For my first post of the new year, I thought it was apt to start a new series I had been thinking about for a while. So many interesting discoveries about the past are constantly coming out, particularly in the realm of archaeology, but they do not always get much publicity. This series aims to... Continue Reading →
Three years ago, I visited Beijing and by far the best thing I did there was visit the Great Wall of China. The scale of the Wall and the amount of time it has lasted, as well as the huge number of visitors it attracts every year are all reasons that I decided this should... Continue Reading →
For English people, as monuments go, Stonehenge is one of the most famous. Some people don’t necessarily get the big deal about it – I mean, it is just a bunch of rocks after all – but for others this ancient monument evokes great passion. Not only is it still a place of worship, but... Continue Reading →
As this blog post has been delayed because I took a trip to Rome, I thought it only fair I return to writing with a Rome-themed post, and as the Colosseum is so emblematic of Rome and the Roman Empire, I thought it fitting. The Colosseum fits my theme of “Ancient Wonders” as although it... Continue Reading →
We tend to have a juxtaposed view of the ancient past: that people were simultaneously less advanced than us, with archaic views on women, people of different races, and little technology, but also great forefathers in maths, science, democracy, and capable of creating wondrous feats of engineering that even today we’re not quite sure how... Continue Reading →
When people think of the medieval or early modern period, often it conjures images of the witch trials across the western world. These people are considered a superstitious bunch, deeply religious, and very suspicious of magic. Whilst there is of course substance to some of these ideas (and I have already discussed one case of... Continue Reading →
Mermaids are creatures that appear time and again throughout history and across cultures. Typically a mermaid is portrayed as having the top half of a woman, and the bottom half of a fish, though this sometimes varies slightly. The first known stories of mermaids come from Assyria around 1000BC; the goddess Atargatis, who was the... Continue Reading →
As many of you may know, today – March 2nd – is World Book Day. Typically this is a day mostly celebrated by school children, often as an excuse to dress up as favourite book characters. As such, I decided that today’s blog post should be dedicated in its honour. Due to the nature of... Continue Reading →
If you have spent as much as half an hour on the internet, then you cannot have missed the fact that the internet is obsessed with cats. From the website that popularised the idea of the Lolcat, to the millions of Youtube videos of the furry creatures (the top result for “cat” on Youtube is... Continue Reading →
