In recent months, health authorities in California, USA, have been obliged to report two cases of the plague that appeared in West Coast state. In the state of Colorado two other people also...
Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Purgatory is presented within The Divine Comedy as a mountain that must be climbed to be overcome. Following Dante and Virgil's sojourn into Hell, he and his guide...
Once known as the birthplace of Alexander the Great's mother Olympia, the former Ottoman Empire region of Epirus has a much more recent historical significance. Under the reign of Ali Pasha, a Muslim...
The German archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann is perhaps one of the luckiest archaeologists in history. His discovery of the Mask of Agamemnon was not his first, but second remarkable discovery...
Known as the blind daughter in Finnish mythology, Loviatar is the goddess of death and disease. Born from the union of Tuoni, the god of death, and his underworld queen Tuonetar, Loviatar is...
Sunada Tetsu (1768-1829) was arguably the most famous individual who successfully mummified himself. Early in life, he was not religiously inclined. He loved a prostitute in Akagawa, Tsuruoka’s...
Scientists have unwrapped ancient knowledge and used it to mummify a modern human. Inspired by the preservation techniques as perfected by ancient Egyptians, a team of researchers have mummified...
The Irish banshee and the Scottish bean nighe tread the darkest of nights as omens from another world, that of the unknown beyond. Though similar at first glance, they were regarded as quite...
Archaeologists in the state of Karnataka, in South West India, have discovered a set of ancient tablets with inscriptions that reveal a family of six people underwent the sacrificial rite of...
The Crusades are best known as a series of military campaigns launched by Western European states, and sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church, aimed at reclaiming the Holy Land from the Muslims...
The tale of Norna-Gest goes down in literary record as a tale of destiny and a character’s attempt to fight it. Not one of the titular Icelandic sagas, Norna-Gest’s story was recorded around the year...
Sadly, the fate of civilians in war has often been harsh, perhaps even more so in the past. Men would invariably be killed, and children were often sold into slavery. As for the women, they might be...
Two rare and ancient Buddha statues have been unearthed at the Bhamala Stupa site in Pakistan. The largest ever statue found at the site depicts the death of ancient sage Buddha. A second statue...
Music has held a special role in human society for thousands of years. In ancient China, for instance, sets of bronze bells were played for entertainment and ritual purposes at court. The...
Known among the pre-Christian Scandinavians, and the gods themselves, as the "Shining God", Baldr was the image of perfection in the Norse religion, and the pride and joy of the Æsir (members of the...
The Necromanteion was an ancient temple dedicated to the god of the Underworld, Hades, and his consort, the goddess Persephone. According to ancient Greek beliefs, while the bodies of the dead...
The Detmold Child is the name that has been given to an ancient Peruvian mummy that dates back an incredible 6,500 years - that's 3,000 years before the birth of Tutankhamun. Recent computer...
A team of Estonian scholars believe they have finally discovered the long-lost location of Vlad the Impaler, the 15 th century Prince upon which Bram Stoker based his 1897 gothic novel ‘Dracula’...
By Tara MacIsaac , Epoch Times Funerary rites, like death, are a source of fascination tinged by mystery and fear. Closely related to how we view the afterlife and how we relate to one another, these...
According to Suetonius (Lives of the Caesars, Julius 81) there were many warnings presented to Julius Caesar about his impending doom. He received bad omens such as the discovery of a table of brass...
Archaeologists have discovered “an exceptional” Aztec burial site under an apartment building in Mexico City containing the remains of twelve dogs , animals that had major religious and symbolic...
A team of scientists who have been trying to unravel why ancient Romans committed infanticide have discovered that equal numbers of boys and girls were killed . This challenges the assumption that...
In June 323 BC, Alexander the Great died in Babylon aged 32, having conquered an empire stretching from modern Albania to eastern Pakistan. The question of what, or who, killed the Macedonian king...
Archaeologists sometimes face the same gruesome discoveries that forensic scientists deal with today, having to unravel the stories behind brutal murders, sacrifices and other dark rituals. Here are...