Ancient Origins presents how human origins are explained through three different perspectives: a) science and scientific evidence, b) religions and creation stories and c) folklore and mythology.
About 60,000 years ago, a human had a sexual encounter with a Neanderthal. Now, a genetic scientist has claimed that this single sexual act caused the deaths of up to a million people during the...
At the beginning of the 20th century, a team of international paleontologists prepared to excavate a cave located in a limestone formation known as Dragon-Bone Hill, a few hours outside of Beijing...
Believe it or not, fake eyes have existed for thousands of years. Besides improving the physical appearance of the patient needing the artificial eye, fake eyes also prevent tissues in the eye socket...
In a place before time, life somehow emerged on Earth. It grew and flourished. It changed. It split, and some of it went its different ways. There was life in the water and life on the land. Some...
Most people will recognize Mecca as the name for the Holy City of Islam. Do you know where the Holy City is? Do you know where it should be? Did it get lost? Was it ever found? Believe it or not,...
The ancient city of Nippur is one of the most interesting holy cities in the Middle East. Now only known as a dilapidated, prehistoric town, Nippur was once recognized as an essential religious...
Ezekiel’s Daniel could be a real person, or he could be the Danel of ancient Ugaritic legend, and evidence points both ways. In the Biblical prophecies of Ezekiel, Daniel is characterized as paragon...
New research just published in the journal Frontiers in Genetics reveals fascinating details about the evolution of Europeans, the humans living in Europe during the Neolithic period (10,000 BC to 4,...
Magic mushrooms, Shrooms, and the ever-famous Liberty Cap are all familiar terms for the same groovy fungus. Popularized in the western world in the late 50s, psychedelic mushrooms have been used for...
The legendary Egyptian metropolises of Pithom and Piramesses were first noted in the Exodus story of the Old Testament. One of the foundations of the Jewish religion, it told of the plight of the...
A new study has shown that the origins of human communication began with hand gestures, and not sounds. The research team discovered this after tasking volunteers to describe words using grunts and...
It had long been believed that the now-extinct Neanderthals walked differently and had a different posture than modern humans. This was based on comparative anatomical studies between ancient...
It was in 1819 when John Smith, a British army officer in pursuit of a tiger came across a cave near Ajanta village in India. More than thirty caves carved inside the rock of the mountainside and...
During an archaeological dig near the village of Willendorf in Lower (Eastern) Austria in 1908, a laborer dug up a small statue that proved to be one of the most important pieces of prehistoric art...
A bard travels through the streets, gathering an audience as he goes, and then starts to recall the adventures of heroes and the tales of the gods. In the ancient world, word of mouth was one of the...
A team of Jordanian and French archaeologists have found an exceptionally well-preserved and intact Neolithic shrine at a remote prehistoric hunting campsite in Jordan’s eastern desert that dates...
What is the origin of the legend of the Christed Son who was born of a virgin on December 25th? I am sure you are familiar with his legend which states that he was born in a manger surrounded by...
The human story begins in Africa. Of the many fascinating fossil sites in Africa, an important one is the Cradle of Humankind outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. The many caves and rock outcrops...
The faeries appear in folklore from all over the world as metaphysical beings, who, given the right conditions, are able to interact with the physical world. They’re known by many names but there is...
Most people identify one special chalice as the only Holy Grail. Others point out that the Holy Grail legends composed in Europe during the 12th to 15th centuries enumerate more than ten different...
While no one knows exactly when alcohol was first produced, it was presumably the result of a fortuitous accident that occurred at least tens of thousands of years ago. However, the discovery of late...
One of the most intriguing and perplexing legends of the Australian Aboriginal people is that of the Wandjinas, the supreme spirit beings and creators of the land and people. The land of the Wandjina...
Humans have always styled their hair in a multitude of creative and symbolic ways, and the various cuts, colors, and presentations reflected across the ages are nearly unlimited. But does hair serve...
If the early chapters of the Book of Genesis present a true account of human origins, then ancient secular human history must connect in significant ways to that account. In fact, ancient Greek...
