Scientists are perplexed at the origins and provenance of two very ancient and unusual Roman coins that turned up like a bad penny in the 20th century. A Quincussis - the correct scientific name of...
In the early ninth century an Irish warrior-priest Cormac mac Cuilennáin, who would become king, wrote Sanas Cormaic in which he presented the ancient creation myths of the Celts . In the early 20th...
One day in early August in the fourth century AD, something strange happened in Rome . Those who were outside braving the heat, walking on the Esquiline Hill would have glanced at the sky to notice a...
Scorpions have inhabited the Earth for over 400 million years. They were one of the first seabed evolved creatures to climb out of oceans onto land. Although older than the dinosaurs and despite many...
Every country in the world has a handful of mountains which demand central roles in tales of lost treasures and mysteries of a supernatural nature, but only Scotland can claim to have a mountain so...
Sumer, in Mesopotamia, was called ‘the land of civilized kings’. It reached its peak around 6,500 years ago when it had the distinction of being a very advanced civilization with a sophisticated...
Science fiction and laymen’s superstitions abound with the concept that the image of the killer is embedded in the retina of the victim. Thanatographia is the account of a person’s death experience...
The main halls and secured vaults of museums around the world are loaded with vast arrays of grotesque antique weapons, golden lined velvet robes, ceremonial swords and crowns, jewel encrusted...
The word ‘shaman’ conjures up images of Native American medicine men smoking peace pipes, dancing in a trance to drumming around a fire or African sangomas , adorned with leopard skin, throwing...
Approaching a subject such as lore about Merlin the Magician is to engage an old, old story that has been cast in poetry, history, music, art, and literature. Through it all is woven a story that has...
For 13 days in October of 1962, our civilization was poised on the edge of nuclear destruction. American president John F. Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev engaged in a faceoff. The world...
The smooth running of Korean royal households depended upon the unseen hands of gungnyeo; the seamstresses, cooks, chambermaids, water- and firewood bearers and other servants. Behind the scenes a...
‘The Company of Avalon’ was a group of monks who allegedly directed excavations at Glastonbury Abbey from behind the scenes, so far behind the scenes in fact from the ‘other side’. In the early 1900’...
The crowd waited expectantly at Malta’s ancient Mnajdra Temple for the spring equinox sun to peek out from behind a nearby hill. Suddenly the sun broke through the low-lying morning mist. Warmed by...
Since its discovery in a shipwreck near Greece in 1900, an ancient metallic astronomical clock, called the ‘Antikythera Mechanism’ still baffles scientists. Research articles on the clock offer loose...
In AD 897 the holy space of the Basilica of St John of Lateran, Rome , was violated by a truly sinister event inside the dark walls of the house of God. In the august presence of the Emperor Lamberto...
The King of the Beasts triumphs in Chinese mythology, albeit in many shapes and forms. Chinese artists combined different creatures’ attributes to create a composite beast, which they called pixiu (...
Why would knights be fighting snails? Medieval art is a complex weave of surreal, bizarre and sometimes disturbing imagery and artists took creative license to a whole new experimental level. With...
Half-human half-beast creatures are found loving and lusting, warring and whoring in myths and legends of nearly every, if not all, cultures in the world. Although many of them made their debut in...
Presumed innocent, yet dirty dark secrets are imbedded in the bedtime stories told to children. Fairy tales are magical narratives that pervade the young minds of children so deeply, leaving imprints...
Why would an ancient, folkloric, but non-Biblical, character such as a mermaid find its way into so many medieval European churches? And can such mermaid imagery and symbology be correlated with the...
First century AD Roman statesman and orator, Cicero’s claim that he had found Archimedes’ tomb may be refuted. In Greek mythology Ciane is a freshwater nymph, who tried to save Persephone from being...
As ancient Egyptian architects gazed up at the night sky and built the three pyramids of Giza based on the celestial plan of the Constellation of Orion , so millennia apart and at the other side of...
Considering that fanciful animals, which the Chinese collectively dub pixiu ( pi hsieh ), typically stem from a real creature, the question must be asked: Were there once horses with horns? Although...
