"The remarkable story of how nomads have fostered and refreshed civilization throughout our history. Moving across millennia, Nomads explores the transformative and often bloody relationship between settled and mobile societies. Often overlooked in history, the story of the umbilical connections between these two very different ways of living presents a radical new view of human civilization. From the Neolithic revolution to the twenty-first century...

Sub-Saharan Africa has often been overlooked by outside historians who are considering the rise of human civilization, yet nations such as Mali and Ghana and the Bantu and Swahili civilizations all have a rich and fascinating history. Survey the story of Africa with a special focus on sub-Saharan geography, people, and civilizations.

An acclaimed bioarchaeologist traces the path of an ancient piece of jewelry found in a Viking grave in England back to eighth-century Baghdad and India, explaining that the Vikings' route may have been far more varied than previously known.

"This entertaining and enlightening graphic narrative tells the exciting story of the seventeenth-century thinkers who challenged authority--sometimes risking excommunication, prison, and even death--to lay the foundations of modern philosophy and science and help usher in a new world...Heretics! tells the story of their ideas, lives, and times in a vivid new way. Crisscrossing Europe as it follows them in their travels and exiles, the narrative describes...

Often demonized by their enemies, many secret societies have become the stuff of myths and conspiracy theories. Award-winning Professor Richard B. 'Rick' Spence brings the expertise of history as he guides viewers through the fascinating, often mystifying world of brotherhoods, sisterhoods, orders, cults, and cabals that have influenced human culture from ancient times to the present.

This course delivers an inside look at both the content and historical context of the world's greatest war strategists. Professor Wilson discusses the subtleties and complexities of strategy and reveals how nations and military leaders have adapted to the dynamic realm of fog, friction, and chance.

In this groundbreaking new series hosted by Niall Ferguson and based on his bestselling book The Square and the Tower, Ferguson visits network theorists, social scientists, and data analysts to explore the history of social networks. Ferguson demonstrates how human behavior, disruptive technology, and the profit motive can energize ideas and communication, ultimately changing the world.

Lecturer Mark J. Ravina presents a series of 24 30-minute lectures on the culture of Japan, from prehistoric through contemporary times.

This course addresses three broad chronological spans. The first third of the course covers the nomadic steppe peoples from antiquity to 550 A.D., from their domestication of the horse through their interactions with the civilizations of China, the Near East, the Greeks, and Imperial Rome. The second third of the course deals with the early Middle Ages, a period of time that was dominated by the spread of the Turkish language across the steppe zones....

Between the fall of the Roman Empire and the brief, brilliant cultural phenomenon we call the Renaissance lay the Middle Ages - fully 1,000 years of artistic, philosophical, political, and religious turmoil and treasures. This course offers an interdisciplinary look at medieval society and culture, with an emphasis on literature, the arts, and the tumultuous historical forces at work from A.D. 500 through A.D. 1500. Medieval Europe was the world of...