Western civilization arose in Greece in the 8th century BC, when some 1,500 city-states emerged from a murky, illiterate 400-year-old Dark Age.

Civilization is back. But it is no longer the preserve of “Renaissance man” or of “the West,” or even of literate societies. Civilization is a way of talking about human history on the largest scale.

History is filled with powerful empires that seemed invincible until they weren't. Between roughly 1250 and 1150 BCE, major ...

Annalee Newitz is the author of “Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age.” But the historical record shows that reports of the end times always turned out to be wrong. “Barbarians” didn’t ...

The feeling will be familiar to many who have visited the great cities of history: I had come to Athens for the first time and made a pilgrimage to its democratic Assembly, Plato's Academy, and ...

The history of humanity was anything but inevitable. Although the Universe created the conditions and ingredients that made our existence possible, it was only a series of unlikely events that ...

Devin Friend is a graduate of McNeese State University with a bachelor's degree in creative writing. Starting from the day that he played Super Mario Kart on a Super Nintendo that he received as a ...

Installation view, Omar Ba, “Clin d’œil : à Cheikh Anta Diop - Un continent à la recherche de son histoire” (2017), oil, pencil, acrylic, ink, and gouache on corrugated card, 129 4/5 x 282 1/2 x 15 ...