Roman “wax tablets” were wooden frames holding a thin layer of wax used like a reusable notepad. The wax is gone in the Tongeren material, but stylus pressure sometimes bit deep enough to leave ...

New analysis of ancient Mesopotamian medical prescriptions suggests that, in a small but striking set of cases, patients were instructed to seek out the sanctuary of a deity as part of their healing ...

Confucius (circa 551–479 B.C.E.) was a teacher, philosopher, and political theorist from ancient China. His teachings have influenced much of East Asia and continue to provide us with guidance on how ...

A palm-sized fragment of elephant bone, shaped and used as a precision tool almost half a million years ago, has been identified as the oldest known elephant-bone implement in Europe. Although the ...

Researchers studying exquisitely preserved Scottish fossils say Prototaxites represents an entirely extinct eukaryotic lineage - a “new form of life” in the sense that it does not fit into known major ...

The modern city of Dwarka (meaning ‘Gateway to Heaven’ in Sanskrit) is located in the north-western Indian state of Gujarat. This city is regarded as one of the most prominent Chardham (the four ...

A faint hand stencil hidden on a cave wall in Indonesia has been dated to at least 67,800 years old—potentially making it the oldest known cave art yet studied. The discovery comes from a limestone ...

According to legends, the Kingdom of Saguenay is a lost city supposedly ruled by blonde men rich with gold and jewels. No one knows if native Canadians in 1534 and 1535 hoaxed greedy Frenchmen and ...

Lia Fáil is a carved standing stone on the Hill of Tara. Legends say this Stone of Destiny roared at the touch of a true king, making it the coronation stone for the High Kings of Ireland from the ...

Tabloids have seized on the most headline-friendly takeaway - “pulleys built the pyramid” - but the underlying claim is more specific: the pyramid may have grown “inside-out,” using internal sloped ...

The newly described specimen is a partial left mandible plus a molar crown, dated to about 2.6 million years ago using multiple methods, making it one of the oldest Paranthropus fossils known. The ...

The project, described by Pompeii officials as Bruits de couloir (“corridor whispers”), used Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), a computational photography technique that photographs a surface ...