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The Plague of Justinian: The Pandemic That Ended the Ancient World

In 541 CE, bubonic plague arrived at an Egyptian port and spread across the known world. It killed perhaps a quarter of the Byzantine Empire’s population, ended Justinian’s reconquest of Rome, and created the conditions for the Arab conquests a century later. Ancient DNA confirmed the pathogen in 2013. This is the pandemic that built the medieval world.

The Real Nazca Lines: What Mainstream Archaeology Won’t Commit To

Everyone has heard of the Nazca Lines. Most people know the alien explanation is nonsense. But the real academic debate three competing theories, none of them fully supported by the evidence is far more interesting than the alternative history crowd wants you to know. The truth is messier, and better.

Who Was Cleopatra?

Most of what people know about Cleopatra came from her enemies.

Stonehenge’s Bones: The Burial Site That Rewrites What We Thought We Knew

New isotope analysis of human remains at Stonehenge shows that many of the people buried there in its earliest phase came from Wales the same place as the bluestones. Some of them may have been descendants of the communities that quarried and transported the stones 300 kilometers to Salisbury Plain. The stones and the dead may have been making the…

Who Built Gobekli Tepe and Why Did They Bury It?

Gobekli Tepe was built 12,000 years ago at least 1,000 years before the first evidence of agriculture anywhere in the world. It required coordinating hundreds of workers, quarrying 20-ton limestone pillars, and sustaining organized construction over generations. The people who built it were hunter gatherers. Then they deliberately buried the entire site. This is one of archaeology’s most important unsolved…

What Happened to the Maya Civilization?

Between 800 and 1000 AD, dozens of major Maya cities in the southern lowlands went quiet.