The Journal of Historical and Mythical Tales
Ancient and medieval history and myth, from primary sources, saying plainly where the evidence runs out.
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Gobekli Tepe: The Dig That Ran the Story Backwards
Category: Lost Worlds. Template: excavation diary, organised by what each phase of digging overturned. In 1963 a joint survey team from Istanbul and Chicago walked over a low hill in south-eastern Turkey, noted broken limestone slabs and a scatter of flint, and recorded it as a medieval cemetery. They moved on. They were wrong by…
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Ibn Battuta: Twenty-Nine Years on the Road
A law student left Tangier for Mecca in 1325 and came home in 1354. What his Rihla records, and why Marco Polo is better known in the West.
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Joan of Arc: The Trial That Preserved Her Voice
Her trial transcripts preserve a teenager's own words under hostile questioning. What the record shows about Joan of Arc, and where it stops.
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Archimedes: Four Famous Stories, Assessed
Four famous stories about Archimedes, including his death in Syracuse in 212 BCE, weighed against what the ancient sources actually say.
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Alexander: The Twelve Years That Rearranged the World
He took the throne at twenty and campaigned for twelve years across three continents. What the sources say about how, and what it cost.
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Ashoka: The Emperor Who Confessed on Stone
An emperor who had his own remorse carved into rock. What the edicts say, and what the later legends add.
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Cleopatra: The Legend and the Person
The Roman propaganda, the later legend and the woman beneath them: what the sources actually say about Cleopatra.
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Spartacus: What the Romans Actually Wrote Down
What Roman writers actually recorded about Spartacus and the slave revolt, and how much of the popular story comes later.
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Babylon: The City That Published Its Laws
A city that wrote its laws down and displayed them in public. What the Babylonian legal texts show, and what they leave out.
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The Legend of El Dorado
How the legend of El Dorado grew, and what the evidence behind it actually shows.
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The Mongol Empire: How Genghis Khan Built It
The Mongols won through organisation, not just cavalry. The reforms that unified the steppe, and why the empire dissolved by absorption.
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The Fall of Constantinople 1453: How the City Fell
Seven thousand defenders held fourteen miles of wall for 53 days. What broke them, and what actually ended in 1453.
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The Black Death: Causes, Deaths and What Changed
A 2022 study located its origin in a Kyrgyz cemetery. What the plague was, how it spread, and how it reshaped medieval Europe.
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The Mayan Calendar and 2012
One Maya inscription mentions the 2012 date, and it describes a ceremony. How three calendars worked, and where the prophecy came from.
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Robin Hood: How England Built an Outlaw
In the earliest ballads Robin is a yeoman who robs abbots and sheriffs. How the outlaw who gives to the poor was built, century by century.
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The Great Fire of Rome: What Really Happened in 64 CE
Nero was fifty kilometres away when it started, and fiddles did not exist. What the three ancient sources actually say, and how they differ.
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The Knights Templar: Fact, Fiction and the Real Story
A king who owed them money destroyed them, using charges his own Pope privately dismissed. What the Templars actually were.
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The Oracle of Delphi: How the Pythia Actually Worked
Nine consultation days a year, sold access, and a fault line under the temple. How Delphi held authority over the Greek world for a thousand years.