Hunting

29 January, 2019 - 01:44 ancient-origins

Our Capable Cousins Were Tech Savvy – Practical Tests Prove Neanderthal Spears Could Kill at a Distance

By Dr. Annemieke Milks and Dr. Matt Pope / Science Daily Neanderthals have been imagined as the inferior cousins of modern humans, but a new study by archaeologists at UCL reveals for the first time...

Mammoth tusk found at the kill site in Austria.

12 September, 2018 - 13:59 ashley cowie

28,000-Year-Old Mammoth Kill Site Discovered in Austria

Archaeologists in Austria have announced the discovery of what they have described as a “Stone Age kill site.” The hoard of ancient mammoth remains indicate a zone into which ancient people must have...

A bannerstone, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (CC0) Background: Rocks and water. (CC0)

27 July, 2018 - 18:55 dhwty

Boggling Bannerstones of Ancient Americans: Were They a Function of Flight or More a Flight of Fancy?

A bannerstone is an enigmatic Native American artifact found in the eastern United States. They come in a range of shapes and sizes and are made of various types of stone. These stones have been...

Mosaic with fishing scene, 3rd century Roman.

12 July, 2018 - 01:55 ancient-origins

Bones Suggest Romans Hunted Whales in the Mediterranean

Two thousand years ago the Mediterranean Sea was a haven for two species of whale which have since virtually disappeared from the North Atlantic, a new study analyzing ancient bones suggests. The...

Artists impression of a giant sloth being confronted by human hunters. Credit: Alex McClelland, Bournemouth University

1 May, 2018 - 02:00 ancient-origins

How to Hunt a Giant Sloth – Ancient Tactics Revealed in Human Footprints

Rearing on its hind legs, the giant ground sloth would have been a formidable prey for anyone, let alone humans without modern weapons. Tightly muscled, angry and swinging its fore legs tipped with...

Obsidian projectile point sourced to Batza Tena, Alaska.

4 February, 2018 - 22:41 ancient-origins

Reconstructing an Ancient Lethal Weapon

Archaeologists are a little like forensic investigators: They scour the remains of past societies, looking for clues in pottery, tools and bones about how people lived, and how they died. And just as...

Iron Age arrow from Trollsteinhøe used to study the relationship between climate variability and how humans used alpine landscapes in the past.

24 January, 2018 - 23:00 Theodoros Karasavvas

Thawing Ice Reveals Norwegian Mountains Littered with Iron and Bronze Age Artifacts

A group of researchers have reportedly discovered artifacts of wood, textile, hide and other organic material on Jotunheimen and the surrounding mountain areas of Oppland, which include Norway's...

The Great Horned Serpent was powerful and magical in Native American mythology.

20 November, 2017 - 15:25 jason and sarah

Drowning, Poisoning, and the Dark Underworld. Meet the King of all Snakes, the wise Great Horned Serpent in Native American Cosmology

Since longer than history can recall, the western mind has been locked in a pattern of dualistic thinking. In the course of our experiences, the world is defined by a series of opposites, which...

Reconstruction of Sungir man with mammoth tusk spear.

24 October, 2017 - 01:57 ancient-origins

Is This Proof Early Man Weaponized Ivory from Woolly Mammoth Tusks to Kill...Woolly Mammoths?

By The Siberian Times reporter Deadly paleolithic spears - pictured below and manufactured from the ivory from extinct beasts - show the lethal genius of ancient craftsmen up to 28,500 years ago...

20 April, 2017 - 18:41 ashley cowie

From Mighty Bear Dogs to Breathless Bulldogs: How Human Manipulation Has Changed the Shape of Canines Forever

Dogs in Prehistory The early ancestors of Gray Wolves were a group of carnivores named the creodonts that roamed the northern hemisphere between 100 and 120 million years ago. About 55 million years...

7 April, 2017 - 23:05 Caleb Strom

Are Humans Just Self-Domesticated Apes?

One of the greatest mysteries is the origin of the human mind. Why are humans so different from other animals? Why do we have languages, religions, complex political and economic systems, and...

The rock engravings, found at Qubbet el-Hawa, Egypt and dating to around 6000 years ago, can hardly be seen today.

23 March, 2017 - 12:55 Theodoros Karasavvas

Where an Ostrich, Dancer, and Hunter Meet: How Common Were Ritual Images in Neolithic Egyptian Rock Art?

Egyptologists at the University of Bonn, Germany have discovered rock art from the 4th millennium BC during an excavation at a necropolis near Aswan in Egypt. The images were carved into the rock in...

27 July, 2016 - 03:42 Natalia Klimczak

Oldest Known Evidence of Tobacco Use in North America Found in Ice Age Hunting Camp

An Ice Age Hunting Camp replete with the bird bones and tobacco has been found in Utah, USA. It is the oldest known evidence of tobacco use found so far. According to Western Digs , the discovery...

Bone artifacts recovered from the Ma’anshan site.

4 March, 2016 - 03:43 Alicia McDermott

Paleolithic Bone Tools Discovered in Chinese Cave Are Some of the Oldest in the World

A research team studying 17 bone tools recovered from the Paleolithic site of Ma'anshan Cave, Guizhou Province, southern China have named the artifacts as the oldest formal bone tools in China to...

Paleolithic man (Paleoindians) hunting a glyptodon – ancient ancestor to the armadillo. (Illustration 1920) Did these societies use poison to bring down their prey?

23 March, 2015 - 21:04 lizleafloor

Invisible Killers - Poisons may have been used by Palaeolithic society 30,000 years ago, new testing shows

Poisons are ubiquitous in the plant and animal world – some snakes and frogs are venomous, and various trees and plants are lethally toxic. This was well-known by our ancient ancestors, and they...

A family of Neanderthals in Eurasia, during the Pleistocene epoch

21 February, 2015 - 00:35 Mark Miller

Did light-skinned, redheaded Neanderthal women hunt with the men?

A team of Spanish researchers theorizes, based on grooves and nicks on the teeth of Neanderthals, that gender roles among that species were similar to gender roles of modern Homo Sapiens. Neanderthal...

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Myths & Legends

The Ancient Pagan Origins of Easter

Easter is a festival and holiday celebrated by millions of people around the world who honor the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred three days...

Is the Island of Dolls Haunted? An Eerie Tribute to a Little Mexican Girl

Legends of Mount Shasta: “The Abode of the Devil” Part I – The Legend of J.C. Brown

The Story of the Scary Shtorka and the Revival of Croatian Mythology

Ragnar Lothbrok: A Real Viking Hero Whose Life Became Lost to Legend

Involuntary Initiation: Tales of Demonic Powers of Sorcery Transmitted to the Unsuspecting

Human Origins

Heavens Gates Opening. Source: Alswart / Adobe.

What and Where is Heaven? The Answers Are at the Heart of the Easter Story

My pious Baptist grandmother once shockingly confessed, at the ripe old age of 93, that she didn’t want to go to heaven. “Why,” we asked? “Well, I think it will be rather boring just sitting around on clouds and singing hymns all day” she answered. She had a point.

Rh-Negative Blood: An Exotic Bloodline or Random Mutation?

One Hundred Thousand Adams and Eves?

The Stoned Ape Theory and the Dawn of Human Consciousness: Did Our Prehistoric Ancestors Evolve by Getting High?

The origins of human beings according to ancient Sumerian texts

Are the Distinctive Kalash People of Pakistan Really Descendants of Alexander the Great’s Army?

Ancient Technology

Handle of one of the wooden tools from the Poggetti Vecchi site.

171,000-Year-Old Fire Forged Tool Discovered Beneath a Giant Elephant

171,000 years ago, in Tuscany, a set of ancient tools were crafted and forged with fire. Archaeologists in Florence, Italy, made an incredible discovery during construction work at Poggetti Vecchi. A paper published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

Romans Mastered Nanotechnology and Used it for Eye Catching Decoration

Does ‘New Evidence’ Prove Noah’s Ark Is Buried on a Turkish Mountain?

Is this a 300 million-year-old screw or just a fossilized sea creature?

The Man Who Stopped a Desert Using Ancient Farming

Norimitsu Odachi: Who Could Have Possibly Wielded This Enormous 15th Century Japanese Sword?

Ancient Places

Legends of Mount Shasta: “The Abode of the Devil” Part I – The Legend of J.C. Brown

Many of Mount Shasta’s strangest tales have yet to be told. Ancient Native American legends speak of a fallen race of prehistoric giants who once inhabited the Pacific Coast of North America...

Peel Castle: Centuries of History, a Mysterious Pagan Lady, and a Phantom Dog

The Dark Underworld of the Paris Catacombs

Ashurbanipal: The Oldest Surviving Royal Library in the World with Over 30,000 Clay Tablets

3,000-Year-Old Ain Dara Temple in Syria Reduced to Rubble by Turkish Airstrikes

Roque Bentayga, Gran Canaria: Vestiges of the Mysterious Guanche People

Opinion

The astronomical ceiling at the Pronaos, Detail of the first Band west from the center. From left to right: two wind creatures (the winged ram with four heads personifies the south wind), the snake- and frog-headed eight goddesses and gods of the Ogdoad who ruled the cosmos before the creation of the world and Osiris seated on a throne sails across the sky as personification of the full moon accompanied by the seated goddesses Nephtys (left) and Isis on the right (Maat stands near the bow of the ship). Siri

Changing Colors and Scampering Across the Night Sky: What Did the Ancients Say about Sirius?

In Egypt, Sirius was the Star of Isis, Isis being the companion and rescuer of the god Osiris. In a very deep way, Osiris was Egypt.

Cracking the Code to Discover Ancient Tarot Symbolism and Forgotten Universal Knowledge

The Secret Strategic Plans of Darius the Great

The Secrets of the Kabbalists Garden

Alchemy and Generating Lifeforce —Global Temples Made in the Shape of Lingams: Shaivite Bull Cult Part II

From Green Man to Bull Son, The Universal Shaivite Bull Cult – Part I

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At Ancient Origins, we believe that one of the most important fields of knowledge we can pursue as human beings is our beginnings. And while some people may seem content with the story as it stands, our view is that there exists countless mysteries, scientific anomalies and surprising artifacts that have yet to be discovered and explained.

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