Hunter-gatherers in what is now southwestern Texas and northern Mexico created rock art for more than 4,000 years, maintaining consistent imagery and techniques that depicted their conception of the universe. The tradition, known as the Pecos River style, first appeared almost 6,000 years ago in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands and persisted until roughly 1,400 to
A new study of a Zapotec site in Mexico may have finally revealed its purpose. A team using LiDAR to analyze the complex have revealed a large post-classical city. The site of Guiengola is well known to Mexican archaeologists. Built by the Zapotec, an indigenous pre-Columbian culture who lived in the Valley of Oaxaca in
At the end of 2024 there was a rash of sightings of purported UFOs in the United States. Social media filled up with blurry footage (and it is, of course, always blurry footage) or strange lights in the sky. For the main this footage is easy to pick apart. Aside from anything else a lot
Musical instruments are near universal across all cultures, ancient and modern, but the music they make is not always pleasant. Aztec skull whistles, extremely versatile instruments from 500 years ago, are certainly not. Such whistles were used for more than 250 years from around 1250 AD by the Aztecs of Central America, producing a combination
Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula is famed for its Mayan ruins, great cities and carved pyramids which, along with the famous sites in Guatemala, formed the heartlands of this lost civilization. You may be forgiven for thinking that everything of import has been found, but it seems you would be very wrong indeed. A new study of
Pellagra is a disease of which most people have never heard. It is understood today, and treatment is straightforward; in fact, nobody needs to suffer form it at all. But it deserves a mention as a historical footnote because of what it did to Europe, and as an interesting study in how legends are formed.