“Great civilizations are not murdered. Instead, they take their own lives.” The great historian Arnold Toynbee concluded this in his 12-volume magnum opus A Study of History. It was an exploration of ...

The fall of the world’s earliest cities has long looked like a riddle of vanished peoples and abandoned streets. A growing body of climate research now points to a simpler, starker driver: water, and ...

This adage seems especially poignant at this moment with the twin conflicts that are playing out in the Western and Eastern hemispheres. For, this is not the first time we’ve witnessed the ...

Guest: Paul Cooper is a podcaster, a historian, and the author of Fall of Civilizations: Stories of Greatness and Decline. He writes, produces, and hosts the Fall of Civilizations podcast which ...

A new, three-part National Geographic series called Guns, Germs and Steel debuts Monday night on PBS. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Jared Diamond, the presentation looks at why some ...