History

The culprit behind the mysterious disappearance of one of the most advanced urban civilizations at the time, contemporaries to Mesopotamians and Egyptians, has finally been identified: a series of severe droughts that dried rivers 4,000 years ago.

New research is adding to the body of evidence showing Neanderthals indulged in expressing abstract behavior, this time with archaeologists finding evidence of pencil-like crayons that were likely used to make symbolic art.

Archaeologists have discovered the submerged ruins of a medieval Silk Road city beneath Lake Issyk-Kul in northeastern Kyrgyzstan. Buildings, artifacts, and a necropolis have been found deep under the waters of the lake.

For a long time, archaeologists believed large buildings required large bosses. It was simple: only societies with strong hierarchies (kings and slaves) could organize massive construction projects. But a new discovery in the Maya region is rewriting that story.

After two decades under construction, Egypt has officially thrown open the doors to the largest archeological museum in the world, spanning 94 football fields and built to house some 100,000 exhibits through several millennia.

One of the first events to signal the collapse of Napoleon's reign was his crushing defeat after an invasion of Russia in 1812. Researchers have long thought that the disease typhus played a role, but modern DNA analysis paints a different picture.

There is still great mystery surrounding the early beginnings of the Karnak temple. When did people first begin to settle in this area? How did the Nile river have an impact on this sacred location? New research is finally providing some answers.

Millenia ago communities went to great lengths to hunt wild boars, and not just for survival. Archaeologists recently uncovered 19 wild boar skulls. The skulls bore butchery marks, hinting at a feast; however, the real mystery was their origin.

Long before the Inka ruled the Andes, the Tiwanaku civilization carved out one of the region’s earliest and most influential societies. Then, about a thousand years ago, it vanished, leaving behind stone ruins and swirling mysteries.

We know what they look like, and even sound like, but there’s one question you might not have pondered: what do ancient Egyptian mummies smell like? Whether you wanted to know or not, scientists have now given us an answer.

Many of us have had a tooth pulled in the dentist's chair, and even with anesthetic, it's not pleasant. So spare a thought for the people who, for millennia, chose to have good teeth yanked out with no painkillers – all in the name of beauty (mainly).

Bizarre clumps of organic matter found buried alongside Bronze Age mummies in China have now been identified as cheese. New DNA analysis has finally solved a long-standing mystery, and it makes it the oldest cheese ever found, dating back 3,600 years.

The ingenuity of ancient Egyptian engineers may have been more advanced than we thought. A currently unexplained ancient structure may have been part of a water purification system feeding a hydraulic lift to raise huge stone blocks to build a pyramid.

Tycho Brahe is best known as a Danish Renaissance astronomer. But he was also a bit of an alchemist, and a first-ever analysis on shards found at his former home from the 1500s has shed some light on just what he was up to in his basement lab.

Pompeii is famous for its uniquely pristine preservation of the daily lives of its residents 2,000 years ago. While most residents were quickly buried under volcanic ash, two newly discovered skeletons reveal unlucky people who suffered a different fate.