HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2026-02-17T16:03:54.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: 4,500 years ago, Arctic Greenland's Paleo-Inuit made terrifying ocean voyages. Why did they risk it?
items: It was an "extravaganza of brutality": how the Vikings menaced the Mediterranean
items: From krakens to serpents: 5 fearsome sea monsters from history
items: Star witness: how the Royal Observatory transformed our understanding of astronomy and time
items: Michael Wood on the struggle of memory against forgetting | "Place names are signposts to the past"
items: Do The Travels of Marco Polo belong in the non-fiction section, or fantasy?
items: The real Viking Age: when did the era of Norse expansion start and end?
items: Sacagawea: life of the week
items: How the compass became a political weapon
items: “Like ancient Greece, India is one of the seedbeds of civilisation” | William Dalrymple on putting India back at the centre of global history

4,500 years ago, Arctic Greenland's Paleo-Inuit made terrifying ocean voyages. Why did they risk it?
type: item
date: 2026-02-17T16:03:54.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: General ancient history
subject: General prehistory
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Archaeological evidence from one of the High Arctic’s most dangerous marine environments reveals that the region’s earliest inhabitants were expert seafarers who undertook perilous open-ocean journeys
encoded: Archaeologists have repeatedly underestimated the seafaring abilities of prehistoric peoples. From the maritime traditions of Polynesia to the first crossings into the landmass known as Sahul – the prehistoric continent that once connected Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania – over 60,000 years ago, claims of early ocean travel have often been met with raised eyebrows. After all, it can be difficult to imagine how these humans crossed vast spans of dangerous water with such limited technology. The prehistoric people who inhabited the Arctic have been no exception to this scepticism. Archaeologists refer to these early Arctic inhabitants as Early Paleo-Inuit: small and mobile hunting communities who lived across northern Greenland and Arctic Canada between roughly 4,500 and 2,800 years ago. For much of the 20th century, archaeologists assumed these communities were a land-based people, edging into frozen landscapes as ice sheets retreated, opening up new inland routes, rather than venturing across open water. This view was shaped in part by the scarcity of evidence for boats and marine hunting technology, because organic materials such as boats, paddles and skins rarely survive in the archaeological record. This lack of preservation is still a problem faced by archaeologists today. As a result, the true extent of prehistoric maritime activity in the Arctic – and across the globe – has long remained uncertain. But a new discovery from northern Greenland is now challenging this long-standing view, providing the strongest evidence yet for something some Arctic specialists have long suspected. How the Early Paleo-Inuit reached northern Greenland In the far north of Greenland, beyond the limits of permanent modern settlement, sits a small archipelago called Kitsissut. More than 700 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, this cluster of islands sits at a similar latitude to Norway’s Svalbard; one of the coldest and most ice-bound places on Earth. Reaching these islands by …

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It was an "extravaganza of brutality": how the Vikings menaced the Mediterranean
type: item
date: 2026-01-19T15:30:53.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Historical events
subject: Historical people
subject: viking
subject: Viking life and culture
subject: Viking warfare
description: Killing, burning, pillaging, enslaving. Even when heading to sunnier climes, Viking raiders deployed the same tactics that they had used along the shores of northern and western Europe, reveals Thomas Williams
encoded: The poor citizens of Al-Jazira al-Khadra never knew what hit them. In 859, an unfamiliar fleet sailed into the bay separating this Muslim settlement – which later evolved into the city of Algeciras, now in southern Spain – from Gibraltar. Making landfall nearby, the alien ships disgorged their fearsome crews: Vikings. In a sequence of events terrifyingly familiar to victims in more northerly parts of Europe, these formidable marauders wreaked havoc. They occupied the city, burned the mosque, ravaged the countryside – and then moved on to the next target, and the next. The campaign later known as the ‘Great Raid’ was well and truly underway – part of a chapter in Norse history that’s less known today, but no less bloody. Stone cold killers The Vikings of our imagination are emphatically creatures of the north – avatars of cold climes and bleak weather, manifestations of ice and snow made flesh and steel. Dragon-prowed ships slice through the frigid waters of steep-sided fjords swathed in midnight-green pine forests. Fur-clad adventurers hunt walrus amid the crashing icebergs of the northernmost seas. Giants haunt the ice-capped mountains in an unreal world of midnight sun and northern lights. We are used to reading tales of Viking rampages through lands both near and far from home: around the Baltic coastline, in Britain and Ireland, in what’s now northern France, Russia, even Canada. But none of these places seem so different from Scandinavia, in climate at least; indeed, some boast similar extremes of latitude. Even in the most temperate of these places, a sharp north-easterly or a rare winter snowstorm may come and go without raising an eyebrow. Likewise Vikings in times past. But, like the ice, it can feel jarring to find Vikings in places where we feel instinctively they don’t quite belong. Like Mallorca, southern France, even Egypt. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/CreditCopyright--Museo-San-Isidoro-de-Leon-Derechos-r…

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From krakens to serpents: 5 fearsome sea monsters from history
type: item
date: 2026-01-02T15:30:11.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Historical people
description: Sea monsters have haunted human imaginations for millennia. From the kraken to killer serpents, Prema Arasu explores what five mythical creatures reveal about our deepest fears
encoded: 1. Armed and dangerous The writhing tentacles of the kraken inspired horror and disgust Sea monsters have fired our imaginations – and chilled our blood – for as long as humanity has sailed the seas. The Babylonian epic Enūma Eliš, which dates back to at least 1200 BC, describes the creation of the world from two fearsome primordial beings: Apsû, the embodiment of subterranean fresh water, and Tiamat, the sea. Like the many mythical aquatic creatures that have occupied our dreams and our nightmares, Apsû and Tiamat reveal much about how the Babylonians saw the world, acting as projections through which their anxieties about nature could be expressed, examined and, perhaps, mastered. Fast forward more than a thousand years and, in Naturalis Historia (c77 AD), the earliest extant work of natural history, the Roman author Pliny the Elder argued that the largest animals found in the sea “exceed in size any of the terrestrial animals” because of the “superabundance of moisture with which they are supplied”. One such giant creature is the kraken, its origins lying in Nordic mythology and folklore. In his 1752–53 proto-scientific work The Natural History of Norway, Danish bishop Erik Pontoppidan described the “Kraken, Kraxen, or, as some world name it, Krabben” as an island-sized creature, “round, flat, and full of arms, or branches”. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was so energised by reports of this monster of the deep that, in 1830, he wrote a poem in its honour, describing an ancient, giant-armed creature slumbering “Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea.” British naturalist Henry Lee offered a more rational perspective. In Sea Monsters Unmasked (1883), he stated that kraken sightings by sailors were most likely exaggerated reports of giant squid (Architeuthis dux), described a quarter of a century earlier by the Danish biologist Japetus Steenstrup. Even after that, though, kraken and other squid-like monsters proliferated in literature. Herma…

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Star witness: how the Royal Observatory transformed our understanding of astronomy and time
type: item
date: 2025-11-26T09:00:37.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Education
subject: Historical events
subject: Space
subject: The Restoration
description: From the moment it was founded 350 years ago, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich drove our understanding of astronomy, navigation and time. Louise Devoy explores eight milestones in the history of this pioneering scientific institution
encoded: The big bang moment 1675: Charles II sparks a star-gazing revolution In the 17th century, the great maritime nations were vying to solve a puzzle that had confounded philosophers for many centuries: how to determine exact positions on the Earth’s surface. And in Britain, Charles II took a major step to ensure his realm’s position at the head of the pack. On 4 March 1675, the king signed a royal warrant appointing John Flamsteed as the first “astronomical observator”, tasked with “perfecting the art of navigation”. Flamsteed’s specific objective was to devise a method by which sailors could establish their longitude (east–west position) at sea – which involved measuring the positions of celestial bodies – and of knowing the time at a ship’s local position. And Flamsteed would get to carry out this vital research from the surroundings of the country’s first state-funded, purpose-built scientific institution: the Royal Observatory. It was urgent work, because England’s great rival, France, had stolen a march: Louis XIV had established an observatory in Paris nearly a decade earlier. Flamsteed was, in effect, playing catch-up. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/T809MT-CMYKWeb-Ready-7606aa3.jpg" width="2663" height="1775" alt="an illustration showing a large crowd looking at several artefacts including a globe, a map, and a satellite dish" title="King Louis XIV visits the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1671. The creation of an observatory in the French capital had left England playing catch-up (Image by Alamy)" /> The size of the task facing the astronomer clearly wasn’t lost on Charles II, for the king appointed none other than the celebrated architect Christopher Wren to design the observatory. Wren’s chosen site was the hilltop ruins of Greenwich Castle – and it was here that the foundation stone was laid on 10 August 1675. With its lofty windows, royal portraits and accurate pendulum clocks, the octagonal ‘star chamber…

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Michael Wood on the struggle of memory against forgetting | "Place names are signposts to the past"
type: item
date: 2025-07-29T08:00:44.000Z
creator: Michael Wood
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Column
description: "Place names are signposts to the past. And how revealing they are", writes Michael Wood
encoded: I was recently back in Devon. Long ago, on childhood holidays from the industrial north, this seemed to me the ‘real’ England. Still today, a rusting cast-iron signpost peeping through the foliage in a sunken lane gives me an inexplicable thrill. It’s the idea that the deep past might still be touched, just around the corner. Place names are signposts to the past. Chulmleigh, Woolfardisworthy, Nymet Rowland… what names! And how revealing they are. Take Ipplepen, a village with Roman and Iron Age roots in the hills near Torquay. A recent dig here turned up a small post-Roman cemetery, in use till the eighth century, and a Roman butchers shop, with coins and broken amphorae that once held olive oil, wine and fish sauce imported from the Mediterranean. The name Ipplepen was first recorded in the 10th century, and contains a personal name that appears to be Roman-British or Celtic: Epilus or Ipela. In a region where the Celtic (pre-Welsh) language may have died out only after 1066, the name of the pre-English landowner was, incredibly, passed down. Read more | The Romans were blamed for massacring these Iron Age warriors. But did they actually murder themselves? In the Home Counties, ancient British (or Welsh) place names are mainly gone – except for river names. Here they linger, from the Thames to smaller watercourses such as the wonderfully named Rib, Beane and Maran (or Mimram) in Hertfordshire. Sometimes English newcomers didn’t understand these words. Avon, of course, has the same derivation as afon, Welsh for river. Bredon Hill includes no fewer than three words with the same meaning: bre is Welsh and dun is Old English, both translating as ‘hill’. So: Hill-hill Hill! Some place names tell of events. You can track the first phase of Viking settlement in hybrid names such as Grimston, denoting an English settlement (or village) taken by Grim, a leading member of the Great Army that invaded Britain from 865. Then, with the second wave of migration, came the names e…

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Do The Travels of Marco Polo belong in the non-fiction section, or fantasy?
type: item
date: 2025-01-23T10:11:34.000Z
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Marco Polo’s adventures in Asia in the 13th century earned him everlasting fame, with his very name now synonymous with the excitement of exploration. But are his accounts of his travels essentially works of fiction? Peter Jackson asks if we can trust this medieval travel-writing superstar
encoded: Life had taken a turn for the worse for Rustichello of Pisa. In the dying days of the 13th century, the Italian romance writer found himself locked up as a prisoner of war. Over the previous years, Rustichello had made something of a name for himself as the first author to pen an Arthurian romance in Italian. Yet he had got himself captured while fighting for his native city in the Genoese-Pisan War. And so here he was, denied his freedom, languishing in a Genoese jail. Yet if Rustichello was searching for some sort of salvation, he didn’t have to look far. It lay in the identity of the curious individual with whom he shared his cell. That man began telling Rustichello an extraordinary story. It was a tale of an epic journey to China – of encounters with unimaginably rich and powerful rulers, of strange and exotic lands, of brushes with creatures that would make your heart race and skin crawl. And it triggered in Rustichello an idea. The Italian writer soon saw the potential of turning the memoirs of his well-travelled cellmate into a book. And so he set about writing them up in the default language of medieval romance: Old French, but with a smattering of Italian. The result – The Travels of Marco Polo, or Le Divisament du Monde (‘The Diverse Parts of the World’), as it was originally known – was Rustichello’s crowning achievement. And it would turn his cellmate, Marco Polo, into one of the most famous figures of the entire Middle Ages. Can we trust The Travels of Marco Polo? Le Divisament transformed perceptions of the far east across medieval Europe, introducing generations of readers to a world that they could barely conceive of, let alone visit. But look beyond its remarkable impact, and how much credence should we give to the text that Rustichello committed to paper following his incarceration with Polo? How useful is the book in understanding life in Asia – especially China – in the Middle Ages? In short, can we really trust Marco Polo’s word? Read more | Why…

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The real Viking Age: when did the era of Norse expansion start and end?
type: item
date: 2025-01-21T09:00:57.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Evergreen
description: When did the Viking Age begin and end, and why is it so difficult to define? Explore when and how the era of Scandinavian raiders shaped history in Europe, and beyond.
encoded: For a long time, the period after the fall of the Western Roman Empire was known as the Dark Ages. Supposedly, it was a time of cultural and economic decline, when the continent was splintered into numerous fiefdoms with warlords vying for control in the power vacuum that the Romans left behind. The term ‘Dark Ages’ has been rejected by a growing number of historians, but there is still much from this era that remains difficult to bring to the light. This includes a clear definition and timeframe for the Viking Age. Attracted by the wealth in other lands, especially fortunes held by relatively defenceless monastic communities, Scandinavian seafarers left their own shores to raid, trade and ultimately settle in these fertile – and more hospitable – territories. By preying on kingdoms across Europe, and then assimilating with them, the Vikings helped shape centuries of history, and their legacy echoed through the medieval period. Yet defining when the Viking Age began and ended, exactly, is a difficult task with no simple answers. When was the Viking Age? The dates most typically given for the start and end of the Viking Age are 8 June AD 793 and 25 September 1066 – bookended by the raid on Lindisfarne and the Norman Conquest. These dates mark nearly three centuries of continuous Viking influence across much of Northern Europe, and beyond. But they also represent a limited, Anglocentirc perception of the Viking Age and how it unfolded. As Viking expert Dr Eleanor Barraclough explained on the HistoryExtra podcast, these dates do not tell the whole story. Norse activity in Europe started sooner than AD 793 and continued well after the Norman Conquest of 1066. A wider-ranging interpretation is that the era of Viking influence might have begun in the eighth century and ended as late as the 15th. When did the Viking Age begin? Traditionally the event that was said to launch the Viking Age in Europe was the raid on Lindisfarne in AD 793. As recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chron…

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Sacagawea: life of the week
type: item
date: 2025-01-21T08:00:16.000Z
subject: Georgian
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Life of the week (podcast series)
description: Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs traces the life and legacy of the Native American interpreter famed for her involvement with the Lewis and Clark Expedition
encoded: Sacagawea is remembered in US history as the Shoshone Native American woman who acted as interpreter to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the early 19th-century mission to chart territory in the American West after the Louisiana Purchase. But what impact did her contributions have on the success of this eventful journey? How did her presence influence interactions with the various Native American tribes the expedition party encountered? And how has her legacy been interpreted and commemorated in the years since? Speaking to Rebecca Franks, Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs delves into the life of Sacagawea – from what we know about her early years to what her story can reveal about broader cultural attitudes toward Indigenous people in American history.

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How the compass became a political weapon
type: item
date: 2025-01-06T07:00:05.000Z
creator: Spencer Mizen
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Jerry Brotton takes us on a journey through the unexpected history of the four cardinal directions
encoded: Why did early Islamic cartographers place south at the top of their maps? Who invented the magnetic compass? And why has 'the west' become an intensely political term, as well as a geographical one? Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Jerry Brotton answers the most intriguing questions on the history of the four cardinal points: north, east, south and west. Jerry Brotton is the author of The Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction (Allen Lane, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon Hear more from Jerry Brotton on the life and legacy of extraordinary cartographer Marie Tharp

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“Like ancient Greece, India is one of the seedbeds of civilisation” | William Dalrymple on putting India back at the centre of global history
type: item
date: 2024-11-21T16:09:01.000Z
subject: General ancient history
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Danny Bird talks to historian William Dalrymple about why we need a greater understanding of how Indian ideas and culture have shaped global history – a story too often obscured by colonial narratives
encoded: Danny Bird: Your book, The Golden Road, addresses the influence of ancient India on the myriad cultures and civilisations of Eurasia. What was it that attracted you to this topic? William Dalrymple: When I first arrived in India, aged 18, I visited the early Buddhist sites at Sanchi and Ajanta [which were at their peak in the first and fifth centuries AD, respectively], and was astonished by them. They were so sophisticated, yet created at a time when in Britain – including Scotland, where I’m from – there were Picts scratching symbols, and an Anglo-Saxon putting up a wobbly church tower. During the same period in India, beautiful murals were being painted in cave temples, and profound philosophies developed. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time on archaeological excavations in Scotland and England. I always thought I’d be an archaeologist, dealing with early history. I’m now on the verge of turning 60, and I think my teenage self would be very surprised to find that I ended up spending most of my adult life writing about the 18th century. That 18-year-old would be very disappointed in the middle-aged version ‘selling out’ to modern history and writing about India, which in my teens was way beyond my horizon. In fact, this is a period about which I’ve written before in From the Holy Mountain, which is set in the same monastic milieu [as Ajanta and Sanchi], though from a Mediterranean vantage. But for the past 20 years I’ve been writing about the East India Company and the Mughals, so this is my first non-Mughal book after two decades of research in that area. It feels very nice to be writing and thinking about a different topic, although there’s also that slight anxiety when you’re dealing with something that you don’t know so well. Read more | “This was a corporation that could topple kings”: William Dalrymple on the East India Company What do you hope readers will gain from reading this book? I wanted to have a very broad, wide-angle focus spanning over 1,000 year…

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