The Icelandic Sagas tell of Erik the Red: exiled for murder in the late 10th century he fled to southwest Greenland, establishing its first Norse settlement. The colony took root, and by the mid-12th...
Maritime archaeologists have made an astonishing discovery off the Kent coast in England. While investigating an almost three-hundred-year-old shipwreck they found some coins that had been sewn into...
Money has come a long way in 5,000 years. While people once bartered for the items they desired, today people are buying and trading in cryptocurrencies like the bitcoin. In ancient times, people did...
Stone tools found with a 5,300-year-old frozen mummy from Northern Italy reveal how alpine Copper Age communities lived, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ursula...
The Guardian Newspaper has reported a remarkable find in Cornwall in the United Kingdom. A slab of slate has been discovered during an extraction at the famous Tintagel historic site on the Atlantic...
New research published in the journal Science Advances overturns more than a century of thought about the source of turquoise used by ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica, the vast region that...
Taking political control is often a violent affair, but tactics, knowledge of local customs and beliefs, and trickery can also be used to get an ambitious leader’s foot in the door. New research on...
The Minoans employed advanced construction methods using natural materials to create seaworthy composite ship hulls which would not be out-of-place in a modern-day marina. The construction method...
An exceptional silk shirt made by a skilled Sogdian craftsman is going up for auction at the end of April. The honey-golden color of the silk is decorated with ducks wearing flowing scarves while...
A new study shows that animal domestication was not only a question of food for the ancient Maya. Remains of a variety of species, including small dogs, large cats, and some turkeys, suggest the Maya...
The first evidence of human life in the Olorgesailie Basin comes from about 1.2 million years ago. For hundreds of the thousands of years, people living there made and used large stone-cutting tools...
The Silk Road is arguably the most famous long-distance trade route in the ancient world. This trade route connected Europe in the West with China in the East, and allowed the exchange of goods,...
Iran’s Arg-e Bam, Bam Citadel, once stood as a pillar of longevity in the Middle East. Created upon the beginnings of the Achaemenid Empire (6th-4th centuries BC), and building on the commercial...
An extremely well-preserved 1,900-year-old bronze mirror has been unearthed in Fukuoka, Japan. The artifact stands out for its fantastic condition and an intriguing description engraved on its...
Vikings in history and popular culture are known as strong and dangerous, bloodthirsty killers, raiders, pillagers – pirates of land and sea. But who were the Vikings, and what were the causes of...
Vikings struck terror into the hearts of many in Europeans—and their reputation still lingers today when you ask a person to describe them. The answers given are that they were violent, hairy brutes...