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Archaeology & Discoveries

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The Neolithic Funnel Beaker people at this Danish site were using grindstones and harvesting wheat, but they were making porridge, not bread. Source: Nationalmuseet / CC BY-SA 3.0.
26 DEC 2024 · 4 MIN

Porridge but No Bread: What was on the Menu in Neolithic Denmark?

One of the most profound shifts in human prehistory occurred around 10,000 years ago. Our ancestors figured out that the plants they were eating did not need to grow where they were…

Brooklyn Museum - Atahualpa, Fourteenth Inca, 1 of 14 Portraits of Inca Kings - overall
23 DEC 2024 · 3 MIN

Billions in Bullion: A New Search for the Lost Gold of Atahualpa

The lost treasure of Inca Emperor Atahualpa is considered among the most important and valuable in history. And now a new team have ventured into the Ecuadorian Andes to try, once again,…

The gold tongues found with the mummies allowed them to speak with Osiris in the afterlife. Source: Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
19 DEC 2024 · 3 MIN

The Gold Tongues of Oxyrhynchus: How to Talk to a God

Archaeologists from the University of Barcelona excavating the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus have uncovered a cache of mummies dating to the Ptolemaic period. Some of the mummies, which seem to have…

Saturn Devouring his Children by Goya. Source: Francisco Goya / Public Domain.
17 DEC 2024 · 4 MIN

Cannibalistic Coping Mechanism? The Bronze Age “Othering” of Fallen Foes

A gruesome discovery in the United Kingdom has thrown a shadow over Bronze Age England. The find, at the ancient site of Charterhouse Warren in Somerset, has been described as “something horrible.”…

The key differences between the Royal Game of Ur and the Shahr-i Sokhta version are the many different pieces, and the lack of “rosettes” denoting certain board spaces as special. Source: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/kctnj / CC-By Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
16 DEC 2024 · 5 MIN

Shahr-i Sokhta: How to Play the Oldest Board Game in the World, Iranian Edition

In 1922 the British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley discovered something unexpected during his excavation of the Royal Cemetery of Ur, in Mesopotamia. Amidst the grave goods and treasures he uncovered a rectangular…

The carved turtle in the heart of the cave complex suggests a hidden Stone Age religion. Source: PNAS / Omry Barzilai et al.
11 DEC 2024 · 3 MIN

Carved Stone Age Turtle Reveals Ancient Middle East Religion

Archaeologists working in the Manot Cave system in Galilee have found a mysterious carving deep within the darkness. The sculpture, apparently of a tortoise or turtle, is extremely unusual. For one, it…