All  

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ Mobile

engravings

Images of Mysterious Rock Art. Source: JSirlin/Adobe Stock; ©John Wombell; ©Salima Ikram; ©Amit Bhardwaj/Times of India; Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland

Ten Mysterious Rock Art Examples from the Ancient World

Rock paintings and engravings are among the world’s oldest continuously practiced art form and are as diverse as the wide-ranging cultures and civilizations that have produced them. Depictions of...
Overhead view of the Saint-Bélec slab.          Source: Denis Glicksman / Inrap

A Bronze Age Rock Has Become a 'Treasure Map' for Researchers

A piece of rock, adorned with mysterious markings that have remained largely unstudied for 4,000 years, has emerged as a remarkable "treasure map" for archaeologists. This ancient artifact, known as...
Trine Freiesleben and Jean-Claude discussing the fingerprints and where to take OSL samples. Source: Kristina Thomsen / PLoS ONE

Study Finds Oldest Ever Neanderthal Cave Engravings, Destroying Established Timeline

In recent years, interest in the subject of Neanderthal cave art has exploded, as new discoveries have illuminated the fascinating truth about the artistic abilities and advanced symbolic...
View of the Romanelli Cave in Italy. 	Source: Sigari et. al. / Antiquity Publications Ltd

New Stone Age Rock Art Discovered at Romanelli Cave

Expert researchers with an interest in ancient European rock art have just completed an exhaustive study of Romanelli Cave, an impressively decorated rock art site located on the southeastern tip of...
The three faces of the Lake Winnipesaukee Mystery Stone, New Hampshire, USA

Out of Place Artifact: The Mysterious Stone Egg of Lake Winnipesaukee

In 1872, construction workers digging a hole for a fence post near the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee in New England found a lump of clay with an egg shaped artifact inside it, six feet below the...
Assortment of the Aboriginal rock art found at the Yilbilinji site in Limmen National Park, Australia.    Source: L.M. Brady / Antiquity Publications Ltd

Study Reveals Rare Aboriginal Rock Art’s Link With Sorcery and Magic

In Australia , a team of researchers have made some dramatic new findings regarding one of the world’s most important rock art assemblages. This Aboriginal rock art is among the very few examples of...
The Paleolithic rock art of the mammoth discovered at Baga-Oygur III in early 2000s. Source: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography SB RAS / Siberian Times

15,000-Year-Old Paleolithic Rock Art Gallery Identified On Russian Border

Paleolithic rock art found in Siberia and Mongolia is some 7,000 years older than previously thought, with ancient artists using the same artistic style in both locations. Scientists have closely...
77,000-year-old engravings from Blombos Cave used in cognitive experiments. Source: Original Rock Art / CC BY-SA 4.0

Cognitive Experiments Give a Glimpse into the Ancient Mind

By Aarhus University Symbolic behavior - such as language , account keeping, music , art, and narrative - constitutes a milestone in human cognitive evolution. But how, where and when did these...
Experts, using neurosciences, study the human brain’s reaction to ancient engravings. Source: E. Mellet et al. The Royal Society Publishing / CC BY 4.0

Neuro-imaging and Ancient Engravings Allow Experts to Understand Prehistoric Thinking

Researchers in France have used neuroimaging to monitor the impact of prehistoric engravings on modern human brains. To their astonishment, they found that the minds of modern people treat the...
Carvings of hippopotamus, horses, and antelopes in the Vredefort impact crater.        Source: Dr. Matthew Huber / University of the Free State

8,000-year-old Petroglyphs Found in the World’s Biggest Meteor Crater

Scientists in South Africa have made an amazing discovery in the globe’s biggest meteor impact crater, the Vredefort Crater . While experts were studying the unique geology of the crater a number of...
Ica Stones - Peru

Do the Ica Stones prove that mankind coexisted with dinosaurs and had advanced technology?

It is a rare object that stimulates the curiosity of archaeologists, ancient astronaut theorists, and creationists all at the same time, but the Ica stones have done just that. The Ica stones refer...
The discovery of mysterious petroglyphs suggests that a meteor has been observed in ancient times in Morocco.

Ancient Carved Eye-Witness Accounts Show Martian Invaders Attacking the Moroccan Landscape

A team of researchers in Morocco have unearthed rocks carved with what appear to be petroglyphs of meteors crashing through space towards Earth, suggesting ancient Moroccan people might have...
Temple of Kom Ombo at dusk.

Engraved Tablets Found at Kom Ombo Temple Reveal New Historic Trail to Horemheb

About 1289 BC Pharaoh Seti I became consecrated to the god Set and having founded the 19th dynasty he reigned for an estimated 55 years. Now, ancient carvings including ‘stone engravings and...
Mammoth in the Royal BC Museum in Victoria (Canada). The display is from 1979, and the fur is musk ox hair.

Surprising Stone Age Knowledge Revealed on a Mammoth Bone Bracelet

In Sivershchina, close to the village of Mizyn in Ukraine is one of the oldest and most unique settlements of humans – and it was discovered in a parking lot. The now well-known archaeological site,...
Image showing part of the engraving found in the Arabian Desert with dogs on leashes

8,000-Year-Old Engravings in Arabian Desert Are Oldest Known Depictions of Dogs on Leashes

Archaeologists have discovered a set of engravings in Saudi Arabia dating back at least 8,000 years, which depict a hunter accompanied by 13 dogs, 2 of which appear to be on leashes attached to the...
Cippus at the Louvre Museum

The Rosetta Stone of Malta: Cippi of Malta Offers Key to Decoding the Phoenician Language

Malqart was considered lord over life and death; he was the chief deity of Tyre. His temple was the site of two major festivals and believed to have been the inspiration for the renowned Temple of...
On the Origins of the Runes - Symbols, Mysteries and Magico-religious Concepts

On the Origins of the Runes - Symbols, Mysteries and Magico-religious Concepts

One of the most shrouded mysteries of the rune alphabet is its early history. As a matter of fact, no-one really knows how the Elder Futhark came to be. We know that the runes exist and were used by...
Some of the beautiful carvings that have been found in the Song Dynasty tomb, Baisha town, Chongqing, China

Chinese Builders Discover Song Dynasty Tomb with Elaborate Decoration but Robbers Have Stolen the Rest

Researchers have recently investigated an ancient stone tomb in Baisha town of Jiangjin district which was originally discovered by builders of a Chinese secondary school. The site is in Chongqing,...
The Visoko Stone

Visoko: An Astronomical Map of More than 100,000 Years

I met Semir Osmanagich, three years ago, in Pescara (Italy) during a conference on Ancient Civilizations and we had several intriguing conversations that were the seeds of my study on the enigmatic...
The Blombos Rocks

The Blombos Rocks: are they Crude Imitations of an Original Australian artifact?

An extremely unusual engraved rock was found in 1990 by a woman named Ros when building a new brick home located within two kilometres of the enigmatic Bambara Hieroglyphs, located in Gosford, New...
Tassili n'Ajjer  Rock Art

15,000 artworks over ten millennia reveal the evolution of human life on the edge of the Sahara

Tassili n'Ajjer has been described as the finest prehistoric open-air museum in the world. Set in a vast plateau in the south-east of the Algerian Sahara at the borders of Libya, Niger and Mali, and...