Enlarge / A rare cuneiform tablet engraved with a portion of the ancient Mesopotamian epic of Gilgamesh will be returned to Iraq, per the US Department of Justice, along with 17, 000 other looted artifacts. (credit: U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) During the unrest in Iraq in April 2003, opportunistic looters stole some 15, […]
Enlarge / Artist’s reconstruction of Thomas Cromwell’s mansion on Throgmorton Street in 1539, London, England. (credit: Peter Urmston) Tudor England was a treacherous place for ambitious courtiers, as the steady rise and sudden tragic fall of Thomas Cromwell—one of the chief architects of the English Reformation under King Henry VIII—makes clear. Cromwell had just completed […]
Enlarge (credit: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities) Twenty-four hundred years ago, Heraklion was ancient Egypt’s largest port on the Mediterranean Sea. Today, the ancient city lies submerged beneath Abu Qir Bay, a few kilometers off the coast of Alexandria. Archaeology recently discovered the wreck of a warship from the city’s final years buried in the […]
Enlarge / Analysis of the reputed self-portrait drawing by Leonardo da Vinci (~1515, Biblioteca Reale, Turin). (credit: C. Tyler/Saiko, Creative Commons) A recently assembled Leonardo da Vinci family tree, spanning 21 generations from 1331 to the present, could pave the way for DNA testing that might confirm whether the bones interred in da Vinci’s grave […]
Enlarge / Florida Museum archaeologist Charles Cobb holds an axe head known as a celt, one of more than 80 metal objects likely from the de Soto expedition. To create this distinct shape, a Chickasaw craftsperson reworked Spanish iron to mimic traditional stone versions. (credit: Jeff Gage/Florida Museum of Natural History) In 1540, Spanish conquistador […]
(credit: Leder et al. 2021) During the Middle Ages, people ventured into the cave now called Einhornhohle to collect unicorn bones. It’s tempting to wonder whether those medieval cryptid hunters would be disappointed or fascinated to learn that the bones they unearthed from the cave actually belonged to ancient bison, deer, cave lions, bears, and […]
Enlarge / Behold, the “Rude Man” chalk giant carved on a hill above the village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, England. (credit: Barry Batchelor/PA Images/Getty Images) The Cerne Abbas Giant is a 180-foot-tall figure of a naked man wielding a large club, carved with chalk into a hilltop in Dorset, England. The figure’s generously sized […]
Ancient Rome’s emperors did some pretty bizarre stuff—bursting into uncontrollable fits of laughter, appointing a horse as a priest, dressing in animal skins and attacking people… the list goes on. Why did they act this way? Possibly… lead poisoning. There are any number of factors that contribute to the demise of an entire civilization, like […]
Enlarge / The Harbin skull (left) and the Dali skull (right). (credit: Ni et al. 2021) The reported discovery of a new hominin species from China created a lot of buzz last week. Its discoverers—paleoanthropologists Xijun Ni, Qiang Ji, Chris Stringer, and their colleagues—say that a skull discovered near Harbin, in northeast China, has a […]
Enlarge / Ole Worm’s 17th-century drawing of the Hjarnø Viking ship settings at Kalvestene (1650). (credit: Ole Worm / Public domain) In 1650, a Danish physician and antiquarian named Ole Worm conducted the first survey of a Viking cremation burial site known as the Kalvestene. Worm created a map of the locations of all the “ship […]