Last month a beet farmer in the Czech Republic uprooted an ornate Bronze Age gold artifact. It was well preserved in mud and the anonymous farmer photographed the golden treasure then sent the images...
Amber, or succinite as a mineralogist might call it, hails from simple beginnings. It is simply fossilized tree sap. For something so humble, it has managed to captivate the human imagination for...
Using a scanning and imaging technology with broad applications in the archaeological field, an international team of researchers discovered fresh and eye-opening details about a famous Maya...
Tlaltecuhtli was a Mesoamerican earth goddess predominantly worshiped by the Aztec people. In most religions, fertility goddesses are depicted as the culture's epitome of beauty, like Aphrodite of...
We’re back in Turkey for the second time this week. Having told the story of the excavation of the oldest church in the world, now we are covering the ancient Roman “Jovial skeleton”. Earlier this...
The ancient world had some impressive military forces. For example, Egypt was famed for its chariots and Greece for its navy. The Romans? They were famous for their foot troops, the legionaries. Yet...
The astounding journeys of John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood to Central America in 1839 to 1842 introduced the ancient, unrecognized Maya civilization to the rest of the world. Their life-...
A rare collection of silver objects believed to be from the Viking Age (8th-11th century) has been discovered in central Norway’s Stjørdal, near Trondheim. Buried barely a few centimeters below the...
The closed eyes and uncannily peaceful expressions of death masks are frozen in time, and show us a side of royalty, of military and political masters, of profound thinkers and artists, and of the...
Archaeologists in Sweden have discovered a Viking Age burial with bear claws and two swords that look to have served as grave markers. The two Viking Age swords were found by archaeologists...
Biblical accounts of ancient military campaigns against the kingdoms of Judah and Israel have been confirmed by archaeologists in a very interesting new study. By recording geomagnetic fields in 21...
These days, it seems that if an author wants to go straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list, all they need to do is release a tell-all memoir or biography aimed at a famous...
These days, sex is everywhere. It's in our books, films, songs, TV shows, and now, even our history articles. Although some countries still impose strict rules upon sex, the fact is most western...
As reported in the journal Frontiers of Medicine , a team of German scientists from the Academic Clinic Munich-Bogenhausen used medical procedures and historical research to identify a 17th century...
Behind every successful man stands an ambitious woman, the saying goes, more-so if she is a blood-relative of Alxander the Great, and a warrior. Claiming descent from Herakles, the son of Zeus,...
What is thought to be a Roman road, potentially dating back 2,000 years, has been uncovered in a field in Worcestershire in the UK. An expert has assessed it to likely be a cobbled ford, and the...
Rowing out to a swimming spot on the Glomma River with his father, 10-year-old Erik Briskerud noticed what looked like a root in a sandbar. To his delight, the object that he unearthed turned out to...
Which came first: the chicken or the egg? If God created the universe, then who created God? If nothing existed before the Big Bang, then what created the cataclysm? The laws of the universe dictate...
A one-of-a-kind golden sword pommel was discovered by a metal detectorist in Scotland in 2019. Depicting a rare mix of Christian symbols with mythological creatures, the treasure has just been valued...
The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) was the most recent time in Earth’s history when the ice sheets were at their greatest extent, with the decline starting somewhere around 15,000-14,000 years ago. At...
Archaeologists in Turkey have excavated the “world’s first church.” Within late Roman-era chambers they discovered smashed clay offering vessels which once held holy water. The team of Turkish...
“Then Zeus no longer held back his might; but straight his heart was filled with fury and he showed forth all his strength. From Heaven and from Olympus he came forthwith, hurling his lightning: the...
The religion of Buddhism has several sacred icons, but one of the most sacred is the famous Emerald Buddha. Housed in a temple named after it, the Emerald Buddha is an essential aspect of Buddhist...
Throughout its millennia long existence, the illustrious city of Rome has been invaded many times, and changed hands just as frequently. The Gauls, Goths, Vandals, and Normans have all been...
