A rare lilac-colored amethyst seal has been discovered in an ancient sewer beneath Jerusalem. Depicting a bird holding a plant branch with five fruits with its feet, the engraved amethyst seal...
In 1879 Charles Darwin wrote a letter to his close friend, the botanist and explorer named Dr. Joseph Hooker. He expressed his annoyance at the puzzling mystery of how the first flowering plants...
The Shroud of Turin is believed by many to be the bloodstained burial cloth Jesus of Nazareth was wrapped in after his crucifixion. But skeptics say it is a forgery, or at best only a religious...
James Cook and his companions aboard the Endeavour landed at a harbour on Australia’s southeast coast in April of 1770. Cook named the place Botany Bay for “the great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and...
Scientists visiting Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic discovered something remarkable and fascinating . Led by Catherine LaFarge, a geologist from the University of Alberta in Edmonton (Canada...
Archaeologists discovered traces of hallucinogenic substances used over 3,000 years by the Philistines living in ancient Yavneh, Israel, revealing a drug culture that is believed to have revolved...
“That plant will save you from a poisonous snake bite,” my Kichwa guide, Pidru, pointed out as I tried to remove my boot from a foot of mud in the depths of the Amazon jungle in Ecuador. “And this...
Researchers at Washington State University and 13 other institutions have found that the arc of prehistory bends towards economic inequality. In the largest study of its kind, the researchers saw...
In the Bible, Genesis 2:7 is the first verse that tells us about the first man. It tells how God formed a man from the dust and blew the breath of life into him. The man was then placed in Eden where...
The landscape of the remote island of Socotra looks so foreign that it could almost pass as an alien planet. Its native flora is so rare and unique that the island looks like something out of a...
Far away on the remote island of Spitsbergen in the Artic Svalbard archipelago lies humanity’s fail-safe storage of seeds. With the threat of natural and man-made disasters looming in the future, the...
Hundreds of strange circular patches of ground where nothing grows can be found amongst the thick grass of the vast Namib desert. These bald spots apparently exist, and sometimes grow, for years...
Piece by piece, archaeologists are discovering evidence of creative engineering techniques practiced by innovative ancient peoples. One such example is making archaeological news headlines – the...
In 2014, archaeologists discovered ceramic containers used for cereal storage dating back 2,800 years in Cuvustepe Castle in Turkey. Incredibly, some preserved sesame and wheat seeds remained inside...
The battle against drugs and drug usage rages on today and for good reason. However, with the near constant limelight that the ‘drug war’ receives today, it can seem like the most common drugs have...
A community of cave dwellers in North Africa apparently resisted switching over to pure agriculture and instead continued gathering highly nutritional wild grass seeds and other wild plants for many...