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Artifacts

There are undoubtedly millions of ancient artifacts from the past that have served to shed light on the lives of our ancestors from many millennia ago. But some ancient mystical artifacts stand out for their uniqueness, their intrigue, or their ability to expand our knowledge about previously unknown aspects of our history. Here we feature many such ancient history artifacts, from amazing examples of ancient technology, to artistic masterpieces, unexplained objects, ancient texts, and mysterious artifacts that shed light on the daily lives of our ancestors.

Painting by Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, Orientalism genre, representation of The Book of Exposition. Source: Jeangagnon / Public Domain.
15 November, 2019 - 19:08 B. B. Wagner

The Book of Exposition and the Enigmatic English Bohemian

Though this title may make many an aspiring writer think it to be instructional for forbidding the writing of on the nose dialogue, The Book of Exposition is far from the case. The Kitab al-Izah Fi'...
Wu zhu bronze coins found in Liu He’s tomb. Source: nocoev.com
14 November, 2019 - 22:59 Aleksa Vučković

Liu He and the Tomb of Two Million Coins

Archaeology is always full of surprises. When an excavation is started, the team never knows what the next artifact will be to see the light of day. Many times a find is mundane – pottery shards,...
Lost treasures. Source: dbrus / Adobe Stock.
9 November, 2019 - 13:57 Aleksa Vučković

10 Spectacular Treasures That Have Never Been Found

Nothing is ever so thrilling as the stories of lost treasures and the hidden riches of the world that are on the borders of the legendary. Sunken galleons, plundered gold, and thrilling museum heists...
Rabanus’ pattern poem a square text on angels. (Goodbichon / Public Domain)
4 November, 2019 - 23:02 dhwty

Ancient Pattern Poetry – A Visual Story

Pattern poetry (known variously as figure poem , shaped verse, visual poetry, concrete poetry, and carmen figuratum) is a form of poetry that may be easily recognized due to the arrangement of its...
A gorgeous example of a gold cross found in the Staffordshire Hoard.
1 November, 2019 - 20:20 mrreese

Staffordshire Hoard: The Most Exquisite Anglo-Saxon Gold Collection

Many people enjoy searching with a metal detector in hopes of finding treasures that have either a financial value or some historical significance. While most people may be lucky to find a few odds...
Do the Unicorn Tapestries Tell Christ’s Story?
27 October, 2019 - 08:48 dhwty

Is the Story of Christ Portrayed in the Unicorn Tapestries?

The Unicorn Tapestries (known also as The Hunt of the Unicorn ) is a set of seven tapestries housed today at the Cloisters, in Fort Tryon Park, northern Manhattan, New York. Incidentally, the...
Stone Age sea travel
25 October, 2019 - 12:14 johnblack

The Discovery that Revealed Ancient Humans Navigated the Seas 130,000 Years Ago

It was a few years ago that a Greek-American archaeological team made a startling discovery – they found the oldest indications of seafaring and navigation in the world, in an area called Plakia on...
Traditional totora reed raft usage is fading away. Source: ecuadorquerido / Adobe Stock
9 October, 2019 - 23:25 george fery

Riding Peruvian Waves for 2000 Years on the Totora Reed Raft

Traveling on the dry windswept northern coast of Peru, beside a spectacular landscape, one finds interesting ways whereby people make a living. That’s how we stumbled on a strange little raft made of...
A dancers curse has been revealed on a Byzantine tablet. Source: par /Adobe Stock
8 October, 2019 - 23:06 Ed Whelan

Mysterious 1500-year-old Tablet Deciphered as Dancer’s Curse

An academic has finally deciphered the mysterious writings on a lead tablet after 70 years. They were shown to be a curse aimed at a dancer. The curse-tablet dates from the Byzantine era and is...
Modern model of the Antikythera Mechanism ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )
3 October, 2019 - 13:52 Alexander Jones

Antikythera Shipwreck and the Discovery of Ancient Tech That Shocked the World

Around 60 BC, a ship was wrecked off the northeast coast of a small island called Aigila in the straits between Crete and the Peloponnese. The exact character of the ship is not known, but it was...
A fake shrunken head.
2 October, 2019 - 01:43 Joanna Gillan

Headhunting and Shrunken Heads: Gruesome Ancient War Trophies

Headhunting is a practice that has been carried out by numerous cultures throughout the world. For instance, during the Qin dynasty in ancient China it is claimed that soldiers collected the heads of...
Meteorite swords came from the heavens. Credit: mdorottya / Adobe Stock By Aleksa Vučković
29 September, 2019 - 19:00 Aleksa Vučković

Meteorite Swords Forged from the Fire of the Heavens

From the earliest conscious moments of the human race, we looked up into the distant night sky in wonder and amazement. Our early ancestors glanced at the same skies we see today and pondered the...
View of Timna Valley, Israel area of copper smelting study. Source: boris_sh / Adobe Stock.
19 September, 2019 - 19:01 ashley cowie

Egyptians Provided Technological Leap For Edomite Kingdom

In the Hebrew Bible , the Edomites were the descendants of Jacob's brother Esau, but did an ancient Egyptian invasion trigger technological innovations within this biblical kingdom? Erez Ben-Yosef,...
The removal of meat from a bone using a replica of the Revadim tiny flake tool. Source: Professor Ran Barkai, Tel Aviv University
17 September, 2019 - 23:14 ancient-origins

Acheulian Culture Had ‘Surgical’ Skills in Butchery

The Acheulian culture endured in the Levant for over a million years during the Lower Paleolithic period (1.4 million to 400,000 years ago). Its use of bifaces or large cutting tools like hand axes...
Several of the ancient pigments were deadly. Photo source: Ezume Images / Adobe Stock.
12 September, 2019 - 22:52 ancient origins

Poisonous Pigments: History’s Deadliest Colors

Throughout history, ancient civilizations have been using all kinds of ingenious ways to create pigments for the coloring of clothing, objects and even buildings. While some of the pigments were...
Ancient Chinese seismoscope
9 September, 2019 - 20:10 Joanna Gillan

Ancient Chinese Earthquake Detector Invented 2,000 Years Ago Really Worked!

Although we still cannot accurately predict earthquakes, we have come a long way in detecting, recording, and measuring seismic shocks. Many don’t realise that this process began nearly 2000 years...
The Dead Sea Scrolls
9 September, 2019 - 16:40 ashley cowie

Ancient Tech Preserved Dead Sea Temple Scroll

Among the thousands of pieces of parchment found in caves near the Dead Sea, one scroll was unique among the rest. The Temple Scroll was the best preserved and with the clearest writing. Now...
Piri Reis Map
9 September, 2019 - 01:22 beth

Piri Reis Map - How Could a 16th Century Map Show Antarctica Without Ice?

On October 9, 1929, a German theologian named Gustav Adolf Deissmann was cataloguing items in the Topkapi Palace library in Istanbul when he happened across a curious parchment located among some...
Trajan's Column and The Church of the Most Holy Name of Mary at the Trajan Forum, Rome, Italy.
3 September, 2019 - 17:37 Riley Winters

Trajan's Column: An Unyielding Pillar of Imperial Strength

A pillar of Emperor Trajan's military victories, the Column of Trajan is as much a benchmark of Rome's strength as an empire as it is a monument to Trajan's success as a leader. Situated at the...
Red runes carved from wood on the ground. There are 24 runes in the Elder Futhark.
29 August, 2019 - 19:11 Bryan Hill

Futhark: Mysterious Ancient Runic Alphabet of Northern Europe

Runes are the characters of the earliest written alphabet used by the Germanic peoples of Europe called Futhark. The runic alphabet was used within Germanic languages but primarily in Nordic...
The Vedas: Ancient Mystical Texts Offer Charms, Incantations, Mythological Accounts and Formulas for Enlightenment
22 August, 2019 - 18:38 dhwty

The Hindu Vedas: Charms, Myths, and Formulas for Enlightenment

The Vedas are the sacred scriptures of Hinduism and are regarded as the oldest religious texts in the world. Thought to have been composed at least 3,500 years ago, the Vedas are a collection of...
The discovery of the sarcophagus was made during redevelopment work. Source: Département du Lot / Facebook.
19 August, 2019 - 22:34 Ed Whelan

Sarcophagus From the Frankish Merovingian Era Found in France

In France a very significant early medieval tomb has been uncovered in a chance find from a key period in the history of France, under the Franks . Construction workers came across the sarcophagus of...
The discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun is one of the greatest archaeology achievements in history. Source: merydolla / Adobe Stock.
19 August, 2019 - 18:50 Aleksa Vučković

Unearthing the Ancients: Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun

The ancient age of Egypt, the enigmatic pharaohs and the rich history of the Nile valley , are without a doubt one of the most exciting and wondrous aspects of modern archaeology. Filled with several...
The Bhagavad Gita. Source: General Press / CC BY-SA 2.0.
17 August, 2019 - 14:00 Caleb Strom

The Ancient Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, Song of God

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most important religious texts in Hinduism as well as one of the most seminal religious texts in the world, alongside the Bible , the Quran , the Torah and the...

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