Pliny the Elder claimed Emperor Nero consumed the last stalk of silphion, which was believed to have gone extinct almost 2000 years ago. But now, a Turkish professor claims to have identified the...
Lavender is one of the most well-known plants throughout the world. It is popular in gardening, baking, cleaning, and medicine. The soft purple flowers have been around for a few thousand years and...
Desertification is a serious problem facing numerous countries in the world today. Various measures have been taken to counter the negative effects, with some providing better results than others. A...
The massive Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city site of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia, Turkey was a flourishing center between 7100 BC and 5700 BC, and it attained the status of a UNESCO World Heritage...
When it comes to plants with powerful medical applications Asia can be called the ‘traditional home.’ However, this is not the case when it comes to opium poppies, for new research has shown their...
Bronze Age food, plant and cereal remains, from a mining site in Austria dating to the 11th - 9th century BC have been studied and the scientists found no evidence of food processing. They suspect...
For the first time ever, scientists have identified a non-tobacco plant in ancient Maya drug containers. The researchers say the plant residues suggest that the Maya found a way to make tobacco...
For thousands of years, the date palm was a staple crop. In the Kingdom of Judea it was a source of food, shelter, medicine, and shade. But the plant went extinct due to waves of conquest and...
Why were certain plants raised from mere utility to reverence in the collective consciousness of various populations from different cultures? This elevation from purely physical use to the realm of...
American researchers have used ground-breaking technologies to make discoveries about Native American smoking habits . They have, for the first time, found traces of a non-tobacco plant in a pipe...
The earliest human inhabitants of the Amazon created thousands of artificial forest islands as they tamed wild plants to grow food, a new study shows. The discovery of the mounds is the latest...
A new botanical scientific study on ginkgo trees highlights the species’ hyper-charged defenses and apparent escalation towards “immortality.” Native to China , G inkgo biloba , also known as the...
His 5,300-year-old mummy contained traces of 75 plant species and reveal that Ötzi (Otzi) the Iceman climbed through the Schnalstal valley in Italy. The naturally mummified, 5,300-year-old corpse is...
With innovations appearing in our lives seemingly every day it seems that new breakthroughs in science are the only ones we trust. New is always considered better. With this prevalent thinking those...
Evidence which shows that ancient Egyptians had already crossed the Atlantic 3,000 years ago, long before Columbus in 1492, comes not only from the mimicking of cultural traditions as seen in Peru...
As the Bronze Age grew old, some of its oral traditions were recorded by poets with gods in their quills and drugs in their gardens. The Odyssey and the Vedas include verses still recited today that...