All  

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ Mobile

writing

The Triumphs of Tonyukuk the Wise, Supreme Commander and Kingmaker

The Triumphs of Tonyukuk the Wise, Supreme Commander and Kingmaker

Today the steles of Tonyukuk the Wise are situated at an immensely popular and historical 1300-year-old memorial site. It is located northwest of Bayantsogt Mountain in Erdene Soum, Mongolia...
Ancient Alphabetic Script Found in Israel Fills Gap in Historic Record

Ancient Alphabetic Script Found in Israel Fills Gap in Historic Record

A team of Austrian and Israeli archaeologists working the fertile ground of the famed Tel Lachish site in central Israel made a discovery that has altered existing theories about how the first...
Saxo Grammaticus: Warrior Historian of the Danes and a Medieval Influencer

Saxo Grammaticus: Warrior Historian of the Danes and a Medieval Influencer

Saxo Grammaticus was a Danish historian whose writings were instrumental for the preservation of the ancient history of the Danes and their nations. Considered to be one of the major historical...
Sealed Letter Virtually Unfolded to Reveal Forgotten Renaissance Story

Sealed Letter Virtually Unfolded to Reveal Forgotten Renaissance Story

For the first time ever, researchers have virtually unfolded a sealed letter from Renaissance Europe. It has remained unopened for 300 years, and thanks to their innovative computational approach,...
Nabu: Ancient Mesopotamian God of Scribes and Wisdom

Nabu: Ancient Mesopotamian God of Scribes and Wisdom

Nestled in the fertile region around the River Tigris and Euphrates, the historical region of ancient Mesopotamia has long been regarded as one of the earliest cradles of civilization. Home to...
Top 10 Archaeological Discoveries of 2020

Top 10 Archaeological Discoveries of 2020

In many ways this has been a difficult year, but in the realm of archaeological research some major discoveries have been made around the world. Lost cities and tombs have come to light, the...
A Frenchman Solves Linear Elamite Puzzle And Rewrites Writing History

A Frenchman Solves Linear Elamite Puzzle And Rewrites Writing History

Every once in a while a scientist goes rogue, and it’s happened to a French archaeologist in Tehran who claims the Iranian plateau was the shared birthplace of writing with Mesopotamia, based on his...
The Northern Mysteries Current: Futhark and Mystery Schools of the Viking Age

The Northern Mysteries Current: Futhark and Mystery Schools of the Viking Age

The existence of mystery schools in the Viking Age (800-1200 CE) is deduced from myth and folklore. The poems of the Edda display the structure and content of cultic texts used within the framework...
Detail of a seated Scribe sculpture

Egyptian Letters Expose an Ancient Version of "Rage Texting"

Written records allow us to really understand ancient people. An expert has studied three letters written by ancient Egyptians and made some interesting discoveries. She found that the letter-writers...
Egyptian Hieroglyphs: The Language of the Gods

Egyptian Hieroglyphs: The Language of the Gods

Egyptian hieroglyphs are among the oldest writing systems in the world, dating back some 5,200 years. Known in ancient Egyptian as the “language of the gods” and said to have been created by the god...
The Rosetta Stone: One of Archaeology’s Greatest Treasures

The Rosetta Stone: One of Archaeology’s Greatest Treasures

The Rosetta Stone is one of the most significant discoveries in the history of archaeology. This artifact was created during the Ptolemaic Period, and was rediscovered at the end of the 18th century...
Stav Meir, holding the 1,500-year-old Byzantine inscription that he discovered near Caesarea.	Source: Karem Said/ Israel Antiquities Authority

13-year-old Israeli Boy Stumbles Upon Ancient Byzantine Inscription

Many important archaeological finds have been made by accident down the years. In Israel, a lucky boy came across a very important historic artifact while out searching for mushrooms. He found an...
Indus Valley seal found at Mohenjo Daro with script (Peter / Flickr)

IT Guru Unlocks Secrets of Ancient Indus Script

The Indus Valley civilization, also known as the Harappan civilization, was the earliest known urbanized ancient culture that emerged on the Indian subcontinent between 2500–1700 BC, and according to...
Chinese jade dragon seal (representational)

The Lost Heirloom Seal of China's First Emperor

The Heirloom Seal of the Realm (known also as the Heirloom Seal of the First Emperor, or the Imperial Seal of China) is a Chinese artifact that is now lost. This artifact was a jade seal created by...
Aerial view of the excavations at Keezhadi, an archaeological site in Tamil Nadu which is re-writing Indian pre-history. Source: Jothi Ramalingam

Tamil Nadu Dig Strikes Gold, Re-Writes Indian Pre-History

After four months of digging, almost 1000 artifacts were unearthed during the 5th phase of excavations in Keezhadi village in Tamil Nadu’s Sivagangai district. According to a report in New Indian...
AI (Pixabay License) is deciphering ancient Greek texts (Pixabay License) faster than humans.

Google AI Decodes Broken Greek Texts Better than Humans

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to revolutionize the world in the coming decades. An example of this comes from Google’s AI research division (DeepMind) which has used the technology to...
Red runes carved from wood on the ground. There are 24 runes in the Elder Futhark.

Futhark: Mysterious Ancient Runic Alphabet of Northern Europe

Runes are the characters of the earliest written alphabet used by the Germanic peoples of Europe called Futhark. The runic alphabet was used within Germanic languages but primarily in Nordic...
Closeup of glyphs on a Mayan calendar. Credit: zimmytws / Adobe Stock

Artificial Intelligence Inching Closer to Deciphering Long Lost Languages

With new technology available to us, we’re inching closer to the end of the days when deciphering ancient languages is a painstaking task filled with frustration and confusion. Nifty machines...
Representational image of high priestess and poet Enheduanna.

Enheduanna: High Priestess of the Moon and the First Known Author

The ancient Sumerian poet Enheduanna has a unique claim to fame: she was the first author in the world known by name. While there were previous instances of poems and stories written down, Enheduanna...
The head of a Buddha statue. Credit: Richard / Adobe Stock. Inset: Fragments of a birch bark manuscript from ancient Gandhara. Credit: British Library (public domain)

Scholars Get Closer to Words of Buddha as They Unravel Oldest Buddhist Scrolls in the World

The oldest Buddhist scrolls ever discovered were made on birch bark and spent two millennia folded in clay pots, in a cave, situated along the northern border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and now...
The mysterious inscription was found on a rock in the French village of Plougastel-Daoulas

Mysterious Inscription Baffles French Village, Prize Offered to Crack the Code

A recently discovered engraving is baffling local people in the small village in north-west France. The locals have made various attempts to decipher the inscription and have enlisted the help of...
Sumerian tablets, Sumerian script is known as cuneiform. Source: Pixabay/ CC0

Sumerian Tablets: A Deeper Understanding of the Oldest Known Written Language

Ancient languages are captivating despite the fact that studying them or learning about them is a long, complex process. Of course, many students just get briefly acquainted with this subject and...
Assyrian Cuneiform

Deciphering Cuneiform to Get a Handle on Life in Ancient Mesopotamia

Cuneiform is a system of writing that was invented by the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia. Believed to have been created sometime during the 4th millennium BC (between 3500 and 3000 BC), this script...
Portion of Ibn Sīna’s Canon of Medicine folded into medieval text

Irish Translation of Ibn Sīna Medical Text Discovered in Medieval Book Binding

A recent discovery is demonstrating the influence of Islamic medicine on European physicians. A fragment from a book dating from the 1400s has revealed the influence of a Muslim Persian polymath on...

Pages