Résultats Éditeur "Charles River Editors" dans Ancienne

The Neolithic period came before the Bronze Age and is generally regarded as the final subdivision of the Stone Age. During this time, communities domesticated plants and certain animals but still relied on hunting and gathering to a considerable extent, and beginning sometime around 7000 BCE, handmade pottery was developed, along with more advanced stone axes that enabled people to clear vast forests.

We take time for granted as it passes during every moment of our existence. Other things may change, but time remains constant and predictable. The past, the present, and the future exist within a harmonious, reliable, and never-changing system. Or at least that’s how it seems. It was Albert Einstein who, in 1905, first theorized that time might not be quite as straightforward as that. In one of the most influential papers on physics ever published[1], he proposed something called “time dilatation.”

The birth of Europe as people know it today was hardly an easy and effortless process. The Old World was reshaped by centuries of continuous wars, raids, and the falls and rises of empires. The most turbulent of these events happened at the beginning of the Middle Ages, from the third through seventh centuries CE. This was the time when the old slave society gave way to the feudal system that marked the latter Middle Ages, and it was also a period of battles between the Roman Empire and various barbarian peoples. The Roman Emperors waged wars and made and broke alliances.

Among all the peoples of the ancient Near East, few are more misunderstood than the Scythians. The Scythians swept into Anatolia in the early first millennium BCE and left a large swath of destruction in their wake. They challenged old, strong, and venerable kingdoms such as the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Medes, until they were defeated by the Medes and then gradually disappeared into historical obscurity once more.

During the several centuries that ancient Egypt stood as one of the greatest civilizations of the ancient world, its three primary enemies were the Libyans who occupied the Western Desert, the so-called Asiatics who lived in the Levant, and finally the Nubians to Egypt's south. Among the three peoples, the Nubians were the most "Egyptianized" and at times were integral to the development of Egyptian history. Truly, the Nubians were the greatest of all sub-Saharan peoples in pre-modern times and deserve to be studied in their own right.

In the wake of the Roman Empire’s collapse, Italy found itself fractured. Among the Italians of the Middle Ages, the most famous - and controversial - man who sought to unify Italy was, somewhat fittingly, a Roman. Cola di Rienzo was a man whose life and actions have reverberated down the centuries, as his charismatic, yet unsuccessful dictatorship has spawned legends and comparisons with movements of later ages. His attempt to bring the greatness of Roman antiquity into the reality of the 14th century, the city’s lowest point, is inspiring on its face.

On October 21, 1600, two massive Japanese armies, totaling an estimated 200,000 soldiers armed to the teeth with swords, yari (spears), arrows, muskets, and cannons, faced off on a battlefield near the town of Sekigahara. A bitter fight to the death ensued, and the results would determine the course of Japanese history for the next 250 years. On the battlefield was the warlord Leyasu Tokugawa, a man desiring domain over the entire island of Japan, but standing in his way was Ishida Mitsunari, a warlord controlling vast swaths of western Japan.

Over the last 2,000 years, ambitious men have dreamed of forging vast empires and attaining eternal glory in battle, but of all the conquerors who took steps toward such dreams, none were ever as successful as antiquity’s first great conqueror. Leaders of the 20th century hoped to rival Napoleon’s accomplishments, while Napoleon aimed to emulate the accomplishments of Julius Caesar. But Caesar himself found inspiration in Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), the Macedonian king who managed to stretch an empire from Greece to the Himalayas in Asia by the age of 30.

Most scientists believe the evolution of humans has a history as long as life itself. Anatomically modern humans and all other life that has existed on the planet first came about from the single-celled microorganisms that emerged approximately 4 billion years ago. Through the processes of mutation and natural selection, all forms of life developed, and this continuous lineage of life makes it difficult to say precisely when one species completely separates from another.

The reasons for so little being known about Thebes and its contributions to ancient Greek civilization are complex, but the fact that it was totally destroyed by Alexander the Great is certainly one. Unlike Athens and Sparta, there are no magnificent structures still extant - indeed, the scale of the destruction meted out to Thebes was so great, that very few artifacts of any kind have been discovered that enable a full picture of life in the city. With the very notable exception of Pindar, Thebes did not produce significant numbers of philosophers or playwrights.

From the moment Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortés first found and confronted them, the Aztecs have fascinated the world, and they continue to hold a unique place both culturally and in pop culture. Nearly 500 years after the Spanish conquered their mighty empire, the Aztecs are often remembered today for their major capital, Tenochtitlan, as well as being fierce conquerors of the Valley of Mexico who often engaged in human sacrifice rituals.

There have been no shortage of great warrior societies in history, including the Romans, Mongols, Macedonians, and Vikings, and the list goes on. Yet one humble city in particular, nestled in a valley near the Eurotas River in the Greek region of the Peloponnese and once ridiculed as little more than a cluster of villages inhabited by uncouth shepherds, produced the most famous warrior elite the world has ever known.

The Sea Peoples remain as mysterious as they were influential; while the Egyptians documented their presence and the wars against them, it has never been clear exactly where the Sea Peoples originated or what compelled them to invade various parts of the region with massive numbers. Whatever the reason, the Sea Peoples posed an existential threat to the people already living in the region, as noted by an Egyptian inscription.

The Greek Dark Ages, sometimes referred to as the Homeric Age or the Geometric Period, spans the era of Greek history from the end of the Mycenaean civilization around 1100 BCE and the emergence of the Greek poleis in the 9th century BCE.

In virtually all fields of human endeavor, Athens was so much at the forefront of dynamism and innovation that the products of its most brilliant minds remain not only influential, but entirely relevant to this day. In the field of medicine, the great physician Hippocrates not only advanced the practical knowledge of human anatomy and care-giving, but changed the entire face of the medical profession.

Rome faced many formidable enemies over the course of nearly 1,000 years, but perhaps none were as enigmatic and forgotten as King Mithridates VI of Pontus. Despite numerous ancient sources detailing the life of the foreign monarch and his wars with Rome, and despite being an interesting character who endured years as a fugitive in his youth, enjoyed a fascination with poisons, and held mercy and pragmatic ruthlessness in a delicate balance, very few scholarly books and works have been produced about the king.

The center of political and commercial interaction in the Ancient Greek polis was the agora. The word essentially means a gathering place or an open space, and in all Greek city states, the agora was central to all aspects of daily life and commerce.

Numida was the complete opposite of the North African stereotype of a desolate place—it was a land of plenty, the home of rich agricultural land that provided a good share of the Roman Empire’s food. Numidia was also home to the Numidian people, who were known for their horsemanship skills, bellicosity, and capriciousness when it came to their friends and allies.

Much has been written about Western intervention during the breakup of Yugoslavia, and whether it made matters worse, prevented worse atrocities, or was simply ineffective. In early 1992, however, what was clear was that Europe was hopelessly divided over the best course of action to take towards Yugoslavia, and after several years of fighting, the Bosnian War was one of the most violent conflagrations in Europe since the end of World War II.

Among the most significant water displacement phenomena in the Western world was Doggerland on the northern European continent. The notable inundation occurred in both a steady and eruptive fashion, covering a vast stretch of former tundra, a land bridge between today’s British Isles and the European continent.