Yet the very system that made Angkor great eventually contributed to its downfall. Researchers determined that a period of ...

One of history's biggest questions is: "How does an entire civilization disappear?" One can comprehend how an object or even a city is lost, buried, or destroyed, but an entire group or nation of ...

Cutting-edge LiDAR technology has revealed an astonishing secret concealed beneath the dense jungle canopy of Ecuador's Andean Chocó: hundreds of pre-Hispanic structures that dramatically expand our ...

We often imagine ancient civilizations as primitive compared to today’s urban landscapes. Living in mud huts, traveling by ...

When discussing the ancient world and how it impacts us today, there’s perpetually a massive tunic-clad and public-bathing elephant in the room: the Roman Empire. According to a recent social media ...

Annalee Newitz is the author of “Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.” But the historical record shows that reports of the end times always turned out to be wrong. “Barbarians” didn’t ...

A century ago, UChicago scholars argued a controversial idea: Western civilization had its roots in the ancient Middle East—not in Greece or Rome. Today, scholars at the OI and across the University ...

Whether it's the sacking of Babylon or the fall of the Roman Empire, we often assume the downfall of ancient civilizations comes down to one thing: war. Historians had assumed the same about another ...

The feeling will be familiar to many who have visited the great cities of history: I had come to Athens for the first time and made a pilgrimage to its democratic Assembly, Plato's Academy, and ...