Archaeology

How early humans lived, traveled and interacted

A new analysis of human remains buried in African archaeological sites has produced the earliest DNA from the continent This tells a fascinating tale of...

Was Facebook the original social network? Not by a long shot

Between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago, people across early eastern and southern Africa left behind traces of an explosion of symbolic expression reflected in...

Everyone has heard of King Arthur, but 90% of medieval manuscripts of chivalric and...

New research finds that, while the Knights of the Round Table have won global fame, most medieval English heroic or chivalric stories have been...

Scientists find locations of ancient Maya sacred groves of cacao trees

For as much as modern society worships chocolate, cacao — the plant chocolate comes from — was believed to be even more divine to...

Archaeologists uncover ancient gold coin hoard in Germany

An Iron Age hoard of gold coins has been uncovered near the village of Baitz, in the Potsdam-Mittelmark district of Germany. The discovery was made...

Ancient Mayan civilization not likely to collapse due to drought, shows study

A new study casts doubt on drought as the driver of ancient Mayan civilization collapse. There is no dispute that a series of droughts occurred...

Dawn of humanity pushed back 30,000 years, shows fossil study

The age of the oldest fossils in eastern Africa widely recognized as representing our species, Homo sapiens, has long been uncertain. Now, dating of a...

Scientists digitally unwrap mummy of pharaoh Amenhotep I for the first time in 3,000...

All the royal mummies found in the 19th and 20th centuries have long since been opened for study. With one exception: egyptologists have never been...

Archaeologists recover treasures from ancient shipwrecks

Underwater archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) have recovered treasures from the survey of two shipwrecks off the coast of Caesarea in Israel. The...

This 2,700-year-old leather armor proves technology transfer happened in antiquity

Researchers at the University of Zurich have investigated a unique leather scale armor found in the tomb of a horse rider in Northwest China. Design...