For centuries, an enigmatic underworld thrived, its inhabitants conversing in a secret tongue that veiled their intentions. This clandestine dialect, known as thieves’ cant , existed from the 16th to...
Art history resembles detective work , often concealing mysteries waiting to be unraveled. Among the array of crossbows at the New York Met, one stands out as truly exceptional. Its ivory panels bear...
Runic script is an alphabetic system based on a non-alphabetical order row. This means that it has letters, like in many languages, but the letters are not arranged in a standard alphabetical order...
Many cultures throughout history have had their own unspoken societal rules, and the Vikings are no exception. The Drengr Code was a code of ethics and principles that was believed to have been...
In the grounds of Shugborough Hall in Staffordshire, England, sits an 18th-century monument known as the Shepherd’s Monument. The monument contains a relief, depicting a copy of a Nicolas Poussin...
The Code of Ur-Nammu is the oldest surviving law code. This text was written on clay tablets in the Sumerian language and is reckoned to have been produced towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC...
On December 1, 1948, authorities were called to Somerton beach in Adelaide, South Australia. A dead body had been found. Little did police realize they were about to encounter what is now considered...
The Beale Ciphers have challenged treasure hunters for almost 200 years. Is the Declaration of Independence the key to finding the gold, silver, and precious stones that Beale buried near Bedford,...
The incredible Shigir Idol, a wooden wonder from the prehistoric world, was dated to approximately 11,600 years old in 2018. Now, a new study has pushed that date back a further 900 years. This means...
Dating back 11,000 years - with a coded message left by ancient man from the Mesolithic Age - the Shigir Idol is almost three times as old as the Egyptian pyramids. New scientific findings suggest...
Has an undergraduate student discovered a secret message in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost ? Miranda Phaal, an undergraduate from Tufts University in Massachusetts, discovered what is being...
Brunswick Town, in North Carolina, was once ‘a hotbed of anti-crown sentiment’ where rebellions were plotted and planned. Now archaeologists have made an amazing discovery in a once razed tavern that...
Claims of ‘cracking the code’ of the Voynich manuscript have lost their sheen somewhat over the last few years, with weak cases being presented from all and sundry. This attempt, described...
The Voynich Manuscript is a mysterious illustrated hand-written vellum codex in a currently unidentified written and visual code. However, according to a non-peer reviewed paper published in John's...
Unique and curious designs plaster the walls of the most popular Zapotec archaeological site in Mexico. They are called the Mitla mosaics and are unrivalled in their precision and quality of...
After 341 years, a mysterious jumble of archaic script allegedly written by an Italian nun possessed by Satan has finally been unraveled. Scientists have accomplished the feat through the use of a...
The secrets within medieval manuscripts can be read once again, thanks to modern technology and new imaging techniques. Experts now suggest that computational imaging and signal processing advances...
The National Museum in Quito, Ecuador exhibits an otherworldly collection of sheet-gold masks representing the Andean sun god Inti. Zig-zag rays of golden light burst from his face and some end in...
Can you solve the cryptic code engraved into the blade of this 13th century sword? The curious inscription continues to baffle historians, cryptographers ad linguists and last year the British...
George Smith was born in 1840 in London to poor parents, and consequently left school at the tender age of fifteen to take up an apprenticeship with Messrs Bradburry and Evans, a firm of engravers...
Archaeologists have discovered a collection of khipu (quipu) —a system of colored strings and knots people used to record various matters and send messages in the pre- and post-colonial eras in Peru—...
An enigmatic clay tablet pulled from the ruins of an ancient Minoan palace has been one of the most puzzling mysteries in archaeology. But now a linguist believes a goddess is the key to unlocking...
Walter Kayo sat at his desk in the scriptorium, the cold chill of winter half broken by a flickering fire in the hearth. The velum page before him was still not finished, yet already his eyes felt...
By April Holloway | The Epoch Times More than a century ago, a small pamphlet was published titled “The Beale Papers,” which contained three cipher texts. The mysterious codes supposedly gave...