The Middle Ages (500 – 1499 AD)

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The voyages of Christopher Columbus, 1492–1504.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus



Viajes_de_colon.svg: Phirosiberiaderivative work: Phirosiberia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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A 15th-century Inca building was built for sound—researchers are working to understand why

by Sean Brenner, University of California, Los Angeles
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-15th-cent ... built.html

The Inca empire is renowned for its architecture; its buildings were intricately designed and extraordinarily durable.

But this summer, it was another aspect of Inca construction that captured the attention of Stella Nair, a UCLA associate professor of art history whose expertise is Indigenous arts and architecture of the Americas.

Nair spent three weeks in the remote town of Huaytará, Peru, studying a single Inca building that appears to have been created primarily to amplify sound and music. Known as a carpa uasi, the structure was likely built in the mid-15th century.

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Giant wooden marker post dates Cahokia's political and economic peak

by Sandee Oster, Phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-giant-woo ... hokia.html

Dr. Nicholas Kessler and his colleagues examined the largest known marker post from the ancient North American city of Cahokia. Their study is published in PLOS One.

Cahokia emerged around 1050 CE as the largest city north of Mesoamerica. Its population of around 20,000 or more was greater than even contemporary medieval London.

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Ancient Maya monument discovery rewrites the history books
By Pranjal Malewar
November 14, 2025
https://newatlas.com/history/ancient-ma ... discovery/

For a long time, archaeologists believed that large buildings required large bosses. The idea was simple: only societies with strong hierarchies (kings, priests, and planners) could organize massive construction projects.

But recent discoveries in the Maya region are rewriting that script. Archaeologists previously pictured early Maya life as simple and small-scale: people making pottery, living in scattered villages from 1000 to 700 BCE. They thought big cities developed much later.

But that old story began to crack when archaeologists uncovered massive early structures at sites such as Ceibal, Cival, Yaxnohcah, and Xocnaceh. However, it was a site called Aguada Fénix, with a giant man-made monument from over 3,000 years ago, that truly shook things up. Suddenly, experts were rethinking the origins of early Mesoamerican civilizations.

Unlike the Olmec centers of San Lorenzo and La Venta, early Maya sites show no signs of top-down power. Yet people still came together to build big. Why?

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Volcanic eruption may have sparked Europe's Black Death plague, scientists find

Thursday 4 December 2025 16:55, UK

The rapid spread of the Black Death through medieval Europe could have its origins in a massive volcanic eruption, according to new research.

The plague killed between a third and half of the European population in the mid-14th century. But it's unknown what triggered the pandemic.

Now scientists in Cambridge and Germany have pieced together an extraordinary sequence of events from environmental clues and historical records that they believe solves the mystery.

They say sooty particles trapped deep in the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland suggest there was at least one eruption by an as-yet-unknown volcano in the tropics, around the year 1345, that shrouded the planet in a thick haze of ash and sulphur.

[...]

The researchers say the subsequent famine explains why the Italian maritime cities of Venice, Genoa and Pisa reached out to the Mongols of the Golden Horde around the Black Sea in 1347 and began to import grain.

https://news.sky.com/story/volcanic-eru ... d-13479387

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Ear piercings marked one of the earliest Maya rites of passage, research shows

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-ear-pierc ... rites.html

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Medieval Peasants Probably Enjoyed Their Holiday Festivities More Than You Do
By Bobbi Sutherland
December 19, 2025

Introduction:

(The Conversation) When people think of the European Middle Ages, it often brings to mind grinding poverty, superstition and darkness. But the reality of the 1,000-year period from 500 to 1500 was much more complex. This is especially true when considering the peasants, who made up about 90% of the population.

For all their hard work, peasants had a fair amount of downtime. Add up Sundays and the many holidays, and about one-third of the year was free of intensive work. Celebrations were frequent and centered around religious holidays like Easter, Pentecost and saints’ days.

But the longest and most festive of these holidays was Christmas.

As a professor of medieval history, I can assure you the popular belief that the lives of peasants were little more than misery is a misconception. They enjoyed rich social lives – maybe richer than ours – ate well, celebrated frequently and had families not unlike our own. For them, holiday festivities didn’t begin with Christmas Eve and end with New Year’s.

The party was just getting started.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/medieval-p ... do-241328

[Yuli Ban]

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Medieval gold ring with dazzling blue gemstone discovered in Norway is a 'fantastically beautiful and rare specimen'

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology ... e-specimen