Pope Leo XIV’s coat of arms and motto were revealed by the Vatican this May 2025, as is customary in heraldry for Popes to signal their main interests. According to Leo, all three order symbols, the fleur-de-lis, the pierced heart and the motto In Illo Uno Unum, are rooted in the life of St. Augustine,
Pregnant women wielding swords and wearing martial helmets, foetuses set to avenge their fathers – and a harsh world where not all newborns were born free or given burial. These are some of the realities uncovered by the first interdisciplinary study to focus on pregnancy in the Viking age, authored by myself, Kate Olley, Brad Marshall
Two shipwrecks maintain their presence in Costa Rica’s Cahuita National Park beneath its turquoise waters as coral reefs dance with tropical fish that have graced the ocean floor for more than three hundred years. For numerous decades fishers from the area shared stories about pirate galleons whose broken pieces suggested battles which occurred long ago.
Imagine a Neanderthal hunter, crouched in the dim light of a prehistoric dawn, meticulously shaping a bone into a deadly spear tip. This scene, vivid with the weight of survival, comes to life through a remarkable discovery in northern Spain. Archaeologists have unearthed a 120,000-year-old bone spear tip, created by Neanderthals, now recognized as the
In a major archaeological discovery, a team of researchers from Dokuz Eylül University has uncovered a sealed Byzantine amphora estimated to be around 1,100 years old, located in a shipwreck off the coast of Marmaris, in Muğla Province, Turkey. The find took place during underwater excavations in the Aegean Sea, at a depth of approximately
Imagine a bustling port in ancient Carthage, circa 600 BCE, where Phoenician sailors unload fragrant cedarwood from Lebanon, North African potters shape intricate ostrich-egg urns, and Sicilian merchants barter for shimmering Aegean textiles. This was the Punic world—a dazzling crossroads of cultures, united not by conquest but by the restless tides of trade and human