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Ancient Origins Premium offers a wealth of knowledge and a variety of learning methods (articles, eBooks, webinars, expeditions and more) that will help you embark on a journey you will never forget!

King Arthur statue at Tingagel (Deriv/ CC0)

Real World Locations, Where Myth Meets Reality

Mythology presented in books, arts, cartoons and movies have subliminally forged impressions of mythical castles, magical mountains and enchanted forests in people’s minds, but many of the places...
Return to the Convent by Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala (1868) Carmen Thyssen Museum (Public Domain)

Mockery of the Crucifixion: The Sacred Donkey and the Cross

In 1857 in a cell of the ruins of Imperial Palace on the Palantine Hill in Rome, a curious graffiti representing a crucified man ( corpus humanum... suffigitur in cruce ) but with the head and ears...
The Capture of Atahualpa. Juan B. Lepiani,  (1864-1932)(Public Domain)

God’s Devils: The Men Who Conquered South America

From the moment Christopher Columbus found land previously unknown to Europe in 1492, thousands of men came to the New World seeking their fortunes and for two centuries they explored and conquered...
Cleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners by Alexandre Cabanel (1887) (Public Domain)

Poison Paranoia: Mythical Antidotes of Ancient Alchemists

Of all the ways to murder someone poisoning must be the most underhanded and downright evil way to proceed. The whole art of poisoning, as it is often referred too, was developed as a stealth way to...
Phaèdra by Alexandre Cabanel (1818) Musee Fabre. (Public Domain)

Fields of Mourning, Where Grieving Love-Sick Women Retire

Hidden deep within the bowels of the earth and ruled by the god Hades and his wife Persephone, the ancient Greek Underworld was the kingdom of the dead, the sunless, cold and shadowy place where the...
Sts Savinus and Cyprian are tortured (circa 1100) Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe (Public Domain)

Horrific Prolonged Capital Punishments in Ancient Times

All are familiar with the burning of witches and criminals – who often died by asphyxia or cardiac arrest before their flesh was consumed by the flames - but since antiquity the cruel ingenuity of...
God statue in traditional old oriental Chinese temple in Taiwan (Chinese Translation on lantern : name of the Chinese god of sea, Matsu) (voyata/Adobe Stock)

Lei Gong and the Ministry of Thunder and Storms

Thunderstorms were one of the most powerful and frightening natural phenomena encountered by the ancients. However, it paradoxically also brought life-giving rain. The universal experience of thunder...
Thetis receiving the arms of Achilles from Hephaestus by Peter Paul Rubens (1630)     Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Public Domain)

Ancient Artificial Intelligence: The Mechanical Messiah and Other Automatons

It may not be long before Artificial Intelligence creates access to God via modern technology, however during the 19th century, a spiritualist by the name of John Murray Spear was inspired to build a...
Scenes from Jerusalem (CC0)

17 Years in Tibet: Where Did Jesus Wander?

“ Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was 12 years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his...
Indian woman wearing feather headdress with lion.  (Jozefklopacka/ Adobe Stock)

Adena-Hopewell Cosmology, Community, and Identity at the Robbins Mound

The first people to construct widespread burial mounds and earthworks in the Ohio Valley were participants in the Adena Culture, which began around 500 BC and continued until about 300 AD. Sometime...
Carved metallic plates from Father Crespi’s collection of the Tayos Caves strewn on the floor in a dilapidated old building. Credit: Ancient-Origins.net

The Elusive Metal Library of the Tayos Caves

Legend has it that a metal library, containing valuable plates of inscriptions, recording an ancient history of some 250 000 years ago, written by an advanced previous civilization, is hidden in the...
There were two main goals to the Tayos expedition 2019 – exploring cave entrances and discovering more about the rock formations. Source: All images are copyright Ancient Origins.

Cueva de los Tayos Expedition 2019: Finding Answers in Amazonia

The Cueva de Los Tayos Expedition 2019 was an adventure no one will forget! Our expedition had two main goals – to find more cave entrances and to solve the mystery of the rock formations we called...
Galata Bridge, ca. 1895 (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Istanbul: Gateway to History, Memory and Magic

For a moment, if one could conjure up in one’s mind's eye Istanbul, a city of magic, mystery, strategic geographical importance, and historic consequence: Standing on the Galata Bridge, facing north...
Depiction of Nyi Blorong ( circa 1879) Tropenmuseum (Public Domain)

Nyi Blorong Commander of the Southern Seas and Bringer of Wealth

One afternoon in the 1960s, the people of Magelang in Java, Indonesia, gathered on the edge of the main road which connects Magelang and Yogyakarta and sounded anything they could find which could...
The petroglyph with swastikas, Gegham mountains, Armenia  Կարեն Թոխաթյան /CC BY-SA 4.0)

Esoteric Nazi Spiritualism Backtracked to Odin and the Rune Ar

It would be difficult to find someone who did not know anything about the Nazis, whose reign ended with the outright slaughter of approximately six million Jews, whom they regarded as subhuman, and...
Illustration of Neanderthal Man Cut Deer with Stone Tool (Roni / Adobe Stock)

Complex Neanderthal Technology Driven by Paleo Dietary Needs

Modern man’s closest human relatives were Neanderthals - that famed ancient species pronounced with a ’t’ rather than a ‘th’, - with their defining large faces, angled cheek bones and broad noses...
The Tuccia Vestal by Louis Hector Leroux (1874) (Public Domain)

The Precarious Fates of Rome’s Vestal Virgins

The fate of Rome depended upon the chastity of the Vestal virgins and their transgressions could lead to live entombment. In the first century BC, Marcus Licinius Crassus , one of the richest and...
The Wild Hunt of Odin by Peter Nicolai Arbo (1872) (Public Domain)

The Man Who Was Wednesday: The Norse Origin of Christmas

Christmastide traditions are a glorious amalgamation of customs and practices that have been appropriated wholesale from other belief systems, primarily those of Ancient Rome. But Rome is only part...
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary by Henryk Siemiradzki  (1886) (Public Domain)

Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ Tower of Wisdom

The ‘repentant prostitute’ or the ‘penitent whore’, this view of Mary Magdalene was cemented in Western ecclesiastical tradition by Gregory the Great in his sermons in the sixth Century, conflating...
Remains from the funerary pyre of Philip II. (Macedonian Heritage / CC BY-SA 3.0)

Orphic Masks and Burial Rituals: Unmasking King Philip II of Macedon

That is the gods’ work, spinning threads of death through the lives of mortal men, and all to make a song for those to come. Homer The ancient Greek world was steeped in superstition and...
Chinese Bronze Mirror (CC BY-SA 1.0)

Unraveling the Miracle of Chinese Magic Mirrors

An ancient oriental miracle, far removed from the religious sphere, and from the western concept of ‘miracle,’ manifested around first century AD China to those who 'had faith', where explanations...
Venetian Carnival Mask of Golden Sun and Silver Moon by allasimacheva. (Adobe Stock)

Moon Tear Hunters and the Quest for Ancient Silver

When the American author, diplomat, inventor, physicist and politician, Benjamin Franklyn, said: “ Genius without education is like silver in the mine , ” he encapsulated an ancient thirst shared by...
Medea by Artemisia Gentileschi (1620)(Public Domain)

Medea, Murderous Mother or Defiant Defender of the Oikos?

In his Argonautica , ancient Greek author Apollonius of Rhodes provides a rather romantic introduction of Medea as a young woman desperately in love. Unfortunately, this introduction quickly takes on...
Kurdish Warriors by Frank Feller (1898) (Public Domain)

Are Zeus’ Curetes the Ancestors of Modern Kurds?

The hypothesis that there is a relationship between the ancient Curetes of Greek mythology and the Kuri or Kuronians, a tribe of warriors and navigators of the Baltic world, where the medieval Danish...

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