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Le Couronnement d’Ines de Castro en 1361’ (The Coronation of Ines de Castro in 1361) by Pierre-Charles Comte (

Was a Portuguese Queen Really Exhumed for her Coronation?

According to legend, in the mid-14th century a heart-broken King Peter (Pedro) I of Portugal exhumed the corpse of his lover to have her posthumously crowned queen. The romantic scandals of European...
Painting of a mermaid by Elisabeth Jerichau Baumann, 1873.

The Secret Life of Melusine: Mysterious Mermaid & Serpent Mother of European Nobility

Melusine is the spirit of fresh water, usually depicted as a woman who is a serpent or fish from the waist down, much like the mythical mermaid. She is also frequently illustrated with two tails. The...
The remains of a mother and fetus were buried alongside those of two other children in the early days of the Black Death in Italy, however researchers cannot say for certain that they died of the plague.

New Details Emerge on the Black Death by Examining a Plague Victim and her Tragic Coffin Birth

We can only guess about the life and times of a young mother and two children buried with her, possibly felled by the first wave of the bubonic plague in the 1340s in Italy. They were all buried in a...
Leaving an Impression: Footprints Left by Children Found in Ancient Capital of Ramesses II

Leaving an Impression: Footprints Left by Children Found in Ancient Capital of Ramesses II

A group of German archaeologists has discovered many Pharaonic features in Egypt's Nile Delta, including the remains of a building complex, a mortar pit with footprints left by children, and a...
Do You Think Breastfeeding a 3-Year-Old is Strange? In the Ancient World, It Saved Lives

Do You Think Breastfeeding a 3-Year-Old is Strange? In the Ancient World, It Saved Lives

There was a time in humanity’s history that later weaning of children, up to 3 years, was considered perfectly normal. In fact, late weaning may have actually saved lives by giving kids the nutrition...
Skeletons in the Attic and Babes in the Wood: Surprising and Spooky Yuletide Traditions

Skeletons in the Attic and Babes in the Wood: Surprising and Spooky Yuletide Traditions

Although we nowadays associate ‘Happy Holidays’ with celebrations during Advent and the run-up to Christmas Day and then on to New Year’s Eve (or Hogmanay in Scotland) not that many years ago the ‘...
Little Emperors and Their Regents: Child Rulers & the Supportive and Destructive People Behind Them

Little Emperors and Their Regents: Child Rulers & the Supportive and Destructive People Behind Them

Some babies shake rattles and others shake up kingdoms. We hear many stories of the unhappy lives and ends of child rulers. Most recently, in 1908, Puyi became the last emperor of China at only two...
The Marriage of the Sky and the Sea: Visayan Creation Myths

The Marriage of the Sky and the Sea: Visayan Creation Myths

Although there are different versions of the Visayan creation myth, they are similar in characters, conflicts and resolutions. The way the story was narrated and its different subsequent retellings...
Pagan God Caught in River by Fisherman Confirmed as Being up to 4,200 Years-old and Unique

Pagan God Caught in River by Fisherman Confirmed as Being up to 4,200 Years-old and Unique

By The Siberian Times reporter Likely from the Okunev culture, might this mysterious ancient figurine with the angry face be a children's 'rattle', to ward off evil spirits? The 'very distinctive...
Translation of 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Will Reveals Family Disputes Similar to Today

Translation of 3,000-Year-Old Egyptian Will Reveals Family Disputes Similar to Today

Unlike ancient Latin and Greek texts, Egyptian hieroglyphs have been mostly inaccessible for the average ancient history enthusiast. But this is beginning to change with a collection of texts that...
A child carrying an artifact at the cemetery.

Silent Victims of Grave Robbers: Children and Mummies Suffer from Extensive Looting in Egypt

The ancient Egyptian civilization lasted for a few millennia. The people who created the unforgettable culture are now buried in the sands of the desert. The number of cemeteries they left behind is...
Child doodles found in a Medieval manuscript. LJS 361, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries folio 26r.

Child Doodles Discovered in 14th Century Manuscript

Researchers have discovered a set of children's doodles in the margins of a medieval manuscript. The discovery sheds new light on the knowledge and education of children in the Middle Ages and their...
Illustration of people during the Bronze Age.

Child Miners, Mother Goddesses, and One of the Greatest Powers of the Bronze Age

In ancient times, metal ores such as tin and copper were hard to come by. So in 4,500 BC when the innovators discovered how to produce bronze from a mixture of the two, there was a mad rush to...
The Secrets and Treasures of KV5, the Largest Tomb Ever Found in Egypt

The Secrets and Treasures of KV5, the Largest Tomb Ever Found in Egypt

The treasures of Tutankhamun have been remembered as the greatest discovery in Egypt. However, in 1995, the Valley of the Kings revealed another magnificent secret – the tomb of at least 52 sons of...
New Archaeological Method Finds Children Were Skilled Ceramists During the Bronze Age

New Archaeological Method Finds Children Were Skilled Ceramists During the Bronze Age

Artisanal interpretation of ceramics from the Bronze Age shows that a nine-year-old child could be a highly skilled artisan. This was one of the discoveries presented in a new thesis from Lund...
The Horrifying History of the Midnight Terror Cave in Belize

The Horrifying History of the Midnight Terror Cave in Belize

The Midnight Terror Cave is an archaeological site located in the Cayo District, which is in the west of the Central American nation of Belize. The cave is situated to the south of Belmopan, the...
Medieval children's milk teeth.

Study reveals surprising facts about diets of Medieval children in England

Studying foods people ate is an important step towards learning more about ancient cultures. Historians try to piece together what foods ancient people ate, preparation methods, and the foods people...
Ancient elves were diabolical fiends and dangerous beauties.

Revealing the True Nature of Elves: Dangerous Beauties and Diabolical Fiends

Present day movies show elves as beautiful beings who help people in their times of need. However, the original ancient form of these beings was quite hostile towards humans. Often enough, elves...
Children learning math, Yucatan, Mexico

Yucatan Children Learn Math Better Thanks to Ancient Mayan Numeral System

Children of the Mexican Yucatan region are getting much better results in mathematics by learning using the ancient Mayan numeral system. Studies suggest that the results are far exceeding those...
‘Siege of Lachish’. Credit: The British Museum; photo by C. Reeder. This relief from Sennacherib’s palace in Nineveh celebrates the Assyrian destruction of the Judaean city of Lachish. Women and children, followed by a man driving oxen, flee from the besieged city.

Looking to ancient wisdom for guidance on modern day refugee crisis

Berlin recently agreed to curb the number of migrants it welcomed after a backlash against Angela Merkel’s suspension of EU rules limiting numbers. It followed previous scenes of crowds welcoming new...
Main: The west tower of the Frankfurt Imperial Cathedral, under which were interred two Medieval children, one with a Christian burial the other a pagan burial.

Double Medieval child burial, one Pagan, one Christian, mystifies German researchers

Archaeologists say the circumstances of the death and double burial of two little children who died in Medieval Frankfurt, Germany, will probably never be known. One of the children had an apparently...
The Jessie Willcox Smith Mother Goose (1914) (Wikimedia Commons)

English Nursery Rhymes with Unexpected and Sometimes Disturbing Historical Origins

Many people associate nursery rhymes with reading happy stories to children, or remember being children themselves and chanting them while they play. However, the popular explanations for the origins...
Ancient bronze stork discovered in the Rhodope Mountains in Southern Bulgaria.

Bronze Age Thracian Stork may be Oldest Children's Toy in Europe

Local residents in the area of Zlatograd, Bulgaria, have uncovered an ancient bronze artifact that archaeologists have described as “the oldest children’s toy in Europe”. The supposed toy consists of...
Zana, Russian Ape Woman

DNA Evidence Suggests Captured Russian Ape Woman Might Have been Subspecies of Modern Human

The story of Zana, supposed Ape Woman of the Caucasus Mountains is one often revisited and reexamined by historians, explorers, and scientists alike. Now a leading geneticist believes that the wild...

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