Category: Archaeology

In the 1920s, laborers and amateur archaeologists at gravel quarry pits in southeastern England uncovered more than 300 ancient, sharp-edged oval tools. Researchers have long suspected that these hand axes…

Although best known as a plague that killed millions of Europeans from 1346 to 1353, the Black Death originated about a decade earlier in Central Asia, a new study suggests.…

It turns out that chicken and rice may have always gone together, from the birds’ initial domestication to tonight’s dinner. In two new studies, scientists lay out a potential story…

A massive urban landscape that contained interconnected campsites, villages, towns and monumental centers thrived in the Amazon rainforest more than 600 years ago. In what is now Bolivia, members of…

Two Inca children slated for ritual sacrifice more than 500 years ago quaffed a special soothing concoction that has gone undetected until now. Those young victims, most likely a girl…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…