Ancient World
Sumerian Base-60 Numbers: Origins of Our 60-Minute Hour
Mesopotamian scribes created the first known place-value number system, in base 60, whose legacy survives in hours, minutes, seconds and the 360-degree circle.
All Articles
Every Chronicle article on world history, newest first: battles, empires, disasters, discoveries and revolutions.
Prehistory
Shangshan Culture: Early Rice Cultivation in the Yangtze Basin
One of the earliest known village cultures in southern China, with pottery and evidence for the early stages of rice cultivation.
Prehistory
Göbekli Tepe: The World's Oldest Monumental Temple Site
One of the oldest known monumental sites in the world; a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2018 that has transformed ideas about early Neolithic society.
Prehistory
Schöningen Spears: The Oldest Complete Hunting Weapons
The spears proved that hominins in Middle Pleistocene Europe made sophisticated wooden weapons and hunted large animals such as horses, overturning the view that they were mainly scavengers.
Prehistory
Laetoli Footprints: The 3.66-Million-Year-Old Hominin Trackway
The trackway proved that hominins walked fully upright with a human-like stride by about 3.66 million years ago, long before the enlargement of the brain.
Prehistory
Messel Pit: Germany's Eocene Fossil Treasure Trove
A former oil shale mine saved from becoming a landfill, now a World Heritage Site famous for exceptionally preserved Eocene animals and plants.
Prehistory
Jack Hills Zircons: Earth's Oldest Known Minerals in Australia
The zircons suggested that solid continental-type crust, and probably liquid water, existed on Earth within about 150 million years of its formation.
Modern Era
Wreck of the Medusa (1816): The Raft and Géricault's Painting
About 150 people were set adrift on a raft and only 15 were rescued alive; the scandal embarrassed the Bourbon government and inspired Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa.
Modern Era
Bletchley Park and Enigma: Breaking Germany's Secret Codes
British codebreakers read large volumes of German military communications, producing the Ultra intelligence that shaped Allied operations throughout the war.
Modern Era
July Crisis of 1914: How Europe Stumbled Into World War I
Diplomacy failed; by 4 August 1914 Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, France, Britain, Serbia and Belgium were at war.
Modern Era
Shaka Zulu and the Rise of the Zulu Kingdom (1816-1828)
Shaka turned a small chiefdom into the dominant Zulu kingdom of south-east Africa before his assassination in 1828.
Modern Era
May Revolution (1810): Argentina's First Step to Independence
Viceroy Cisneros was removed and replaced by the Primera Junta on 25 May 1810, the first self-governing authority of what became Argentina.