For the most part, history is more complicated and more nuanced than we give it credit for. Hindsight serves to soften and streamline the narrative. Understanding contemporary motivations requires a ...

“Great civilizations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.” The great historian Arnold Toynbee concluded this ...

A new study uses genome analysis to show the decline, not erasure, of the ancient Maya civilization. Researchers compared the genomes of seven skeletons to previously sequenced sets from across ...

As modern civilization’s shelf life expires, more scholars have turned their attention to the decline and fall of civilizations past. Their studies have generated rival explanations of why societies ...

CAHOKIA MOUNDS, Illinois — I am standing atop a 100-foot-high temple mound, the largest known earthwork in the Americas built by prehistoric peoples. The temperatures, in the high 80s, along with the ...

As I sit here in my den, not wearing pajamas but leisure shorts and a bright red T-shirt instead, I’m thinking it’s time for a hot cup of java, most likely a cup of Eight O’clock, in memory of my ...

Consider this, if you would: a network of far-flung, powerful, high-tech civilizations closely tied by trade and diplomatic embassies; an accelerating threat of climate change and its pressure on food ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: The ancient Maya were a group of Mesoamerican Indigenous people who developed one of the most advanced societies in history, which such achievements ...