All posts filed under: Editorial

Announcing History AI Chat

Published by Jan van der Crabben

We are excited to announce the launch of our History AI Chat – a new way to explore the vast historical knowledge stored on World History Encyclopedia. It’s a credible AI using only reliable sources, designed for educational use. 🏛️ Credible Sources & Trustworthy AI ChatGPT and other popular AI chatbots draw on the entire internet to provide answers, including both reliable sources (such as our website) and unreliable sources (such as Reddit forums or social media). That’s great if you want to get product recommendations or recipes, but not so much for historical research. The World History Encyclopedia AI only draws on reliable, human-created and reviewed sources This groundbreaking new AI tool is made possible through a collaboration between World History Encyclopedia, Open University (CORE) and Perplexity AI. As everything on World History Encyclopedia, our History AI Chat is entirely free of charge to everyone! 🎓 Designed for Education Schools are incredibly important to us at World History Encyclopedia: It is our mission to support history education and provide teachers and students with precisely …

Why Non-Profits Must Make a Profit

Why Non-Profits Must Make a Profit

Published by Jan van der Crabben

As you know, World History Encyclopedia is a non-profit organisation, and proudly so. Having a mission for the greater good and not answering to investors or shareholders allows us to focus on doing the right thing, not on revenue.  Revenue is always a secondary consideration for us. For example, last month we were approached with an opportunity to allow political advertising on our website, which we were told would increase our advertising revenue in the coming months due to the election in the United States this year. However, we turned down the offer as we take a strictly neutral and non-political stance, which is important to our mission. Nevertheless, non-profit organisations (including ours) actually need to make a profit. This may seem counterintuitive at first given their name, but it is true: Without profits, a non-profit organisation will struggle to improve, grow, survive and ultimately fail to fulfil its stated mission and purpose. What is a Non-Profit Organisation? Before we dive into my argument, let’s examine what “non-profit” actually means. The precise definition is slightly …

AI at World History Encyclopedia

Published by Jan van der Crabben

With the start of 2025, we have now firmly arrived in the era of artificial intelligence. When people search for information on Google, they are now presented with an AI-generated answer to their question for an increasing number of search queries. As a result, we have seen a noticeable drop in visitors to our website coming from Google – why visit a website when Google gives you the answer? Artificial intelligence puts in question the very  idea of an encyclopedia, and information-based publishing in general. Any publication that is not focused on entertainment or news, but rather evergreen informational content, is challenged by artificial intelligence. Certainly, AI frequently makes mistakes at the moment, but most answers are “correct enough” for the general public and AI companies are working hard to solve this issue. Since the start of the year, we have been working on developing our organisation’s strategy for 2025 and beyond. We have to adapt to this changing environment of technology and media – and embrace AI in one way or another. AI is …

Is the Ancient Alien Theory Racist?

Published by Jan van der Crabben

There is a theory that keeps reappearing in popular culture, each time with slight variations and different names, but the core remains the same: “Those ancient people couldn’t possibly have built this, so someone else must have.”  While the first part of the theory is pretty constant, the “someone else” part changes: In Erich von Däniken’s popular 1968 book Chariot of the Gods he points to extraterrestrials. So does the highly successful Ancient Aliens television series that has been running continuously since 2009 – now in its 19th season! Netflix was heavily criticised by historians and archaeologists for its 2022 docu-series Ancient Apocalypse featuring Graham Hancock and his belief in an Ice Age “Atlantean” civilisation.  It is rather straightforward for historians and archaeologists to discredit beliefs in aliens, Atlantean civilisations, and other supposed high-technology precursors. I will leave the debunking to the experts who have already done so at length. This article is about the other part of the hypothesis: “Those ancient people couldn’t possibly have built this.” While this may seem innocent at first …

How This Pandemic Could Change the World

Published by Jan van der Crabben

If you paid attention in history class, you may remember that the system of Feudalism in Europe broke down after the Black Death because of worker shortages caused by the high death toll. If you haven’t, you can read all about it here at World History Encyclopedia. We’re now living through another pandemic, which I believe also has the potential to change the face of society. A while back Facebook presented me with an ad for Newfoundland and Labrador, telling me: Picture yourself working from here. #WorkRemoteNL Wait, what? This was new! Previously, I had seen ads for cities or regions vying for the attention of businesses, but never had I seen an ad asking educated high-income workers to move to a remote and rural place. We’ve seen so many new things during the pandemic, but I am wondering whether this ad could be emblematic of an inflection point in one of the overarching trends in history? Since the agricultural revolution made concentrated urban centers possible in ancient Mesopotamia, urbanization has been an overarching trend …

Why Study History? Russia Teaches a Lesson.

Published by Jan van der Crabben

Why should we study history? We all have our personal reasons why we love history; some like reading exciting stories that can be stranger than fiction, others let their imaginations transport them to worlds gone by. There are many reasons for loving history, but in this article I want to explore why history actually matters in the here and now. Unfortunately, that belief is not universal. Around the world, budgets for social studies and history in particular are cut, and the focus in curricula is shifted to more practical subjects, such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in universities, and English and mathematics in schools. Yet we have to look no further than the top headlines in current affairs to understand why history is extremely important as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine can only be understood through the lens of history. The primary reason for Russia’s war is neither economic (as wars so often are) nor religious (as wars so often were). No, it is Putin’s belief that Ukraine is the cradle of Russian civilization …