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The past that still shapes the present.
History is the story of how the present was built. Our History stories revisit turning points and long-running processes from every continent, from ancient trade networks misnamed the Silk Road to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs and the court of Heian Japan. We explain what happened, how historians know it and where the evidence is uncertain, so that myths and genuine records are kept apart. Each piece draws on established scholarship and primary sources where possible, and aims to show how events that feel distant still shape languages, borders, beliefs and daily life today.
A broken slab of granodiorite found by French soldiers in 1799 carried the same decree in three scripts. Turning that into the key to ancient Egypt took a race between two rival geniuses and a flash of insight in Paris in 1822.
The name is barely 150 years old, and the reality was a shifting web of caravan trails and sea lanes that carried paper, religions, technologies and plague between China, India, Persia and Europe.