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Other Artifacts

Other Artifacts covers many items which have been recovered from the past and give us insights into ancient human worlds. From loaded Roman dice to the Shroud of Turin, these items help tell the stories of the varied culture and everyday lives of our ancestors. 

Dendera light relief, Temple of Hathor, Dendera, Egypt

The Dendera Light: Myths, Tests and Truth

The Dendera light is a particularly controversial topic since it is not exactly an artifact of potential ancient technology, but the possible depiction of such an artifact on a wall of one of the...
Lewis Chessmen

The Missing Pieces: Unraveling the History of the Lewis Chessmen

In the early 1800s, on a golden Hebridean beach, the sea exposed an ancient treasure cache: ninety-two game pieces carved of ivory and the buckle of the bag that once contained them. Seventy-eight...
Cleopatra’s Needle: The Story Behind the Obelisks

Cleopatra’s Needle: The Story Behind Three Awe-Inspiring Obelisks

Cleopatra’s Needle is the name shared by three ancient Egyptian obelisks – one in New York City, one in London, and one in Paris. However, each comes from a different Egyptian site and none may have...
Viking jewelry and sword representations on fur

Viking-Era Jewelry: Revealing an Intricate Cultural History of the Ancient Norsemen

When you think of ancient Vikings, the first thing that pops into your mind is probably not jewelry, right? The picture that forms in the mind of most people is one of savages with long sharp spears...
Moldavite, green vitreous silica rock found in South Bohemia             Source: KPixMining/ Adobe Stock

The Cintamani Stone - A Truly Powerful Gem or a Humble Philosophy?

The Cintamani Stone, or Chintamani, long sought by treasure hunters, has captured the imagination of man through the ages as tales of this wish-fulfilling jewel have spread around the world. The...
Bird flying over Sigiriya / Lion Rock in Sri Lanka.         Source: Givaga / Adobe stock

How Sigiriya’s Ancient Connections Question Dogmatic World History

Sigiriya - literally translating to ‘Lion Rock’, pales in comparison to its famed Egyptian counterpart - not through a lack of sheer, grandiose scale, it is by no means unimpressive in either size or...
Representation of a female Viking magic practitioner

Vestiges of the Vikings: Magic Buried in a Viking Woman's Grave

Murky, elusive and undefined, the religion of the pre-Christian Vikings has long been subject to debate. Contemporary texts of their spiritual worship do not survive, and the later records that do...
Blue Babe

Blue Babe: Would You Eat 36,000-year-old Bison Meat?

The Alaskan Gold Rush, which began around the end of the 19th century, brought many miners and prospectors to this American state. During their mining operations, many miners have come across the...
Beyond the Pyramid Ramp: Unravelling Egypt’s Most Elusive Enigma

Beyond the Pyramid Ramp: Unravelling Egypt’s Most Elusive Enigma

The mystery of how the Pyramids of Giza in Egypt were built continues to elude scholars, even in the 21 st century. As famed Egyptologist Flinders Petrie records in his The Pyramids and Temples of...
The Kaaba, Mecca, Saudi Arabia

The Kaaba Black Stone: A Holy Stone from Outer Space?

Every day, five times a day, Muslims across the world face the holy site of Mecca and pray. Mecca is believed to be the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad but when followers visit the site, it is not...
Does the Buache Map show Antarctica without ice?

The Buache Map: A Controversial Map That Shows Antarctica Without Ice

The Buache Map is an 18th century map commonly claimed to accurately depict the continent of Antarctica before it was buried by ice. By extension, it has been claimed that this map is evidence that...
Investigating the enigmatic Lady of Elche has revealed new links with an Indian goddess. Source:        SoniaBonet / Adobe stock

Spain’s Lady of Elche Reveals New Links with Indian Goddess

Many of us have heard of the famous Lady of Elche and are intrigued with her mystifying appearance, and the strange enigma surrounding her origins. In reality not a whole lot is known about the bust...
Helmet of the ancient Greek warrior Miltiades the Younger

The Helmet of Miltiades, Symbol of a Famous Ancient Greek Warrior

When a magnificent helmet was recovered from the ruins of the temple of Zeus researchers couldn't believe their eyes. It is very rare to find an item which belonged to a famous warrior of the ancient...
The oldest board game in the world, the Royal Game of Ur.   Source: Shriram Rajagopalan / CC BY 2.0

Play the Oldest Board Game in the World: Royal Game of Ur - Part 2

In the first part of this article, we attempted to unravel the mystery symbolism on the oldest board game in the world - the Royal Game of Ur. The Heliopolitan creation myth was used to explain how...
Detail of Ornament from Panagyurishte Gold Treasure, Archaeological Museum, Plovdiv, Bulgaria      Source: CC BY-SA 2.0

How The Thracian Panagyurishte Treasure Changed Bulgaria’s History

The Panagyurishte Treasure is a set of gold vessels from Panagyurishte, a town in the southern Bulgarian province of Pazardzhik. The treasure was discovered by accident during the 20 th century. The...
The bizarre face of one of the Mont’e Prama Giants. Source: Author provided

The Mont’e Prama Giants: A Massive Archaeological Mystery

1974, Sinis region, Sardinia (Oristano): the plow of a farmer being blocked by a piece of stone marked the beginning of a series of excavations in the area of Mont'e Prama, near the village of Cabras...
The Acropolis Athens (where the cyclopean wall can be found) during sunset.             Source: sea and sun / Adobe stock

The Acropolis' Cyclopean Wall, Sages and Our Deeply Connected Past

The Athenian Acropolis . This rocky citadel sits alone, striking out imposingly against the backdrop of the dry, blue Mediterranean sky. Towering 490 feet (150 meters) over the modern cityscape, the...
Kosher Female Figurines in Judah During The Biblical Period?

Kosher Female Figurines in Judah During The Biblical Period?

Israeli archeologist Dr. Aaron Greener asks “what are clay female figurines doing in Judah during the biblical period?” My non-archeologist answer is; they represent kosher (suitable for religious...
Detail of The Boxer at Rest, Greek Hellenistic bronze sculpture of a sitting nude boxer at rest. Credit: giorgio / Adobe Stock

Boxer at Rest: The Most Iconic Ancient Bronze Statue in the World

The Boxer at Rest is a bronze sculpture from the Hellenistic period , the most iconic ancient bronze statue in the world. When it was discovered in Rome during an excavation in the 19th century it...
History through a lens – the importance of questioning history.

The Importance of Questioning History: From Malta to the Dead Sea Scrolls

According to George Orwell, Sir Walter Raleigh stopped writing his History of the World after he was unable to identify the cause of the scuffle and murder that took place outside his cell in the...
Left: Front angle of the reconstructed Bull Headed Lyre found in the Sumerian Royal Tombs of Ur in Mesopotamia, c. 2500 BC. Source: Penn Museum

Satire in Mesopotamia: Unravelling the Bull Headed Lyre of Ur

Many of us tend to think that the people of early cultures were less sophisticated than us. The wealthiest people may have lived lives of luxury with gold and slaves, but admittedly we cannot really...
Stone Age clothing suggests our ancestors were more interested in comfort than style.

Stone Age Clothing: Function Over Fashion

One of the defining periods of early humans and their development is the Stone Age . This long era of our earliest history lasted for roughly 3.4 million years, and gradually ended between 8500 BC to...
Ancient Egyptian eye makeup was protective and poisonous

Ancient Egyptian Makeup: Beauty and Protection with Poison

It’s sort of like the evil eye , but in reverse: the good eye, brought on by an application of lead-based kohl makeup that was unknowingly poisonous to ancient Egyptians but also had anti-microbial...
Scene on the Gundestrup Cauldron. Source: British Museum

The Gundestrup Cauldron Decoded - With a Tantric Twist

All the hammered figures on the silver vessel known as the Gundestrup cauldron obviously mean something. Found dismantled in a peat bog in Denmark in 1891, this mysterious vessel continues to puzzle...

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