The treasures on display range from the spectacular – a cooking pot made 5,000 years ago decorated with a ceramic representation of dancing flames – to the intriguing, such as lovingly crafted models of mushrooms that might suggest the ancient makers were interested in the mind-altering properties of fungi. Gathered in an exhibition room at […]
A 3,000-year-old canoe has been found in Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin, less than a year after another historical canoe dating back more than a millennium was discovered in the same body of water. An archaeologist found the artifact in pieces before it was recovered from the lake last Thursday in collaboration with Wisconsin’s Native […]
Scientists have been using sophisticated forensic techniques to create snapshots of life in prehistoric Britain. By discovering, recording and analysing ancient footprints, they have been able to reconstruct in considerable detail specific moments in the lives of Britons who lived up to 8,500 years ago. The research has been carried out on a beach near […]
The discovery of hidden hieroglyphics within Tutankhamun’s tomb lends weight to a theory that the fabled Egyptian queen Nefertiti lies in a hidden chamber adjacent to her stepson’s burial chamber, a world-renowned British Egyptologist has said. Nicholas Reeves, a former curator in the British Museum’s Department of Egyptian Antiquities, said that while the theory remained […]
Wandering on Stapeley Common is to walk on the floor of the sky. Strangely apart from the hills and valleys of Shropshire and Powys, and where the border between countries may be a raven’s flight line or a skylark’s parabola over a gorse clump, this is an outlier place. The Stiperstones and Long Mynd lie […]
Israeli archaeologists have discovered opium residue in 3,500-year-old pottery pieces, providing evidence to support the theory that the hallucinogenic drug was used in ancient burial rituals. The joint investigation by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Weizmann Institute of Science began in 2012 when excavations in the central Israeli town of Yehud revealed a series of […]
An ornate Byzantine floor mosaic showing colourful birds and animals has been discovered by chance in Gaza after a Palestinian farmer planted new trees on his land. Salman al-Nabahin unearthed the mosaic pavement, thought to date from the 5th to 7th century AD, six months ago while working in his olive orchard in Bureij refugee […]
This peculiar, tonally uncertain, quirky-solemn-sentimental movie is based on the true story of Philippa Langley, likably played here by Sally Hawkins, the amateur British history enthusiast who in 2012 became globally famous for discovering the remains of Richard III beneath a Leicester car park. By her own account, Langley was a member of the Richard […]
Archaeologists in Georgia have found a 1.8m-year-old tooth belonging to an early species of human that they say cements the region as the home of one of the earliest prehistoric human settlements in Europe, and possibly anywhere outside Africa. The tooth was discovered near the village of Orozmani, which lies about 60 miles south-west of […]
I grew up in Chaozhou, a small city in southern China surrounded by mountains and sea. I was always fond of dinosaurs, and when I was in high school I set up the first website dedicated to dinosaurs in China. Now, as a professor at the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, I’m also active […]
