Category: Human History
A Volcano Toasted This Scroll 2,000 Years Ago. Here’s How Scientists Read It Without Ever Opening It
A combination of technical ingenuity, scientific risk-taking, and interdisciplinary collaboration has unlocked a record once thought to be...
This Skeleton May Prove That Imperial China Really Did Cut Off Noses as Punishment
Researchers say the woman received medical attention after the procedure but was eventually buried in shame.
A Massive, 2,000-Year-Old Iron Haul Could Rewrite What We Know About Ancient Trade
The team calls the discovery a “minor miracle.”
Could King Tut’s Tomb Be Hiding an Ancient Queen?
The deceased pharaoh may have hijacked the larger burial of one of ancient Egypt's most famous women: Nefertiti.
Scientists Say Lead in Ink Could Finally Crack Herculaneum’s Burnt Scrolls—So They Baked a Fake One as a Test
The Herculaneum scrolls were discovered in the 1700s. It's taken centuries for researchers to read one of them...
We’ve Been Giving the Parthenon’s Architects Credit for a Trick They Might Not Have Even Used
The Greeks probably were very intelligent, innovative architects—but we're also probably overestimating the extent of their scientific awareness.
Archaeologists Just Opened a Pre-Incan Tomb Sealed for 600 Years. Here’s What They Found
The mausoleum miraculously evaded colonial and contemporary looters—but not the careful eye of experts working at the historical...
We Were Wildly Off About Pre-European Indigenous Populations in Australia
This also implies that we've been wildly undermining the true scale of the crushing impact colonization had on...
A Woman Ruled Ancient Egypt as King 5,000 Years Ago, Research Claims
A blurry old photo is reviving a decades-old debate over Egypt's First Dynasty.
Scientists Studied 185,896 Miles of Roman Roads—and That’s Still the ‘Tip of the Iceberg’
After developing the biggest-ever map of Roman roads, a team of archaeologists has found that some of our...
