Reading time: 4 minutes
Parties in ancient Greece were wild, with evidence of copious alcohol and sex. That’s the popular idea that endures today. But there were different types of parties at the time. Not all involved lots of alcohol and debauchery. Some featured moderate eating and drinking, and intellectual conversation. So what actually went on at these parties? And how exactly do you party like an ancient Greek?
Reading time: 7 minutes
Since humans first began draping themselves in animal skins and walking upright, we have developed a sense of fashion – often both with a sense of beauty and as a status symbol, alongside practical uses of warmth and protection.
As far as we know, humans are the only animals to wear clothes regularly and of their own choice (though evidence suggests fish have a sense of fashion) – and a combination of the age of lice, and tools for gathering animal pelts suggests humans have been wearing clothes for over 300,000 years.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Ancient Roman political leaders could be violent and cruel. Some had odd tastes and were out of touch. Others had wildly eccentric habits that might seem amusing today. But eccentric behaviour combined with almost unlimited power, made some Roman leaders dangerous and unpredictable.
Reading time: 9 minutes
The text outlines key events in Earth’s and humanity’s history, spanning from the Chicxulub meteor impact 65 million years ago to the 536 AD Dust Veil Event, focusing on major environmental and historical transformations like the crossing of Wallace’s Line, the Agricultural Revolution, the end of the last Ice Age, the North Sea flooding, and the environmental impacts of the Roman Empire.
Reading time: 6 minutes
Why did we take so long to invent civilisation? Modern Homo sapiens first evolved roughly 250,000 to 350,000 years ago. But initial steps towards civilisation – harvesting, then domestication of crop plants – began only around 10,000 years ago, with the first civilisations appearing 6,400 years ago.
Reading time: 5 minutes
People throughout history have deliberately tried to forget corrupt or criminal leaders who offend the public’s sense of morality or justice. The term damnatio memoriae (“condemnation of memory”) describes this kind of deliberate forgetting in ancient times.
Reading time: 8 minutes
It may come as no surprise, therefore, that one of the world’s oldest surviving cookbooks, De Re Coquinaria (“On the Topic of Cooking”) is ancient Roman. But while many recipes within this collection may seem strange or extravagant to a modern palate, (flamingo braised in vinegar, peacock in a rich, peppery wine sauce, roast parrot …) the work offers more than just glimpses into elite Roman tastes.
Reading time: 8 minutes
From its mythical founding in 753 BCE, early Rome was no stranger to warfare.
In fact, it was forged in the flames of war and expansion. Minor feuds led to the incorporation of the Etruscans, the Latin Wars grew Rome’s territory across central Italy, and the Samnite Wars expanded Rome into a serious regional power.
Reading time: 6 minutes
If you could travel back in time to one of the bustling cities of ancient Mesopotamia (c. 4000–330 B.C.), for example, you would have no trouble finding yourself a bar or a beer. Beer was the beverage of choice in Mesopotamia. In fact, to be a Mesopotamian was to drink beer.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Like us, ancient people had many things to say about natural disasters. So, what information did they leave behind for us, and what can we learn from them?
Reading time: 5 minutes
In modern times, democracy is the word we use to refer to a system of government where the people elect representatives to push for their interests in the national assembly. Unlike in ancient times, in most modern countries with democratic forms of government most adults are eligible to take part in politics and vote for representatives.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Yet patterns in their descendant languages preserve enough structure to enable us to manage at least a shadowy glimpse of them. The theories and methods pioneered through this work will continue to fuel research into the reconstruction of human ethnolinguistic prehistories worldwide for many years to come.
