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Artifacts

There are undoubtedly millions of ancient artifacts from the past that have served to shed light on the lives of our ancestors from many millennia ago. But some ancient mystical artifacts stand out for their uniqueness, their intrigue, or their ability to expand our knowledge about previously unknown aspects of our history. Here we feature many such ancient history artifacts, from amazing examples of ancient technology, to artistic masterpieces, unexplained objects, ancient texts, and mysterious artifacts that shed light on the daily lives of our ancestors.

A 3,000-year-old prosthetic big toe unearthed in Egypt. Source: Jacky Finch / University of Manchester
30 April, 2022 - 01:58 dhwty

3,000-Year-Old Artificial Toe Reveals Ancient Origins of Prosthetics

Believe it or not, but the use of prosthetics is actually not a modern phenomenon. In fact, the creation of man-made devices to replace missing body parts was already in use several thousand years...
Whatever Happened to Blackbeard’s Silver-Plated Skull?
29 April, 2022 - 22:52 Lex Leigh

Whatever Happened to Blackbeard’s Silver-Plated Skull?

Blackbeard, an infamous pirate from the 1700s, was notoriously an excellent fighter and survivalist. He was so famous, in fact, that after his death his skull was rumored to have been plated in...
Stone Age friendship rings found in Finland, made from slate in Russia, broken or refashioned into pendants. Source: Marja Ahola / University of Helsinki
29 April, 2022 - 01:57 Sahir

Slate Stone Age ‘Friendship Rings’ Found in Finland

According to the latest research, Stone Age hunter-gatherers in northeast Europe expertly crafted slate friendship rings some 6,000 years ago. These were produced in copious numbers by many makers in...
The ancient Chinese made sticky rice mortar by using sticky rice for construction. Source: Atstock Productions / Adobe Stock
28 April, 2022 - 15:13 dhwty

Sticky Rice Mortar Used in Ancient Chinese Architecture

Ancient Chinese culture has made great contributions to humanity. The so-called Four Great Inventions of China – the compass , gunpowder , paper , and printing – are still being used extensively...
The Borgund Viking village museum basement has drawers upon drawers with remains of textiles from perhaps a thousand years ago. They can tell us more about what kind of clothes people in Norway wore during the Viking Age and the Middle Ages. Source: Bård Amundsen / sciencenorway.no
27 April, 2022 - 18:30 Sahir

‘Lost’ Viking Village Artifacts Emerge From Norwegian Basement Archive

It isn’t rare for a once prosperous medieval town to be abandoned and slowly get side-lined in the annals of history. Nothing exemplifies this statement better than the lost Viking village of Borgund...
A fragment of the sphero-conical vessel that was identified as containing a possibly explosive material to make an ancient hand grenade. Source: Robert Mason, Royal Ontario Museum. Griffith University
27 April, 2022 - 14:40 ashley cowie

Crusaders Were Attacked With These Ancient Hand Grenades in Jerusalem

Archaeologists have for a long time unearthed clay pots in medieval Jerusalem. But now, a new study shows that some of them were likely ‘ancient hand grenades’. Residues sampled from inside a...
The Goddess Anat head recently discovered by a farmer in the Gaza Strip. Source: WAFA
26 April, 2022 - 18:42 Sahir

4500-year-old Limestone Head of Canaanite Goddess Anat Found in Gaza

While cultivating his fields in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza strip, a farmer discovered a rare 4500-year-old sculpture, according to the WAFA News Agency . The stone head was found...
The 1,800-Year-Old marble bathtub from Aphrodisias. Source: Hurriyet Daily News
25 April, 2022 - 22:50 Nathan Falde

Rare 1,800-Year-Old Marble Bathtub from Aphrodisias Rescued from Thieves

A raid by Turkish police on March 31, 2022 led to the recovery of a rare and valuable ancient artifact that was about to be sold by smugglers. In Turkey’s western or Aegean province of Aydin , law...
Selection of helminthes, or parasitic worms, under a microscope. Source: jarun011 / Adobe Stock
23 April, 2022 - 14:59 Nathan Falde

Britons Have Battled Parasites Since the Bronze Age, Shows New Research

An interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and biologists from Oxford University recently completed a study of parasite infections in ancient Britain. Their exhaustive survey covered a period of...
Composite of in-article images.
23 April, 2022 - 01:58 ancient-origins

Nine of the Finest: A Run Down of Recent Top Stories

In the recent top stories; A sunken Maya city, Costa Rica’s stone spheres, Mungo Man makes it home, a Jewish-style Alexander the Great, all Roswell’s witnesses, Anglesey Druid slaughter, Jesus death...
Archaeologists have deciphered what could be the origins of the Latin alphabet in graffiti found at the Temple of Hathor near the Serâbît el-Khâdim mines. Serâbît el-Khâdim in the background and the evolution of the letter “A” in the foreground. Source: Einsamer Schütze / CC BY-SA 3.0 & Till Nikolaus von Heiseler / CC BY 4.0
22 April, 2022 - 19:12 Laura Tabone

From an Ox to an “A”: The Ancient Egyptian Origins of the Latin Alphabet

As crazy as it sounds, it’s now well attested that the letter “A” started out its evolution as the Egyptian hieroglyph for an ox. But its truly mind-blowing transformation came when turquoise miners...
Photo showing replica rock art etchings by firelight. Source: Needham et al. - PLOS ONE / CC-BY 4.0
21 April, 2022 - 21:00 Cecilia Bogaard

Fiery Illusions of Rock Carvings: Prehistoric Movies

A virtual reality investigation of prehistoric rock art has concluded that flickering firelight may have been used to animate a selection of engraved rocks discovered in France. This could mean that...
The hoard of silver bracteate medieval coins found by a dog in Poland! Source: Dolnośląski Wojewódzki Konserwator Zabytków
21 April, 2022 - 18:33 Sahir

Polish Dog Unearths Rare Booty of Revealing Bracteate Medieval Coins

Out on his daily constitutional, a dog in Poland unexpectedly struck gold, or rather, silver. The dog was being taken for a walk by his owner near the city of Wałbrzych in southwestern Poland when he...
Three-dimensional modeling showing the way into a Neolithic Anatolian house and the position of the furnace oven under the 8,500-year-old Çatalhöyük ladder recently unearthed at the Turkish site. Source: Grant Cox / Arkeonews
20 April, 2022 - 18:57 Sahir

A First of Its Kind - 8,500-Year-Old Wooden Ladder Found at Çatalhöyük

Turkey’s Çatalhöyük settlement, which developed between 7,500 BC and 6,400 BC, is often referred to as the world’s first, and oldest, metropolitan city, and for good reason. The two most revealing...
The Ma’agan Michael B Shipwreck. Source: A. Yurman / The Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, University of Haifa
19 April, 2022 - 14:42 Sahir

Dead Rats and Diverse Pots Reveal Long Voyages of 1400-year-old Shipwreck

Scientists from the University of Haifa in Israel have been studying an ancient shipwreck off the Mediterranean coast of Israel. The Ma‘agan Mikhael B shipwreck has provided a rich haul of artifacts...
Left: An unknown Egyptian mummy. Right: Modern equivalent of Mummy Brown pigment. Source: michal812 / Adobe Stock
19 April, 2022 - 01:55 dhwty

Mummy Brown – 16th Century Paint Made from Ground Up Mummies

Most people today would probably associate Egyptian mummies with museums. This is unsurprising, as this is probably where most of us have seen them, especially in Europe. Yet, if I were to say that...
Archaeologist from Archaeology Baselland excavates the pot of Roman coins. Source: Archaeology Baselland
18 April, 2022 - 18:56 Sahir

Swiss Metal Detectorist Finds 1,290 4th Century Roman Coins!

Nearly 1,300 priceless 4th-century AD Roman coins, all in a pot, were found in September 2021 near Bubendorf, Basel County, Switzerland by amateur archaeologist volunteer, Daniel Ludin. During one of...
The remains of the ancient Roman sandal found on the “thawing” Lendbreen ice patch, which has yielded numerous unusual artifacts, including the world’s oldest ski, over the last few years. Source: Arkeonews
18 April, 2022 - 14:59 Sahir

Trendy Roman Era Sandals Discovered on Norway Ice Pass

It might be a controversial statement, but despite the havoc that global warming and climate change are wreaking on the world’s ice cover, there is one community of people benefiting from this –...
The oldest celestial aurora or Northern Lights sighting, in 10th-century-BC China, is 300 years older than the current Assyrian-Babylonian record. This image shows an aurora borealis event in Norway. Source: Svein-Magne Tunli / CC BY-SA 4.0
17 April, 2022 - 18:58 Sahir

Oldest Recorded Celestial Aurora Event Found in Ancient Chinese Text!

The oldest known evidence referring to a “celestial aurora event” from a section of the famous Bamboo Annals Chinese text dated to the 10th century BC has been researched by scientists from Nagoya...
Representation of Jesus Christ in death. Source: nito / Adobe Stock
16 April, 2022 - 14:56 Nathan Falde

Doctor-Turned-Priest Determines How Jesus Died from the Shroud of Turin

A new study published in the journal Catholic Medical Quarterly claims to have discovered the specific cause of Jesus Christ’s death. He died from excessive bleeding caused by a severely dislocated...
Archaeoacoustics and Ancient Architecture: Megaliths, Music and the Mind
15 April, 2022 - 23:00 Linda C. Eneix

Archaeoacoustics and Ancient Architecture: Megaliths, Music and the Mind

Before introducing the Big Question, let’s ponder a minute. Isn’t it amazing that for hundreds of thousands of years, all of humankind lived the same way everywhere on Earth. We were all indigenous...
Earliest Maya Calendar Fragment Found in Guatemala
15 April, 2022 - 18:17 Sahir

Earliest Maya Calendar Fragment Found in Guatemala

A new study published in the journal Science Advances has announced the discovery of the earliest known use of the Maya calendar. This discovery of the glyph “7 Deer” on mural fragments from deep...
The lost city of Amarna found in the 19th century was built by the almost alien-like heretic pharaoh Akhenaten, who introduced the smaller, more efficient talatat blocks for building construction and changed Egyptian religion for a while. Source: Brown University
14 April, 2022 - 23:01 Khadija Tauseef

Talatat Blocks and Akhenaten’s Failed Architectural Revolution

Egypt has a rich history of architectural monuments that dot its landscape. Each monument is a testament to the pharaoh who created it. These buildings have forever cemented the names of the pharaohs...
The other side of this graffiti covered slab at The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem led to the discovery of the beautiful medieval ancient altar. Source: YouTube screenshot / Reuters
14 April, 2022 - 18:57 Nathan Falde

Stunning Lost Medieval Altar Found in the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem

For many years in an obscure back corridor of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem there was a large stone slab leaning against a wall. The eight-feet-by-five-feet (2.5 meter...

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