It is perhaps due to the importance of salt that one of the biggest salt mines in the world is associated with one of the greatest conquerors of the ancient world. Cheap and easily available, s alt...
Mongolian conqueror Genghis Khan was renowned for his domination of ancient Asia, and genetic studies have indicated that his powerful reach extends into modern times, as his DNA is thought to be...
Archaeologists have found an artifact made of jadeite at an Olmec site in Mexico that they think represents a cob of corn and that may have been offered to the gods. Corn was a vitally important crop...
In the simple, tiny church of St. Mary, Aldworth there lie the nine stone statues of what have become known as the “Aldworth Giants,” a name bestowed upon them because all are over 7 feet tall and...
Hidden treasure found by amateur explorers in a cave is being described as one of the most important discoveries in northern Israel in recent years. Members of the Israeli Caving Club have uncovered...
Named after the crocodile God Sobek, Sobeknefru, whose name means ‘she who shows the beauty of Sobek’, succeeded her brother to the throne of Egypt. At the time she came to power, the cult of Sobek...
A stone tool believed to be 15,800 years old or older and with bison blood on it, has been excavated from deep under the earth’s surface in Oregon, archaeologists announced. If the scraper, made from...
The earlier Stone Age seems to have been a time of peace and not war, says an anthropologist specializing in war who has studied the published work of dozens of researchers. Unfortunately for many...
Empires may rise and fall, but the impact they have on their conquered subjects and the future may continue beyond their passing, for better or for worse. The Spanish Empire, which began in the 15 th...
For over a thousand years until its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the city of Constantinople was one of the greatest urban centres in the Christian world. At the heart of this city was the Hagia...
In 977 AD, a Persian poet named Ferdowsi began on a grandiose poetic journey that would take him 33 years to complete. He used ancient Persian tales which had been told from generation to generation...
It turns out Caesar Augustus was an undeserving braggart. He claimed, “I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.” But new research by a university professor has found that only a...
An extraordinary fossil find in the desert of Ethiopia is pushing back the dawn of humankind by approximately half a million years, and rewriting what we know about the evolutionary branching that...
More than 1.2 million rotations of the Earth on its axis since her death, Queen Hatepshut has not been eradicated from memory by her ancient successors. Far from it. Still today, nearly 3,500 years...
In many ways, the old Norse beliefs of Scandinavia are strange and wonderful. The old pagan religion had gods and goddesses of music and fertility, nature deities, elves, dwarves, giants, magical...
The 12 th century is generally regarded as a period of European decline. In other parts of the world, however, this was certainly not the case. In South East Asia, the Khmer Empire was enjoying its...
Archaeologists have unearthed the skeletal remains of 200 people underneath a supermarket in Paris on the site of an old hospital where victims of the Black Plague had been known to be buried. It was...
Archaeologists have been met with surprise upon surprise as they excavate coffins and remains found at the medieval grave site of England’s King Richard III. The opening of a unique lead coffin found...
The Sagas of the Icelanders have long been preserved as the most comprehensive specimen of the literary culture of the 13 th and 14 th centuries of Iceland. In writing these sagas, many attributes of...
Archaeologists have concluded that pre-agricultural Stone Age hunter-gatherers on the Isle of Wight 8,000 years ago obtained domesticated wheat from farmers on the continent of Europe. That is 2,000...
Scenes depicted in a Chinese medieval travel book gave clues to researchers, helping them locate what is said to be a 13 th century military outpost used by Mongolian conqueror Genghis Khan. As...
Two years ago, an aerial search of the dense jungle of Honduras fuelled by local legends of a lost ancient city, revealed miles of seemingly man-made features. Announcements quickly spread that...
Archaeologists stumbled upon a surprising find in 2009 when they uncovered a preserved brain in a skull, buried in an Iron Age pit in Yorkshire, England. Known as the Heslington Brain, the find has...
During the 7 th and 6 th centuries B.C., the ancient Greek city-states began establishing colonies on the coast of the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea. Panticapaeum, Theodosia and Kimmerikon, for...
