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
For 4,400 years, a small clay tablet lay hidden inside the ruins of the Ancient Sumerian city of Nippur (in what’s now southern Iraq). This tablet may be miniscule but it reveals a forgotten myth that expands Mespotamian storytelling. Today, this ancient tablet (labeled Ni 12501) rests in Turkey’s Istanbul Archaeological Museums, where University of
Writing is one of the most important inventions in the entire history of civilization. The ability to record conversations, agreements and stories is literally what separates history from prehistory, and those civilizations who wrote things down captured their cultural identity for all time in doing so. And now, in a new study published in Antiquity,