Welcome to The Past, the brand new website that brings together the most exciting stories and the best writing from the worlds of history, archaeology, ancient art and heritage.
The big talking point here this week has been The Dig, the new Netflix movie of the Sutton Hoo…
Today, the Co-op group has 65,000 employees, £11bn in revenues, and thousands of shops around the country. Yes, there have been some high-profile hiccups in recent decades – but the movement which spawned it has come a long way since 21 December 1844, when a group of Rochdale textile workers…
According to the dictionary, it means simply 'land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation'. But in the context of our human story, the word 'jungle' – which derives from the Hindi 'jangal' – has often taken on unfairly negative connotations.…
A number of imaginative solutions to the global-warming crisis were on offer this month, as world leaders gathered in Glasgow to discuss ways of tackling climate change – but one subject that was not up for discussion was human sacrifice. As a fascinating new exhibition on the history and culture…
It was, according to a famous speech made by US President Franklin D Roosevelt the following day, 'a date which will live in infamy'. Shortly before 8am on Sunday 7 December 1941 – 80 years ago next month – 360 aircraft launched in two waves from carriers belonging to the…
Archaeologists have been among those paying close attention this week as delegates have gathered in Glasgow for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26. Few would now disagree that man-made global warming is having a devastating effect around the world.…
It’s a scary thought for parents. After an enforced pause in 2020, Halloween spending is expected this year to return to something like pre-pandemic levels – which in 2019 stood at £474m in the UK alone, according to market analyst Statista. That equates to an awful lot of chocolate ‘treats’…
According to a recent estimate by the World Gold Council, the total quantity of this precious pale yellow metal discovered around the world throughout all of human history amounts to just 201,296 tonnes. If the whole lot were melted down to form a single cube, it would measure just 22 metres…
When the painter Stanley Spencer unveiled his masterpiece, 'The Resurrection, Cookham' (1924-27), The Times called it “the most important picture by any English artist in the present century”. In this famous, dreamlike composition, now one of the highlights at Tate Britain, Spencer imagines biblical figures rising up from the dead in…
Lancelot 'Capability' Brown is the towering genius of English garden architecture. Born in Northumberland in c.1715-16, this low-born son of a land agent and a chambermaid would go on to design groundbreaking naturalistic schemes of enduring beauty and enormous sophistication for many of the country's grandest country houses – from…
All eyes were on Tokyo this summer, as the world's most populous metropolitan area (home to an astonishing 37 million people) finally played host to the postponed 2020 Olympic Games. With its gleaming skyscrapers and ultramodern stadia, the Japanese capital made a suitably impressive backdrop for the planet's biggest sporting…
For centuries, the work of archaeologists has allowed us to piece together a picture of the past, and to understand our ancestors' place in the universe. Without it, we would not know what life was like in Pompeii, or how the Ancient Egyptians buried their dead, or what role the…
The Defence of Rorke's Drift remains one of the most celebrated engagements in UK military history. On the night of 22 January 1879, a force of just over 150 British and colonial troops held off an estimated 3-4,000 Zulu warriors during more than 12 hours of bitter, hand-to-hand fighting that…
He inherited the kingdom of Macedonia (in modern-day Greece) at the age of 20. By the time of his death, just 13 years later, he had created an empire that covered two million square miles – stretching across three continents, from the Danube and the Nile to the Himalayas –…
It was not, perhaps, our finest hour. On 21 July, UNESCO announced that its World Heritage Committee had voted to remove Liverpool from its List of World Heritage Sites, making Britain only the third country ever to suffer such an indignity. To make matters worse, the UN-backed agency warned that…
With her high cheekbones and long neck, she has been described as the 'world's first supermodel'. When her portrait bust went on display in 1923, she was hailed as an icon of timeless femininity. Since then, Nefertiti has been admired by everyone from Hitler to Beyoncé, and has provided inspiration…
Fifty miles south of Sicily, the tiny, densely populated island of Malta sits at the epicentre of Mediterranean history. Perched midway between Europe and Africa, it has long been a cultural crossroads, and its strategic importance has been recognised by a complicated succession of foreign rulers – including the Phoenicians,…
Tragically, massacres have been a regular feature of human conflict – and locations as varied as Amritsar and Srebrenica, Rwanda and Guatemala, Malmedy and My Lai have all earned their places in the annals of infamy. But while examples of indiscriminate mass killing may sadly be relatively commonplace, each has…
It seems less obvious today, as we hurtle about the country using modern road and rail networks, but river crossings were once dangerous places. In ancient times, rites in the form of prayers and sacrifices would be performed to appease the river gods and to improve the chances that goods…
Those with even a cursory knowledge of ancient history will recall that Julius Caesar made his first expedition to Britain in 55 BC. Others may also be aware that the process of Rome's permanent conquest of Britannia did not begin until 43 AD, during the reign of Emperor Claudius.…
One of the exciting things about archaeology is that, just occasionally, something truly extraordinary comes along which radically changes the way we think about the past. One such moment came in 1900, when sponge divers working around the Greek island of Antikythera happened upon a shipwreck containing the single most…
