In this opinion piece exploring proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, guest writer William James Veall challenges the view that Christopher Columbus was the first foreigner to set foot in the Americas by...
Archaeologists have made a remarkable discovery at Gebel el Silsila, a historic quarry site near Aswan on the River Nile, - a sacred temple used for four epochs of ancient Egyptian history spanning...
Read Part One At first, Zarathushtra preached among ordinary people on the streets but met harsh resistance from the conservative priesthood, and his teachings were dismissed. For twelve years he...
It is not every day that a team of divers and investigators stumbles upon the wreck of a 17 th century Spanish merchant ship. The Encarnación ( ‘ Incarnation’) was part of a fleet of Merchant Ships...
There was a time when the philosophy of oneness, one entity and one universal power emerged out of the polytheistic teachings. The Persian words goftare nik, pendare nik, kerdare nik meaning good...
In the early 1970s, a local guaquero (meaning ‘grave robber’), Florentino Sepúlveda, and his two sons Julio César and Jacobo, were said to have stumbled upon an ancient city in Colombia's Sierra...
The fear and stigma attached to the terrible disease of leprosy has endured for millennia. Answers have long been sought regarding this mysterious ancient ailment, and now archaeologists have...
About 8,000 years ago in southwestern Bulgaria, around the time agriculture, husbandry and pottery were emerging, people were consuming bone powder. In a new scholarly paper published in the...
The invention of the ancient sport of polo, called the King of Sports and the Sport of Kings, had been dated to the 6 th century B.C. in Persia, but that may be changing soon. Archaeologists have...
The Great Pyramids of Giza are among the most recognizable structures in the world today. Yet just south of the Egyptian border is a set of equally impressive pyramids that stand beautifully...
Ten years of scientific and archaeological investigation of the Bosnian pyramids have brought many exciting moments as well as dramatic turnovers which are seeking the redefining of our knowledge...
The Dikteon Cave is one of the most important and famous cult places of Minoan Crete. It is located in the high mountains on the island of Crete in Greece and is associated with the birthplace of the...
The mummy of an ancient Egyptian child was saved from a municipal dump and is set to go on display for the first time outside Paris. The 2,000-year-old mummified body and casket are thought to have...
Two stone epitaphs found within a 500-year-old gold-filled tomb discovered in Nanjing, China, tell a remarkable story about the tomb owner, a woman named Lady Mei. According to the tablets, Lady Mei...
Like many ancient poems and epic tales, the 13 th century saga of The Nibelungenlied, or "The Song of the Nibelungs", is based on both myth and history. Written by an unknown author, the tale remains...
The skeletons of more than 200 medieval Parisians have been moved for further study to a warehouse of the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research in a suburb north of Paris,...
A necropolis is being excavated at a veritable crossroads of ancient civilizations, in Sinop, Turkey. Workers found remnants of the 4 th century BC city of the dead while building a culture center in...
Carved bone pendants have been found at a prehistoric site in Alaska that may prove to be the very first known examples of artwork in the northern region of North America. Two pairs of pendants were...
A 2015 study revealed little variation in body height among Egyptian Pharaohs compared to the general population, signaling the presence of extensive inbreeding among the ancient Egyptian royalty...
In what is described as Egypt’s “dark secret,” a staggering 70 million mummified animals have been found in underground catacombs across Egypt, including cats, birds, rodents, and even crocodiles...
Australian Indigenous art is the oldest unbroken tradition of art in the world. It is so old in fact, that examples have been found that depict long extinct megafauna. One particular region, the...
New geophysical investigations into a stone circle discovered in 2007 in Dartmoor, southern England, show the stones were once standing and may have been arranged in a “sacred” circle with seven...
The ancient Greeks believed that many aspects of a person’s life were determined by the three mythical women known as Fates. These were three sister goddesses that appeared in Greek and Roman...
Local residents in the area of Zlatograd, Bulgaria, have uncovered an ancient bronze artifact that archaeologists have described as “the oldest children’s toy in Europe”. The supposed toy consists of...
![The wooden coffin of a mummified cat [left] and a CT scan revealing the ancient cat skeleton inside.](https://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/styles/teaser_optimized/public/field/image/wooden-coffin-of-a-mummified-cat.jpg?itok=gNhl4sQ4)
