Archaeologists working at Kani Shaie in Iraqi Kurdistan have uncovered a monumental building dating to the Uruk period, around 3300–3100 BC. The structure, discovered during the 2025 excavation season, appears to have served an official or religious function and demonstrates the far-reaching influence of Uruk, the world’s first metropolis, into the Zagros Mountains. The Kani
A certified metal detectorist scanning a field near Leipzig, Germany, has unearthed the oldest coin ever found in the state of Saxony. The 2,200-year-old gold coin, known as a “rainbow cup,” represents a rare example of Celtic currency discovered far beyond the traditional Celtic settlement areas. The discovery occurred in July in Gundorf, a neighborhood
Hippos didn’t rush out of Central Europe as the ice advanced. New tests on ancient bones reveal these huge semi-aquatic animals still wandered Germany’s Upper Rhine Valley between about 47,000 and 31,000 years ago. Deep into the last ice age. A global team led by scientists from the University of Potsdam and the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen in
Scientists probing the bones of Napoleon’s fallen troops have uncovered solid evidence of two brutal pathogens that turned the 1812 Russian retreat into a disaster. Researchers at the Institut Pasteur identified paratyphoid fever and louse-borne relapsing fever in soldiers interred in a mass grave. They shared preliminary findings on bioRxiv July 16, 2025, before publishing
A team from the Szent István Király Museum has discovered an elite warrior’s grave near Aba and Székesfehérvár in central Hungary. The burial, dated between 670 and 690 CE, belonged to a member of the Avar Khaganate, the nomadic empire that ruled the Pannonian Basin and much of Central and Eastern Europe during the early
New research has decoded how Maya astronomers forecasted solar eclipses with remarkable precision more than a millennium ago, revealing a self-correcting system that maintained accuracy across multiple generations. The study, published in Science Advances by John Justeson from the University at Albany and Justin Lowry from SUNY, analyzes the eclipse table in the Dresden Codex,