navigation

A calcite crystal found on an Elizabethan ship believed to have helped the Vikings navigate the seas.

6 April, 2018 - 18:53 aprilholloway

Mythical Viking Sunstone Used for Navigation was Real and Remarkably Accurate, New Study Shows

The Vikings have been reputed to be remarkable seafarers who could fearlessly navigate their way through unknown oceans to invade unsuspecting communities along the North Sea and Atlantic Sea coasts...

Homo erectus statue, taken at David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins as the Smithsonian Natural History Museum.

23 February, 2018 - 18:54 ashley cowie

Primeval Navigation Suggests Language Began 1.5 Million Years Earlier Than Thought

Were our primeval ancestors skilled mariners who sailed thousand of miles to distant islands using language, or did they grunt at each other while holding onto tree trunks being blown randomly on the...

28 October, 2017 - 01:51 ancient-origins

Earliest Known Marine Navigation Tool Revealed with Scanning Technology

Details of the earliest known marine navigation tool, discovered in a shipwreck, have been revealed thanks to state-of-the-art scanning technology at WMG, University of Warwick. Professor Mark...

17 November, 2016 - 03:46 ancient-origins

How the 1,000-Year-Old Mystery of the Druze People’s Origin Was Solved

For 1,000 years, the mysterious origin of the Druze people – who live almost exclusively in the mountains of Syria, Lebanon and Israel – has captivated linguists, historians, and sociologists. There...

27 October, 2016 - 14:51 Clyde Winters

Did the Portuguese Have Secret Knowledge about Brazil Before the Treaty of Tordesillas?

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...

3 August, 2016 - 03:43 Mark Miller

The Remarkable Ancient Navigation System of the Marshall Islands

People were navigating long distances between islands in the Pacific for at least 2,000 years. How did they do it without astrolabes, sextants or modern satellite positioning technology? One group,...

Vikings. Summer in the Greenland coast circa year 1000.

5 June, 2016 - 14:56 William James Veall

Remote Sensing Satellite Uncovers Astonishing New Evidence of Viking Presence in Newfoundland, Canada

Ancient Origins Guest Writer, William James Veall, is far afield from his usual research concerning Trans-Oceanic visitations to South America. On this occasion he turns his attention towards the...

20 May, 2016 - 21:31 XpoKolon

End of the Enigmatic Christopher Columbus: A Man at Last Emerges to Eradicate the Myth

History is a record of the past – sculptured by omissions, interlarded with distortions, brazen lies and innocent befuddlement – forming an amalgam that's often stubbornly resistant to analysis. For...

22 February, 2016 - 14:49 dhwty

Songlines: Mapping the Journeys of the Creation Ancestors in Australia

Songlines (known also as dreaming tracks) are believed by the Aboriginal people of Australia to be the journeys taken by the creation ancestors (or creator-beings) across the land during the Dreaming...

30 January, 2016 - 13:12 ancient-origins

Did the Vikings use crystal sunstones to discover America?

By Stephen Harding Ancient records tell us that the intrepid Viking seafarers who discovered Iceland, Greenland and eventually North America navigated using landmarks, birds and whales, and little...

Wooden fragment discovered in Uunartoq, Greenland, in 1948, which is believed to be a sun-compass used to determine direction

26 March, 2014 - 22:07 aprilholloway

New study reveals Vikings could navigate after dark using sun-compass and mythical sunstone

The Vikings have been reputed to be remarkable seafarers who would confidently head into unexplored waters. Now a team of researchers from Hungary and Sweden claim to have a clue as to how the Norse...

25 October, 2013 - 12:14 johnblack

The Discovery that Revealed Ancient Humans Navigated the Seas 130,000 Years Ago

It was a few years ago that a Greek-American archaeological team made a startling discovery – they found the oldest indications of seafaring and navigation in the world, in an area called Plakia on...

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.

One Hundred Thousand Adams and Eves?

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

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

Where are Ashkenazi Jews from? Their Origins May Surprise You

The origins of human beings according to ancient Sumerian texts

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?

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

The Man Who Stopped a Desert Using Ancient Farming

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

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

The Dark Underworld of the Paris Catacombs

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

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

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

Our Mission

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.

The goal of Ancient Origins is to highlight recent archaeological discoveries, peer-reviewed academic research and evidence, as well as offering alternative viewpoints and explanations of science, archaeology, mythology, religion and history around the globe.

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By bringing together top experts and authors, this archaeology website explores lost civilizations, examines sacred writings, tours ancient places, investigates ancient discoveries and questions mysterious happenings. Our open community is dedicated to digging into the origins of our species on planet earth, and question wherever the discoveries might take us. We seek to retell the story of our beginnings.