The mythological Alcinous and his kingdom have remained one of the most mysterious and elusive topics of ancient Greek literature. Not much is known of this foreign monarch, or at least not much has...
Every year, western scholars look with wonder to the ancient mythologies, ruins, and histories of such places as Egypt, Greece, and the Near East. Due to the considerable efforts of professional and...
Anyone who has paid a visit to Rome will know that around just about every corner of the historic center lies a reminder of Rome’s glorious and inglorious history. Be it buildings, fountains, statues...
Do you have a talent in solving magical puzzles and manuscripts? Do you have a penchant for casting spells? Well, if that’s the case, Chicago's Newberry Library is offering the right job for you as...
Lane Eagles / The Conversation One could say the consequences of the planet’s warming climate can be seen on fashion week runways and the shelves of Anthropologie and H&M. Silhouettes shrink as...
There has been a lot of interest in our discovery of nearly-6m-year-old footprints on Crete, first reported by the The Conversation – suggesting that human ancestors could have roamed Europe at the...
In a small village northeast of Cambridge, near the most northern route of the ancient Icknield Way, a great 'dyke' emerges smoothly from the ground and rises to over two stories high. This...
2017 is a turning point in the history of Barbuda. Due to the devastation of Hurricane Irma, this small Caribbean island currently has no human inhabitants. As Ambassador Ronald Sanders, Antigua and...
Researchers would have never guessed what they would find inside a seven-foot-tall statue when it came crashing down the Peruvian cliffside in the Utcubamba valley in 1928. The sculpture was a...
The Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala has declared the excavation of a royal tomb pertaining to a mature man at the Classic Maya city of Waka' as the oldest royal tomb to be discovered at...
Over the centuries, many of the world’s natural mystics have succumbed to pogroms of elimination or the steady erosion of traditional practices – witches burnt at the stake, indigenous peoples forced...
Where do we come from? A normal life consists of being born into and then living within a world made up of material building blocks such as subatomic particles, atoms, protoplasm, flesh and blood...
An English architect by profession and self-trained in the discipline and studies of linguistics and ancient history, Michael Ventris would be the first to identify the Mycenaean written Linear B...
Ancient DNA recovered from fossils is a valuable tool to study evolution and anthropology. Yet ancient fossil DNA from earlier geological ages has not been found yet in any part of Africa, where it's...
The Ancient Greeks may have built sacred or treasured sites deliberately on land previously affected by earthquake activity, according to a new study by the University of Plymouth. Professor of...
Scientists claim to have traced the earliest example of one of the most significant conceptual breakthroughs in arithmetic to an ancient Indian text, known as the Bakhshali manuscript. The specific...
The Epic of Gilgamesh is widely recognized and frequently a required reading for world literature courses. The poem is considered a masterpiece in its own right, not just because it is the earliest...
The oldest evidence of food storage rituals has been found by researchers from the University of Haifa and the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) in Berlin during excavations at the prehistoric...
The Scythians were a mysterious and fascinating people. They were nomads and left no known writing, yet their elaborate burials and tattoos have given up some of their story. A new exhibition at the...
The myth of Brutus of Troy is well over a thousand years old, yet it continues to fascinate and current scholarship seeks to find new truths hidden in its mossy folds. John Clark’s excellent paper ‘...
There is a cunning and deadly device that used by armies in the past, and up to the present day. It’s a weapon mostly overlooked but is yet brilliantly effective—the caltrop. The caltrop (or calthrop...
Zhang Heng (78-139 AD) was a Chinese astronomer, mathematician, inventor, geographer, cartographer, artist, poet, statesman, and literary scholar from Nanyang, Henan Province, China. He is noted for...
This tiny ankle bone belonged to one of the earliest members of the primate family tree. The 52-million-year-old fossil suggests that the first primates were expert leapers. Discovered more than 30...
After 3,350 years, a Mycenaean-era nobleman’s tomb has been re-entered and his favored possessions have been seen by modern eyes. Archaeologists consider his burial an odd one, with grave goods and...