Ancient Places and/or Civilizations Story Briefs

The very land we call "ours" once belonged to others. How did ancient people live on that land? What was important to them? Are we more alike than we are different? Explore this collection to find answers.

Although beautiful, this famous painting inaccurately depicts how the sea met the land at the time of the famous battle at Thermopylae.

Scientists make a stunning find when they realize a gift to the Smithsonian's National History Museum contains a highly preserved, blood-engorged mosq...

Bran Castle, a national monument, may have ties to the real Vlad III - also known as "Dracula" - but then again...

When scientists working in the Hammond Lab, at Jurassic World, decide to "create" a new hybrid dinosaur, they use the DNA of a South American predator...

Castel Sant'Angelo (Castle of the Angel Saint) had its beginnings in 135 A.D. Throughout its long history, the great castle has been more than a tomb...

In ancient Greece, artists used vases in the same way as painters use canvases today. We therefore see great works of art, which survive from the anc...

This image depicts how a ceremonial shield, made of gold and ivory, appeared when it was first discovered at the Tomb of Philip at Vergina.Believed to...

The town of Tyrenear today's town of Sor (in Lebanon)was part of the Roman world.

This image depicts a facsimile page from the Codex Vaticanus (the original of which dates to the mid-4th Century, A.D.). The specific page, which we s...

After several hours of erupting, the gas pressure propelling Vesuvius’ eruption plume, in 79 AD, begins to falter. The eruption cloud itself begins ...

Ferdinand Knab, a 19th-century German painter, created artistic images of some of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

The Catholic Church bans Nicolaus Copernicus's book on the 5th of March, 1616 (decades after his death). Why ban a book which Catholic Universities ha...

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