Archaeology

Archeologists say they have solved the 6,000-year-old mystery of Armenia’s “dragon stones" – massive carved monoliths scattered across high-altitude slopes and pastures where no ancient settlements ever existed. It's a story of worship and water.

If you ever travel back in time around 41,000 years ago, pack some sunscreen. New research suggests that during a cataclysmic polar reversal, our ancestors might have covered themselves in mineral-rich ochre to survive harmful solar radiation.

There is still great mystery surrounding the early beginnings of the Karnak temple. When did people first begin to settle in this area? How did the Nile river have an impact on this sacred location? New research is finally providing some answers.

We generally associate the origins of mathematical thinking with the emergence of writing but a new study challenges this assumption looking at floral designs found on the pottery sherds across northern Mesopotamia, dating back 8000 years.

A 26-ft deep excavation in Indonesia has revealed that humans and a hominin species that pre-dates humans used the same cave. The enticing possibility even exists that both species overlapped, sharing the space at the same time.

Using chemical clues from Neanderthal bones, researchers have placed them at the top of the food chain, alongside apex predators like lions. However, until now, experts have been missing out on one of their key, fat-rich, food sources: Maggots.

Once thought an exclusive human skill, the ability to make fire on demand has long been seen as a turning point in our evolutionary story. But new research suggests Neanderthals also mastered fire-making hundreds of thousands of years before Homo sapiens.

The culprit behind the mysterious disappearance of one of the most advanced urban civilizations at the time, contemporaries to Mesopotamians and Egyptians, has finally been identified: a series of severe droughts that dried rivers 4,000 years ago.

New research is adding to the body of evidence showing Neanderthals indulged in expressing abstract behavior, this time with archaeologists finding evidence of pencil-like crayons that were likely used to make symbolic art.

Archaeologists have discovered the submerged ruins of a medieval Silk Road city beneath Lake Issyk-Kul in northeastern Kyrgyzstan. Buildings, artifacts, and a necropolis have been found deep under the waters of the lake.

For a long time, archaeologists believed large buildings required large bosses. It was simple: only societies with strong hierarchies (kings and slaves) could organize massive construction projects. But a new discovery in the Maya region is rewriting that story.

One of the first events to signal the collapse of Napoleon's reign was his crushing defeat after an invasion of Russia in 1812. Researchers have long thought that the disease typhus played a role, but modern DNA analysis paints a different picture.

Back in 1954, archaeologists uncovered a hidden shrine deep beneath a Greek settlement. Inside, they found bronze jars holding a waxy, scented paste. Sealed with cork and marked with traces on their surfaces, the vessels held a sticky secret.

Millenia ago communities went to great lengths to hunt wild boars, and not just for survival. Archaeologists recently uncovered 19 wild boar skulls. The skulls bore butchery marks, hinting at a feast; however, the real mystery was their origin.

Long before the Inka ruled the Andes, the Tiwanaku civilization carved out one of the region’s earliest and most influential societies. Then, about a thousand years ago, it vanished, leaving behind stone ruins and swirling mysteries.

We know what they look like, and even sound like, but there’s one question you might not have pondered: what do ancient Egyptian mummies smell like? Whether you wanted to know or not, scientists have now given us an answer.

Many of us have had a tooth pulled in the dentist's chair, and even with anesthetic, it's not pleasant. So spare a thought for the people who, for millennia, chose to have good teeth yanked out with no painkillers – all in the name of beauty (mainly).

Bizarre clumps of organic matter found buried alongside Bronze Age mummies in China have now been identified as cheese. New DNA analysis has finally solved a long-standing mystery, and it makes it the oldest cheese ever found, dating back 3,600 years.