All  

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ Mobile

death

Exposing the Shady Secrets of Charon's Obols: Spirit Coins of Ancient Greece

Exposing the Shady Secrets of Charon's Obols: Spirit Coins of Ancient Greece

Charon’s obols were coins supposedly used by the ancient Greeks for funerary purposes. More precisely, the belief is that these coins were used by the shades (roughly equivalent to the concept of ‘...
Unravelling the Tragic Story Behind the Impressive Lion Monument of Lucerne

Unravelling the Tragic Story Behind the Impressive Lion Monument of Lucerne

The Lion of Lucerne (known also as the Lion Monument) is a memorial located in Lucerne, Switzerland. This monument is a rock relief carved into the cliff face of a former sandstone quarry, and...
Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, 18th Century Miniature based on Holbein's Sketch.

Intelligence and Witchcraft – What Caused the Downfall of Anne Boleyn?

Heartless propaganda made people believe that Anne Boleyn was a witch - a woman who manipulated the king and put spells on him to reach her goals. She was obviously a very intelligent woman, but her...
Deriv; Silbury Hill, Avebury, UK. Inset, the humble earthworm

Was Neolithic Silbury Hill Designed as a Welcoming Home for Omnivorous, Upwardly-Mobile Earthworms?

Silbury Hill, said to be the largest prehistoric man-made mound in Europe, looms over the landscape. Yet so little is understood about this enigmatic British site. However, surprising as it may seem...
Conservation of Ötzi, the Iceman.

Making the Dead Speak: Scientists Plan to Recreate the Voice of Otzi the Iceman

Italian scientists are attempting to give Ötzi the Iceman a voice. By using CT scans of his throat and the tissue around his voice box, the researchers believe there is a chance to recreate the...
An illustration of a strigoi.

Preventing the Evil Dead from Arising, Ancient Practices Alive in Present-Day Romania Part 2

Read Part 1 As shown in numerous existing Romanian legends and testimonies, the main measure of protection against strigoi (vampires) is respecting funeral rites in detail. (The majority of strigoi...
A vampire, often likened to the Romanian ‘strigoi’.

Confronting the Evil Dead: Terrifying Ancient Beliefs Still Alive in Present-Day Romania – Part I

Romanian folklore records two atypical versions of the western vampire. These are the strigoi and the moroi which, even though they resemble the western image of the vampire, are very different from...
Hans Makart's painting of Charlotte Wolter in Adolf Wilbrandt's tragedy, Arria und Messalina.

Questioning the Dramatic Story of the Empress Messalina, Was She a Cruel Doxy or the Victim of a Smear Campaign?

In Ancient Rome, Valeria Messalina was a symbol of vanity and immorality. For centuries, people identified her as one of the most demoralized women in history, but how much of what we know about...
A possible example of a ‘coffin birth’.

The Bizarre Phenomenon of Coffin Births

I was reading through an article yesterday from the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology titled The Non-Adult Cohort from Le Morne Cemetery, Mauritius: A Snap Shot of Early Life and Death after...
19th century watercolor of the Tomb of the Dancers.

Ancient Burial Rituals Prove You Can Take it With You ... and What You Take Says a lot

Death is inevitable, but what death shows us about the social behaviors of the living is not. And recent University of Cincinnati research examining the ancient bereavement practices from the Central...
An evil undead woman and a demon king spell the end of Khoma Brut in a Slavic tale

Beware the Evil Dead in Myth and Folklore: The Tale of Khoma Brut

A well-known medieval tale talks about the three living and the three dead. As the story goes, three young men meet three undead walking, talking corpses. The dead tell the living that they must mend...
: Inside the eerie chambers of the Nekromanteion (Evilemperorzorg/CC BY-SA)

How Ancient Greeks Took Trippy Journeys to the Land of the Dead

By Tara MacIsaac , Epoch Times The Nekromanteion, or the “Oracle of Death,” was an ancient Greek temple in Epirus, Greece, in which supplicants sought to consult shades of the dead. Sensory...
The sarcophagi of Carajia, emblematic of the lost Chachapoya culture

Cloud Warriors: The Mysterious Power of the Lost Chachapoya Culture

In pre-Columbian America, the Incas had the largest empire and a flourishing civilization. They called their empire Tawantinsuyu , meaning The Four United Provinces , and they worshiped the sun god...
Close-up of human skulls that are part of the Chapel of Bones of the Church of San Francisco in Évora, Portugal.

The Story Behind a Frightening Chapel of Bones in Portugal

There is a Church of San Francisco found in the Portuguese city of Évora, 140 km (87 miles) from Lisbon. Inside this church, next to the cloister of the former Franciscan monastery, in the place...
Shiva carrying Sati on his trident. (1800s).

Manikarnika Ghat and the Role of Cremation in Traditional Indian Funerary Rites

India is renowned for having distinctive religious practices that coexist with one another. The numerous shrines and monuments allow one to contemplate the importance of faith for many. One of the...
Egyptian Mummy.

Mummies have had a bad wrap – it is time for a reassessment

As far as crowd-pleasers go, it is hard to beat mummies. When Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs opened at the Melbourne Museum in 2011, it broke all previous records for touring...
[Left], Photo of the Vulture Stone of Göbekli Tepe. (Alistair Coombs). [Right], Archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey.

The Vulture Stone of Gobekli Tepe: The World’s First Pictogram?

A report in the Hürriet Daily News published in July of this year announced that the world’s earliest pictogram had been discovered at the archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe, Southeast Turkey. It...
St Macarius of Ghent Giving Aid to the Plague Victims, 1673 painting by Jacob van Oost

The Plague that brought down mighty empires is thousands of years older than thought

The Plague is far older than previously known and later changed to become much more virulent—so virulent that it may have contributed to the decline of Classical Greece and the Roman and Byzantine...
A crypt with up to 30 burials discovered in Siberia

Haunting new find of death masks from ancient Siberian warrior race

By Anna Liesowska / The Siberian Times A crypt with up to 30 burials is giving archaeologists fresh insights of intriguing ancient Siberians famed for their death masks which give us a clear idea of...
Digital illustration of a portrait of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe: Was Mary Rogers his Muse or his Murder Victim?

Edgar Allan Poe is considered a literary genius and one of the fathers of horror literature as well as the inventor of the detective story. Poe was gifted with an undoubtedly brilliant mind able to...
Tutankhamun’s death mask

Tutankhamun Death Mask was Made for Nefertiti, Archaeologist says

A new analysis of Tutankhamun’s golden death mask has led to a radical new theory – the mask was originally made for Nefertiti, step mother of Tutankhamun , as a co-regent to her husband king...
Bronze Age skeleton found at Stragglethorpe, during archaeological work on the Highways Agency scheme, England.

Bronze Age Britons Mummified the Dead: Smoked over Fires, Preserved in Bogs

Mummification may have been more common in Bronze Age Britain than previously believed, and the ancient Britons may have purposefully mummified their dead with unknown funerary rituals—but why and...
Easter Han tomb of Luoyang, Henan Province. Representational image only.

3 Men Suffocate, Die While Looting Ancient Tomb in China

Three men have died and others were incapacitated while grave robbing an ancient tomb in China. The three men died of suffocation in the airless gravesite. Two other men in the tomb called for help,...
La Peste (1695) wax sculpture, Gaetano Zumbo, Museum of Specola, Florence

The Black Death: the Plague that Sowed Terror and Death in Medieval Europe - Part 2

Read Part 1 Science had to wait until the nineteenth century to banish the idea of ​​a supposed supernatural origin of the plague. The fear of a pandemic on a global scale persisted for four...

Pages