Marcus Kane

A country where Damascus has been a city for more than 11,000 years, where the alphabet was simplified into something usable, and where a single bazaar smells like 4,000 years of trade.

A landlocked country smaller than West Virginia, with four official languages, more bunkers than people, and a flag that's literally square.

Sweden built modern furniture, recorded pop music, and most of the safety features in your car. Here's the country behind the quiet inventions.

Suriname is the country most Americans cannot place on a map. It speaks Dutch, sits on the Amazon basin, and is mostly trees.

Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt, two rivers that become one, and a stretch of history most of us were never taught. Here's what I keep coming back to.

A teardrop-shaped island that produced the cinnamon in your spice rack, the tea in your cup, and ruins older than most European cathedrals.

Spain is the country most travelers think they understand after one trip to Barcelona. The actual country is older, weirder, and a lot more patient than that.

South Sudan became a country in 2011, which makes it younger than the iPhone. The land underneath it has been holding civilizations together for a lot longer than that.

South Africa has three capitals, eleven official languages, and a mine that goes nearly two and a half miles into the earth. And that's just the start.

Somalia gets reduced to a headline most of the time. The country underneath the headlines is older, stranger, and more poetic than you'd guess.

The Solomon Islands are nearly a thousand islands of jungle, coral, and saltwater history. Here's what makes this Pacific country so much more than a dot on the map.

Slovenia is small, green, and quietly weird in the best way. Half the country is trees, and the rest is mountains, vineyards, and one very photogenic lake.