Ancient World Review

The Viking Ship Gaia

The Viking ship Gaia, built in 1989-90, is a replica of the Gokstad ship now located at the Viking Ships Museum in Oslo, Norway. These ships were fantastic seagoing vessels, but their shallow drafts also made it possible for the Vikings to navigate rivers and raid inland cities. They could appear anywhere at any time, striking terror in coastal villages and monasteries.

"The earliest documented raids began in 793 in Lindisfarne, England," according to the Web Chronology Project." By 851, the fleet ships had increased from 3 ships to 350 ships per raiding party." Imagine seeing hundreds of these ships suddenly approach your village. The Vikings started off raiding for booty, then for land. "Charles the Simple, king of the West Franks, ended the Viking raids in 911 by giving Normandy to the Vikings." Charles bought them off and they settled down, assimilating with the local population.

Book Review: The Collapse and Recovery of the Roman Empire by Michael Grant

The fall of Rome proves beyond doubt that one thing always leads to another, usually in unexpected ways. For example, when the Romans gave up the idea of conquering Germany and switched to a defensive strategy along the Rhine and Danube frontier, they succeeded in blocking the German advance into their territory, but they had no idea that they were starting a long chain of events which would eventually lead to the collapse of the western empire.

The Germanic tribes needed living space. Stymied in their attempts to spread west into Roman Gaul, the various tribes started to move to the east in the Second Century AD and ran into big trouble about a century later. In 372, according to The New Penguin Atlas of Medieval History, "the eastward expansion of the Ostrogoths provoked an explosive reaction from the Huns of the Volga Steppe." When the Ostrogoths intruded into their territory, the Huns drove all the German tribes back towards the Danube like a giant hammer, pounding them against the Roman frontier.

Tablets Reveal Details Of Assyrian Empire

Partially decoded clay tablets discovered in 2009 during the excavation of an Assyrian governor's palace in what is now southeastern Turkey are revealing the inner workings of the Assyrian Empire, one of the greatest and bloodiest tyrannies in ancient Babylonia.

"Meticulous ancient notetakers have given archaeologists a glimpse of what life was like 3,000 years ago in the Assyrian Empire, which controlled much of the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf," according to National Geographic News."Palace scribes jotted down seemingly mundane state affairs on the tablets during the Late Iron Age—which lasted from roughly the end of the ninth century B.C. until the mid-seventh century B.C."

Headless Vikings Found In English Execution Pit

"Naked, beheaded, and tangled, the bodies of 51 young men--their heads stacked neatly to the side--have been found in a thousand-year-old pit in southern England, according to carbon-dating results released earlier this month." Source: National Geographic News. The apparent execution pit has been dated to "between AD 890 and 1034," around the time the Vikings were raiding England."The dead are thought to have been war captives, possibly Vikings, whose heads were hacked off with swords or axes, according to excavation leader David Score of Oxford Archaeology, an archaeological-services company."

The City Of Sabratha In Libya

A short video of the ruins of Sabratha, a World Heritage Site in Tripolitania, a region along the Mediterranean coast of northern Libya. The city was apparently founded as a trading post by the Phoenicians around 500 BC, so these ruins are over 2500 years old. This entire region was controlled over the centuries by successive waves of Berbers, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Numidians, Romans, Vandals and the Byzantine Empire before it was conquered by the Arabs in the 7th Century AD.

Thracian Chariot Discovered In Bulgaria

"Archaeologists have unearthed an elaborately decorated 1800-year-old chariot sheathed in bronze at an ancient Thracian tomb in southeastern Bulgaria," according to Discovery News. "The bronze-plated wooden chariot is decorated with scenes from Thracian mythology, including figures of a jumping panther and the carving of a mythological animal with the body of a panther and the tail of a dolphin..." The chariot was found in the grave of a "wealthy Thracian aristocrat" who apparently decided you could take it with you after all.

Ancient Bactrian City Discovered In Afghanistan

"French archeologists believe they have found a vast ancient city" in what was once part of ancient Bactria in northern Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press. Locals call the site the "City of Infidels" and the whole area has apparently been heavily damaged by looting and decades of warfare.