National Geographic stories take you on a journey that's always enlightening, often surprising and unfailingly fascinating.

This story appears in the November/December 2016 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Sparta’s enemies, when facing the intimidating Spartan forces, would see a wall of shields ...

This story appears in the March/April 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Throughout history, small states have come out of nowhere, and rapidly become great powers. This was the ...

This story appears in the January/February 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Depicted on a tetradrachm, the Olympian Dionysus was the god of wine, an important part of the ...

This story appears in the January/February 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Where do babies come from? The Aztecs’ answer to the classic child’s question was that they came ...

Photograph by Werner Forman, GTRES This story appears in the January/February 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Mesopotamia—“the land between two rivers”—gave birth to ...

Amy Briggs is the Executive Editor of National Geographic History magazine . This story appears in the July/August 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. It was first published online ...

This story appears in the September 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine. Your National Geographic ... the closest thing to an empire in Maya history. It was ruled by the Snake kings of ...

This story originally published in the June 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine. In the fall of ... 12 adults with a history of repeated lying, 16 who met the criteria for antisocial ...

National Geographic Explorer Tara Roberts goes through a journey of self discover and healing while study sunken enslavement ...