All  

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ Mobile

Bird

3,000-Year-Old Corridor in Peru Temple Yields Massive Condor Statue

3,000-Year-Old Corridor in Peru Temple Yields Curious Condor Statue

Archaeologists in Peru used cameras mounted on robots to explore the entrance to a 3,000-year-old sealed tunnel at the Chavin de Huantar archaeological site in Peru. The excitement was static when...
Experts Still Stumped By Child Buried With A Bird In Its Mouth

Bizarre Burial: Girl With A Bird Skull In Her Mouth

Between the 18th and 19th century in Poland, a child was given an unusual burial involving bird skulls within the Tunel Wielki Cave. A ritualistic burial like this surely would have been a spectacle...
Reconstruction of an Iron Age Nordic warrior’s burial. Two rich warrior graves in Sweden also included down duvets!

Norse Warrior Took Comfy Duvet (and a Beheaded Owl) to the Afterlife

The Valsgärde burial field near Uppsala in Sweden is known for its magnificent boat graves from the 600s and 700s AD. Archaeologists have identified more than 90 graves from the Iron Age, but two...
Phoenix bird

Symbolism of the Mythical Phoenix Bird: Renewal, Rebirth and Destruction

Ancient legend paints a picture of a magical bird, radiant and shimmering, which lives for several hundred years before it dies by bursting into flames. It is then reborn from the ashes, to start a...
One of the ancient Egyptian animal mummies (Andrea Izzotti /Adobe Stock) scanned in the study was a cat. (Nature)

Scans Reveal Cruelty Behind Ancient Egyptian Animal Mummies

Ancient Egypt is famous for its mummies of pharaohs, however, the ancient Egyptians mummified animals as well as people. In 2020, new non-invasive technology was used to digitally unwrap three animal...
A child mummy discovered in an ancient Egyptian tomb was not human.

CT Scan Revealed 3,000-Year-Old Non-Human Egyptian Mummies

Two ancient Egyptian sarcophagi were believed to contain human remains. One of them was thought to be a mummified child as it has the appearance of a “small human”. However, CT scanning in 2020...
Amber holds the secret to the tiny world of the age of dinosaurs.  Source: Xing Lida, CC BY-ND / The Conversation

This Tiny Predator Existed Alongside the Giant Dinosaurs

By Lars Schmitz & Jingmai Kathleen O'Connor / The Conversation In 2016, our colleague Xing Lida held up a small piece of polished, deeply yellow amber. As sunlight shone through the ancient resin...
Main: Group of Moai monoliths during sunset on Easter Island. Inset: Birdman cult carvings on the back of standing Moai.       Source: Aliaksei & thakala / Adobe stock

Easter Island’s Birdman Cult: A Story of Struggle and Survival

The Pacific Ocean is a world filled with diverse and remote islands, which are the home to some truly unique natives. Many of these islands were discovered comparatively recently in our history, and...
Swan shamanism could go back hundreds of thousands of years.       Source: abiwarner / Adobe Stock

Wing Bone Indicates Swan Shamanism Could Be 420,000 Years Old!

The idea that the human soul might take the form of a swan to journey from this world to the next could be one of the oldest fundamental beliefs of human kind, or so suggests a new discovery from the...
Artists impression of the bird with a third toe 41 per cent longer than the second toe. Source: Zhongda Zhang/Current Biology

Unique Bird With Bizarrely Long Toe Found Fossilized in Amber

Meet the ancient bird that had toes longer than its lower legs. Researchers have discovered a bird foot from 99 million years ago preserved in amber that had a hyper-elongated third toe. The study,...
Bird are the messengers of omens. Source: Yuriy Mazur / Adobe Stock

Birds in the Ancient World: Messengers of Omens and Auguries

Translators regularly face the problem that the words and expressions of one language do not always translate exactly into those of another. In fact, a literal translation can sometimes seem...
A popular Celtic symbol is the Celtic Cross.

Irish and Celtic Symbols: The True Meanings Behind Signs of Pride and Power

Irish and Celtic symbols reflect ancient beliefs and traditions and were believed to influence lives. The meanings of symbols such as the Claddagh, Crann Bethadh, Triquetra, and Triskelion have lived...
Side view of the Saqqara bird

The Saqqara Bird: Did the Ancient Egyptians Know How to Fly?

The pride of flying too close to the sun was a costly endeavor for Icarus. Mythology says he fled Crete on wings of feathers and wax built by his father Daedalus, of King Minos’ labyrinth fame. His...
Bone daggers of the Sepik watershed, New Guinea. (a) Human bone dagger attributed to the Upper Sepik River. (b) Cassowary bone dagger attributed to the Abelam people.

Human Bone Daggers in New Guinea were Used to Strike the Fatal Wound

Prized as symbols of a warrior’s strength, prestige, and power, bone daggers were once widespread artistic and functional tools in New Guinea. New research on the subject shows that not all the bones...
 Preserved Megalapteryx (moa) foot, Natural History Museum

Extinct Bird with Dinosaur-Like Claw May Soon Be Resurrected

A clawed, flightless bird that went extinct in New Zealand in the late 13th century might be brought back to life, claim scientists at Harvard University. Nearly three decades ago, archaeologists...
Ravens and Crows have been symbols and played a role in myth since ancient times.

Feathered Tricksters Since the Dawn of Time

In the Bible, crows and their close cousins, ravens, were called “unclean” and with this unshakable spiritual grey cloud these bullied birds have subsequently been associated with the occult,...
Detail of ‘Iwatake mushroom gathering at Kumano in Kishu.’

Zombie Powder, Bird Saliva, and Rotten Shark: Would You Try These Ancient Foods?

Ancient tribal cultures all over the world partook in perilous hunting, fishing, and food gathering adventures. Hearths appear 250,000 years ago - which is the accepted archaeological estimate for...
Examples of Olmec art.

What Makes the Olmec Culture So Unique and Alluring?

The Olmecs were the first true Mesoamerican civilization. There were small villages and groups of people in the area in which the Olmec developed but these societies are referred to as Pre-Olmec. The...
The rock engravings, found at Qubbet el-Hawa, Egypt and dating to around 6000 years ago, can hardly be seen today.

Where an Ostrich, Dancer, and Hunter Meet: How Common Were Ritual Images in Neolithic Egyptian Rock Art?

Egyptologists at the University of Bonn, Germany have discovered rock art from the 4th millennium BC during an excavation at a necropolis near Aswan in Egypt. The images were carved into the rock in...
How Was This 7,000-Year-Old Mysterious Artifact Carved from Granite Without Metal Tools?

How Was This 7,000-Year-Old Mysterious Artifact Carved from Granite Without Metal Tools?

A strange bird-like statuette from around 5,000 BC has puzzled Greek archaeologists, who can’t explain what it depicts or what its origin is. The "7,000-year-old enigma," as they have labeled it, is...
World First as Feathered Dinosaur Tail is Found Preserved in Amber

World First as Feathered Dinosaur Tail is Found Preserved in Amber

Researchers from China, Canada, and the University of Bristol have discovered a dinosaur tail complete with its feathers trapped in a piece of amber. The finding reported today in Current Biology...
Birds, Stones, and Jaguars: Piecing Together the Multifaceted Ancient Olmec Religion

Birds, Stones, and Jaguars: Piecing Together the Multifaceted Ancient Olmec Religion

The Bilingual-Mayan inscription of Comalcalco and decipherment of the La Venta celts and Olmec iconography allows one to understand much about the ancient Olmec religion and its cult associations...
Strange Discovery Made in Mexican Cave, Including Mummified Macaw, Baby and Adult Remains

Strange Discovery Made in Mexican Cave, Including Mummified Macaw, Baby and Adult Remains

Archaeologists are accustomed to finding evidence of funeral practices around the world, but every once in a while, something they find surprises them. This was the case with a recent discovery in...
The bird plaquette.

Rare Ritual Artifacts Reveal Details on Life at the Cusp of the Agricultural Revolution

A remarkable collection of etched limestone pebbles may change our knowledge of prehistory in the Levant. Moreover, a beautiful head of a bird, which was carved into a limestone plaque 16,500 years...

Pages