Finding out what actually happened in the deep past can be a slog, so when ancient history is packaged as mystery-spine-tingling but solvable-it's hard to resist. Who doesn't want to know how a lost civilization got lost, or where it might be hiding? The trouble is that what gets touted as a lost civilization often turns out to have been there all along.
Pottery made by people of the Halafian culture, who inhabited northern Mesopotamia between around 6200 and 5500 BC, is painted with flowers that have 4, 8, 16 or 32 petals, and some show arrangements of 64 flowers. These patterns show a clear understanding of symmetry and spatial division long before written numbers came into use around 3400 BC, argue scientists in a new study. The skill might have helped the Halafian people with tasks such as sharing harvests or dividing communal fields, the authors say.
Taking its name from the word for "boiling waters," Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park in Georgia dates back more than 12,000 years and features Indigenous earthen mounds used for burials and ceremonies. Today, it's in talks to be designated a national park with expanded acreage. "This was a capital city for the Creek Confederacy," says Tracie Revis, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and director of advocacy for the Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve Initiative (ONPPI).
The use of poisoned hunting weapons is one of the most important innovations in the history of humans obtaining meat and has intrigued researchers for centuries. Until now, the oldest evidence came from bone arrowheads with traces of toxic glycosides found in Kruger Cave, South Africa, dating back to the mid-Holocene, about 6,700 years ago. However, a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances significantly extends that timeline.
Researchers have found traces of what appears to be plant-derived poison on tiny stone arrowheads from South Africa dated to 60,000 years ago. The finding pushes back the origin of this revolutionary hunting technology by tens of thousands of years. Scientists have long been fascinated by the development of poisoned hunting weapons. For one thing, they would have seriously leveled up our ancestors' foraging game.
The word vampire first appears in English in sensational accounts of a revenant panic in Serbia in the early 18th century. One case in 1725 concerned a recently deceased peasant farmer, Peter Blagojevic, who rose from the grave, visited his wife to demand his shoes, and then murdered nine people in the night. When his body was disinterred, his mouth was found full of fresh blood. The villagers staked the corpse and then burned it.
Research suggests that the introduction of monetary systems in Central Europe can be traced back to Celtic mercenaries. These men were paid for their services in Greece with coins and brought them back home with them. Around the middle of the 3rd century BC, the Celts began their own coinage, imitating gold coins of the Macedonian king Philip II (359336 BC).
Below, we examine how it carried the torch of the classic films to create the best new piece of Indy fiction in decades. Indiana Jones is one of the most revered blockbuster stories of the 1980s. Spielberg and Lucas' work on the original trilogy stands alongside Jaws and Star Wars as timeless classics that are worth revisiting regularly. The more recent entries--the Crystal Skull and the Dial of Destiny--do little to live up to the standard that the first three set.
The mystery of when, how and perhaps most importantly why a giant naked figure was carved into a dizzyingly steep hillside in the English West Country has been a source of wonder and intrigue for centuries. Future generations may come closer to solving the puzzle of the Cerne Giant after the National Trust stepped in to buy 340 acres of land around the 55-metre (180ft) figure. The planned purchase is expected to clear the way for more archaeological investigations around Britain's largest chalk hill figure, which looms over the rolling Dorset landscape.
An archaeological investigation before redevelopment of the railway station in Manduria, 20 miles east of Taranto, southeast Italy, has uncovered a large section of a defensive wall built by the pre-Italic Messapian people in the 4th century B.C. The structure is composed of limestone blocks that were precisely worked and laid dry in an alternating pattern. It was built inside a moat that encircled the inner wall of the older Archaic-era defensive walls.
Senon was an important city of the Mediomatrici tribe, documented in Roman sources after the conquest of Gaul (57 B.C.). While pre-Roman Gallic remains had been found before, the excavations were too small in scale to draw any conclusions about the extent and nature of the settlement. The excavation revealed the remains of timber-framed constructions that proved it was a fully developed settlement from the middle of the 2nd century B.C. to the beginning of the Roman period.
In that job, the 73-year-old Parkman used artifacts found in old ruins or the chemistry of rocks and layers of soil to piece together possible narratives about life in the Bay Area as far back as tens of thousands of years ago or as recently as the late 20th century. More than being a scientist or historian, Parkman has always seen himself as a storyteller with an innate curiosity about other worlds and a desire to imagine the people who lived in them.
Laurent Davin, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who made the finding, called it 'extraordinary on multiple levels'. 'The depicted scene relates to the imaginary mating of a gander spirit with a woman,' he told the Daily Mail. 'Such imaginary mating between animal spirits and humans are very common in animistic societies across the world in specific situations such as erotic dreams, shamanistic visions and myths.' Although the detail is hard to make out, scientists have recreated the scene in a new illustration.
The face's features-"deep-set eye sockets, a flat nose, and lips marked by a cleft that also emphasizes the chin"-suggest that the face belongs to "an elderly man." The INAH statement describes that when the 18-inch-tall carving was uncovered, it was attached to the remains of the foundation of a building with an ovoid floor plan and an entrance facing west, to maximize sunlight.
About 15 years ago, Philippa Langley set out on a mission to find the remains of King Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England. Almost everyone regarded this as an impossible task. His remains had gone undiscovered for more than 500 years. It was a folly, a fool's errand. She was out of her depth, an amateur. No letters after her name. But Philippa diligently did the work and did her research. She had an inner conviction that she would find him, and she
A massive stone water basin of unknown purpose has been discovered in the ancient site of Gabii, 11 miles east of Rome. Most of it dates to around 250 B.C., but there is evidence that some parts were built at an earlier date. It is one of the earliest examples of Roman monumental architecture that isn't a temple or a defensive wall.
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