The excavation is by far the most ambitious in Afghanistan’s history. But the security wasn’t put in place just to protect a few scientists and some local workers. Buried below the ancient ...

This story appears in the November/December 2016 issue of National Geographic History ... from all over the ancient world. In 1978, a year before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Russian ...

It was one of the richest and most populous regions of ancient Afghanistan under the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th Century BC. By 327BC, Alexander the Great had conquered the region and married a ...