History Guild publishes articles that provide interesting insights into history. These articles cover social and cultural history from across the world.

“Its Name Synonymous with Barbarism”: The Colonial Narratives that Destroyed Dahomey’s ‘Amazons’

Reading time: 7 minutes Tales of Dahomey’s fearsome female fighting force are writ large across the world, rippling from the ...

Farmers or foragers? Pre-colonial Aboriginal food production was hardly that simple

Reading time: 6 minutes For almost ten years, debate has raged over the book Dark Emu by Aboriginal historian Bruce ...

They Shall Not Grow Old poignantly illuminates the human face of the Great War.

Reading time: 6 minutes When the staggering number of casualties from the Great War became increasingly apparent to those left ...

The Hiberno-Scottish Missions and the Roots of the Early Christian Church

Reading time: 7 minutes A series of missions that spanned the 6th to 8th centuries would emerge as one of ...

The Birth of Modern Iraq: A Historical Odyssey

Reading time: 6 minutes Mesopotamia, now located in the country of Iraq, has been home to some of Earth’s earliest ...

What is the History of Diwali?

Reading time: 4 minutes Diwali is a festival of lights and celebrates the triumph of light over darkness – but ...

Who Would Be the Roman Emperor Today?

Reading time: 10 minutes The Roman Empire continues to fascinate the world and dominate many cultural aspects of modern Western ...

Birth of a nation: how Australia empowering women taught the world a lesson

Reading time: 20 minutes In February 1902 – just 13 months after the Australian colonies federated to become the world’s ...

The Origins of the Commons in Britain

Reading time: 8 minutes Walking around any British town or village today, it's difficult to imagine that land might not ...

Cracking the Code: The Quest to Decipher the Indus Valley Script

Reading time: 5 minutes The Rosetta Stone laid the groundwork for our understanding of Ancient Egyptian language and culture when ...

How Australia became a nation, and women won the vote

Reading time: 6 minutes Maybe seven really is a magic number. 2017 certainly has a lot of tricks up its ...
A group of British soldiers in drag operating heavy artillery during WWII.

“They Used Us When It Suited Them”: LGBT Servicemen in World War II Britain

Reading time: 6 minutes When Britain entered the Second World War in 1939, all citizens were heartily encouraged to ‘do ...

From whistling arrows and trumpeting elephants to battle cries and eerie horns, ancient soldiers used sound to frighten and confuse their enemies

Reading time: 6 minutes As if the tumultuous din of battle is not horrendous enough, over the ages humans have ...

Revealed: how women cricketers mended Australia’s relationship with Britain after Bodyline

Reading time: 7 minutes To combat the prodigious run scoring of Australian batting legend Don Bradman, the captain of the ...

How Star Wars’ Jedi were inspired by the Knights Templar

Reading time: 5 minutes Star Wars is once again in the spotlight and pulling on nostalgic heartstrings in the new ...

1915 in Australia: the reality of total war sinks in

Reading time: 5 minutes 1915 was a critical year for Australians, and not just because of the pride and myth-making ...

For outstanding bravery: Civilian honours in the Second World War

Reading time: 7 minutes Arriving in occupied Paris in February 1944, Eileen Nearne’s mission was fraught with danger. She was ...

Pope Gregory XIII gave us the leap year – but his legacy goes much further

Reading time: 7 minutes On this day, February 29, conversations the world over may conjure the name of Pope Gregory ...

The Hippocratic Oath: Changing Perspectives Throughout History

Reading time: 6 minutes With its oldest known version penned around 400 BCE, the Hippocratic Oath has a long and ...
a house in the mountains book cover

A HOUSE IN THE MOUNTAINS: THE WOMEN WHO LIBERATED ITALY FROM FASCISM – BOOK REVIEW

Reading time: 2 minutes A House in the Mountains: The Women Who Liberated Italy from Fascism by Caroline Moorehead The ...

The Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS)

Reading time: 5 minutes The first Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea was prompted by the sinking of ...
Toussaint Louverture Philippe Girard book cover

TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE: A REVOLUTIONARY LIFE – BOOK REVIEW

Reading time: 2 minutes Toussaint Louverture: A Revolutionary Life by Philippe Girard The definitive biography of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint ...

The Beginning of Rebellion: The Hidden History of the 1521 Santo Domingo Slave Revolt

Reading time: 6 minutes As the Age of Discovery slowly transitioned into the Age of Colonialism, the Spanish Empire, or ...

Why are algorithms called algorithms? A brief history of the Persian polymath you’ve likely never heard of

Reading time: 5 minutes Algorithms have become integral to our lives. From social media apps to Netflix, algorithms learn your ...
The Light of Days by Judy Batalion book cover

THE LIGHT OF DAYS – BOOK REVIEW

Reading time: 3 minutes THE LIGHT OF DAYS: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghetto, by Judy ...

The A to Z of the Royal Navy Captains’ letters project

Reading time: 11 minutes This is the first of a planned series of blogs charting the progress of the Royal ...
crusaders dan jones book cover

CRUSADERS: THE EPIC HISTORY OF THE WARS FOR THE HOLY LANDS – BOOK REVIEW

Reading time: 3 minutes Crusaders: The Epic History of the Wars for the Holy Lands, by Dan Jones A major ...

Why the Romans weren’t quite as clean as you might have thought

Reading time: 5 minutes Prior to the Romans, Greece was the only part of Europe to have had toilets. But ...

HISTORICALLY SKEWED AND MUSICALLY SUBLIME: AMADEUS AT 40

Reading time: 9 minutes In the pantheon of Western classical music an esteemed list of names has captured the admiration ...
civilisations david olusoga book cover

CIVILISATIONS: FIRST CONTACT / THE CULT OF PROGRESS – BOOK REVIEW

Reading time: 2 minutes Civilisations: First Contact / The Cult of Progress, by David Olusoga Oscar Wilde said 'Life imitates ...

The spirit of invention in the Victorian home

Reading time: 8 minutes The Victorian era was an amazing time for inventive activity. Advances in technology, science and industry ...

What Australia’s convict past reveals about women, men, marriage and work

Reading time: 5 minutes Success for women often comes at a cost. Award-winning, election-winning and high-earning women are more likely ...
blood on the river marjoleine kars

BLOOD ON THE RIVER: A CHRONICLE OF MUTINY AND FREEDOM ON THE WILD COAST – BOOK REVIEW

Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast - by Marjoleine Kars Winner of ...

Neanderthals were no brutes – research reveals they may have been precision workers

Reading time: 5 minutes Neanderthals were until quite recently often seen as simple-minded savages – powerful hunters with a short ...
Martin Luther Lyndal Roper book cover

MARTIN LUTHER: RENEGADE AND PROPHET – BOOK REVIEW

Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet By Lyndal Roper A New Statesman, Spectator, History Today, Guardian and Sunday Times Book of ...

Treason against the state: The execution of Charles I

Reading time: 7 minutes Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason ...
who discovered what when book cover david ellyard

WHO DISCOVERED WHAT WHEN? – BOOK REVIEW

Who Discovered What When? Five hundred years of great scientific discoveries, by David Ellyard Who Discovered What When? is an ...

‘Habits of civilised life’: how one Australian State forced Indigenous people to meet onerous conditions to obtain citizenship

Reading time: 7 minutes Note of warning: This article refers to deceased Aboriginal people, their words, names and images. Words ...

Dockyard incendiarist: The tale of ‘John the Painter’

Reading time: 8 minutes Opposition to the British Crown during the American War of Independence took many forms, none more ...

Traps, rites and kurrajong twine – the incredible ingenuity of Indigenous fishing knowledge

Reading time: 20 minutes Standing on a ferry chugging across Sydney Harbour, it’s still possible to imagine the city as ...

The forgotten female soldiers who fought long ago – and why their stories matter today

Reading time: 13 minutes On the Swedish island of Björkö lie the remains of Birka, a significant Viking trading post ...

The Treason of Sir Thomas More

Reading time: 9 minutes Sir Thomas More was among the leading statesmen of the Tudor period and his legacy has ...
ON THIS DAY SHE: PUTTING WOMEN BACK INTO HISTORY, ONE DAY AT A TIME cover

ON THIS DAY SHE: PUTTING WOMEN BACK INTO HISTORY, ONE DAY AT A TIME – BOOK REVIEW

Reading time: 2 minutes On This Day She: Putting Women Back into History, One Day at a Time, by Jo ...

Schindler’s List at 30: a look back at Steven Spielberg’s shattering masterpiece

Reading time: 5 minutes Schindler’s List, released 30 years ago, remains Steven Spielberg’s most highly acclaimed and emotionally sapping film ...

A Brief History of West Papua: Indonesia’s Unwilling Territory

Reading time: 7 minutes Currently a province of Indonesia, West Papua is a region rich in cultural diversity and natural ...

In The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back

Reading time: 5 minutes First Nations people please be advised this article mentions colonial violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait ...

LAND: HOW THE HUNGER FOR OWNERSHIP SHAPED THE MODERN WORLD – BOOK REVIEW

Reading time: 2 minutes Land—whether meadow or mountainside, desert or peat bog, parkland or pasture, suburb or city—is central to ...

Australia is still reckoning with a shameful legacy: the resettlement of suspected war criminals after WWII

Reading time: 6 minutes In the Canadian parliament last year, an outcry erupted after 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian Yaroslav Hunka was presented ...

Why Aboriginal Australian ‘Ununiformed Warriors’ Qualify for the Australian War Memorial

Reading time: 5 minutes Last year, chair of the Australian War Memorial Kim Beazley called for First Nations “guerilla campaigns” ...

How King Arthur became one of the most pervasive legends of all time

Reading time: 5 minutes King Arthur is one of, if not the, most legendary icons of medieval Britain. His popularity ...

“Homosexuals Are Not Cowards”: The Legacy of Willem Arondeus

Reading time: 6 minutes Dutch artist and author Willem Arondeus’ life had always been fraught with insecurity. Despite the modest ...

Why Did Britain Change its Stance on Slavery?

Reading time: 7 minutes By the 1730s, Britain was the largest slave-trading Empire in the world. It is estimated that ...

500 years after Ferdinand Magellan landed in Patagonia, there’s nothing to celebrate for its indigenous peoples

Reading time: 5 minutes Five hundred years ago, on March 31 1520, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan began a sojourn ...
Hull City Police, 1875 (Flickr - East Riding Archives: https://www.flickr.com/photos/erarchives/31980137941)

How was law and order maintained in Britain before modern Policing?

Reading time: 6 minutes Although the police force may seem an integral part of our world now, the first statutory ...

Swedish Viking hoard: how the discovery of single Norman coin expands our knowledge of French history

Reading time: 5 minutes In the autumn of 2020, I was contacted by the field archaeology unit of the Swedish ...

From Chaucer to chocolates: how Valentine’s Day gifts have changed over the centuries

Reading time: 5 minutes For Valentine’s Day, some couples only roll their eyes at each other in mutual cynicism. The ...

In a first discovery of its kind, researchers have uncovered an ancient Aboriginal archaeological site preserved on the seabed

Reading time: 7 minutes For most of the human history of Australia, sea levels were much lower than they are ...

Feeling guilty about drinking? Well, ask the saints

Reading time: 6 minutes Each year the holidays bring with them an increase in both the consumption of alcohol and ...
viking

How Has Our Perception of Vikings Changed due to Recent Discoveries?

Reading time: 6 minutes The image of “The Viking” has always been a colourful one in the minds of society, ...

Fook Shing, colonial Victoria’s Chinese Australian detective

Reading time: 7 minutes On July 25 1882, Inspector Frederick Secretan, the head of Victoria Police’s Detective Branch, shifted uncomfortably ...

Cheating, bribery and scandal: how the ancient Greeks did the Olympic Games

Reading time: 6 minutes Is cheating at the Olympic Games a symptom of modernity? Do recent scandals involving athletes signal ...

THE POWER OF FRIGHT COMPELS: THE EXORCIST AT 50

Reading time: 8 minutes The horror film genre has a long and celebrated history which now dates some 100 plus ...

When should we hang Christmas decorations?

Reading time: 4 minutes December 6 is celebrated by the Christian churches as the feast day of St Nicholas. The ...

How unearthing Queensland’s ‘native police’ camps gives us a window onto colonial violence

Reading time: 7 minutes In 19th century Queensland, the Native Mounted Police were responsible for “dispersing” (a euphemism for systematic ...

Black GIs arrive in Britain

Reading time: 13 minutes In this blog post I’m going to draw on the Cabinet Papers to explore the British ...

How those found guilty of treason were punished

Reading time: 7 minutes In 1352 the crime of treason was defined for the first time in English law. But ...

ALL RIVERS LEAD TO ROME

Reading time: 7 minutes Never mind the roads, rivers were the arteries of the Roman Empire, carrying food, fuel and ...

Women, Parliament and Political Space

Reading time: 8 minutes This blog post marks the anniversary of the Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act, which passed on 21 ...

FIVE GREAT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE FILMS: PART FIVE

Most history enthusiasts will eye the release of a new film on a historical topic somewhat skeptically, thinking ‘will they ...

African-American GIs of WWII: Fighting for democracy abroad and at home

Reading time: 7 minutes Until the 21st century, the contributions of African-American soldiers in World War II barely registered in ...

Auxiliary power: in wartime, Australian women fought germs, fired shells – and took on gender norms

Reading time: 5 minutes Sheila Sibley enlisted in the Australian Army in 1942 with a vision of becoming a wartime ...

Shapurji Saklatvala – British MP and agitator for change

Reading time: 4 minutes One of the first MPs of Indian heritage, Shapurji Saklatvala (1874–1936) was an agitator for change, ...

‘Wicked and seditious writings’ – Thomas Paine, Rights of Man and treason

Reading time: 7 minutes In December 1792, detachments of the 2nd Dragoon Guards across the Southwest of England staged spectacles ...

What contemporary feminism owes to Victorian textile workers in Glasgow

Reading time: 5 minutes As well as being Scotland’s largest city, Glasgow was its industrial heart. Central to the civic ...

Black soldiers and the Red Ball Express during World War II

Reading time: 6 minutes Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had a problem. In June 1944, Allied forces had landed on Normandy ...

How did 4th-century Roman coins end up in a medieval Japanese castle?

Reading time: 5 minutes The recent discovery of Roman coins in controlled excavations of a castle in Japan prompted the ...

Are we learning the wrong lessons from history?

Reading time: 7 minutes Can historians influence government policy? Should they? And, if so, what kinds of historical knowledge should ...

Treason against the state: America declares independence

Reading time: 6 minutes This is the second part of a two-blog series exploring treason against the state, as used ...

Are Aussie pubs really filled with tiles because it’s easier to wash off the pee? History has a slightly different story

Reading time: 6 minutes The “six o’clock swill” is one of the best known terms in Australian history. It captures ...

How a third-century Roman soldier named Carausius was behind the first ‘Brexit’

Reading time: 5 minutes From the first to the fifth centuries AD, Britain – though not officially Scotland, which lay ...

Tales from the Special Operations Executive: Operation Remorse

Reading time: 5 minutes It was ‘the biggest currency black market in history’, a secret operation under the auspices of ...

The “Madman Theory” Was Quintessential Nixon

Reading time: 6 minutes When H. R. “Bob” Haldeman first described Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” in his 1978 memoir, The ...

Linguistics locates the beginnings of the Austronesian expansion – with Indigenous seafaring people in eastern Taiwan

Reading time: 5 minutes The study of Indigenous languages spoken in maritime South-East Asia today has shed new light on ...

How the Gunpowder Treason was discovered

Reading time: 9 minutes On the night of 4 November 1605, a man calling himself John Johnson was found in ...

The story of HMT Empire Windrush (1930–1954)

Reading time: 5 minutes Next June will mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury ...

The dark history of slavery and racism in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period

Reading time: 7 minutes The anti-racism protest that started in the US has spread to Europe and the world. Protesters ...

Vikings were never the pure-bred master race white supremacists like to portray

Reading time: 6 minutes The word “Viking” entered the Modern English language in 1807, at a time of growing nationalism ...

A slave state – how blackbirding in colonial Australia created a legacy of racism

Reading time: 46 minutes In July 2021, Jack Dempsey, the mayor of Bundaberg, delivered an official apology for Northern Queensland’s ...

Pickett’s Charge: What modern mathematics teaches us about Civil War battle

Reading time: 5 minutes The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the American Civil War, and Gen. George ...

Black troops were welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow wasn’t: the race riot of one night in June 1943

Reading time: 6 minutes Bullet holes found in the wood surrounds of the NatWest Bank in Bamber Bridge, in Lancashire ...

Volcanoes, plague, famine and endless winter: Welcome to 536, what historians and scientists believe was the ‘worst year to be alive’

Reading time: 5 minutes It’s only February and already 2022 is shaping up badly. A huge volcanic eruption off the ...

Slavers in the family: what a castle in Accra reveals about Ghana’s history

Reading time: 6 minutes As a Ghanaian archaeologist, I have been conducting research at Christiansborg Castle in Accra, Ghana. A ...

A brief history of lion taming

Reading time: 6 minutes Britain’s last lion tamer, Thomas Chipperfield, was recently refused a licence to continue performing with his ...

Lead up to the Jonestown Massacre

Reading time: 7 minutes Most people have heard Jonestown Massacre in 1978, when 918 members of the Peoples Temple committed ...

Fresh clues to the life and times of the Denisovans, a little-known ancient group of humans

Reading time: 7 minutes We know that some modern human genomes contain fragments of DNA from an ancient population of ...

LUCKY DISCOVERIES OF LOST ANCIENT HISTORY

Reading time: 8 minutes Our knowledge of the ancient world owes a lot to chance discoveries. Here, we share the ...

The Cowra breakout: remembering and reflecting on Australia’s biggest prison escape

Reading time: 8 minutes Today (August 5) marks the 81st anniversary of Australia’s largest prison escape: the Cowra breakout, in New ...

A white supremacist coup succeeded in 1898 North Carolina, led by lying politicians and racist newspapers that amplified their lies

Reading time: 6 minutes While experts debate whether the U.S. Capitol siege was an attempted coup, there is no debate ...

Returning looted artefacts will finally restore heritage to the brilliant cultures that made them

Reading time: 6 minutes European museums are under mounting pressure to return the irreplaceable artefacts plundered during colonial times. As ...

A short history of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy – an indelible reminder of unceded sovereignty

Reading time: 6 minutes Often people think about the Aboriginal Tent Embassy as something historic, dating back to the 1970s ...

The Christmas truce, 1914

Reading time: 7 minutes The Christmas truce of 1914 will generally conjure up images of opposing British and German soldiers ...

How whiteness was invented and fashioned in Britain’s colonial age of expansion

Reading time: 6 minutes Fashion is political — today as in the past. As Britain’s Empire dramatically expanded, people of all ...

With Academic History in Crisis, can Departments Pivot to Reach Interested Audiences?

Reading time: 4 minutes When you work in higher education, people will tell you what they think of your discipline ...

The Roman ‘Brexit’: how life in Britain changed after 409AD

Reading time: 5 minutes Leaving a major political body is nothing new for mainland Britain. In 409AD, more than 350 ...

Spain’s new memory law dredges up a painful chapter of Spain’s often forgotten ties to Nazis

Reading time: 6 minutes Walking down a tree-lined street in the Poble Sec neighborhood of Barcelona, one might easily miss ...

DNA reveals large migration into Scandinavia during the Viking age

Reading time: 5 minutes We often think of the Vikings as ultimate explorers, taking their culture with them to far-off ...

What good is a new national cultural policy without history?

Reading time: 5 minutes Alongside much else that is being revised, reimagined or recast by the Albanese government, Australia is ...

Regimes Around the World are Manipulating History and Threatening Historians

Reading time: 6 minutes The past is back at the center of today’s politics. The invasion of Ukraine by Russian ...

How World War II spurred vaccine innovation

Reading time: 7 minutes War and disease have marched arm in arm for centuries. Wars magnify the spread and severity ...

America Fought Its Own Battle Over Books Before it Fought the Nazis

Reading time: 7 minutes When United States servicemen stormed the beaches in Normandy, most of them had an essential item ...

‘Excessive severity’: Treason and the Grenadian Rebellion of 1795

Reading time: 9 minutes Late in the night of 2 March 1795, a rebellion broke out on the Caribbean island ...

A love story that threatened the Commonwealth: Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams

Reading time: 7 minutes A relatively unknown name in contemporary Britain, Sir Seretse Khama left an indelible mark on southern ...

WHY IS CHARLES CURTIS’S LEGACY SO COMPLICATED?

Reading time: 6 minutes Since the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, journalists, scholars, and activists have celebrated Harris ...

A cave site in Kenya’s forests reveals the oldest human burial in Africa

Reading time: 7 minutes Africa is often referred to as the cradle of humankind – the birthplace of our species, ...

Cave of Horror: fresh fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls echo dramatic human stories

Reading time: 6 minutes In March 2021 news broke of the discovery of fresh fragments of a nearly 2,000-year-old scroll ...

Sheepskin was used as an anti-fraud device in British legal documents for hundreds of years

Reading time: 4 minutes The 16th and 17th centuries were a notably litigious period in British history. New rights, wealth ...

Historians are Being Asked to Spin Simple Stories of Nationalism; The Past Won’t Cooperate

Reading time: 7 minutes North Macedonia, an EU candidate since 2005, and Bulgaria, an EU member since 2007, are neighbors ...

New archaeology finding shows how Muslim cuisine endured in secret despite policing by the Spanish Catholic regime

Reading time: 5 minutes Granada, in southern Spain’s Andalusia region, was the final remnant of Islamic Iberia known as al-Andalus ...

90 years ago, Yorta Yorta leader William Cooper petitioned the king for Aboriginal representation in parliament

Reading time: 4 minutes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased ...

Reappraising The Passion of the Christ

Reading time: 5 minutes Looking back at director Mel Gibson's controversial depiction of Christianity's central event. As another Easter holiday ...

On the screen: Cold warriors

Reading time: 4 minutes The Courier, directed by Dominic Cooke, is a film of the Cold War with the Cuban ...

Uncovering the roots of racist ideas in America

Reading time: 5 minutes Donald Trump proclaimed during his inaugural address, “When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no ...

Ammonite: the remarkable real science of Mary Anning and her fossils

Reading time: 6 minutes This story contains spoilers for Ammonite Palaeontologist Mary Anning is known for discovering a multitude of ...

The Philadelphia zebras … and six great animal escapes of the Victorian era

Reading time: 6 minutes Nothing beats a good chase sequence, particularly when an animal is involved. Recently, social media was ...

Hidden women of history: Maria Sibylla Merian, 17th-century entomologist and scientific adventurer

Reading time: 8 minutes Most school kids can describe in detail the life cycle of butterflies: eggs hatch into caterpillars, ...

Rediscovered: the Aboriginal names for ten Melbourne suburbs

Reading time: 7 minutes Ten previously forgotten Aboriginal names for 19th century sites and suburbs of Melbourne have been recently ...

Why archaeology is so much more than just digging

Reading time: 5 minutes It’s our experience that most people think archaeology mainly means digging in the dirt. Admit to ...

What we’re finding as we excavate Halmyris, a frontier fort of the Roman Empire

Reading time: 5 minutes Nationalism is resurging across Europe, and with it has come increasing attention on the vulnerable outer ...

Safeguarding our Heritage – Why we must fund Trove

Reading time: 2 minutes Trove, the National Library of Australia's (NLA) public online database, has grown to include over 6 ...

Peta Clancy brings a hidden Victorian massacre to the surface with Undercurrent

Reading time: 6 minutes The slaughter of Australian soldiers at Gallipoli in 1915 is claimed by many to be a ...

Roman Britain was multi-ethnic – so why does this upset people so much?

Reading time: 4 minutes Nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi velle placere,nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo. I’m not ...

Why the Neanderthals may have been more sophisticated hunters than we thought – new study

Reading time: 6 minutes When Neanderthals are depicted in artistic reconstructions, they often have a spear in hand. Most archaeologists ...

The Roman dead: new techniques are revealing just how diverse Roman Britain was

Reading time: 6 minutes Our knowledge about the people who lived in Roman Britain has undergone a sea change over ...

FIVE GREAT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE FILMS: PART FOUR

Reading time: 5 minutes Most history enthusiasts will eye the release of a new film on a historical topic somewhat ...

Neanderthals: Javelin athletes helped us show how effective they were at hunting with weapons

Reading time: 5 minutes Neanderthals used to be portrayed as unintelligent and technologically deficient, a species that went extinct because ...

Why we must better understand our history

Reading time: 5 minutes History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme. Mark Twain As a society it is ...

Old teeth from a rediscovered cave show humans were in Indonesia more than 63,000 years ago

Reading time: 6 minutes Modern humans were present in Southeast Asia about 20,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to ...

18th- and 19th-century Americans of all races, classes and genders looked to the ancient Mediterranean for inspiration

Reading time: 6 minutes The ancient world of the Mediterranean has long permeated American society, in everything from museum collections ...

A snapshot of our mysterious ancestor Homo erectus

Reading time: 6 minutes If you bumped into a Homo erectus in the street you might not recognise them as ...

What the Romans can teach us about immigration and integration

Reading time: 4 minutes As a Roman historian, I’m struck by how often people ask why the Roman empire ended, ...
Still image from the 1940 propaganda film ‘Christmas Under Fire’ produced by the Crown Film Unit. BFI Archive

Carols, ration books and bomb shelters: how Britain celebrated Christmas in 1940

Reading time: 6 minutes At Christmas 1939, Britons had been able to maintain a semblance of normality. The blackout prevented ...

How did we come to celebrate Christmas?

Reading time: 6 minutes Christmas is literally “the mass for Christ”, the day on which Christians celebrate the birth of ...

Schnapps, whipping and sacks: how Christmas traditions evolved around the world

Reading time: 6 minutes Christmas has become a cultural event, associated with the giving of gifts and lavish meals with ...

The borrowed customs and traditions of Christmas celebrations

Reading time: 6 minutes Not long to go now before many of us get to spread some good tidings and ...

Harking back: the ancient pagan festivities in our Christmas rituals

Reading time: 5 minutes In the movie The Life of Brian (1979), Reg, played by John Cleese, asks fellow members ...

The busy Romans needed a mid-winter break too … and it lasted for 24 days

Reading time: 5 minutes In the Doctor Who Christmas Special from 2010, Michael Gambon’s Scrooge-like character remarks that across different ...

When did Homo erectus die out? A fresh look at the demise of an ancient human species over 100,000 years ago

Reading time: 6 minutes Imagine your child asked you “When did grandma die?” and you could only respond “It was ...

Mythbusting Ancient Rome: cruel and unusual punishment

Reading time: 7 minutes Early Roman history is full of stories about the terrible fates that befell citizens who broke ...

The Onna-Musha: Japan’s Fearsome Warrior Women 

Reading time: 6 minutes In pre-modern Japan, there existed a group of samurai warriors that defy the modern worldview of ...

‘Experimental in every sense’: The Metropolitan Police Women Patrols

Reading time: 8 minutes On 18 October 1918, Sir Cecil Macready, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, submitted a recommendation ...

The Right of Wreck

Reading time: 8 minutes With howling westerly winds and in freezing rain, the unforgiving waves push ships closer to the ...

4 Forgotten Historical Events that Shaped The World

Reading time: 7 minutes Our world has such a long, twisted history, it’s no surprise that some tales have been ...

The History of Food Delivery 

The History of Food Delivery Reading time: 7 minutes Friday night food delivery is a tradition that is as old ...

Saint Olga of Kyiv is Ukraine’s patron saint of both defiance and vengeance

Reading time: 5 minutes Ukrainians are used to adversity and they have a special medieval role model who personifies their ...

The colonial origins of scientific forestry in Britain

The colonial origins of scientific forestry in Britain Reading time: 27 minutes Around 1850 Britain had no forestry service and ...

The Moon Landing, Before the First Steps

Reading time: 10 minutes “We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do the other things, not ...

From ‘Australia’s Titanic’ to deadly mutineers: 4 infamous shipwrecks found on the Great Barrier Reef

Reading time: 6 minutes The Great Barrier Reef is incredible, with turquoise water, stunning reefs and white sandy cays. Yet ...

Has Captain Cook’s ship Endeavour been found? Debate rages, but here’s what’s usually involved in identifying a shipwreck

Reading time: 5 minutes The Australian National Maritime Museum has announced a shipwreck found in Newport Harbour, off Rhode Island ...

How drinking fashions change: a historical take on the British fizz fervour

Reading time: 7 minutes Brits, typically associated with sipping warm beer on village greens – or, more recently, binge drinking ...

The messy history of our modern, Western calendar

The messy history of our modern, Western calendar Reading time: 7 minutes For something that’s meant to lend order to ...

The Jonestown Massacre: The Mass Murder-Suicide that Shook the World

Jim Jones, leader of the People's Temple Cult and perpetrator of the Jonestown Massacre. Reading time: 12 minutes The phenomenon ...

Plague Ahoy! Maritime quarantine in the 18th century

Reading time: 8 minutes On 23 August 1720 at the Council Chamber in Whitehall, the Privy Council issued an order ...

Meeting Grace O’Malley, Ireland’s pirate queen

Meeting Grace O’Malley, Ireland’s pirate queen Reading time: 8 minutes Mid-16th century tower house on an inlet from Clew Bay ...

The wreck of Endurance is a bridge to a bygone age, and a reminder of Antarctica’s uncertain future

The wreck of Endurance is a bridge to a bygone age, and a reminder of Antarctica’s uncertain future Reading time: ...

ABUSE AND TENACITY: UKRAINE’S STRUGGLE FOR AUTONOMY

ABUSE AND TENACITY: UKRAINE'S STRUGGLE FOR AUTONOMY Reading time: 10 minutes The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has rightfully outraged ...

The Mafia, The Godfather, and the Hollywood romance

The Mafia, The Godfather, and the Hollywood romance Reading time: 8 minutes The Godfather. Perhaps one of the greatest films ...

REEL OR UNREAL HISTORY

REEL OR UNREAL HISTORY Reading time: 5 minutes Long before “fake news” wedged itself into American vernacular, “fake” or “engineered” ...

Why January 6 Was Not Like a Banana Republic

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How George Orwell justified killing German civilians in the second world war

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Humans domesticated horses – new tech could help archaeologists figure out where and when

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How much did our ancestors drink – and are we drinking more?

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Shillings, gods and runes: clues in language suggest a Semitic superpower in ancient northern Europe

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When History disappears: the modern loss of historical artifacts

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The Conquerors Perspective: Why Europe Has so Many Different Languages

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Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheneer heading for the gallows 'The first execution' Painted in 1875 by WFE Liardet.

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The Biggest Estate on Earth

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This rainforest was once a grassland savanna maintained by Aboriginal people – until colonisation

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New research turns Tasmanian Aboriginal history on its head. The results will help care for the land

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In 1968, computers got personal: How the ‘mother of all demos’ changed the world

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Sardines for breakfast, hypothermia rescues: the story of the cash-strapped, post-pandemic 1920 Olympics

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From the Caribbean to Queensland: re-examining Australia’s ‘blackbirding’ past and its roots in the global slave trade

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Caste: A Divisive Structure in the United States, India, and Nazi Germany

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Constructing Oppression: The Berlin Wall and the Literal Iron Curtain

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How The Napoleonic Wars Entrenched British Rule In 19th Century South Africa

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Who will have us? Jewish Refugees before WW2

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People gave up on flu pandemic measures a century ago when they tired of them – and paid a price

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Nikola Tesla – His Vision is our Reality

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The Deadliest Infectious Diseases in History and Their Prevalence Today

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Picturing the unimaginable: a new look at the wreck of the Batavia

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How will our bodies be put back together? What about those eaten by cannibals? A brief history of Christian resurrection beliefs

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Ancient undersea middens offer clues about life before rising seas engulfed the coast. Now we have a better way to study them

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Archaeologists have a lot of dates wrong for North American indigenous history – but we’re using new techniques to get it right

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Saint Patrick: A Story of Faith and Mythology

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The priestess Pythia at the Delphic Oracle, who spoke truth to power

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Wise women: 6 ancient female philosophers you should know about

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Archaeologists determined the step-by-step path taken by the first people to settle the Caribbean islands

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Cultural diversity – the making of Rome

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This 17,500-year-old kangaroo in the Kimberley is Australia’s oldest Aboriginal rock painting

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french fur trade

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Decking the halls of history: the origins of Christmas decorations

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Got your bag? The critical place of mobile containers in human evolution

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