by Aseem Gupta | Feb 4, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
More than four thousand years ago, millions of people lived in cities and settlements spread across a vast part of northwestern South Asia. They built neighbourhoods with brick-lined drains, dug hundreds of wells, captured seasonal rainwater in enormous reservoirs,...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 3, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
When Kim Jong Il died in December 2011, television footage from North Korea showed crowds collapsing in grief. Men and women sobbed in streets and public squares. Some clutched one another for support. Others beat the frozen ground with their hands as the funeral...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 2, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
China is often described as a civilisation with five thousand years of continuous history. The phrase captures something real: an exceptionally long tradition of writing, political thought, historical memory and cultural inheritance. Yet it can also create a...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 1, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
Where does the history of the United States begin? It cannot begin in 1776, because the society that declared independence had already been shaped by more than a century of colonisation, slavery, religious conflict, imperial warfare and local self-government. It...