The UK now has a female prime minister and Elizabeth II has been queen for more than six decades, but few would associate Anglo-Saxon England with powerful women. Nearly 1,100 years ago, however,...
Neanderthals treating toothaches? A discovery of multiple toothpick grooves on teeth and signs of other manipulations by a Neanderthal of 130,000 years ago are evidence of a kind of prehistoric...
Stonehenge stands on the windswept Salisbury Plain reminding us of the engineering, astronomical, and mathematical skills of our distant ancestors. Undoubtedly, Stonehenge is recognised worldwide as...
When the ancient Olympics began, the greatest athletes in Greece gathered before a statue of Zeus Horkios, the god of oaths. Laid before its feet would be the freshly cut meat of a boar sacrificed by...
After using many different scientific approaches for a study appearing in the July issue of Royal Society Open Science , a team of researchers concluded that humans lived throughout the year in the...
Christian-Georges Schwentzel / The Conversation Somewhere in Iraq, the tomb raider Nick Morton (a never-ageing Tom Cruise) flies over the desert. This is where Egyptian queen Ahmanet lies in her tomb...
Santa Claus, Keebler cookies, and overloaded shelves. When one speaks of elves, the mind most often goes to those who work for Santa or Keebler, or those which hide from little children in the middle...
Timur, historically known as Tamerlane (1336 - 1405), was a Turco-Mongol conqueror and the founder of the Timurid Empire in Persia and Central Asia. After having conquered much of the Near East,...
Sillustani is a pre-Incan burial ground on the shores of Lake Umayo, about an hour’s drive from Puno in Peru, which is a large city on the shore of Lake Titicaca. The tombs, which are built above...
Ancient Egypt is one on the oldest civilizations in the world and it was also home to many of the ancient world’s greatest achievements. Without their creativity and innovative approach to the world...
In his poems of the Iliad, the Greek Philosopher Homer introduces us to the mythical city of Troy, which remained a curiosity to many until the late 1870s when Heinrich Schliemann, on a hunch, began...
Just as people at the world’s oldest known temple site in Southeast Turkey began to make the transition from hunter-gatherers to a more settled lifestyle, they also started a “skull cult” in which...
A team of archaeologists have recently excavated the remains of a church on Lindisfarne (Holy Island) in Northumberland. Experts describe the newly discovered church as one of the most significant...
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a 3,000-year-old altar to the sun in North West China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Experts say that the altar resembles the heaven-worshipping...
A team of archaeologists has conducted a geophysical survey that has revealed what appears to be a cairn cemetery at the prehistoric ritual area around Bryn Celli Ddu on the Welsh island of Anglesey...
Long before modern warfare, there was a time of knights in shining armor atop equally armored horses fighting for the hand of a maiden or in pitched battle. However, the weapons that these knights...
Timur, historically known as Tamerlane (1336 - 1405), was a Turco-Mongol conqueror and the founder of the Timurid Empire in Persia and Central Asia. Timur rose through the ranks by gaining the...
Even a touch can kill. The Visha Kanyas were supposedly poisonous young women who operated as executioners in ancient India. Any contact with these toxic ladies would mean death. However, no one can...
A medieval samurai text recently translated into English gives many practical tips on fighting an enemy and advises all warriors to be ‘pure of heart and in balance in their spirit’. Although...
From the beginning of time, those among us we now call artists have tried to capture in two dimensions what they saw of the real, three-dimensional world in which they lived. Almost from the very...
“The 'Moon of Nakhshab' was an artificial moon which Hakim Ibn-e 'Ata, known as Muqanna' (the Veiled One), caused to arise from the Pit of Nakhshab. This moon had been prepared by means of [magical]...
According to Wired , scientists believe that ancient Native Americans living in California made their own plastic water bottles. However, they probably didn’t know how toxic the manufacturing process...
Chapurukha Kusimba / The Conversation Sometimes you run across a grimy, tattered dollar bill that seems like it’s been around since the beginning of time. Assuredly it hasn’t, but the history of...
Every year on June 24, Cusco in Peru celebrates the Inti Raymi, a tribute festival to the venerated Inca Sun God Inti. As TRT World reports , the festival draws thousands of local and international...
