For the ancient people living on the Hawaiian Islands, kapu was a major factor in their day-to-day lives. Kapu was a system of laws that governed political and religious affairs as well as lifestyle...
If the apparitions which are said to have been witnessed at Fatima in 1917 had taken place centuries earlier they might have been described as Fairy encounters or visions of spirits and demons. Today...
Ahuitzotl was a tlatoani (meaning ‘speaker’) of the city of Tenochtitlan, and the eighth ruler of the Aztec Empire. This emperor reigned from 1486 AD to 1502 AD, a period which is regarded by some...
New evidence has emerged that suggests ancient surgeons in China were drilling or scraping holes in people’s heads more than 3,500 years ago. The process, known as trepanation, was used in various...
A crew of facial reconstruction experts have successfully recreated the face of a male who lived in the Biblical city of Jericho. The project was based on an advanced analysis of the Jericho Skull -...
Alexander the Great was apparently fascinated with everything that could be seen as a symbol of power. Stories about his interest in animals are well known too. He was probably intrigued by other...
Mexico is seeing a renewed interest in the traditional alcoholic beverage known as pulque, a milky drink made from the sap of the agave, whose origins go back thousands of years. Although the ancient...
Over the last two centuries, Egyptologists have proposed a host of certainties on Egyptian burial customs with the study of abundant literature found within the tombs, built during the Ancient and...
The Bilingual-Mayan inscription of Comalcalco and decipherment of the La Venta celts and Olmec iconography allows one to understand much about the ancient Olmec religion and its cult associations...
A team of specialists at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo, Japan have recreated the pensive face of a European missionary. The man died in Tokyo in 1714 while he was kept in prison...
The city of Megiddo is well-known from ancient texts, but it was overlooked for many years. Over the centuries, people had forgotten whether Megiddo was a real city, or just a legend from the past...
Biologists and other academics have long debated whether there was malaria in ancient Rome, and recent analysis of teeth of human remains from the time has confirmed it, says a story just published...
Ancient Etruscan deities continue to puzzle researchers. Unveiling the truth about their cults and positions in the pantheon took decades, yet they still protect some of their secrets. One of the...
If you think that collecting artifacts that belonged to famous people is a modern domain, you are wrong. The idea of idols has been popular since the beginning of human civilization, and people have...
With Christmas almost upon us, there will be plenty of frenzied present shopping and meal planning. Haven’t made that Christmas cake yet? Fear not. If you were preparing the festive meal 600 years...
The Villa of the Papyri is the name given to a private house that was uncovered in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum. This city, along with nearby Pompeii, is perhaps best remembered for its...
“A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious...
It is conceivable that 5 th or early 6 th century humans, whose remains were recently excavated at Glastonbury in England, may have known King Arthur or St. Bridget—two towering figures of early...
The Song of Seikilos is the oldest complete surviving music composition in the world engraved in a marble stele that served as a flower stand. The beautiful composition, also known as the ‘Seikilos...
A valuable collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts was returned to its motherland by the US government in a clampdown on criminal gangs smuggling cultural treasures. Among the ancient artifacts was...
Anahita was a goddess associated with water, fertility, wisdom, warfare, and eventually the planet Venus. During the Achaemenid dynasty in Persia, she became incorporated into the Zoroastrian...
CHRISTIANS TO THE LIONS! rang without end through all quarters of the city. So writes Henryk Sienkiewicz in his novel Quo Vadis (1895). By the end of the 19th century, the image of cowering...
There is scarcely any concrete information about the man widely credited with the foundation of medieval Scotia, the precursor to today’s Scotland. There are facts about battles that occurred and...
There is an elaborate silver sarcophagus overlaid with silver plaques in a church in Croatia. Legends say that the remains of Saint Simeon are inside it. The chest is protected by UNESCO and it is...
