How we make it

Every article on this site follows the same process. We publish it here because a reader should be able to judge how a page was made.

1. Choose the question

Each article answers one question a reader might actually search for: who built the pyramids, why Athens chose leaders by lottery, how a charred scroll can be read without opening it. The question comes first; the article exists to answer it in the first paragraph.

2. Research from sources

We work from primary sources, excavation and inquiry reports, museum and university publications and peer-reviewed research. General encyclopedias, Wikipedia among them, help us find leads but are not cited as sources. Every fact we use is traced to a source that appears in the Sources section of the article, with a link wherever the source is online. Some of our earliest articles, written in July and August 2026, were drafted before this rule and still cite general reference works; we are re-checking them against primary and scholarly sources, and each one’s “reviewed” date changes when that is done.

3. Write with AI assistance

Drafts are produced with the help of large language models, working only from the sources gathered in step 2. The editorial team sets the question, the structure and the facts; the model helps with drafting. We say this plainly because it is true, and because readers deserve to know.

4. Check

Before publication every name, date, number and quotation is compared against the sources. Where historians disagree, the article says so and names the positions. Articles are re-checked when we learn something new; the “reviewed” date on each page records the last check.

5. Illustrate

Most pictures are photographs of places and museum objects from Wikimedia Commons under free licences, with the photographer or holder credited under each. Where no photograph can show a scene, we use an AI-generated historical reconstruction, made from the same research notes, checked for period accuracy (dress, architecture, tools) and labelled as a reconstruction on the page.

What this means for you

Treat each article as a well-sourced starting point, not the final word. The Sources section is there so you can go further.