Due to its ability to mimic important events, enchant the audience as well as evoking joy and extasy in the audience and performers alike, the art of dance was infused in many religious rituals and festivals of ancient civilizations. By the third...
Confucian values in ancient China held that since one's hair is a gift from one's parents it is to be treated with utmost respect. This rule applies to men and women alike. Haircuts were therefore considered to be a serious filial offense against...
Human hair has always played an important role in culture and in society. For men and women alike, styling one's hair seems to be an innate human desire to emphasize their beauty and power. Thus, apart from being interesting and rather beautiful,...
Cycles of nature were at the core of the ancient practice of divination to decipher the will of the gods. Many different methods of divination were practiced in antiquity, such as Read More
Hidden deep within the bowels of the earth and ruled by the god Hades and his wife Persephone, the ancient Greek Underworld was the kingdom of the dead, the sunless, cold and shadowy place where the souls of those who died went after death....
Thunderstorms were one of the most powerful and frightening natural phenomena encountered by the ancients. However, it paradoxically also brought life-giving rain. The universal experience of thunder and lightning shared by cultures around the wo...
One afternoon in the 1960s, the people of Magelang in Java, Indonesia, gathered on the edge of the main road which connects Magelang and Yogyakarta and sounded anything they could find which could make a loud noise. After some time, the wind blew...
The fate of Rome depended upon the chastity of the Vestal virgins and their transgressions could lead to live entombment. In the first century BC, Read More
In his Argonautica, ancient Greek author Apollonius of Rhodes provides a rather romantic introduction of Medea as a young woman desperately in love. Unfortunately, this introduction quickly takes on a sinister turn and casts Medea as one...
Constantly battling with Zeus’ infidelity, Hera the ancient Greek goddess of family and marriage, often took swift and cruel revenge - not on her philandering husband, but on his conquests and the resulting children. "Heaven has no rage lik...
