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Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

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Atlas was tasked with supporting the world on his shoulders. Source: rudall30 / Adobe Stock.

Atlas: The God with the World on His Shoulders

Atlas is one of the most famous Titans in Greek mythology. He is best-known for bearing the sky on his shoulders, a punishment inflicted on him by Zeus following the Titanomachy . Although Atlas’...
Everything is distinct in the shaman’s secret world. Source: Ammit /Adobe Stock

The Shaman’s Secret World: Living in Light and Darkness

Shamanism is described in Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy as a every ancient coherent system of esoteric beliefs and practices that attempt to organize and explain the interrelationship...
Portrait of Ferdinand Magellan and his ship Trinidad on postage stamp

500 Years Ago Today Magellan and Elcano Set Sail to Conquer the World

On August 10, 1519, King Charles of Spain watched naval officers Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano set sail to the ‘Spice Islands’, now the Maluku Islands in Indonesia. 239 brave men...
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Can You Name the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World are seven awe-inspiring monuments of classical antiquity that reflect the skill and ingenuity of their creators. The list, comprised by ancient Greek historians...
‘Crossing the River Styx’ (circa 1520-1524) by Joachim Patinir. Many ancient people imagined the edges of the earth as strange and magical places.

What Did Ancient Civilizations Believe Lay at The Edges of the Earth?

The first civilizations didn’t have satellites in the sky, mapping every inch of the world in real time. They only knew the parts of the world they’d seen. Everything beyond that, they had to imagine...
The famous Omphalos considered to be the center of the Universe for ancient Greeks, Delphi, Greece.

The Sacred Omphalos Stone, Navel of the World and Communicator of the Gods

An omphalos is a powerful symbolic artifact made from stone. Considered the ‘navel of the world’, the central point from which terrestrial life originated, an omphalos was an object of Hellenic...
Artist’s representation of Vanaheimr.

Where is Vanaheimr, Land of the Norse Nature Gods?

In a realm of nine worlds, one might assume that the gods would be satisfied with one. One world where they could live away from humans and watch over their antics as one might watch a TV show. In...
‘End of the World’ artistic representation.

Ancient Fears to Keep You Up at Night - The End Really, Really is Nigh

Historians often declare that at least 3500 end of world prophecies have appeared over the same number of years. And those are only the written ones! Eschatology is theology concerned with the final...
A depiction of a tree of life or axis mundi.

The Axis Mundi: Sacred Sites Where Heaven Meets Earth

What do Mount Fuji in Japanese culture, the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, Mecca in Islam, and the Black Hills for the Sioux all have in common? They are all examples of a belief in the axis...
The magical night sky

This Haunted World: You’re a Part of It, and You Have Been for Thousands of Years

Where do we come from? A normal life consists of being born into and then living within a world made up of material building blocks such as subatomic particles, atoms, protoplasm, flesh and blood...
Sean's Bar is located on Main Street, Athlone, on the West Bank of the River Shannon, and was originally known as Luain's Inn.

Quaffing Here For 11 Centuries: Sean’s Bar Claims Title of Oldest Pub in Ireland, Europe and Possibly the World

Sean’s Bar is a pub (abbreviated from ‘public house’) located in Athlone, in Ireland’s County Westmeath. This bar holds the Guinness World Record for being the oldest public house in Ireland. In...
A globe from 1504 that may be the world's oldest depicting the New World is engraved on ostrich egg halves in this photo from the Washington Map Society

Globe on an Ostrich Egg is World’s Oldest Depiction of the New World

An elaborately carved globe made from joining the lower halves of two ostrich eggs is the oldest known depiction of the New World. The 16th century globe had become lost to the pages of history but...
The School of Athens

The Lost Knowledge of the Ancients: Were Humans the First? Part 1

Much of modern science was known in ancient times. Robots and computers were a reality long before the 1940´s. The early Bronze Age inhabitants of the Levant used computers in stone, the Greeks in...
The Fool’s Cap Map of the World.

Cartographic Comedy in the 16th century: The Fool’s Cap Map of the World

The Fool’s Cap Map of the World is an engraving of a map of the world, and is thought to have been made towards the end of the 16th century. This map is peculiar as it is framed within the hood /...
Hand-colored woodprint by Samuel Coccius, Basle Switzerland 1566. August 7th many black globes moved before the sun at great speed and seemed to be fighting. Was this an ancient UFO sighting or celestial event?

What Did the Ancients See? Unidentified Flying Objects that Made an Impact on Early History

In the 43 years since the National UFO Reporting Center began keeping track, 104,947 have been reported, including historical events back to the beginning of the 20th century (Monfort, 2017). The...
Imaginative depiction of the Stone Age, by Viktor Vasnetsov.

Just a Few Men Controlled Reproduction in Prehistory and Dominate World Genetics Today

A new genetic study of male ancestry shows there were periods in human prehistory when just a few elite men controlled reproduction. For example, one man about 190,000 years ago was the ancestor of 1...
Engraving of the Colossus of Rhodes.

Project Launched to Revive the Colossus of Rhodes, Wonder of the Ancient World

A multinational team of professionals has launched an ambitious ‘Colossus of Rhodes Project’ to revive the tallest statue of the Hellenistic period. The planned 150-meter tall colossus would house a...
The Yale world map of "Henricus Martellus Germanus" (Heinrich Hammer). It is the most detailed "Dragon Tail" map by Martellus. It is the only one with a coordinate grid.

Hidden secrets revealed in 1491 world map that may have guided Columbus

A map of the world produced in 1491 by Henricus Martellus has been subjected to multispectral imaging, which has revealed hidden details on the map not previously visible, including numerous Latin...
Babylonian Map of the World

The Babylonian map of the world sheds light on ancient perspectives

A damaged clay tablet discovered in the late 1800s in Sippar, Iraq is said to be the oldest map of the world. It was discovered on the banks of the Euphrates River, and published in 1899. Now housed...
Stonehenge

Henge of the World

As the full rose-tinted moon ascended sedately into the night sky it bathed the Avebury henge in a pale luminous glow, and the great monolithic stones threw translucent shadows out across the grass...
Darwin Theory

Moving on from a Darwinian World View

Darwin’s vision of the world significantly influenced biology in the 20 th century, despite persistent questions posed by factors such as lateral gene transfer, neutral evolution, and chaotic...