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Carved mother-of-pearl Thai art. Source: YouTube Screenshot / Insider Business.

Thai Artist Carves Snail Shells into Ancient Art That Costs Thousands (Video)

Jukkit Suksawa is a Thai artist who has been creating traditional mother-of-pearl inlay, a 700-year-old tradition, for the past 30 years. Suksawa's dedication to preserving ancient Thai art forms and...
Returning to the Camino de Santiago in Search of Health and Happiness

Returning to the Camino de Santiago in Search of Health and Happiness

Psychologists and religious leaders agree that the ancient Camino de Santiago is a great “way” to fight depression and mental health illnesses. The trail, whose English name translates into the “Way...
Chumash Cash: The Saucers That Formed America’s First Economy

Chumash Cash: The Saucers That Formed America’s First Economy

A Californian researcher who studied tens of thousands of shells decorated by indigenous Chumash hunter-gatherers, has pushed back the origins of “cash” in the U.S. by over one thousand years. Dr...
Byssus, Secrets of a Shining Sea Silk Loved by Ancient Cultures

Byssus, Secrets of a Shining Sea Silk Loved by Ancient Cultures

Byssus is an extremely fine, rare, and valuable fabric of animal origin. It is a sort of natural silk with golden and sparkling reflections that is obtained from the filaments secreted by a large...
Neanderthal tools included shell scrapers. Source: procy_ab & Comugnero Silvana / Adobe Stock

Coastal Neanderthals Went Diving For Tools

Neanderthals are known to have used tools, but the extent to which they were able to exploit coastal resources has been questioned. New research shows they collected clam shells and volcanic rock...
Representation of Tocobaga Indians at a pre-Columbian settlement in Florida, USA. Source: pinellascounty.org

Unprecedented Find of Shell-Enclosed Settlement in Florida

Archaeologists using the latest drone and radar technology have identified a major pre-Columbian settlement in Florida. They have discovered what appears to have been a significant settlement on the...
Some of the artifacts discovered in the ancient city of Jericho.

5,000-Year-Old Jewelry and Eyeliner Highlight the Power of Ancient Jericho

2017 proved to be a fruitful excavation season at the archaeological site of Tell es-Sultan on the West Bank. A collection of unique Egyptian artifacts unearthed at the site shows that the ancient...
The theatre at Aspendos, Turkey is famous for its magnificent acoustics. Even the slightest sound made at the center of the orchestra can be easily heard as far as the upper most galleries. It is the best preserved and most complete example of a Roman theatre.

Ancient Acoustic Artifacts and Communication with the Gods

In this article, I will introduce the subject of archaeoacoustics and ancient “musical instruments”. As we will see, these can be used in conjunction with a number of ancient sites from around the...
Monument of the pilgrims, Burgos

Following Symbols and the Bones of a Dead Sorcerer: Mysteries of the Camino de Santiago – Part II

The popular 500-mile-long pilgrimage road, the Camino de Santiago (specifically the French Way that leads from the French Pyrenees across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela) seems like a...
Undeciphered characters carved into an ancient tortoise shell.

China Offers $15,000 for Each Deciphered Character of Mystery Text on Ancient Oracle Bones

The National Museum of Chinese Writing in Anyang is offering a huge reward to anyone able to crack an ancient code found cut into bones and shells dating back more than 3,000 years to the Shang...
A Jewish prayer shawl adorned with ritual tassels that contain tekhelet-dyed threads.

Piece of Ancient Fabric Revealed True Source of Biblical Blue Dye Lost for 1,300 Years

An ancient blue dye, known as tekhelet, once adorned the precious robes of kings, priests, and high-ranking Jews. But around two millennia ago, this highly-valued commodity became lost to the pages...
Margate Grotto Wall

The mysterious shell grotto of Margate – Part 2

Ninety-nine per cent of the shells that were used in the Margate shell grotto (eg mussels, oysters, clams, whelk, razors and limpet) are from shellfish that occur along the English coast. Only in the...
shell grotto Margate

The mysterious shell grotto of Margate – Part 1

Thirty-five miles north of Dover, a 40 minutes drive, one can find the English town Margate in Kent - a coastal town with 57,000 inhabitants and a proud maritime history. Since 1760 Margate has been...