New Discovery

When Joseph Merrick died at age 27, his body didn’t go into the ground in one piece. Instead, the bones of the so-called “Elephant Man” were bleached and put on display at Queen Mary University of London’s medical school, and some of his flesh was saved for medical study. Yet for ...read more

The Neolithic Revolution marked a major turning point in history. During it, many communities transitioned from hunting and gathering to farming and herding, providing them with a more stable food source and allowing their populations to grow. Now, researchers suggest the ...read more

Stonehenge may be the most famous stone circle in the world, but its northern neighbor, Avebury, is the largest. Avebury is so big that there are actually two Stonehenge-size circles tucked inside—one of which, archaeologists believe, was built to commemorate the place where a ...read more

Beneath the rocky floor of Callao Cave on Luzon island in the Philippines, researchers have uncovered a number of fossils from what they believe is a previously unknown ancient human species. Dubbed Homo luzonensis, the newly identified species inhabited Luzon more than 50,000 ...read more

We know that Neanderthals were carnivores, with a diet that consisted primarily—if not exclusively—of meat. But a new study by researchers in France suggests that around 120,000 years ago, when a period of sudden climate change wiped out many of the animals who made up their ...read more

Archaeologists in Poland have discovered a giant 60,000-year-old flint workshop that they believe was used by Neanderthals to make thousands of stone tools. So far, the researchers have recovered some 17,000 stone products from the site, believed to be the first large ...read more

Around 450 B.C., the Greek writer Herodotus traveled to Egypt. His later account of the trip, included in his famous work The Histories, focused on a distinctive river barge known as a “baris,” which he said the Egyptians used to ferry goods up and down the Nile River. Herodotus ...read more

People in Ireland stored their butter in bogs for at least 3,500 years, leaving behind well-preserved waxy globs with a very pungent odor. In a recent study, researchers dated 32 globs of bog butter at National Museum of Ireland from about 1700 B.C. to the 17th century. They ...read more

In the treacherous waters of the Atlantic and the bomber-laden Mediterranean of World War II, the USS Wasp, a 741-foot-long aircraft carrier, came out unscathed. But it wasn’t so lucky in the Pacific. After earning two battle stars and ferrying soldiers and aircraft in the ...read more

When an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex stood about 12 feet tall. But there were smaller tyrannosaurs that roamed the Earth before it. A newly discovered specimen has revised the timeline of when short tyrannosaurs became the ...read more

The human family tree is becoming messier than The Jerry Springer Show. We already know Homo sapiens and Neanderthals slept together. We also know both slept with the mysterious “Denisovan,” a human relative first identified in Siberia’s Denisova Cave in 2010. Now, researchers ...read more

Captain Matthew Flinders is famous for circumnavigating Australia and putting the continent on European maps for the first time. He’s also the subject of urban legends because of the fact that, for over 200 years, nobody has known exactly where his body is buried. But in January ...read more

At a fourth century Roman grave site in England, archaeologists have discovered that a third of the skeletons are decapitated—an unusually high percentage, even for the Roman Empire. “Low proportions of decapitated burials are a common component of Roman cemeteries,” said Andy ...read more

There are a lot of mysteries surrounding Viking graves, and a recent discovery has raised a new one: Why did Icelandic Vikings kill male horses in their prime and bury them with middle-aged men? And why, it seems, were these Vikings more inclined to eat female horses? ...read more

The Schiedam was a pirate ship for a period of time in between its life in the Dutch East India Company and its time in the English fleet. It wrecked in 1684 off the coast of Cornwall in England while transporting English munitions; and recently, two hand grenades still filled ...read more

1. The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s. It Just Surfaced Zora Neale Hurston's searing book about the final survivor of the transatlantic slave trade, Cudjo Lewis, could not find a publisher for nearly 90 years. READ MORE 2. Early Humans ...read more

From a 13,000-year-old brewery to a long-lost ancient city supposedly built by Trojan War captives, it was an eventful year for historical discoveries. As the year comes to a close, take a look back at some of the ways history made news this year. 1. A human ...read more

These boots were made for walking—and surviving the ravages of time. In London, archaeologists discovered the 500-year-old skeleton of a man lying face down in the mud of the River Thames, wearing thigh-high leather boots that were basically still intact. The boots date to the ...read more