HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-12-22T12:07:28.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise
items: Who was REALLY buried at Sutton Hoo? The secrets behind the famous helmet
items: Kavita Puri's hidden histories: the enduring appeal of archaeological sites
items: This ancient goddess commanded a Wonder of the World – but why did she have thirty breasts?
items: The making of Rome's monster
items: Let’s get things done together, like the builders of Stonehenge did
items: Alice Roberts: “Christianity didn’t invent itself as an empire from nothing: it adapted existing Roman structures”
items: What have the Etruscans ever done for us?
items: Paint your own pot, like an ancient Etruscan
items: Live locally, live sustainably, live medieval

Think you know everything about ancient Rome? These 25 facts will prove otherwise
type: item
date: 2025-11-28T13:02:32.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Death
subject: Gladiators
subject: Life in ancient Rome
subject: Roman rulers
description: Edward J Watts, author of The Romans: A 2,000-Year History, shares 25 things you need to know about one of the greatest civilisations of the ancient world – from their incredible feats of engineering to their sporting spectacles
encoded: 1. The Romans lived in an independent state for more than 2,200 years According to tradition, Rome was founded in 753 BC, shortly after the beginning of the Italian Iron Age. Its inhabitants were Latin-speaking pagans who lived along the river Tiber in what is now central Italy. The empire of Trebizond, the last independent Roman kingdom descended from that state, was captured in 1461 by an Ottoman army equipped with gunpowder weapons. The people living in Trebizond also called themselves ‘Roman’, but they were Christians who lived in a city on the Black Sea coast of modern Turkey and spoke a language they called Romeika (which translates as 'Roman', but which we now call Greek). 2. The Roman empire once included all, or part of, nearly 50 countries At the empire’s greatest extent in AD 117, Roman territory stretched from what is now the Atlantic coast of Portugal to the Persian Gulf beaches in Kuwait, from southern Egypt near the current Sudanese border to northern England, and from just south of Casablanca in Morocco to the Caspian Sea shores of Azerbaijan. The land area of the Roman empire was smaller than Australia, but if one included the territorial waters controlled by Rome (as is customary with modern states) the empire would rank as the fifth-largest country on earth if it existed today. 3. As much as one-third of the world’s population lived under Roman control Late during the reign of the emperor Trajan (ruled AD 98–117), it is thought that the Roman empire reached a population of 80 million, out of a total world population of around 230 million. In modern terms, Rome’s share of the world population at that moment would be nearly equivalent to a country with the combined populations of India and China. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2GettyImages-1369193411-fa1bfb0-e1764241964618.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A yellow, blue and red map showing the Roman empire" title="The Roman empire reached its maximum…

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Who was REALLY buried at Sutton Hoo? The secrets behind the famous helmet
type: item
date: 2025-11-14T08:55:53.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Who was buried inside the ship at Sutton Hoo, one of the most significant archaeological finds in British history? David Musgrove explores the enigmatic burial site and explains more about what was found inside the Suffolk mounds
encoded: HistoryExtra's David Musgrove explores the enigmatic burial site of Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, famous for its treasure-filled 27-metre ship, first excavated in 1939. The site, today managed by the National Trust and brought to life in 2021 Netflix film The Dig, continues to captivate, and highlights a dynamic period in Anglo-Saxon history. Despite the wealth of artefacts found inside the ship, the identity of the buried individual remains unknown. What are the leading theories? Discover more in this video as we look closer at the contenders, including an Anglo-Saxon king and a Byzantine soldier. Plus explore the various buried items that suggest a tantalising mix of both Christian and pre-Christian influences. Of course, we also get closer to the famous Sutton Hoo helmet, and its possible connection to the Norse god Odin. View Green Video on the source website

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Kavita Puri's hidden histories: the enduring appeal of archaeological sites
type: item
date: 2025-10-27T12:00:45.000Z
creator: Kavita Puri
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: "Nothing beats feeling the earth in your hands and uncovering the past", writes Kavita Puri
encoded: It was late morning, but already hot enough to warrant wearing a sun hat and sticking to the shade. I was in a quiet part of Andalucía, looking at an archaeological treasure that I visit regularly. However, this time there was more activity than usual. There were scores of people digging, others with notepads, some wearing gloves – all situated in different parts of the site. It was July and students had come from across Europe to take part in excavations. A 35-minute drive from Granada in southern Spain, the hill town of Tózar is located close to La Ruta del Califato (the Route of the Caliphate). Here, the local council recently purchased the archaeological area from a private owner. Investigations started on the land in 2012 when a Mozarabic cemetery was found. Eighty tombs of Christians who lived under Muslim rule in al-Andalus (the Iberian peninsula) were carved into the rock on the highland projecting into the surrounding landscapes. The site was believed to have been used as a cemetery between the ninth and 12th centuries. If you walk below, archaeologists have found another burial chamber, known as Dólmen Pileta de la Zorra, dating from sometime between the Neolithic and Bronze Ages. There are also remnants of ancient agricultural terraces and irrigation systems. Further below is a Mozarabic village. I chatted to the lead archaeologist who told me they recently found a small refuse dump, which she excitedly said revealed what people had eaten, the utensils they used, the tools they worked with. Clues of life. And then she led me to what was once a dwelling. In the ground were three small rectangular holes. Two weeks ago, they discovered the remains of a child in one. She says they think these were graves for babies who had died before they had been baptised, which meant they were buried in the home, rather than in the cemetery above. As she spoke, enthused by the find, she described the moment of discovery, and what it could reveal about the practices and bel…

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This ancient goddess commanded a Wonder of the World – but why did she have thirty breasts?
type: item
date: 2025-10-24T12:00:22.000Z
creator: Isabel King
subject: General ancient history
subject: Period
subject: Gods
description: The strange and powerful symbol at the heart of one of history’s greatest temples reveals the importance of the goddess Artemis in ruling fertility, childbirth and nature
encoded: When we think of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon may be the first examples that come to mind. However, the oldest-known versions of the list start with a landmark that is often forgotten: the Temple of Artemis. Located in the ancient city of Ephesus (near modern-day Selçuk, Turkey), this remarkable place of worship was renowned for its size and scale, standing at least 20 metres tall and boasting an enormous tile-covered roof supported by 127 marble columns. With a floor plan of some 6,000 square metres, the temple was also nearly three times as large as the famous Parthenon in Athens. But some of the most startling archaeological evidence from Ephesus isn’t concerned with the dimensions of the temple, nor its complicated history of destruction and rebuilding. Instead, much attention has been directed towards a collection of statues depicting the temple’s patron deity, Artemis. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/BAL957668-36357fc.jpg" width="7715" height="4533" alt="A large temple with a triangular roof and many columns holding it up. It sits on top of a large flight of stairs. The roof has a mural of the goddess sitting in the middle and surrounded by crowds of people and two golden horses" title="A 20th-century depiction of the Temple of Artemis, dedicated to the goddess Artemis (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Rather than portraying the goddess as a conventional Greek beauty, the sculptures display Artemis in an altogether different guise. And, according to classicist and broadcaster Bettany Hughes, these statues bear a particularly striking physical characteristic. Read more | On the steps of a sacred temple, Cleopatra's feud with her sister came to a blood-soaked end “[This] is not the Artemis that you probably have in your heads… this image of a beautiful young woman in a tiny Greek chiton, artfully pulling a bow and arrow,” reveals Hughes on an episode…

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The making of Rome's monster
type: item
date: 2025-10-08T08:00:55.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Historical events
subject: Roman rulers
description: In the second century BC, Roman troops razed the city of Carthage and obliterated its civilisation. So why, asks Eve MacDonald, did the victors remain obsessed by their conquered foes for the next 200 years?
encoded: Carthage burned for six days. After three long years of siege, in the spring of 146 BC Roman soldiers finally broke through the city’s defences and began to slaughter the population. But still the Carthaginians resisted. Street by street, they threw themselves at their enemy. Rome’s relentless military machine moved from the city’s ports, across the temple-filled marketplace and up the streets that lined the central hill. There they were assailed by projectiles hurled down from roofs by women, children and old men. Yet the Romans’ fierce assault on that already ancient city on the north African coast could not be stopped. They went from house to house, ascending to roofs, rooting out Carthaginians from their hiding places. Houses burned and bodies lined the streets while a unit of ‘sweeper’ soldiers cleared away the dead to allow access for more troops. The scene, as told by the Greek historian Appian – in what, it seems, was an eyewitness account – paints a gruesome picture of conquest in the ancient world. It was so brutal, in fact, that the Roman commander, Scipio Aemelianus, had to change his troops frequently, sending in fresh fighters to combat the Carthaginians’ desperate attempts to defend their land, their houses, their families, their gods and their very lives. Those attempts at defence came to nought. The people of Carthage were slaughtered or enslaved, their once-beautiful city left in smouldering ruins on the shores of the Mediterranean. As a result of the destruction, and of the memory of the wars fought between these two ancient superpowers, Carthage became an integral part of the story of Rome and its rise to empire. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/shutterstockeditorial14491209jWeb-Ready-b90d516.jpg" width="5824" height="3883" alt="A photograph of a ruin. The foreground is a large, ragged stone arch, and beyond it, there are some white columns coming out of various size of rocks" title="A century after des…

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Let’s get things done together, like the builders of Stonehenge did
type: item
date: 2025-10-03T12:30:42.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
subject: Stonehenge
description: To counter our modern individualist outlook, let's turn to the example of the community-minded Neolithic builders of stone circles, says Dr Susan Greaney
encoded: If somebody said to you, “take the summer off, come down to Wiltshire with everyone else you know, and let’s build a stone circle together”, would you do that? For me, that’s a tempting offer, but I’m a big fan of stone circles. I share my megalithic enthusiasm with Dr Susan Greaney, lecturer in archaeology at the University of Exeter, and a specialist in prehistoric monuments. When I asked Sue what her Life Lesson from History is, she suggested that we could learn a lot from the communal enterprise of the Neolithic stone circle builders. Commentators often opine that one of the things that we lack today is a sense of community. It seems clear that in the Neolithic period in Britain, community was at the forefront of society, or else they would never have been able to construct the enormous monumental structures that we can still see in the landscape today. So how did they do it? The monument-building frenzy <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/dreamstime167710916-5205221.jpg" width="6479" height="4292" alt="A photograph showing the standing stones at Stonehenge, with sunlight streaming through from the right hand side" title="Morning sun filters between the rocks of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, one of the most famous prehistoric monuments in Europe (Image by Dreamstime)" /> Sue describes the main period when Stonehenge was built (the third millennium BC) as a time of intense activity: “There’s a frenzy of monument building that happens all across Britain and Ireland at that time.” That frenzy must have brought people together: “These are monuments built of stone, built of timber, built of earth, and they often cluster together in what we call monument complexes - places in the country where they attract more and more monuments in one location. And it seems to be where people were gathering in large numbers to carry out these building projects, but also to take part in feasts and rituals that were related to the monuments.” Read m…

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Alice Roberts: “Christianity didn’t invent itself as an empire from nothing: it adapted existing Roman structures”
type: item
date: 2025-09-15T08:00:29.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Burial
subject: Roman rulers
description: Alice Roberts speaks to Danny Bird about the evolution of the new religion that swept across the Roman empire and beyond
encoded: Danny Bird: What made you decide to write about the collapse of the western Roman empire and the rise of Christianity? Alice Roberts: I’ve long been fascinated by this historical period, especially in Britain, where written records are scarce. This book grew from my interest in burial archaeology, shaped by excavations I took part in 20 years ago on a Welsh cliff. Bones were eroding from the cliff face, and we uncovered cist graves – stone-lined, coffin-like structures – some dating from as early as the fifth century. One grave even had a stone lid carved with a simple cross. These early Christian burials sparked my curiosity. More recently, I visited an excavation at Llantwit Major, where archaeologists are investigating what may be Britain’s earliest monastery, possibly dating to the fifth century. This raised further questions: why was Christianity spreading so early? And who was behind it? Rather than relying on broad generalisations, my book focuses on individuals: the people who carried Christianity across regions, and their motives. A story that began with burials in Wales led me across the Roman world from Istanbul (formerly Constantinople) to Alexandria, aiming to find out how Christianity spread so widely, and what that reveals about the fall of the western Roman empire. Christianity presents itself as a faith for the powerless, but your book suggests that it was adopted by urban elites in its early centuries. How does this challenge the mythology surrounding its origins? It stands in stark contrast, really. It’s a tricky point, because those writing about Christianity were necessarily literate members of the elite. So, from the outset, we’re seeing a movement that appears to have spread among relatively well-off individuals. By the fourth century, it had clearly reached the highest echelons of Roman society. Emperor Constantine had begun to take notice, convening a council of bishops in AD 325. But even in the earliest years, this was a movement involving…

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What have the Etruscans ever done for us?
type: item
date: 2025-09-10T08:00:55.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: The wealthy civilisation that dominated the Italian peninsula before the Romans left a legacy that’s full of surprises. Lucy Shipley explains why we have the Etruscans to thank for the way we write, the shape of our towns, Renaissance art – and even horror movies
encoded: They taught us to read and write (well, kind of) Long before the Romans came to dominate the ancient world – before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Claudius invaded Britain and Vesuvius buried Pompeii – another civilisation dominated the Italian peninsula: the Etruscans. You may have heard of them, or that name may mean nothing to you. Either way, there’s little doubting their influence, continuing through the long hegemony of the Romans (who occupied Etruscan settlements) and the medieval period all the way to the modern age. The Etruscans, whose name is echoed in the modern region of Tuscany, emerged in central Italy around 900 BC. Their heartland, Etruria, lay between the rivers Tiber and Arno, and their cities were often perched on imposing plateaus with views across the fertile fields and metal-bearing soils that made their fortune. Their ports sent vessels out into the Tyrrhenian Sea (which bears their Greek name), trading as far afield as Spain and the near east. If you know the Etruscans at all, you might identify them as the villains of many a Roman tale or Greek myth. But who were these people? How did they live? And what impact do they have on our lives today? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-webready150617775-378ec5d.jpg" width="3602" height="2401" alt="A pale green and cream tablet with white letters inscribed across the top" title="An ivory writing tablet discovered in Marsiliana d'Albegna. The characters of the Etruscan alphabet inscribed along the top clearly influenced modern Latin letters (Image by Getty Images)" /> Well, a good place to start is with the words you’re reading on this page. Without the Etruscan alphabet, the Latin characters we use in modern English writing could have developed totally differently. Etruscan letters are clearly influenced by Greek and Phoenician scripts, but you’ll find you can read them with relative ease because the letter forms are so familiar. Read more | The hi…

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Paint your own pot, like an ancient Etruscan
type: item
date: 2025-07-27T09:00:19.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Ancient Egypt
subject: Ancient Greece
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Historical people
description: Silence your inner critic and forget about perfectionism. That's the life lesson we should learn from the Etruscans and their artistic habits, Dr Lucy Shipley tells Dr David Musgrove
encoded: There’s a place I used to go to with my children where you could unleash your creative zing by painting a pot. You picked your pot, you painted your pot, and then they fired it for you and you came back and retrieved your handiwork a few days later. I’m no artist, so my pot designs were always distinctly average. But I enjoyed it, and so did my kids, and in that, we were unwittingly drawing on the mindset of the ancient Etruscans. Dr Lucy Shipley is an expert on this overlooked people, and her life lesson that we should draw from them is simple: paint your own pot. The overlooked Etruscans Before we go into that, let’s have a quick recap of who the Etruscans were. They are the people who lived in parts of what is now Italy, particularly in Tuscany and Umbria, in the period before the rise of ancient Rome, in the first millennium BC. They were neighbours and rivals of the Romans and the Greeks. They lived in cities spread across the region, and from their ports they traded widely across the Mediterranean. The Etruscans pop up in ancient sources quite often, but we only ever have accounts of them from an outside perspective, because their own texts do not survive beyond short inscriptions and one religious text. We have to rely on those accounts, along with archaeology, to get to grips with who they were and how they lived. Most of their cities are hard to excavate as they sit under modern settlements, but new excavations are revealing more of their world. Read more | The history of Florence: Italy's Renaissance powerhouse Etruscan tombs also provide a fascinating insight into Etruscan culture, and some feature remarkable wall paintings. These paintings show scenes from everyday life, religion and myth, but also some graphic sexual acts, which has surprised modern eyes (I’ll come back to that). Though Etruria was eventually subsumed into the Roman empire in the fourth and third centuries BC, echoes of their culture persisted. According to Shipley, there is something a…

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Live locally, live sustainably, live medieval
type: item
date: 2025-07-23T09:30:46.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Medieval life
description: If you want to live a sustainable life today, you need to think local. For that, you can channel the experience of the Middle Ages, as Dr Ian Mortimer suggests
encoded: When I have a spare moment, I dabble in making hazel hurdle fence panels. It’s gloriously therapeutic. You get yourself a fat bundle of six-foot-long straight hazel rods, ram a few of them vertically into the ground at regular intervals and then cajole the rest of your rods through them on the horizontal, weaving them in and out of the uprights. The trick is to bend the rods robustly so that you can feel the fibres creaking and twisting through your palms, but you can’t be so hard on the wood that it cracks and snaps. It’s bad if that happens. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/Hurdles-panels-f647815.jpeg" width="1006" height="774" alt="A fence made of light brown hazel rods, weaved together. In the background, there is a wall covered in ivy and a wooden structure with fairy lights on it" title="“My shabby efforts at making hazel hurdle panels,” explains Dr David Musgrove. “Note the amateur broken ends of the rods.”" /> I am a rank amateur at this, and the results of my labours are woefully rustic, but I like the process of getting there. If you’re doing it properly, you’re supposed to split the hazel rods in half, but I’ve yet to conquer that art. To see it done masterfully, there are loads of informative videos of competent, serious chaps in forests teasing the wood into beautiful hurdle panels. People have been making hazel hurdle panels for millennia. In the Somerset Levels, archaeologists have excavated them in situ where they were laid down in the Neolithic period as trackways to help people get across the boggy ground. They survive, amazingly, because peat grew up over them and protected them. The trickiest bit of making a hazel hurdle is procuring the rods. You have to coppice trees (ie cut them down to the base) in order to encourage the hazel to shoot up in straight stems. If you’re managing a woodland, you would crop the coppiced hazel on a regular rotation every five to seven years. It’s a very sustainable buildi…

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