A surprising new discovery of ancient human remains in Africa — with remarkably well-preserved DNA — is redrawing the map of human populations in new and exciting ways. Pierre de Maret Louis UniversityThe rock shelter at Shum Laka, where the…
When the volcano erupted in 79 A.D., it baked hundreds of people to death — and transformed at least one victim’s brain matter into hard, twisted, glassy bits. The New England Journal of Medicine 2019Glassy black brain material extracted from the…
Archaeologists found the bottle at a Civil War-era site on the median of Interstate 64 in York County, Virginia. A glass bottle filled with rusted nails may not sound like much of an archaeological find. But this Civil War artifact…
Here, a close-up of one of the engravings (in green contrast) in Peru that was scanned reveals a circular design with a hole in the center and lines radiating outward. A sprawling, stone monument decorated with swirls, circular patterns and…
The rich assemblage of grave goods indicates that the person buried here held a high status. Archaeologists have found the remains of an entire iron-wheeled war chariot in a newly discovered Iron Age tomb in central Italy, a new study…
The rock shelter at Shum Laka in Cameroon. Surprisingly, the ancient people who lived at this rock shelter are not related to the people in the region today. During the Stone Age in what is now western Cameroon, four children…
The mummified body of the ancient Egyptian priest Nesyamun underwent medical scans in 2018 so that a copy of its vocal tract could be made. The voice of an ancient Egyptian priest has been heard for the first time in…
Fragment of glassy black material extracted from the cranial cavity of a victim of the volcanic eruption at Herculaneum in the year 79. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79, the volcano unleashed an avalanche of gas and rock…
The leader of the excavation, archaeologist Daniele Morandi Bonacossi, and one of the panels of Assyrian carvings unearthed in the northern Kurdistan region of Iraq. Stunning ancient rock carvings that portray an Assyrian king paying homage to his gods amid…
Train tracks converge at the entrance to the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. In this photo, taken in 1945, the tracks are strewn with snow-covered personal effects that belonged to the camp’s inmates. In the spring of 1944, Allied forces received…
When Luftwaffe pilot Franz Stigler had American bomber Charlie Brown’s defenseless plane in his sights in 1943, he not only let him go but then escorted him out of danger. A half-century later, the two men became close friends. Public…
By analyzing 103 skulls of early Caribbean inhabitants, experts were able to reassess when and where they settled. This, in turn, lent credence to Columbus’ infamous tales of cannibalism. Ann Ross/North Carolina State UniversityExperts analyzed the skulls of early Caribbean…