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.
Several years ago, a team of scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, set out to put a human face to ancient hominid species that once walked the Earth. Using...
John the Baptist was a Jewish preacher and prophet who is believed to have been a forerunner to Jesus Christ . In the Book of Matthew in the Greek New Testament, John is depicted as another Elijah...
“One day you will be old enough to read fairy tales again!” – CS Lewis All my life I’ve been fascinated by faeries, as I grew up with European fairy tales, Walt Disney’s Tinker Bell and movies like...
Many of us have heard of the famous Lady of Elche and are intrigued with her mystifying appearance, and the strange enigma surrounding her origins. In reality not a whole lot is known about the bust...
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (in Middle English as Sir Gawayn and þe Grene Knyȝt ) is one of the most famous Arthurian legends. As the name of the poem suggests, the story is about Sir Gawain, one...
Xiwangmu (西王母), whose name means ‘Queen Mother of the West’ is a goddess in the Taoist pantheon, and worshipped in Chinese folk religion. Xiwangmu is considered to be one of the most prominent female...
The most profound mystery of mankind is the origin of the universe. In juxtaposition, its origin is also the most profound event known to man. Since about 1200 BC the Bible has declared in its first...
What we see is not always what we expect, whether from nature or man-made. This is often true with archaeological remains of cities or human settlement, when new discoveries shed unexpected light on...
Israeli archeologist Dr. Aaron Greener asks “what are clay female figurines doing in Judah during the biblical period?” My non-archeologist answer is; they represent kosher (suitable for religious...
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...
According to George Orwell, Sir Walter Raleigh stopped writing his History of the World after he was unable to identify the cause of the scuffle and murder that took place outside his cell in the...
Take notice of any debate in the media and you’ll see that science and religion are, and always were, at loggerheads. Science is about evidence-based fact, religion is about faith-based belief. But...
A new analysis of two 7.2 million-year-old fossils belonging to a hominin species nicknamed “El Graeco” from Mediterranean Europe, suggests that mankind emerged in Europe and not in Africa. The new...
The twelve tribes of ancient Judaism were united into a single kingdom under the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon. The destruction of this kingdom and the forced exile of its population is known as...
Laos is a country that we know little about, it is only in recent years that the nation has opened to the outside world. But the country has many important archaeological sites, amongst the most...
The Eye of Providence (known also as the all-seeing eye of God) is a well-known and popular symbol. This symbol has been used for centuries in both religious and secular contexts, and therefore its...
Our fascination with ghostly tales around Christmas time goes back thousands of years and is rooted in ancient celebrations of the winter solstice. In the depths of winter, pagan traditions included...
The Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England began towards the end of the 6 th century AD, and by the end of the succeeding century, all the kings of Anglo-Saxon England were Christian, at least...
Christianity, as one of the world’s most prominent and widely practiced religions, brings along a whole string of myths, stories, historical occurrences, and relics. From saints and their remains, to...
Who were the nephilim ? The word nephilim appears twice in the Old Testament of the Bible. They are first mentioned in chapter 6 of the book of Genesis and then again in Number 13:33. But their brief...
Nick Longrich / The Conversation 300,000 years ago, nine human species walked the Earth. Now there’s just one. The Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis , were stocky hunters adapted to Europe’s cold...
The Stone Age is the longest period of human history, lasting from 2.6 million years ago to about 5,000 years ago. It is also the period of human history that is the least well known relative to...
Ancient DNA from India’s Rakhigarhi archaeological site is telling volumes about the destiny of the mysterious Indus Valley Civilization. Around 3000 BC, Neolithic hunters in northern Scotland began...
The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most important religious texts in Hinduism as well as one of the most seminal religious texts in the world, alongside the Bible , the Quran , the Torah and the...
