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The Age of Exploration and Its Consequences
How European voyages from the 1400s linked the continents, what drove them, and the lasting effects on trade, food, disease, empires and peoples worldwide.
People, History and Technology
Exploration, Empires and Ideas
Turning points in world history from ancient cities to the Scientific Revolution.
Ancient Mesopotamia: Cradle of Cities
How early cities, cuneiform writing and written laws emerged between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and what Mesopotamian civilizations left to later societies.
How and Why the Egyptian Pyramids Were Built
What archaeology shows about why pharaohs built pyramids, how workers quarried and moved the stone, and which parts of the story are still debated.
How the Printing Press Changed the World
Gutenberg's movable type in the 1450s made books cheaper and faster to produce. See how it spread, who else invented printing, and what it changed.
The Black Death in Medieval Europe
How the plague of the 1340s reached Europe, what caused it, how many died, and how it changed labor, religion and public health in the following decades.
The French Revolution in Brief
A short guide to why France erupted in 1789, how the revolution moved from reform to the Terror, and how it ended with Napoleon in 1799.
The Renaissance: A Rebirth of Art and Learning
How art, humanist learning and new techniques such as linear perspective flourished in Italy from the 1400s, and why historians debate the term Renaissance.
The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
A clear outline of Rome's path from city to empire, its peak, the third-century crisis, the 476 end in the West, and the debated causes of its decline.
The Scientific Revolution Explained
How Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and others used observation, mathematics and experiment to change European ideas about nature between 1543 and 1687.
The Silk Road and Ancient Trade
How overland and sea routes linked China, Central Asia, India, Persia and the Mediterranean, and what goods, religions and ideas traveled along them.
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