Archaeology

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

Scientists discovered the ancient human skeleton known as the “Spirit Cave Mummy” back in 1940, hidden in a small rocky cave in the Great Basin Desert in northwest Nevada. But it wouldn’t be until the 1990s that radiocarbon dating techniques revealed the skeleton was some 10,600 ...read more

Researchers in Egypt discovered a 4,500-year-old ramp system used to haul alabaster stones out of a quarry, and reports have suggested that it could provide clues as to how Egyptians built the pyramids. Yet while the ramp system is a significant technological discovery, the ...read more

A secret passage to the underworld may have just been discovered, at least according to the mysterious ancient civilization that built it. Archaeologists have confirmed the existence of a hidden tunnel leading to a chamber deep underneath the Pyramid of the Moon, the massive ...read more

Off the Bulgarian coast, just over a mile beneath the surface of the Black Sea, archaeologists have discovered what they believe is the world’s oldest intact shipwreck. Measuring some 75 feet (23 meters) long, the ship is thought to be an ancient Greek trading vessel. With its ...read more

A massive Viking ship has been found in Norway less than two feet below the Earth’s surface. Archaeologists at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) made the discovery using radar designed to permeate the ground without actually excavating any artifacts. ...read more

Sure, the story of King Arthur drawing Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake is pretty cool. But have you heard about the eight-year-old girl who pulled a sword that’s at least 1,000 years old out of a Swedish lake? The Swedish news site The Local reports that Saga Vanecek was ...read more

Every fall, grocery stores line their shelves with pumpkin spice-flavored products that range from traditional pumpkin pies to the more questionable pumpkin spice candy corn. The flavor is a mixture of nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and cloves—all spices that humans have enjoyed in ...read more

For many people, nothing tastes better than a glass of cold beer, whether enjoyed at the end of a long day of work or while relaxing on a summer afternoon. But brewing beer—not baking bread—could be the reason our ancestors began cultivating grains in the first place. Inside a ...read more

In 2014, Greenpeace got in trouble for disturbing a mysterious World Heritage site of desert hieroglyphs known as the Nazca Lines (and in early 2018, a truck drove across them, too). The site consists of massive designs that pre-Incan people etched into the ground starting around ...read more

It’s been known for some time that our modern human ancestors interbred with other early hominin groups like the Neanderthals. But it turns out they were even more promiscuous than we thought. New DNA research has unexpectedly revealed that modern humans (Homo sapiens) mixed, ...read more

The city of Rome is over 2,700 years old. Dig into the ground and you’ll eventually bump into what the old residents left behind. Over the past decade, the construction and extension of Rome’s third subway line—Line C—has unearthed a treasure trove of artifacts. In December 2017, ...read more

1. Santa Maria Christopher Columbus famously set sail on his first voyage to the Americas with three ships—the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa Maria—but only two returned to Spain. On Christmas Eve 1492, the sailor charged with steering the flagship Santa Maria handed the wheel ...read more

The allure of Sicily’s beauty is nothing new. Around 650 B.C. the Mediterranean island seduced a band of colonists from the port of Megara in ancient Greece who settled near the mouth of a small river on the southwest coast. The colony—named for the wild celery (“selinon” in ...read more

1. Lascaux Cave In September 1940, four French teenagers were roaming the forests near Montignac when their dog began sniffing around a mysterious hole in the ground. After shimmying down a stone shaft, the boys encountered a vast underground cavern whose walls were adorned with ...read more

The Abu Sir necropolis southwest of Cairo contains several pyramids dedicated to Egyptian pharaohs of the Fifth Dynasty (2994-2345 B.C.), including Pharaoh Neferefre. A Czech archaeological mission working at Abu Sir, in collaboration with the Egyptian antiquities authorities, ...read more

In the winter of 1757, one of the bluest of Colonial Connecticut’s bluebloods set sail from New London. Colonial governors sprouted from Dudley Saltonstall’s family tree, and his ancestors included John Winthrop, the Puritan founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Sir ...read more

1. Ginger Nicknamed for its red hair, “Ginger” is the most famous of six naturally mummified bodies excavated in the late 19th century from shallow graves in the Egyptian desert. It went on display at the British Museum in 1901, becoming the first mummy to be exhibited in public, ...read more