Videos

Did you know that salt was literally worth its weight in gold in ancient West Africa? This video is all about the lucrative trade of salt in West African history. Salt from the Sahara desert was one of the major trade goods of ancient...

A major new history of the eastern Roman Empire, from Constantine to 1453. In recent decades, the study of the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantium, has been revolutionized by new approaches and more sophisticated models for how...

We all live in states today, and Thomas Hobbes has a good claim to have been the first person to articulate this concept in its modern sense. The intention of Hobbes’s civil science was to lower the temperature of politics, and his concept...

Trace the history of barber-surgeons, and find out what led to barbers performing medical procedures in medieval Europe. – It’s a cold morning in 15th century France and you’re off to the barber for a shave and haircut. You hear the...

Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu—better known simply as Montesquieu—was a French nobleman, judge, novelist, and also a decisive figure in the early years of the Enlightenment, whose impact can still be seen in...

Trace the origins of zombies from the Afro-Haitian religion of vodou, and discover how zombification was a reflection of slavery. – Zombies have a distinct lineage— one that traces back to Equatorial and Central Africa. For three centuries...

View full lesson: https://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-fascinating-history-of-cemeteries-keith-eggener Spindly trees, rusted gates, crumbling stone, a solitary mourner: these things come to mind when we think of cemeteries. But not long ago...

In this short film, Emily Hannam discusses a pair of mid-seventeenth century paintings by the Mughal court artists Bichitr and Ramdas from the most famous South Asian manuscript in the Royal Collection, the Padshahnama (‘Book of Emperors’...

What happened to the places that history forgot – the cities submerged under water, decimated by invading armies or swallowed up by the sands of time? Where are they, and what can they tell us about our past? From the sunken city of Thonis...

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/everything-you-need-to-know-to-read-mary-shelley-s-frankenstein-iseult-gillespie In 1815, Lord Byron proposed a challenge to a few literary guests he had gathered in his house on Lake Geneva...