Why weren’t casualty figures in ancient battles far higher?
All battles are awful affairs, but ancient battles must have had a awfulness all their own. Up close and personal A few years ago I went on a tour around some First World War battlefields. The tour guide talked about what it was like for ordinary soldiers to attack...
The beginnings of Pre-Columbian civilizations
As I indicated in my last blog post, it is a truism amongst historians of the ancient world that early civilizations first arose on large floodplains. Here, fertile soils, fed by large-scale irrigation and flood control systems, enabled densely concentrated...
How did early civilization spread beyond the river valleys?
The earliest civilizations (in the Eastern Hemisphere at least) all arose in river plains - the Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia, the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in South Asia and the Yellow River and Yangtze in China. This is because large rivers flood these plains...
Why did the stirrup take so long to be invented?
Sometimes, historians have to deal with topics which are way outside their natural field of knowledge. For me, one such topic is horse riding. The only time I have been on a horse’s back was when I was about seven years old. A man with a horse came one day to a park...
What was it about the Romans that made them succeed in conquering such a large empire?
The Roman empire was comprised of more than two thousand cities and tribes. Why was it that, out of all of them, it was the city of Rome that came to rule the rest? One of the easiest answers to this question is that the Romans had the best army. But this begs the...
Why did the great 15th century Chinese seagoing expeditions cease?
In the early 15th century, China sent out a series of great sea-going expeditions, which sailed further and further from the shores of China. Each one consisted of a huge fleet of warships, merchant ships and supply vessels. The first one set out in 1405, sailing...
Why did Democracy first appear in Ancient Greece?
Have you ever wondered why democracy emerged in Ancient Greece but nowhere else in the Ancient World? I have done quite a bit of thinking about this issue over the years (I'm not sure what that says about me!) It was such a remarkable development - and seems such a...
The Islamic Golden Age and the Transfer of “Know How” to the West
Are you any good at arithmetic? Yes? Can you add LIII to XLVII? Or perhaps subtract XIV from CXX? Or try this: multiply VII x IX? The answers are: C CIV LXIII These sums are in Roman numerals. How long did it take you to work them out? Not so easy, eh? Thankfully, in...
The Grand Canal of China: did it do any good?
So far as places go, Venice and China are in many ways - in most ways - complete opposites. Venice is a small city; China a vast country. Venice isn’t even a state in its own right; it belongs to Italy. China is one of the most powerful states in the world. Venice is...
The Invention of the Compass
The compass is one of the most significant inventions in world history. To this day it remains a vital instrument of international navigation; without it global trade and travel would be almost impossible, even in these days of GPS and radar. The compass played an...