) launched to restore the status of the imperial...

The cataclysmic end of the Roman Empire in the West has tended to mask the underlying features of continuity. The map of Europe in the year 500 would have been unrecognizable to anyone living a hundred years earlier. Gone was the solid boundary...

Korea, located on a large peninsula on the eastern coast of the Asian mainland, has been inhabited since Neolithic times. The first recognisable political state was Gojoseon in the second half of the first millennium BCE. From the 1st century...

The German Peasants' War (1524-1525) was a conflict between the lower class of the Germanic region of the Holy Roman Empire and the nobility over the feudal system of serfdom, religious freedom, and economic disparity. It was later characterized...

The Arthashastra is an Indian treatise on politics, economics, military strategy, the function of the state, and social organization attributed to the philosopher and Prime Minister Kautilya (also known as Chanakya, Vishnugupta, l. c. 350-275...

Early medieval Icelandic government, or Viking Iceland, has been termed an incipient form of democracy or democratic parliamentarism, however, the system was actually nothing like its European counterparts, be they medieval or contemporary...

Hunter-gatherer societies are – true to their astoundingly descriptive name – cultures in which human beings obtain their food by hunting, fishing, scavenging, and gathering wild plants and other edibles. Although there are still groups of...

Authority in ancient Rome was complex, and as one can expect from Rome, full of tradition, myth, and awareness of their own storied history. Perhaps the ultimate authority was imperium, the power to command the Roman army. Potestas was legal...