Category: Social and Cultural History

What stone tools found in southern tip of Africa tell us about the human story

What stone tools found in southern tip of Africa tell us about the human story

by | May 29, 2025 | , , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Stone tools. Our ancestors made them, some people still make them, and many species of extinct humans made them too. For more than three million years, fractured pieces of hard rock provided past people with a means to extract their livelihood from the environment. Because stone is plentiful and cheap to acquire, stone tools were made in large numbers. And because it is so durable, it usually outlasts other traces of human activity. With the passing of time, everything from our thoughts and languages to clothes, food waste and even our own bones are inevitably erased. But stone tools have remained.

Read More
Here are the five ancient Britons who make up the myth of King Arthur

Here are the five ancient Britons who make up the myth of King Arthur

by | May 19, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
King Arthur is probably the best known of all British mythological figures. He is a character from deep time celebrated across the world in literature, art and film as a doomed hero, energetically fighting the forces of evil. Most historians believe that the prototype for Arthur was a warlord living in the ruins of post-Roman Britain, but few can today agree on precisely who that was.

Read More
Will tourism transform the way Australians remember the Vietnam War?

Will tourism transform the way Australians remember the Vietnam War?

by | May 15, 2025 | , | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes

More than 300,000 Australians visit Vietnam annually. With the ongoing growth of tourism, it is likely that tourists’ experiences at Cu Chi and other war-related sites in Vietnam will increasingly influence how we commemorate this conflict, and encourage Australians to see it from both sides of the frontline.

Read More
Why we are still living with the legacy of Waterloo – that ‘most bloody battle’

Why we are still living with the legacy of Waterloo – that ‘most bloody battle’

by | May 5, 2025 | , , | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Our views of war are sanitised today. In an age of professional armies trained for increasingly technical tasks, few of us have witnessed combat, much less taken part in it. In that vein, commemorations of the 200th anniversary of Waterloo will focus on the battle’s strategic significance. There are, though, individual accounts that give us a glimpse into what sword fights and cavalry charges must have been like – and the deadly consequences of defeat.

Read More
The forgotten Anzacs: ‘honoured guests’ of the Sultan

The forgotten Anzacs: ‘honoured guests’ of the Sultan

by | Apr 21, 2025 | , , | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
As we undertake our annual remembrance of Australians at war, some attention should be paid to those personnel who were taken captive by the enemy and then faced long years in brutal conditions. Enduring starvation, beatings, disease, death marches and forced labour in extreme climatic conditions, many of them died from casual neglect, deliberate abuse and untreated medical conditions. And I’m not talking about prisoners of the Japanese in World War Two, but Australians taken captive by Ottoman forces during The Great War.

Read More
What exactly is the Holy Grail – and why has its meaning eluded us for centuries?

What exactly is the Holy Grail – and why has its meaning eluded us for centuries?

by | Apr 14, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
Type “Holy Grail” into Google and … well, you probably don’t need me to finish that sentence. The sheer multiplicity of what any search engine throws up demonstrates that there is no clear consensus as to what the Grail is or was. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people out there claiming to know its history, true meaning and even where to find it.

Read More
Hidden in plain sight: Finding working-class women in The National Archives

Hidden in plain sight: Finding working-class women in The National Archives

by | Mar 31, 2025 | , | 0

Reading time: 10 minutes
This article will make use of a particularly interesting case study of pit brow women in Lancashire, to explore the complexities and opportunities associated with archival work. The women’s lives can be revealed through analysis of documents from sources in the Copyright Office, and the Ministry of Power collections. By identifying strengths and weaknesses of records, they can be analysed with greater depth and nuance, so that they are used most effectively during an exploration of the past.

Read More
April Fools! The History Behind the World’s Greatest Day of Pranks

April Fools! The History Behind the World’s Greatest Day of Pranks

by | Mar 27, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 7 minutes
The world loves a good April Fools’ Day prank – from telling your schoolmates it’s non-uniform to assuring a coworker the boss has definitely given everyone the day off, April 1st is a day of big and small pranks all around the world.
While mostly celebrated in Western countries such as Northern Europe, America, and other English-speaking countries like the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, much of the world knows of and sometimes takes part in the light-hearted tradition of April Fools.
But where does it come from?

Read More
Medieval Christians saw the lunar eclipse as a sign from God — but they also understood the science

Medieval Christians saw the lunar eclipse as a sign from God — but they also understood the science

by | Mar 10, 2025 | | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
This has been cited as evidence that some people believed that lunar eclipses were caused by magicians or moon-hungry monsters. However, it is important to remember this comes from a source written by an educated churchman who may have exaggerated evidence of superstitious beliefs in order to then condemn them. Yet even if we allow for these beliefs, the range of ideas surrounding lunar eclipses in medieval Europe reveal it was not the dark age of superstition and ignorance it is often assumed to have been.

Read More
Loading