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Archeologists have discovered a huge Mayan sculptured head in Guatemala that suggests a little-known site in the jungle-covered Peten region may once have been a significant city. The stucco sculpture, which is 10 feet wide and 11.5 feet tall, was b
Somewhere in the Sierra Nevada, a granite terrace the size of a football field holds hundreds of mysterious stone basins---one of the earliest known "factories" created by Miwok Indians to make tons of salt to trade with tribes around California.
The apes' use of tools can be surprisingly sophisticated. "For example, nut-cracking in the Bossou chimpanzee community in Guinea involves the use of a movable hammer and anvil, and sometimes the additional use of stabilizing wedges to make the anvil
Did our Neolithic ancestors turn to agriculture so that they could be sure of a tipple? The expert on identifying traces of alcohol in prehistoric sites reckons the thirst for a brew was enough of an incentive to start growing crops.
The ancient Mayans may have had enough engineering know-how to master running water, creating fountains and even toilets by controlling water pressure, scientists now suggest. Perhaps the earliest known example of the intentional creation of water
The islanders usually removed the volcanic ash before burying their dead under ashes and sand. Each grave is marked with a pottery jar decorated with intricate patterns, possibly stamped by small pieces of worked bone. The ceramic also depicts faces
Archaeologists unveiled a humble dwelling that is the first dating to the era of Jesus to be discovered in Nazareth, then a hamlet of around 50 impoverished Jewish families where Jesus spent his boyhood.
With wisdom and wit, Anupam Mishra talks about the amazing feats of engineering built centuries ago by the people of India's Golden Desert to harvest water. These structures are still used today -- and are often superior to modern water megaprojects.
Aphorism enthusiast and author James Geary waxes on a fascinating fixture of human language: the metaphor. Friend of scribes from Aristotle to Elvis, metaphor can subtly influence the decisions we make
Early humans were dividing their living spaces into kitchens and work areas much earlier than previously thought. Rather than cooking and eating in the same area where they snoozed, early humans demarcated such living quarters.
Recently excavated Mayan murals are giving archaeologists a rare look into the lives of ordinary ancient Maya. The murals were uncovered during the excavation of a pyramid mound structure at the ancient Maya site of Calakmul, Mexico (near the bord
The dawn of humanity remains a fascinating mystery. What started our distant ancestors on the evolutionary path that led to us? Spectacular fossils and a host of other data uncovered in the last decade are revealing key details to solving this riddle
Many prehistoric Australian aboriginals could have outrun world 100 and 200 meters record holder Usain Bolt in modern conditions. Some Tutsi men in Rwanda exceeded the current world high jump record of 2.45 meters during initiation ceremonies in
This is not something we normally do but this is truly magic. We do not know the tranlation of this song but we give it to you with love. Copy it down or loose it forever.
Knock me over with an eagle feather, one of the oldest indigenous languages still exists but you can't speak it, it's not a spoken language, never was. It's a sign language that used to be literally ubiquitous.
It is kinda weird seeing how people spend their time each day: Note that the chart shows the percentage of what EVERYONE is doing at a given money over the course of a day doing a given activity at that moment.
Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of an ancient farming community at a site called Las Capas in Arizona. The settlement dates to 1200 BC-800 BC, the early agricultural period in the Southwest
The oldest known human hair belonged to a 9,000-year-old mummy disinterred from an ancient Chilean cemetery. Until now: a recent discovery pushes the record back some 200,000 years.
Africans have more genetic variation than anyone else on Earth, according to a new study that helps narrow the location where humans first evolved, probably near the South Africa-Namibia border. The largest study of African genetics ever undertake
In my manuscript Paradigms Shift, I develop the thesis that modern Homo Sapiens Sapiens emerged first in the Indonesian archipelago somewhere around perhaps 70,000 to 100,000 years ago from a hominid distribution that had reached there long since.
6 years after their discovery, the extinct little people nicknamed hobbits who once occupied the Indonesian island of Flores remain mystifying anomalies in human evolution, out of place in time and geography, their ancestry unknown
Our ancient human ancestors traded in the ability to climb trees for the power to walk on two legs, but it is unclear when this happened in evolutionary time. A new study could help pin down the timing of this exchange, revealing that human
A Greek fisherman must have been expecting a monster of a catch when he brought up his nets in the Aegean Sea last week. Instead, Greek authorities say his haul was a section of a 2,200-year-old bronze statue of a horseman.
For a millennium it has lain undisturbed beneath the waves a stone's throw from one of Britain's best-loved beaches. But now modern technology has revealed this ancient fish trap, used at the time of the Norman Conquest.
CONNECTING THE DOTS
In a few words: sickening, horrid, infantile, stupid and pathetic!
An archaeological dig near Venice has unearthed the 16th-century remains of a woman with a brick stuck between her jaws — evidence, experts say, that she was believed to be a vampire.
Early humans had feet like ours and left lasting impressions in the form of 1.5 million-year-old footprints, some of which were made by feet that could wear a size 9 men's shoe. The findings at a Northern Kenya site represent the oldest evidence
Landscapers were digging a hole for a fish pond in the front yard of a Boulder home last May when they heard a "chink" that didn't sound right. Just some lost tools. Some 13,000-year-old lost tools. They had stumbled onto a cache of mor
Maintenance workers at Egypt's Giza Pyramids have found an ancient quartzite statue of a seated man buried close to the surface of the desert. The statue, about life-size at five feet tall, was found north of the smallest of Giza's three mai
Most encouraging to myself is that the consistent application of terra preta and terra mulato soils allows us to ultimately map truly settled lands like nowhere else in the world. We will ultimately get a measure of optimum population at the time of
