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,...
A new study suggests that Ötzi the Tyrolean Iceman died of exposure to freezing temperatures in the Italian Alps. Researchers claim that his body and head injuries were most likely made during some...
An amazing find at an Ice Age site in San Diego, California may dramatically alter the accepted timeline for when early humans first reached North America. 130,000-year-old bones and teeth of a...
The Brazen Bull (known also as the ‘Bull of Phalaris’, the ‘Bronze Bull’ or the ‘Sicilian Bull’) was a type of ancient torture and execution device from ancient Greece. The story of the Brazen Bull...
Are we poised to discover an Amarna royal in a hitherto unimagined location that will rewrite history — or will this be the final nail in the coffin for the ‘double burial’ theory? It is quite...
The Vikings had a very bizarre tradition that might be totally unique: they buried their own homes. From the Bronze Age until the Viking Age, historians have noted that burial mounds were placed on...
Which came first in pre-human species’ communication and teamwork—larger brains or the folds and ridges of the brain that fostered language and empathy? Some scientists studying a possible human...
The cave located at Altamira was inhabited thousands of years ago and contains remarkable examples of sophisticated art from Prehistory. The first paintings appeared there most probably around 35600...
Persepolis is an ancient city that once served as the capital of the mighty Achaemenid Empire. Persepolis is the Greek name for ‘Parsa’, and both these names mean ‘Persian City’ or ‘City of the...
A team of archaeologists at Historic Jamestown is attempting to solve one of the biggest mysteries of the first English settlements in America: a knight’s gravestone that has been embedded into the...
The Greco-Persian wars lasted for more than half a century in some respects. Some date the war as being from 499-448 BCE while others date the conflict from 492-448 BCE. Either or, the war itself was...
St. Margaret of Antioch is a Christian saint venerated in both the Churches of the West and of the East. In the latter, she is known as Saint Marina the Great Martyr. Little is known for certain...
Every pilgrim who is traveling along the French route of the Camino de Santiago, going to Santiago de Compostela, will pass through the Ponferrada in the Spanish section. Most of them have no idea...
Chongye Valley is known also as Tibet’s Valley of the Kings. This site adjoins the Yarlung Valley (about 180 km (111.85 miles)) to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. The Chongye Valley is famed for its...
Orithyia was one of those dangerous women whose beauty was so often described by terrified and excited men that it became legendary. For centuries, the Amazons were believed to be nothing more than a...
Anyone familiar with Greek legends has heard of the Colchis Kingdom. It was to here that the band of heroes known as the Argonauts ventured in order to obtain the Golden Fleece, a symbol of authority...
It’s entered modern lore as a nightmare scenario for planet Earth: A huge asteroid or comet or a swarm of smaller comet fragments hits Earth and causes a major catastrophe. Now, scientists think they...
The most comprehensive study on the bones of Homo floresiensis, a species of tiny human discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, has found that they most likely evolved from an ancestor...
Johannes Kepler, a key figure in the scientific revolution and keen astrologer, paid the bills by writing horoscopes for the rich and famous. The namesake of NASA’s space observatory was a German...
Much is known about the ancient Mongol military and their incredible victories on the battlefield, but little is ever discussed about their arms, armor, horses, and logistics. What gear did they use...
A team of Italian researchers claim that they have discovered two relics belonging to Leonardo da Vinci, which could them help in tracing the DNA of the legendary polymath whose work epitomized the...
For a long time, medieval medicine has been dismissed as irrelevant. This time period is popularly referred to as the “Dark Ages,” which erroneously suggests that it was unenlightened by science or...
Dogs in Prehistory The early ancestors of Gray Wolves were a group of carnivores named the creodonts that roamed the northern hemisphere between 100 and 120 million years ago. About 55 million years...
The tomb of Cyrus the Great is the name given to a monument located in the ancient Persian city of Pasargadae. This city was founded by Cyrus, and served as the capital of the Achaemenid Empire until...
