This article was originally published on mentalfloss.com as 5 Historical Reasons People Used to Dread the New Year.

Understanding New Year history is to understand humanity’s obsession with renewal itself. From the LED-lit canyons of Times Square to the water-drenched streets of Bangkok, the New Year persists ...

Many researchers have spent decades attempting to decode biblical descriptions and link them to verifiable historical events.

The history of beard oil and beard care reveals how a simple habit became modern grooming culture, part ritual, part style ...

Long before modern telescopes, early astronomers mapped the heavens with math, myth, and sheer curiosity. This crossword quiz celebrates the minds who first charted the cosmos.

Rabat Castle in Mardin reveals 2,000-year-old artifacts, including coins and arrowheads from Hellenistic, Roman, and ...

The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, known as cradles of the Mesopotamian civilisation, are yearning for water. Flows have ...

Under the shadow of a centuries-old castle in Şanlıurfa, in southeastern Turkey, black-spotted golden carp swim in turquoise pools. Tradition holds they were created after Mesopotamian king Nemrut bin ...

Archaeologists working in the depths of Kateřinská Cave have made a series of remarkable discoveries that challenge our understanding of ancient human activity in Central Europe. Recent excavations ...

Rising from the plains of southern Iraq, the Great Ziggurat of Ur was built around 2050 BCE as a sacred link between heaven and earth. Dedicated to the moon god Nanna, it stood at the heart of one of ...

The Great Ziggurat of Ur dedicated to the Moon god. Ziggurats were massive structure typical for Mesopotamia. Sumerians believed that the gods lived in the temple at the top of the ziggurats. Woods ...