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.
In many ancient cultures and religious traditions, rulers and elite members of society not only had wives, they also had concubines. Concubines normally served a dual purpose – to increase a man’s...
Modern humans, Homo Sapiens , are now the only surviving member of the homo genus. It is almost inconceivable to us that there was a time we walked with other human species, but as the science of...
Facial reconstructions allow us to look eye to eye with our ancient ancestors and relate to them in a way that skeletal remains do not inspire. It can be dehumanizing to look at a bare skull , and...
Osiris, the green-skinned god of the underworld, lord of the afterlife and judge of the dead, is one of the best-known gods from ancient Egypt. His story provided his followers with reassurance for...
There have been a number of high-profile reconstructions of historical figures recently and it seems like whenever a reconstruction is shared there is controversy and argument about whether the...
By Ian Moffat / The Conversation If you bumped into a Homo erectus in the street you might not recognize them as being very different from you. You’d see a certain “human-ness” in the stance, and his...
The Cycladic culture (known also as the Cycladic civilization) is an early Bronze Age culture located in the Cyclades. This culture thrived from around 3200 to 1100 BC, and predated two other major...
The Land of Nod is not just a place we go to catch a few winks but was mentioned in Genesis as the place where Cain, the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, was cast away after murdering his brother Abel...
University College London / Science Daily Skin color is one of the most visible and variable traits among humans and scientists have always been curious about how this variation evolved. Now, a study...
In the early 1960s, renowned chemist Dr. James Lovelock was approached by NASA to develop systems and methods that could be used in determining whether or not a planet harbored life. Specifically,...
While consciousness is a term that is difficult to define, there is evidence to link it with the EM field of the brain. This EM field is well known and is utilized in many brain-scanning techniques...
New research using ancient DNA is rewriting the genetic history of two ancient peoples; the Hindus and the Jews - and it shows that their two religious civilizations are the result of multiple...
It is obvious to any astronomer that some of the brightest objects in the night sky are the planets. It is thus mysterious that there are so few references to the planets in ancient literature. Prior...
Reality television shows based on surgical transformations, such as The Swan and Extreme Makeover , were not the first public spectacles to offer women the ability to compete for the chance to be...
This is the account of the discovery of a skull that has the potential to change what we know about human evolution, and a suppression and cover-up which followed. In 1959, in an area called...
There are many reported human skeletal finds which are in discordance with current evolutionary beliefs dating back to anomalously ancient geological periods in the distant past, way before it is...
The Yazidis (also spelled as Yezidis) are a religious minority found primarily in northern Iraq. In recent years, the Yazidis have received the attention of the international media as a result of...
All cultures and religions have their creation stories - some seem more familiar and others perhaps seem farfetched. One creation story is of the god Mbombo who vomited the world, humans, and the...
The arts of North American natives typically fall into broad categories of sculpture, painting, quill-work, beadwork and architecture. The Native American art types are further divided geographically...
Although Jewish people usually, but not always, share a common gene pool, they are not a race because any non-Jew who converts to Judaism will be recognized as being Jewish by all those rabbis who...
For thousands of years, the sudden appearance of a ring of mushrooms was a sure sign of otherworldly presences. These rings would seemingly appear overnight, or travel from one location to another,...
A ritual based religion, Shintoism is defined as "the way of the gods" in Japan, from the Chinese Shendao. It is the indigenous religion of the country, and survives today as the state religion,...
Those raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition may be surprised to learn that the god we were told was singularly sacred once had a wife. How do we know? Asherah figures prominently as the wife of El—...
During Medieval times almost all Christian theologians accepted the Ptolemaic earth centered Greek view of the universe as an absolute universal truth of both nature and religion. The Catholic...
