Prehistoric people may have used firelight to create the illusion of movement in their art. An analysis of 50 engraved stones excavated in France suggests that when the stones were…
Category: Archaeology
Ancient ‘smellscapes’ are wafting out of artifacts and old texts
Ramses VI faced a smelly challenge when he became Egypt’s king in 1145 B.C. The new pharaoh’s first job was to rid the land of the stench of fish and…
Muons spill secrets about Earth’s hidden structures
Inside Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza lies a mysterious cavity, its void unseen by any living human, its surface untouched by modern hands. But luckily, scientists are no longer limited…
This hieroglyph is the oldest known record of the Maya calendar
Buried within the Las Pinturas pyramid in San Bartolo, Guatemala, thousands of painted plaster mural fragments offer a window into ancient Maya civilization. Two of those fragments form the earliest…
North America’s oldest skull surgery dates to at least 3,000 years ago
A man with a hole in his forehead, who was interred in what’s now northwest Alabama between around 3,000 and 5,000 years ago, represents North America’s oldest known case of…
Ancient seafarers built the Mediterranean’s largest known sacred pool
On a tiny island off Sicily’s west coast, a huge pool long ago displayed the star-studded reflections of the gods. Scientists have long thought that an ancient rectangular basin, on…
Ancient Homo sapiens took a talent for cultural creativity from Africa to Asia
Creativity runs deep in human evolution. Stone Age people steered their cultures through some inventive twists and turns as far-flung groups of Homo sapiens independently learned to cope with harsh…
The world’s oldest pants stitched together cultures from across Asia
What little rain that falls on a gravelly desert located in western China’s Tarim Basin evaporates as it hits the blistering turf. Here, in this parched wasteland, lie the ancient…
A technique borrowed from ecology hints at hundreds of lost medieval legends
King Arthur’s lasting renown is one for the books. But a statistical spotlight now shines on medieval European literature’s round table of lost and forgotten stories. An international team used…
Homo sapiens may have reached Europe 10,000 years earlier than previously thought
Stone Age Homo sapiens began migrating into Europe much longer ago than has typically been assumed. Discoveries at a rock-shelter in southern France put H. sapiens in Europe as early…
