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.
The Aborigines of Australia are considered one of the oldest continuously surviving cultures in the world, encompassing hundreds of diverse cultural groups, each with their own creation stories...
The Māori, or the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand , use a special word Matariki , which identifies the cluster of stars known to astronomers as the Pleiades, and to mythologists and...
Dentistry, in some form or another, has been practiced for at least 14,000 years, although tooth extraction and remedies for toothaches probably go back much further. The study of ancient remains...
Nestled in the fertile region around the River Tigris and Euphrates, the historical region of ancient Mesopotamia has long been regarded as one of the earliest cradles of civilization. Home to...
There is no doubt that most of us, in our childhoods and later in life, heard all about the stories and legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. For many, the stories of Arthur and...
The imperfect state of archaeological research in the Near East impedes any definite identification of the original race or races that created the earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt...
The Faravahar is arguably the best-known symbol of the Persian Zoroastrian faith. This symbol consists of a winged disc with a man emerging from it. The man is shown holding a ring. Whilst the symbol...
The Antichrist. The name itself is enough to instill dread into the hearts of all devout Christians as well as others. It is a name that was ever connected to the negative, the malicious, and the...
From the lush, foggy hills rolling through the Scottish Isles, to the primordial peaks of glorious Hawaii, and all the way across the globe to the wild rainforests of Indonesia, evidence of a “little...
The existence of mystery schools in the Viking Age (800-1200 CE) is deduced from myth and folklore. The poems of the Edda display the structure and content of cultic texts used within the framework...
Ashkenazi Jews are a Jewish ethnic group who have their earliest ancestors from the indigenous tribes of Israel…at least on one side of the family tree. A study published in 2013 in Nature...
“All the great rabbis of this generation are saying that the Messiah is about to reveal himself. All the signs the prophets gave, all the signs predicted in the Gemara, the Mishnah, the Midrash,...
The Little Ice Age is a period tentatively defined as running from the 13 th /14 th to the 19 th century in which the northern hemisphere of Earth endured a limited but substantial cooling period...
The fascinating legacy of the controversial American physician who weighed the human soul and determined dogs don’t have one is an incredible story. And, like in many areas of life, what one believes...
For anyone familiar with the Bible, the story of the Israelite god Yahweh is a simple one. Yahweh appears to Abraham in the book of Genesis and enters into a covenantal alliance with him. Abraham's...
The origin of Jewish New Year celebrations has long been shrouded in mystery. Families around the world celebrate it during autumn with sweet delicacies, joyous prayers, and the blasting of the...
The stories of Romulus and Remus, Osiris, and Moses all share a common element. Why is it that the overarching theme surrounding ancient people and the start of their legacy is a male floating down...
Over the past two centuries, Europe has become increasingly secular. Scholars in fact no longer talk of the Christian West when they speak of Modern Europe and North America, but of the Secular West...
Oceania was the last region to be settled by humans and the last part of Oceania to be settled by humans was Polynesia. Polynesians are famous for their voyages to remote islands in distant parts of...
The name of the Torah has a complicated history. It has been thought to mean a multitude of things including “instruction”, “law”, and “teaching”. The Torah is often misunderstood to represent the...
Every culture has an explanation about how we got here. The ancient Greeks were no different. The dramatic story of the origins of humanity in Greek mythology involves love, pain, and a hefty dose of...
Buried for millennia in the rear of a rock-shelter in the Lapedo Valley 85 miles north of Lisbon, Portugal, archaeologists uncovered the bones of a four-year-old child, comprising the first complete...
Neanderthals are generally classified by palaeontologists as the species Homo neanderthalensis , but some consider them to be a subspecies of Homo sapiens ( Homo sapiens neanderthalensis ). The first...
Peering into the development stages of the Neolithic cultures of Old Europe has always been a challenging task for archaeologists and scholars. Reaching so far back into time in the hope of piecing...
