Science Source ftp Apr 2015

Huitzilopochtli, from the Veytia Codex. In Aztec religion, Huitzilopochtli was a god of war, sun, human sacrifice and the patron of the city of Tenoch...

Tezcatlipoca was a central deity in Aztec religion. He is associated with a wide range of concepts, including the night sky, the night winds, hurrican...

Iztlacoliuhqui, from the Codex Borbonicus. In Aztec mythology, Itztlacoliuhqui is the god of frost, cold hard things, castigation and human misery. He...

Mictlantecuhtli, in Aztec mythology, was a god of the dead and the king of Mictlan, the lowest and northernmost section of the underworld. He was one...

Quetzalcoatl is a Mesoamerican deity whose name comes from the Nahuatl language and has the meaning of "feathered serpent". Quetzalcoatl was related t...

Tezcatlipoca was a central deity in Aztec religion. He is associated with a wide range of concepts, including the night sky, the night winds, hurrican...

Tlaloc was an important deity in Aztec religion, a god of rain, fertility, and water. He was a beneficent god who gave life and sustenance, but he was...

Xochiquetzal, from the Codex Borbonicus. In Aztec mythology, Xochiquetzal was a goddess associated with concepts of fertility, beauty, and female sexu...

Xochiquetzal, from the Codex Borgia. In Aztec mythology, Xochiquetzal was a goddess associated with concepts of fertility, beauty, and female sexual p...

Human sacrifice was a religious practice characteristic of pre-Columbian Aztec civilization, as well as of other mesoamerican civilizations such as th...

Aztec priest draw blood from their bodies with skewers and knives to appease Mictlantecuhtli, Lord of the Underworld. Priests often performed self-sac...

Human sacrifice was a religious practice characteristic of pre-Columbian Aztec civilization, as well as of other mesoamerican civilizations such as th...

The old couple Oxomoxo and Cipactonal, believed to be the ancestors of all humans, casting lots with grains of corn and burning incense. Cipactonal is...

Aztec medicine, taken from the Codex Magliabechiano. Two patients explain their troubles to a doctor. The doctor discovered the cause of the illness b...

Those Aztec warriors who demonstrated the most bravery and who fought well became either jaguar or eagle warriors. Of all of the Aztec warriors, they...

Aztl?n is the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples. The mythical homeland of the Aztecs. Aztec is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlan"....

Montezuma II watching a comet, taken from the Codex Duran. For several days in 1519, a comet hung over the capital city of Tenochtitlan. It was descri...

Codex Fejerv?ry-Mayer depicts specific aspects of the tonalpohualli, the sacred 260-day Mesoamerican augural cycle. The painted manuscript divides the...

Ruins of the Hippodrome, from an engraving by Onofrio Panvinio. The engraving, dated 1580, was based on a drawing from the late 15th century just befo...

Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin and the Ottoman Empires. It was founded in AD 330, at ancient Byzantium as the n...

Illustration from Hartmann Schedel's, Buch der Chroniken und Geschichten, 1493. Constantinople was the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, the Latin...

Astronomicum Caesareum depicts the cosmos and heavens according to the 1400 year old Ptolemaic system, which maintained that the sun revolved around t...

St. Michael and his angels fight Satan in the shape of a Wyvern. Image from the Liber Floridus, Flemish manuscript, 1448. Michael is an archangel in J...

Woodcut taken from The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents (1658) by Conrad Gessner. Depicts mammals and reptiles, both real and fantastical, i...

Illustration taken from De Herbis et Plantis, a physician welcomes students who bring him plants used for healing. Claudius Salmasius (1588-1653) was...

Maya numerals are a vigesimal (base-twenty) numeral system used by the Pre-Columbian (before the appearance of significant European influences on the...

Maya numerals are a vigesimal (base-twenty) numeral system used by the Pre-Columbian (before the appearance of significant European influences on the...

Maya numerals are a vigesimal (base-twenty) numeral system used by the Pre-Columbian (before the appearance of significant European influences on the...

Anicius Manlius Severinus Bo?thius, commonly called Bo?thius (480-524/525 AD) was a philosopher of the early 6th century. Boethius, of the noble Anici...

Image taken from the Baburnama. shows Babur Supervising the Laying Out of the Garden of Fidelity. The Bagh-e Vafa (Garden of Fidelity) was Babur's fir...

Image taken from The Suleymanname entitled: Hayreddinon his first arrival at Instanbul is welcomed by Suleiman the Magnificent. Hayreddin Barbarossa,...

Woodcut from Historien vom Gallier und der Romer, published in Mainz in 1530 showing Julius Caesar sailing the Thames. In his Gallic Wars, Julius Caes...

Charlemagne and his nobles. Charlemagne (742-814 AD) was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) from 800 to his d...

Aspremont is a 12th century chanson de geste, with 11, 376 verses. In this tale, the African Saracen king Agolant and his son Helmont invade Calabria...

Spurred by an angel Charlemagne beats Baligant the Emir of Babylon; miniature in a manuscript of about 1290. The Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland)...

Charlemagne hears Roland blow his horn. Image from Stricker's Karl der Grosse, manuscript of Bonn, 1450. Roland is in many ways the perfect knight. St...

Charles Martel (686-741), Charles the Hammer, was a Frankish military and political leader, who served as Mayor of the Palace under the Merovingian ki...

Pepin the Younger (714-768) was the first King of the Franks of the Carolingian dynasty. In 741 he and his brother Carloman succeeded their father, Ch...

Marco Polo with elephants and camels in the Gulf of Persia from India. Miniature from the book, The Travels of Marco Polo. Marco Polo (1254-1324) was...

Marco Polo's caravan, in an illustration from the Catalan Atlas, circa 1375. Marco Polo (1254-1324) was a Venetian merchant traveler and the most famo...

Illustration from unknown manuscript. Roland (died 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in th...

Illustration from David Aubert's, Chroniques et conquestes de Charlemagne based on Girart de Vienne, a late twelfth-century Old French chanson de gest...

Panning for gold from Oviedo' s La Historia general de las Indias, 1535. Gonzalo Fern?ndez de Oviedo y Valdes (1478-1557) was a Spanish historian and...

The Byzantine Empire (or Byzantium) was the Roman Empire during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centered on the capital of Constantinople. The Byz...

Assyrian archers mount an attack on Ekron, one of the cities in the Philistine Pentapolis, in this drawing of a wall relief from the place of Sargon I...

Woodcut from Vegetius', Four Books of Knighthood, 1511. German translation of De Re Militari (Concerning Military Matters) a treatise by the late Lati...

Woodcut from Vegetius', Four Books of Knighthood, 1511. German translation of De Re Militari (Concerning Military Matters) a treatise by the late Lati...

Rogers in a studio photograph, 1920. William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers (November 4, 1879 - August 15, 1935) was an American cowboy, vaudeville performe...

This image, illustrating an experiment proposed by Father Mersenne, contemporary and friend of Galileo, to test the behavior of falling bodies, is an...

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He is known as one of the most important composers of 20th cen...