We bring you all the latest historical news and archaeological discoveries relating to ancient human history. Read more history news from around the world here at Ancient Origins.
Hanukkah or the Jewish Festival of Lights is celebrated in memory of the recovery of the Second Temple in Jerusalem from the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd century BC. This was at the beginning of the...
Archaeologists continue to excavate in search of remains left behind after the 79 AD Mount Vesuvius volcanic eruption which decimated the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy. Now, an...
Archaeologists in Mexico have excavated a 16th-century Aztec altar surrounded by sacred artifacts. While abstract trinkets and incense burners reflected the structure of the cosmos, a giant clay jar...
Archaeologists in Cyprus have excavated two Bronze Age Tombs at one of the most important holy sites in the Islamic world. The treasures they discovered reveal the presence of a far-reaching trade...
Just 2 miles (3.2 km) northeast of Stonehenge in England, Durrington Walls is a huge Neolithic settlement and henge site. Located within the Stonehenge World Heritage Site, excavations back in 2004...
Her metal detector went crazy. Milly Hardwick, the 13-year-old English girl, had discovered ancient treasure. This September, Milly identified a rare archaeological Bronze Age hoard in a field near...
The Upanishads are a genre of texts that form the final and last section of the Vedas. The Upanishads were composed orally in Sanskrit, and the earliest surviving ones dating to the 1st millennium BC...
Rare rock art was discovered by an indigenous archaeologist ‘with help from bison,’ at Wanuskewin Heritage Park near Saskatoon in Canada. According to a report in Smithsonian Magazine , the park’s...
A preserved rope-bound mummy, estimated to be at least 800 years old, has been discovered in an underground tomb by archaeologists on Peru’s central coast. The mummified remains, which are in...
In the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, in northern China, archaeologists have unearthed tombs with urn burials – of 128 children! The remains of these 128 children have been found near the ruins of...
A thriving metropolis often referred to as “China’s Venice of the Stone Age” was mysteriously abandoned in approximately 2300 BC, leading to the extinction of China’s ancient Liangzhu culture. Now, a...
The accidental discovery of an extraordinary Roman mosaic in a Rutland field that has been described by experts as the “the most exciting Roman mosaic discovery in the UK in the last century,”...
Egypt hosted the re-enactment of the ancient Egyptian Opet festival last night. The grand ceremony was held to mark the reopening of the 1.7-mile-long (2.7 km) road which links the Temples of Karnak...
Polish archaeologists in Egypt were supporting a tomb ceiling when they realized that beneath their feet lay an unknown treasure trove. They had inadvertently discovered an ancient temple dump and...
A recent study in pre-Hispanic northern Peru shows previously unacknowledged use of adobe brick building as early as 5,000 years ago. What’s more, these adobe bricks were created by annual El Niño...
In June last year, archaeologists in Britain announced that they had made an amazing discovery near Stonehenge . They detected a massive circular monument near the world-famous Neolithic site. When...
A skillfully decorated mammoth ivory pendant found in Stajnia Cave in southern Poland in 2010 has been radiocarbon dated to approximately 40,000 BC, as is detailed in a new study published in the...
A rare silver Second Temple coin belonging to the second year of the Great Jewish Revolt (67-68 AD) against the Romans was found by volunteers sifting through dirt from an archaeological dig...
An 1,800 year old Roman soldier's cavalry face mask has been discovered at a 3rd century AD military site in Turkey. But this site isn’t located in the heart of the Roman empire, but at a far flung...
A massive volcanic eruption in 536 AD resulted in dramatic climate catastrophe and the volcanic ash significantly cut the sunshine reaching Earth. As a direct result, temperatures dropped leading to...
In a new study appearing in the journal Past & Present , Cambridge University history professor Peter Sarris argues that recent scholarship has badly underestimated the true impact of the sixth-...
Archaeologists from the Czech Republic’s Rakovník Museum have announced the discovery of a rare Bohemian gold ring and clasp or buckle dating back to the 5th century. Unearthed last summer by amateur...
Humans were adorning their persons to make fashion statements 142,000 to 150,000 ago, according to a new analysis of the sea snail shell jewelry beads found in Morocco’s Bizmoune Cave. Conducted by a...
A ground-breaking recent leprosy research study published in the International Journal of Paleopathology used the fragments of a skull found on an uninhabited Caribbean island called Petite Musique...
