About 18,000 years ago, the Magdalenian occupants of Marsoulas Cave in what is now France transformed a shell of the predatory sea snail Charonia lampas into a wind instrument. A team of researchers in France has now released a recording of what the instrument would have sounded like. The ancient seashell horn was discovered in 1931 at the entrance of the cave of […]
The skeletal remains of two lovers, buried together more than 1,500 years ago in northern China, were recently discovered locked in an eternal embrace, a new study finds. It’s possible that the woman, who wore a metal ring on her left ring finger, sacrificed herself so that she could be buried with her husband, the […]
University of Queensland’s Dr. Anthony Romilio has examined the ‘Meidum Geese,’ a painting from the Chapel of Itet at Meidum in Egypt. The Meidum Geese painting was found in 1871 in a tomb located near the Meidum Pyramid, which was built by the pharaoh Snefru (reign 2610-2590 BCE). The tomb belonged to the pharaoh’s son, the vizier Nefermaat, and […]
During World War II, 26-year-old John F. Kennedy was nearly killed in action when a Japanese destroyer collided with his patrol torpedo boat in the South Pacific. The harrowing encounter stretched into an eight-day saga that ended with two heroism awards and a coconut souvenir Kennedy later displayed in the Oval Office while serving as the 35th […]
The United States is returning more than 17,000 ancient artifacts looted and smuggled out of Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003, including a 3,500-year-old clay tablet bearing part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Iraq said on Tuesday. Tens of thousands of antiquities disappeared from Iraq after the 2003 invasion that toppled leader Saddam Hussein. […]
Neanderthals may be closer to our prehistoric modern human species than previously believed, after cave paintings found in Spain proved they were fond of creating art, one of the authors of a new scientific report said on Sunday. The red ochre pigment, discovered on stalagmites in the Ardales caves near Malaga in southern Spain, was […]
Spanish and French archaeologists excavating at the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus have discovered what could be one of the earliest known images of Jesus Christ. At the archaeological site, which is located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo, the team led by Prof Josep Padro from the University of Barcelona unearthed an underground stone structure dating […]
The Philadelphia Experiment is one of the most grotesque military urban legends ever — and it has endured as an infamous World War II conspiracy theory. But is there any truth to it? Let’s take a look. According to legend, on Oct. 28, 1943, the USS Eldridge, a Cannon-class destroyer escort, was conducting top-secret experiments […]
An international team of scientists has retrieved and analyzed nuclear and mitochondrial environmental DNA of humans, wolfs (Canis lupus), and bisons (Bison bonasus) from a 25,000-year-old sediment sample from the Upper Paleolithic site of Satsurblia Cave, western Georgia, Caucasus. Satsurblia Cave is a karst cave located 1.2 km from Kumistavi village in the Imereti region of […]
Archaeological excavations in Turkey that began in 2004 have yielded a unique historical treasure — 37 shipwrecks from the Byzantine Empire, eight of which are now described in a new report. The shipwrecks were discovered at a site called Yenikapi, in Istanbul, in what was a port of the ancient city, then called Constantinople. The ships date […]
