5 Surprising Differences Between Ashkenazi & Sephardic Jews

Oftentimes, Jewish people depicted in the media typically appear to be of European descent, yet most Jews don’t fit into this category.

While the two largest groups of Jews in North America are Ashkenazi Jews from countries like Germany, France and Eastern Europe, and Sephardic Jews from Portugal and Spain, there are also Mizrahi Jews from the Middle East, Ethiopian Jews, and so many more across the globe.

Although there are many differences between these groups such as the languages they speak, the foods they eat, or even the Jewish customs and traditions they keep, they all share the core connection of Judaism and are a part of one peoplehood.

Archeologists find 5,000-year-old giants in China

Many of the 5,000 year-old skeletons measured 5’ 9” or longer, making the Neolithic humans exceptionally tall for that period.

In 2016, archaeologists began excavating a late Neolithic settlement in Jiaojia, a village in China’s Shandong province. They have unearthed a trove of fascinating finds there—including the ruins of 104 houses, 205 graves, and 20 sacrificial pits—but a recent discovery has taken experts by surprise. As Mark Molloy reports for the Telegraph, a graveyard in Jiaojia was found to contain the bodies of several men who were 5'9'' or taller. That might not seem like anything to write home about, but the men would have been exceptionally tall for the period in which they lived.

The remains, which date to about 5,000 years ago, were buried in large tombs. One of the individuals found in the graveyard was even taller than his leggy peers, measuring approximately 6'2'' or 1.9 meters.

"This is just based on the bone structure,” Fang Hui, head of Shandong University's school of history and culture, tells China Daily. “If he was a living person, his height would certainly exceed 1.9 meters."

Hui didn’t provide specific details about the average height of Neolithic populations living in what is now modern-day China, but Molloy writes that the men in the Jiaojia graveyard “would have seemed like giants to the average person 5,000 years ago.” In Europe, for context’s sake, the average height of Neolithic populations was about 5'5'' (1.67 meters), according to the publication Our World in Data.

Researchers have theorized that the men grew to (relatively) towering heights because they were high-status individuals who had access to better food than most of their contemporaries. The large tombs that housed the bodies certainly suggest that their occupants were wealthy. The theory would also explain why some of the remains, along with pottery and jade artifacts found within the tomb, appear to have been deliberately broken.

“The damage may have been done not long after the burials and may be due to power struggles among high-ranking people,” China Daily reports.

The people of Shandong province consider height to be a defining attribute, though vertically speaking, the men found in the Jiaojia graveyard still wouldn't have been in league with Shandong’s most famous son. Legend has it, Confucius, a native of the region, is said to have reached a height of 9'6".

History of Japan

In the following video we will be exploring the history of Japan. Watch the video to find out more and enjoy!

3300-Year-Old Baboon Skull Is Thought To Have Come From The Lost Land Of Punt

According to Ancient Egyptian legends, the Land of Punt was a mysterious kingdom covered in tropical vegetation, inhabited by exotic animals and rich in treasures, including gold, gemstones, frankincense and myrrh. Modern archaeological evidence suggests that Punt was more than just a legend, but for over 150 years, Punt has been a geographic mystery as nobody could pinpoint its exact location.

In 1858, French archaeologist Auguste Ferdinand François Mariette interpreted a stone relief discovered in the temple of Deir el-Bahari, the mortuary temple build for the famous Queen Hatshepsut, as a realistic depiction of an expedition by ship to the remote Land of Punt. Based on the display of exotic animals and plants, like leopards, apes, giraffes and myrrh trees, some researchers argued that Punt was located somewhere in East Africa or maybe even on the Arabian Peninsula.

The Egyptians first began to travel to Punt about 4500 years ago and continued to do so for more than 1000 years. But although written records and artworks list the many products the Egyptians brought back from Punt - precious resins, metals like gold, silver and electrum, tropical wood, exotic plants and even living animals - scientists have found little hard evidence of these goods in the archaeological record.

In a 2020 study Nathaniel Dominy, a primatologist at Dartmouth College, and colleagues analyzed chemical traces of a baboon skull hosted in the collection of the British Museum, providing direct evidence that the living animal was brought back to Egypt from Punt.

The remains belong to a hamadryas baboon discovered by 19th-century archaeologists in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. This primate is not native to Egypt, but based on the Deir el-Bahari relief, showing baboons climbing around on the returning ship, this species actually lived in Punt. The hamadryas baboon (Papio hamadryas) is a species of baboon native to the Horn of Africa and the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.

The researchers studied chemical isotopes in the baboon’s tooth enamel for clues to the animal’s birthplace. The soil and water in a region have a distinctive ratio of strontium, hydrogen and oxygen isotopes, depending on the underlying geology. By drinking water from springs and feeding on plants growing there, animals will accumulate those isotopes in their bones and teeth. Teeth form in the first years of an animal’s life and the isotopic signature of the tooth enamel remains unchanged even if the animal later moves to a foreign land.

The strontium ratio in the tooth enamel confirmed that the baboon found in ancient Thebes had not been born in Egypt. Instead, an analysis of strontium ratios in 31 modern baboons from across East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula suggests the animal was born in an area stretching across modern-day Eritrea, Ethiopia, and northwest Somalia.

That’s where most archaeologists think Punt was located and thus implies the baboon is the first known Puntite treasure, Dominy says.

Fall of The Roman Empire...in the 15th Century

In which John Green teaches you about the fall of the Roman Empire, which happened considerably later than you may have been told. While the Western Roman Empire fell to barbarians in 476 AD, the Byzantines in Constantinople continued the Eastern Empire nicely, calling themselves Romans for a further 1000 years. Find out what Justinian and the rest of the Byzantine emperors were up to over there, and how the Roman Empire dragged out its famous Decline well into medieval times. In addition to all this, you'll learn about ancient sports riots and hipster barbarians, too.

36,000-year-old Meat of a Mummified Bison was used for a Stew

The steppe bison, also known as the steppe wisent, was a species that once roamed the mammoth steppe. This giant grassy area spanned from present-day Spain eastward all the way to Canada, and southward from the Arctic islands to China, during the last Ice Age.

Along with ancient horses, wooly mammoths, and wooly rhinoceroses, steppe bison was one of the most common large mammals to inhabit the vast mammoth steppe. Prehistoric paintings in the caves of Altamira and Lascaux, which are some of the oldest known examples of human art, feature steppe bison alongside figures of humans and other animals.

These majestic, long-horned creatures went extinct some 8,000 years ago, during the early period of the Holocene — the current geological epoch. They gave rise to modern species of bison, including the American bison.

During the Klondike Gold Rush, which occurred in the late 1890s, as many as 100,000 miners and prospectors from all over the United States headed to Alaska and to the Canadian federal territory of Yukon to take part in extensive gold mining operations.

At that time, many miners stumbled upon ancient fossils and incomplete remains of prehistoric mammals, but the paleontological value of such findings was usually overlooked: most of the relics ended up discarded or taken home as souvenirs by the workers.

However in 1976, long after the gold rush had ended, the Rumans, a family of miners, discovered an incredibly preserved carcass of a male steppe bison embedded in ice near the city of Fairbanks, Alaska.

They named it Blue Babe, in reference to Babe the Blue Ox, the mythical companion of the American folk figure Paul Bunyan, a giant lumberjack. Thankfully, the family immediately realized that their discovery might be exceptional, so they called Dale Guthrie, a paleontologist from the University of Alaska.

Guthrie and his team managed to melt the thick layer of ice and excavate the carcass, and they quickly realized that they had encountered one of the most preserved specimens of steppe bison ever found.

A radiocarbon analysis of a piece of the animal’s skin showed that it had died approximately 36,000 years ago. While examining several wounds on the bison’s neck and back, the researchers determined that it had most likely been killed by an American lion, a subspecies of the long-extinct Ice Age lion, the ancient ancestor of the modern African lion.

This had probably occurred in winter; extreme cold had quickly caused the dead bison to freeze, and the vultures thus couldn’t destroy its remains. Over the following thousands of years, layers of ice and snow covered the carcass and it silently waited for someone to discover it, almost completely intact.

Guthrie’s research team put a lot of effort into preserving the dead bison in its initial state so that it could be permanently exhibited at the University of Alaska Museum. They even sought the help of Eirik Granqvist, the chief taxidermist for the Zoological Museum of the University of Helsinki, Finland, who used his expert taxidermy skills to completely restore the remains and prevent them from decomposing. During the process, the team even managed to extract some of the animal’s blood and bone marrow.

By mid-1984, the specimen was ready to be exhibited. In order to celebrate their success, Guthrie and his team decided to do something rather unorthodox: they removed some meat from the bison’s neck and used it to prepare a stew.

According to Guthrie, the meat was tough and somewhat hard to chew, but also quite delicious, resembling ordinary beef. Also, since nobody experienced any nausea or digestive problems, the 36,000-year-old meat was evidently quite edible. Blue Babe can be seen displayed in the Gallery of Alaska at the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

Girl Finds Huge Megalodon Tooth On Maryland Beach On Christmas Day

A 9-year-old aspiring paleontologist found the find of a lifetime on Christmas morning: a massive 5-inch tooth from a prehistoric megalodon.

Molly Sampson, a fourth grader from Prince Frederick, Maryland, made the astonishing find on Calvert Beach.

Molly told CNN that she has spent years combing Maryland’s beaches for shark teeth, inspired by her father’s love of fossils.

“They’re just cool because they’re really old,” she said.

Molly’s mother Alicia Sampson added that her daughter has long harbored a love of exploring the outdoors. “She loves treasure hunting,” she explained.

Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs State Park is known as a hotspot for fossil finding, Alicia Sampson added.

For Christmas, Molly asked her parents for cold-water waders so that she could hunt for shark teeth and other fossils in the Chesapeake Bay. Equipped with her new gear, she set out at 9:30 a.m. to search for the remnants of ancient predators.

“I saw something big, and it looked like a shark tooth,” she said. “We were about knee deep in the water.”

She explained that she tried to grab the tooth with a sifting tool, but it was too big. She was “amazed” when she realized just how large the tooth was. “I was so excited and surprised.”

The Sampsons took their exciting find to the Calvert Marine Museum, where paleontology curator Stephen Godfrey confirmed their suspicions: It was indeed the tooth of a megalodon, the massive sharks that lived more than 23 million years ago.

Godfrey told CNN that there are usually only five or six megalodon teeth comparable in size to Molly’s find discovered along Calvert Cliffs each year.

“There are people that can spend a lifetime and not find a tooth the size Molly found,” he said.

“This is like a once-in-a-lifetime kind of find.”

Amateur fossil hunters typically find around 100 megalodon teeth on Calvert Cliffs per year, he added. But most of them are much smaller than Molly’s huge tooth. The largest megalodon teeth ever found have been just over 7 inches.

The size of the tooth indicates that this particular megalodon was between 45 and 50 feet long.

Godfrey explained that millions of years ago, the waters off Calvert Cliffs would have been home to whales and dolphins that would have served as bountiful prey for megalodons looking to eat. Because sharks replace their teeth over the course of their lives and because the teeth are made up of hardy enamel, they are “by far the most abundant vertebrate fossil.”

Megalodons hold a particular fascination for humans because they served as the “apex predator on Earth” for millions of years, he said.

Both Godfrey and Alicia Sampson said they hope Molly’s find helps inspire other children, especially girls, to pursue their scientific interests.

“This will inspire people of all ages, children included, to pursue their natural inclination in nature, art music, there’s so many possibilities that are available to us today,” said Godfrey.

Alicia Sampson said children around the globe have sent letters to Molly sharing their excitement at her discovery. She set up an Instagram page to share her daughters’ outdoor adventures.

“We really want to reach other kids and get them excited about like being outside,” she said.

Molly said she hopes to display the huge tooth in a shadowbox in her room – and one day hopes to become a paleontologist.

Giant 180 million-year-old ‘Sea Dragon’ fossil found in UK reservoir

The colossal 180 million-year-old fossilized remains of an ichthyosaur have been found in the UK, in what researchers have described as one of the most significant discoveries in the region.

Discovered in a reservoir in the county of Rutland, in the English East Midlands, the specimen is the largest and most complete ichthyosaur fossil ever found in the UK, measuring nearly 33 feet in length and with a skull weighing one ton.

It is also thought to be the first of its particular species – Temnodontosaurus trigonodon – to be found in Britain.

Marine reptiles that lived alongside the dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs resembled dolphins in body shape. They became extinct around 90 million years ago, after first appearing 250 million years ago.

The ichthyosaur was first uncovered in February 2021 in the Rutland Water Nature Reserve by Joe Davis, a conservation team leader from Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, which operates the nature reserve in partnership with owner Anglian Water.

Davis was undertaking routine re-landscaping work, which involved draining the water in the lagoon, when he spotted parts of vertebrae sticking out of the mud, the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust said in a press release.

Then followed a large-scale excavation in August and September by a team of paleontologists, led by Dean Lomax, an ichthyosaur expert and current visiting scientist at the University of Manchester.

“The size and the completeness together is what makes it truly exceptional,” Lomax told CNN, adding that previous finds of ichthyosaurs in the UK had been “nowhere near as complete and as large as this.”

Lomax said it was the most complete large specimen – which he classified as being 10 or more meters in length – found globally. He said it was “a really fantastic discovery” as well as, for him, “a real career highlight.”

“This was a top of the food chain, apex predator,” he told CNN of the discovery. “So this would have been dining on other ichthyosaurs, it would have been eating large fish, it would have eaten, if could catch them, squids as well.”

However, Lomax said the discovery was the “tip of the iceberg,” with much left to uncover of the specimen after chunks of rock have been cleared away, with the possibility that the ichthyosaur’s last meal may have been preserved or even that the reptile could have been pregnant.

“It was just mind blowing,” Regan Harris, a spokeswoman for Anglian Water, told CNN. “I mean, you kind of couldn’t really believe your eyes when you were looking at it in front of you. But yeah, incredible.”

Harris, who was onsite for the excavation, said smaller ichthyosaurs had previously been found on the Rutland Water site, but the “sheer scale” and “well preserved” nature of this particular discovery made it unique.

Paul Barrett, Merit Researcher in the Earth Sciences Vertebrates and Anthropology Palaeobiology department at the Natural History Museum in London, said the Rutland ichthyosaur was “probably one of the largest fossil reptiles ever found, including dinosaurs.” Barrett was not involved in the find.

“It’s genuinely a really impressive, spectacular object,” Barrett told CNN. “Certainly one of the most impressive marine fossil discoveries from the UK that I can remember at least in the last 20 to 30 years or so.”

Barrett, whose work has covered dinosaurs and other extinct reptiles including ichthyosaurs, said the find confirmed the “cosmopolitanism” of the species, which had previously mainly been known in Germany.

The specimen is currently being treated by a specialist paleontological conservator, a process that will take 12-18 months. Following this, Harris said, the aim will be to put it on public display.

“We’re very proud of it, and I know the local community are as well,” she told CNN. “We very much want to bring it back home to Rutland and have it on display for people to enjoy.”

For Lomax, the lead researcher, one hope is to explore the Rutland Water site further, as six or seven vertebrae from other ichthyosaurs were also uncovered during the excavation.

He said the fact that “serendipitous things have happened to actually make this find” had not been lost on him.

“Honestly, it’s incredibly unusual,” Lomax told CNN. “Avid fossil hunters or paleontologists, they can search their entire careers and never find anything quite like this, even when you know where you’re looking.”

12 Most Incredible Archaeological Discoveries That Really Exist

Most archaeological discoveries are interesting in some way or another, but there are those that stand out from the crowd. We're talking about strange finds that aren't quite where they should be or artefacts that seem somehow out of place. In some cases, discoveries like these even make us question everything we think we know about archaeology! Let's check some out, and you'll see exactly what we mean.

Baldwin IV, Leper King who Defeated Saladin (Full Documentary)

Baldwin IV, Leper and crusader, was one of the outstanding commanders of his age, and during his life, posed a worthy challenge to the valorous Sultan Saladin. In this titanic struggle, Saladin had considerable advantage – he controlled the territory around Baldwin’s tiny kingdom, and he had far larger armies at his disposal. What’s more, the young King also suffered from a grave illness – leprosy. Despite his disease, and despite the fewness of his men, Baldwin the Leper rode at the head of his knights, sword in hand, battling Saladin’s legions on more than one occasion. Today, we’ll delve into the life, struggles, victories and defeats of this truly remarkable youth. This is Real Crusades History – the life of King Baldwin IV, the Leper King of Jerusalem.

THE ART OF WAR - Full Audiobook by Sun Tzu (Sunzi) - Business & Strategy

The Art of War is a Chinese military treatise written during the 6th century BC by Sun Tzu. Composed of 13 chapters, each of which is devoted to one aspect of warfare, it has long been praised as the definitive work on military strategies and tactics of its time. The Art of War is one of the oldest and most famous studies of strategy and has had a huge influence on both military planning and beyond. The Art of War has also been applied, with much success, to business and managerial strategies.

Mummy of Egyptian pharaoh digitally ‘unwrapped’ after 3,000 years

Scientists have used non-invasive imaging to see inside the burial wrappings of the Egyptian Pharaoh Amenhotep I.

For the first time in 3000 years, the digital ‘unwrapping’ revealed new details about the ruler who is thought to have died young at around the age of 35.

Scientists aimed to understand the events surrounding Amenhotep’s death, mummification, and later reburial. They found that he died in his mid-30s and was around 5 feet 5 inches tall. Details of their work have been published in Frontiers in Medicine.

Amenhotep I reigned from 1525 BCE to 1504 BCE, during ancient Egypt’s 18th Dynasty. About 400 years after his death, his mummy was opened in order to repair the damage done by grave robbers and subsequently reburied. The mummy has recently been kept at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Museum officials had decided against opening the mummy because of its perfect wrapping, decorated with flower garlands and with its face and neck covered by an exquisite lifelike facemask inset with colourful stones.

Sahar Saleem, a radiologist at Cairo University and the study’s lead author, told Gizmodo that one of the most exciting elements of the research was ‘the opportunity to reveal the face of Amenhotep I and to see that his facial features resembled those of his father, Ahmose I’.

‘The discoveries were possible thanks to the advancement of technology that enabled digital unwrapping of the mummy non-invasively, preserving it,’ said Saleem.

CT scans were used to look at Amenhotep’s remains including regions of the body that are otherwise inaccessible. The scans take thousands of images of slices of the body, which can be assembled into high-quality 3D views, making it the perfect technology for examining fragile mummies, ensconced in many layers of wrappings.

The scans revealed 30 different amulets and a girdle made of gold beads adorning the mummy.

The scientists couldn’t find any indication that Amenhotep I died of a flesh wound or noticeable disease. The body had been mutilated, but the researchers suspect that was done post-mortem by grave robbers. The areas that had been hacked at were the neck and limbs—typical places for jewellery, the researchers noted in the study.

The researchers found that the pharaoh still has some locks of hair, which were curly. The mummy also had all its teeth with the top row protruding slightly. The pharaoh was circumcised, and his penis was independently wrapped.

‘Special wrappings were applied to the head, hands, and genitals to help the deceased’s journey to the afterlife,’ Saleem explained.

Amenhotep I ruled in the New Kingdom era which was the height of the ancient Egyptian civilization, according to the researchers. The civilization at that time was very rich and advanced in all aspects, including mummification. Royal mummies of the New Kingdom were the most well-preserved ancient bodies ever found.

There’s no evidence that the embalmers attempted to remove the pharaoh’s brain, which was still inside the skull, nor his heart. Typically, embalmers removed the internal organs to avoid body putrefaction.

All organs were removed except the heart, as ancient Egyptians believed that the heart was the house of the soul.

Saleem added that some of the adornments on the mummy were likely added by later embalmers to address the hack marks made by grave robbers. This indicated that even several centuries after a pharaoh’s death, the ancient Egyptians still made sure their dead were cared for.

Just this April, CT scans illuminated a 3,200-year-old mud-covered mummy and revealed the first known pregnant mummy, which previously was misidentified as male.

Two freedivers led archeologists to a treasure trove of 53 perfectly preserved ancient Roman coins

Two amateur divers swimming along the Spanish coast have discovered a huge hoard of 1,500-year-old gold coins, one of the largest on record dating to the Roman Empire.

The divers, brothers-in-law Luis Lens Pardo and César Gimeno Alcalá, discovered the gold stash while vacationing with their families in Xàbia, a coastal Mediterranean town and tourist hotspot. The duo rented snorkeling equipment so they could go freediving with the goal of picking up trash to beautify the area, but they found something far richer when Lens Pardo noticed the glimmer of a coin at the bottom of Portitxol Bay on Aug. 23, El País reported.

When he went to investigate, he found that the coin "was in a small hole, like a bottleneck," Lens Pardo told El País in Spanish. After cleaning the coin, Lens Pardo saw that it had "an ancient image, like a Greek or Roman face." Intrigued, Lens Pardo and Gimeno Alcalá returned, freediving to the hole with a Swiss Army knife and using its corkscrew to unearth a total of eight coins.

Stunned by the find, Lens Pardo and Gimeno Alcalá reported it the next day to the authorities. "We took the eight coins we had found and put them in a glass jar with some sea water," Lens Pardo said. Soon, a team of archaeologists from the University of Alicante, the Soler Blasco Archaeological and Ethnological Museum and the Spanish Civil Guard Special Underwater Brigade, in collaboration with the Town Council of Xàbia, came together to excavate and examine the treasure.

With the help of the archaeologists, they found that the hole held a hefty pile of at least 53 gold coins dating between A.D. 364 and 408, when the Western Roman Empire was in decline. Each coin weighs about 0.1 ounces (4.5 grams).

The coins were so well preserved, archaeologists could easily read their inscriptions and identify the Roman emperors depicted on them, including: Valentinian I (three coins), Valentinian II (seven coins), Theodosius I (15 coins), Arcadius (17 coins), Honorius (10 coins) and an unidentified coin, according a University of Alicante statement. The hoard also included three nails, likely made of copper, and the deteriorated lead remains of what may have been a sea chest that held the riches.

The hoard is one of the largest known collections of Roman gold coins in Europe, Jaime Molina Vidal, a professor of ancient history at the University of Alicante (UA), researcher at the University Institute of Archaeology and Historical Heritage at UA and team leader who helped recover the buried treasure, said in the statement. The coins are also a treasure trove of information, and may shed light on the final phase of the Western Roman Empire before it fell, Molina Vidal said. (In A.D. 395, the Roman Empire split in two pieces: the Western Roman Empire, with Rome as its capital, and the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire, with Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) as its capital, Live Science previously reported.)

Perhaps these coins were purposefully hidden during the violent power struggles that ensued during the Western Roman Empire's final stretch. During that time, the barbarians — non-Roman tribes such as the Germanic Suevi and Vandals and the Iranian Alans — came to Hispania, the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula, and took power from the Romans in about 409, according to the statement.

"Sets of gold coins are not common," Molina Vidal told El País, adding that Portitxol Bay is where ships leaving from Rome's Iberian provinces stopped before sailing to the Balearic Islands, which includes modern-day Mallorca and Ibiza, and then heading to Rome. Given that archaeologists haven't found evidence of a nearby sunken ship, it's possible that someone purposefully buried the treasure there, possibly to hide it from the barbarians, likely the Alans, he said.

"The find speaks to us of a context of fear, of a world that is ending — that of the Roman Empire," Molina Vidal said.

So far, a study of the coins suggests that the gold hoard belonged to a wealthy landowner, because in the fourth and fifth centuries "the cities were in decline and power had shifted to the large Roman villas, to the countryside," Molina Vidal told El País.

"Trade has been stamped out and the sources of wealth become agriculture and livestock," he said. As the barbarians advanced, perhaps one of the landowners gathered up the gold coins — which did not circulate as regular money, but were collected by families to serve as signs of wealth — and had them buried in a chest in the bay. "And then he must have died because he did not return to retrieve them," Molina Vidal said.

The Euphrates River Finally Dried Up But Now Something Has Emerged

The Euphrates River is a major international waterway that divides Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. For over ten thousand years, this river has provided the majority of the region's water, but it has recently begun to dry up due to the terrifyingly bizarre conditions that have brought about the drought. However, the drying up of the Euphrates is not unexpected because it was foretold in a horrific prophecy that appears to be coming to a head. Scientists have made a horrifying discovery in the Euphrates River. As a result of what was found beneath the riverbed once it had dried, the entire globe was rocked.

When We First Talked

The evolution of our ability to speak is its own epic saga and it’s worth pausing to appreciate that. It’s taken several million years to get to this moment where we can tell you about how it took several million years for us to get here.

The Life of Alexander the Great | Full Historical Documentary Part 1

In Part 1 of this stunning documentary we focus on Alexander the Great’s childhood and path to power. The kingdom Alexander inherited was volatile. How did he succeed in defeating his enemies at home?

One of the most iconic personalities in history, Alexander the Great was also one of its greatest commanders, who expanded his father's realm from Macedonia to Egypt and India. This miniseries explores the legacy of one of history's most renowned leaders.

5 Strangest Accounts of First Contact in History

War Thunder is a highly detailed vehicle combat game containing over 2000 playable tanks, aircrafts and ships spanning over 100 years of development. Immerse yourself completely in dynamic battles with an unparalleled combination of realism and approachability.

Experts Made A Miraculous Discovery At Mount Zion That Proves A Biblical Story Really Took Place

A group of archaeologists is slaving away in the Middle Eastern heat. And as the team goes, they pick through 1000s of years of history in a bid to find something significant At Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Their efforts aren't in vain, though, as ultimately they're rewarded with an incredible fine, something that may just prove a story from the Bible once took place, experts made a miraculous discovery at Mount Zion that proves a biblical story took place. It's perhaps no surprise that the archaeologists struck paydirt either, as in the sixth century BC, a great city described in the Bible as a place rich in culture and wealth stood at the location. And even today, Jerusalem hosts several historic sites that provide a window into the area's past. But because many stories have been told about this land, it sometimes takes an expert to separate fact from fiction. According to the Bible, Jerusalem fell when the Babylonian kingdom budgeted Nezzer to unleash his wrath on the Judean King Zedekiah in around 586 BCE, and in the chaos, it said much of the city was destroyed.

The Crusades - Pilgrimage or Holy War?

In which John Green teaches you about the Crusades embarked upon by European Christians in the 12th and 13th centuries. Our traditional perception of the Crusades as European Colonization thinly veiled in religion isn't quite right. John covers the First through the Fourth Crusades, telling you which were successful, which were well-intentioned yet ultimately destructive, and which were just plain crazy. Before you ask, no, he doesn't cover the Children's Crusade, in which children were provoked to gather for a Crusade, and then promptly sold into slavery by the organizers of said Crusade. While this story is charming, it turns out to be complete and utter hooey.

Japanese archaeologists discover 8ft iron sword in 4th century burial mound

Archaeologists have uncovered an 8ft-long iron sword in Japan’s largest circular burial mound built in the fourth century. The weapon was discovered at Tomio Maruyama Kofun in Nara alongside a shield-shaped mirror, the latter being the first of its kind to be found. Experts say that the sword is the largest of its kind made in that period, and the oldest example of a meandering sword.