Archaeology

Researchers have peered back through 800 years of history to conclude that Mayapan – the capital of culture and politics for the Maya people of the Yucatán Peninsula in the 13th and 14th century CE – may well have been undone by drought. That drought would have led to civil conflict, which would, in turn, […]

The pyramids of Giza astonished researchers for many centuries with their large size, symmetry, and even their mysterious spaces and frightening rooms, and the confusing puzzle revolved around the construction techniques that the ancient Egyptians used to erect these wonderful harmonious buildings without modern technology, as well as who built them specifically, and whether they […]

ATF3, a gene that leads to a taller nose (from top to bottom), may have been the product of natural selection as ancient humans adapted to colder climates after leaving Africa, according to a new genome-wide association study of facial features in over 6,000 Latin Americans. “In the last 15 years, since the Neanderthal genome […]

A modern male-centered view of archaeological remains has overlooked a possible matriarchal society in ancient Europe. A lavish burial site from the Copper Age, unearthed in southwest Spain in 2008, is not the final resting place of a young male leader, as scientists once assumed. As it turns out, the so-called ‘Ivory Man’ is actually […]

A Cretaceous origin for placental mammals, the group that includes humans, dogs, and bats, has been revealed by in-depth analysis of the fossil record, showing they co-existed with dinosaurs for a short time before the dinosaurs went extinct. The catastrophic destruction triggered by the asteroid hitting the Earth resulted in the death of all non-avian […]

In new research, scientists examined chemical properties locked inside tooth enamel of two Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals and a Magdalenian human from the Almonda karst system, Torres Novas, Portugal. The findings show Neanderthals in the region were hunting fairly large animals across wide tracts of land, whereas humans living in the same location tens of thousands […]

A 39,600-year-old bone fragment with strange indentations has been found in Spain. Researchers believe that the bone was used as a punch board for making holes in leather, which suggests that humans were wearing leather clothes in Europe 39,000 years ago. This is the earliest evidence of humans making leather clothes, and it provides new […]

Archaeologists in Spain have unearthed five life-size busts of human figures that could be the first-known human depictions of the Tartessos, a people who formed an ancient civilization that disappeared more than 2,500 years ago. The carved stone faces, which archaeologists date to the fifth century B.C., were found hidden inside a sealed pit in […]

A cycle featured in Maya calendars has been a mystery pretty much since it was rediscovered and its deciphering began in the 1940s. Covering a period of 819 days, the cycle is referred to simply as the 819-day count. The problem is that researchers couldn’t match that 819 days up to anything. But anthropologists John […]

The Benin Bronzes — some roughly 3,000 stunning bronze artworks sculpted by African metalsmiths between the 16th and 19th centuries — were crafted from metal mined from Germany’s Rhineland region, a new study finds. Researchers had long suspected that the masterfully crafted sculptures — created by the Edo people of the Kingdom of Benin, now […]