gear Push settings
If confirmed, the findings could rewrite history.
In the year 79, the Vesuvius volcano erupted, wiping out the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing at least 1,500 people. But while Pompeii usually takes the spotlight, it's Herculaneum that may provide us with key information.
What was once discarded as a myth or an urban legend may actually be true – geophysical studies seem to indicate that Shakespeare’s head may be missing from the grave, possibly stolen by graverobbers in the 19th century. The bard is buried in the beautiful Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Shakespeare was buried in his home-town church, […]
The first images of Viking treasure, stashed in a pot more than 1,000 years ago and buried in a field in Galloway, have been made public by the conservators working to preserve them. The items, including six silver disk brooches, a gold ingot and Byzantine silk, are not currently on display.
Whenever I see a glint in the grass, it’s either a penny or nothing at all. But when Israeli hiker Laurie Rimon found a coin, it was such a rare find that archaeologists only found a single one similar to it. Israeli scientists believe the coin is part of a series made by the Roman Emperor […]
Researchers working in Spain have made a surprising finding: Neanderthals emerged much earlier than previously believed, perhaps as far as half a million years ago.
Archaeologists have uncovered one of the biggest and best-preserved wheels from the Bronze Age, dating from nearly 3,000 years ago. The wheel holds a special place in human culture – even though we rarely give wheels a second thought, they basically revolutionized our world, allowing us to redefine transportation. After all, there’s a reason why something […]
Alistair Evans of Monash University in Australia took a refreshing look at hominid teeth evolution. He found human evolution was much simpler than previously thought, but also that wisdom teeth considerably shrank around the time complex tools began to be used.
Recent archaeological findings in the Timna region in Israel's southern Arava Valley showcase the surprising variety and quality of the clothes worn some 3,000 years ago.
British archaeologists have uncovered five Roman roads built over 2,000 years ago using a technology called LIDAR - a mix between LASER and RADAR.
When archaeology meets forensics - a team of British researchers has found three thousand year old fingerprints on the lid of an Egyptian coffin.
Following ISIS's attack and destruction of the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, Italy and the United Nations have joined forces to protect cultural heritage sites in conflict zones.
The Easter Island is one of the biggest mysteries in human history. How people got there and where they came from, how they built the huge moai statues and why, and what brought their demise are still unsolved questions. But at leas for the latter, we may be getting a bit closer to the truth. The previously […]
It all started when archaeologists working in Germany made a surprising discovery, uncovering the bodies of children and of one adult man who was buried, strangely, standing upright. The cemetery was dated to 8,500 years, being one of the oldest – if not the oldest – ever found on the continent. The cemetery dates from the […]
A surprising finding could change the history of orthodoxy.
Archaeologists from the Charles University in Prague have made a stunning discovery in Egypt: they found a stunningly well preserved long boat, buried for four and a half millennia. The discovery was made at Abusir, “the House or Temple of Osiris” and an extensive necropolis with many well documented findings. But Egypt still has a story to […]
Archaeologists working off the coast of Italy have found a Roman shipwreck containing three thousand fish sauce vessels.
A German astrophysicist decoded ancient Babylonian tablets stuffed with computations. His analysis reveals that these were used by the ancient scholars to predict where and when Jupiter would show up in the night's sky based on abstract computations so advanced they're indispensable to modern science. It's thought analytical geometry was invented at Oxford in the 14th century, but it seems the Babylonians had it covered more than 1,400 years earlier.
War may have emerged even before humans settled down.
Archaeologists have reported the stunning discovery of a new (old) city discovered in Honduras.
Using cutting edge technology, scientists are now surveying the Great Pyramids of Giza to unravel new clues and maybe find hidden chambers.
Volcanic eruptions have fascinated and frightened people for millennia, and many have tried to describe them in different ways. Whether it was through paintings, text or documentaries, we’ve all seen volcanoes described in one way or another. But for people 30,000 years ago, that was a much more difficult challenge. Now, researchers believe they have […]
Archaeologists working in the arctic have found evidence that ancient humans made it to the arctic some 45,000 years ago.
Austrian archaeologists said on Thursday that they've uncovered Europe's oldest prosthetic implant -- a wooden foot dated from the sixth century AD.
Archaeologists have discovered something as valuable as the Roman Pompeii.
More than twice the age of the Stonehenge, the Shigir Idol has been recently dated to 11,000 years ago, which makes it the oldest wooden object in existence by far. The idol is also covered with some drawings which may actually be a written language that no one understands.
In a cave in France, three bisons stand next to each other, modeled from the clay from the walls of the cave. They’ve been standing there alone for 14,000 years, propped against a small boulder in the darkness. The craftsmanship and durability is remarkable, up to the point where you’d almost think they’re modern; one can […]
Archaeologists working at NOAA made a surprising discovery - they found the remains of a century-and-a-half old whaling ship
Many ancient civilizations made astronomical notes, but according to researchers, this is the earliest historical document of naked eye observations on a variable star – Algol. Variable stars are stars with a varying brightness (as seen from Earth), and they probably held a special place in Egyptian astronomy – they made careful notes on these […]
Partial femur bones found in the renowned Red Deer Cave seems to show that other species of humans overlapped with our own species during the ice age.
This summer in Poland, two treasure hunters discovered what they believe was a WWII Nazi train filled with treasure, in a buried tunnel. Poland’s Deputy Culture Minister Piotr Zuchowski said authorities were led to the spot and that he was 99% convinced that the treasure had been located. But according to scientists Krakow’s AGH University of Science […]
Christianity is currently the world's largest religious movement, with an estimated 2.2 billion followers. And because he plays such a huge role in christian mythos and practice, and because of the influence he's had on the course of history (we even date our years after his birth), we all know how Jesus Christ looks like. We've seen it in paintings. on tv, in church, on Christmas; he's white, long haired and wears something thorny. Right?
Archaeologists believe they have found the he tomb of sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled over the Ottoman empire from 1520 to 1566, near the fortress of Szigetvar in southern Hungary.
Despite it being studied for many decades, there are still many things we don’t understand about the Stonehenge. Scientists have now identified the original quarries where the bluestones were mined: 225 km away in Wales, and 500 years before the Stonehenge was built! This could indicate that perhaps a proto-version of the Neolithic monument could […]
A ship missing for over 300 years has been rediscovered, according to Colombian authorities – a boat with an estimated $17 billion in loot. San José was a 60-gun, 3-masted galleon of the Spanish Navy. It was launched in 1698, and was sunk in the battle off the coast of Cartagena in 1708, during a […]
While many people are probably consulting Google these days with searches for “easy turkey dinner” or “last minute side dishes”, it’s pretty safe to say there’s no shortage of websites offering answers to those queries. But there is a shortage of recipes thousands of years old. The Yale Babylonian Collection now allowed us to take dinner as humans did […]
Archaeological diggings at the First Nations in Canada unearthed, among others, a small, 800 year old pot - and inside it, squash seeds!
Even inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, outside of Cairo, researchers have found something interesting.
Archaeologists have discovered fossils of rats 10 times bigger than modern rats. Working with the Australian National University (ANU), the team made the findings in East Timor, a former Portuguese colony in south-east Asia. Dr Julien Louys of the ANU School of Culture, History and Language said these are the largest rat fossils ever to be found, and by […]
The fossils were discovered in the Parnaiba Basin of north-eastern Brazil, and are some 278 million years old, corresponding to the Permian period, when all the continents we know today were still fused together.
It could only happen in Norway: a hiker traveling a historic route found a 1,200 year old Viking sword in excellent shape.
The Sulaymaniyah Museum in Iraq uncovered 20 new lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the nearly 3000 years old Mesopotamian poem, considered to be one of the world's first great works of literature. They belong to a passage in which Gilgamesh enters a cedar forest and slays a demigod named Humbaba, with the setting and the demigod himself described differently and in more detail, writes Ted Mills for Open Culture.
Sure, we’ve all heard of Egypt’s pyramids, but have you heard of Sudan’s pyramids? Well, you really should have – they’ve survived in the African desert for 3,000 years, and they’re absolutely spectacular, as we can all see, thanks to this National Geographic drone footage. These pyramids were built by Nubians, the rulers of the ancient […]
The ancient Greek shipwreck that produced the awesome Antikythera mechanism, hailed as the world's first analog computer (being almost two millenia old), had archaeologists' collective pants full of ants and it seems that their enthusiasm was well placed. The shipwreck is slowly yielding new artifacts, offering a glimpse into the lifestyles of the ancient "1%" in the Hellenic peninsula.
A new species of plant-eating dinosaur was discovered in Alaska, a variety of hadrosaur -- duck-billed dinos that roamed in herds, said Pat Druckenmiller, earth sciences curator at the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks. Researchers named the creature Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis (oo-GROO'-nah-luk KOOK'-pik-en-sis), meaning "ancient grazer," chosen by scientists with assistance from speakers of Inupiaq, the language of Alaska Inupiat Eskimos.
Middle Age Europe was a place ruled by superstition and mythical beliefs - at least some parts of it were. Now, researchers are trying to figure out what made some people in Poland believe there was an 'outbreak of vampires' in the 17th and 18th century.
The humble bean is the first thing some of us reach for in the mornings, it's our companion during breaks and comes to warm us up on cold winter days. We've come to rely on coffee, due to the caffeine it contains, to wake us up when the night is short and full of terrors, and keep us going when the going gets rough. A new study from the University of New Mexico's researchers however shows how the people of the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico were drinking caffeinated beverages as early as 750 AD, over 1,200 years ago.
Is there anything you can't buy in today's shopping malls? The list must be pretty short already, but now we can cut artifacts off it. Archaeologists in Redmond US., working on a routine survey to get the green light for a construction site near a mall in the area, found thousands of stone tools estimated to be at least 10,000 years old, "The Seattle Times" reported.
While analysing starch grains on ancient stone grinding tools from southern Italy, Marta Mariotti Lippi at the University of Florence in Italy and her colleagues were able to date the earliest known human consumption of oats as far back as 32,000 years ago – way before farming took root.
Ongoing excavations at a site in the southern Peloponnese are offering rare insight into the ancient past of Laconia, about which very little physical evidence exists. The Greek Ministry of Culture released several photographs yesterday showing the newly unearthed ruins of an ancient palace likely built during the 17th-16th century BC.
