Between the 18th and 19th century in Poland, a child was given an unusual burial involving bird skulls within the Tunel Wielki Cave. A ritualistic burial like this surely would have been a spectacle...
The Valsgärde burial field near Uppsala in Sweden is known for its magnificent boat graves from the 600s and 700s AD. Archaeologists have identified more than 90 graves from the Iron Age, but two...
Ancient legend paints a picture of a magical bird, radiant and shimmering, which lives for several hundred years before it dies by bursting into flames. It is then reborn from the ashes, to start a...
Ancient Egypt is famous for its mummies of pharaohs, however, the ancient Egyptians mummified animals as well as people. In 2020, new non-invasive technology was used to digitally unwrap three animal...
Two ancient Egyptian sarcophagi were believed to contain human remains. One of them was thought to be a mummified child as it has the appearance of a “small human”. However, CT scanning in 2020...
By Lars Schmitz & Jingmai Kathleen O'Connor / The Conversation In 2016, our colleague Xing Lida held up a small piece of polished, deeply yellow amber. As sunlight shone through the ancient resin...
The Pacific Ocean is a world filled with diverse and remote islands, which are the home to some truly unique natives. Many of these islands were discovered comparatively recently in our history, and...
The idea that the human soul might take the form of a swan to journey from this world to the next could be one of the oldest fundamental beliefs of human kind, or so suggests a new discovery from the...
Meet the ancient bird that had toes longer than its lower legs. Researchers have discovered a bird foot from 99 million years ago preserved in amber that had a hyper-elongated third toe. The study,...
Translators regularly face the problem that the words and expressions of one language do not always translate exactly into those of another. In fact, a literal translation can sometimes seem...
Irish and Celtic symbols reflect ancient beliefs and traditions and were believed to influence lives. The meanings of symbols such as the Claddagh, Crann Bethadh, Triquetra, and Triskelion have lived...
The pride of flying too close to the sun was a costly endeavor for Icarus. Mythology says he fled Crete on wings of feathers and wax built by his father Daedalus, of King Minos’ labyrinth fame. His...
Prized as symbols of a warrior’s strength, prestige, and power, bone daggers were once widespread artistic and functional tools in New Guinea. New research on the subject shows that not all the bones...
A clawed, flightless bird that went extinct in New Zealand in the late 13th century might be brought back to life, claim scientists at Harvard University. Nearly three decades ago, archaeologists...
In the Bible, crows and their close cousins, ravens, were called “unclean” and with this unshakable spiritual grey cloud these bullied birds have subsequently been associated with the occult,...
Ancient tribal cultures all over the world partook in perilous hunting, fishing, and food gathering adventures. Hearths appear 250,000 years ago - which is the accepted archaeological estimate for...