Welcome to The Ancient & Medieval World, a fully open and co-created educational resource designed to help students better understand a world long removed from their contemporary experience. We have organized this text in a modular format, with a general introduction to each topic, a timeline and relevant maps, several primary documents to help students to better understand the time period, and at least two visual or audio sources to add a different dimension to that understanding. Where possible, visuals have been uploaded in high resolution format so that the reader can zoom in on the image to view specific details. Each artefact has an accompanying set of discussion questions and each module contains a series of learning objectives. Unfamiliar terms have been linked to an explanatory glossary.

We hope that this collaboration will continue to grow as time passes, but the initial modules have been co-created by Dr Adrianna Bakos, University of the Fraser Valley, Mr Barrie A. Brill, Langara College (retired), Dr Niall Christie, Langara  College, Dr Jessica Hemming, Corpus Christi College, Dr Aleksandar Jovanović, University of the Fraser Valley, and Dr Tracey J. Kinney, Kwantlen Polytechnic University. We have also benefited from the editorial assistance of our work-study student, John Niescier. The biographies and brief synopses that appear on the various timelines have been written by students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Many of the maps that appear in this work do so courtesy of Ian Mladjov. We thank him for his generosity in sharing this resource with our readers.