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

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. Where do babies come from? The Aztecs’ answer to the classic child’s question was that they came ...

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 ...

Fresh advances in 3D scanning technology are making it possible to explore some of the hardest-to-reach and most fragile sites on Earth.

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 ...

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 ...

This story appears in the January 2017 issue of National Geographic magazine. Lots of people are ... and civilizations throughout history. In a story from our issue, Robin Marantz Henig writes ...

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 appears in the October 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine. On a chilly January ... Maidment, a curator at the U.K.’s Natural History Museum, has come with me to tour Crystal ...

for a limited time get a bonus issue with your National Geographic subscription! From breathtaking photography to in-depth articles, explore nature, science, history, and culture like never before.