On a chilly winter day in 1929, Halil Edhem, the Director of Turkey's National Museum, was hunched over his solitary task of classifying documents. He pulled towards him a map drawn on Roe deer skin...
Much of modern science was known in ancient times. Robots and computers were a reality long before the 1940´s. The early Bronze Age inhabitants of the Levant used computers in stone, the Greeks in...
It is tempting to regard the history of Europe as a tale of gradually closer union, an evolution now imperilled by the forces of nationalistic populism that have brought Brexit and the growth of far-...
The first arctic explorer isn’t who you think. More than 2,300 years ago, Pytheas of Massalia traveled to the Arctic Circle and back – and, when he came home, nobody believed him. In a time when most...
面相 (‘miàn xiàng’, or less accurately as ‘mien shiang’) is a type of Chinese divination that relies on the observation of a person’s facial features. Apart from divining an individual’s future,...
The Fool’s Cap Map of the World is an engraving of a map of the world, and is thought to have been made towards the end of the 16th century. This map is peculiar as it is framed within the hood /...
Secrets of the world’s oldest surviving map of maritime trade routes in Asia are being revealed with a range of modern imaging techniques and other research. Dating back to the early 17th century,...
If you had a globe at home when you were a child, you may have played the game of spinning the globe, placing your finger on it lightly, and wherever the globe stops under your finger is where you...
By the age of 10, most children in the United States have been taught all 50 states that make up the country. But centuries ago, the land that is now the United States was a very different place...
This year has provided an array of exciting, and sometimes puzzling, discoveries for archaeologists and ancient history enthusiasts. Looking back to our most ancient ancestors, a few of the...
Reports of existing archaeological discoveries are pouring in lately from Scandinavia. A puzzling stone found in a ditch on Bornholm, a Danish island in the Baltic Sea, to the east of the rest of...
Controversy surrounds the knowledge the Portuguese had about Brazil before they entered into the Treaty of Tordesillas. The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in 1494, was a treaty between Castile (Spain...
The Turin Papyrus Map is an ancient Egyptian map that is generally considered to be the oldest surviving topographical and geological map of the ancient world - there are some older maps from outside...
Maps are a useful modern tool, telling us how to get places, showing us where borders lie, and illustrating the distance between two places. While modern technology has made the creation of and...
The Spanish archaeological site Moli del Salt (Vimbodi i Poblet, Tarragona) continues to provide new and pleasant surprises. The latest discovery is a stone slab that is over 13,000 years old. The...
A map of the world produced in 1491 by Henricus Martellus has been subjected to multispectral imaging, which has revealed hidden details on the map not previously visible, including numerous Latin...
A walled Maya city from 2,600 years ago was laid out in a grid that suggests the ruler who oversaw the design was a particularly powerful person. The city, Nixtun-Ch'ich' in Petén, Guatemala, is...
The 15 th century voyages of Chinese maritime admiral and diplomat Zheng He have been well documented by historical accounts. Zheng He, highly influential in Ming emperor Yongle’s court, was...
The Chinese government claims ninety percent of the South China Sea, including the Spratly Islands, an archipelago of 750 islands and reefs nearer the Philippines. However, a series of ancient maps...
A damaged clay tablet discovered in the late 1800s in Sippar, Iraq is said to be the oldest map of the world. It was discovered on the banks of the Euphrates River, and published in 1899. Now housed...
As tourists wonder the streets of Rome and flock to the incredible sites of the Colosseum and Roman Forum, few of them realise that beneath their feet lies something even more ancient – a maze of...
Recently we reported on a new book by Italian physicist and philologist Lucio Russo who presented the controversial claim that the ancient Greeks discovered America long before Christopher Columbus...
We are of the opinion the cluster of engraved astronomical markers found on a series of rock platforms is without parallel in Australia, and perhaps the world. Within a span of 3.5 kilometres there...