An archaeologist in Ireland has discovered an ancient megalithic tomb — one that was seen and sketched in the 19th century but then lost for almost 200 years. Local scholar Billy Mag Fhloinn, an archaeologist and folklorist with Sacred Heart University in the Irish town of Dingle, found the tomb with the help of photogrammetry, … Read more
Devastating volcanic eruptions may have been so enormous they turned the planet into “Snowball Earth” 717 million years ago, a study has found. The volcanic outburst — one of the largest in Earth’s history — likely triggered a series of chemical reactions that sucked carbon dioxide (CO2) from Earth’s ancient atmosphere. The massive eruptions, which … Read more
Nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and early 1960s left the first obvious and indelible marks of “overwhelming” human activity on Earth, and these events may signal the beginning of a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene, geologists say. Fallout from these tests snowed down from the atmosphere and became trapped in the earth … Read more
A hidden “entrance to the underworld” built by the ancient Zapotec culture has been discovered beneath a Catholic church in southern Mexico, according to a team of researchers using cutting-edge ground-scanning technology. The complex system of underground chambers and tunnels was built more than a millennium ago by the Zapotec, whose state arose near modern-day … Read more
Archaeologists in England have discovered more than two dozen monumental pits dotting the countryside in Bedfordshire, north of London. Radiocarbon dating of materials retrieved from the prehistoric site revealed that the round, steep-sided holes were created around 7,700 to 8,500 years ago during the Mesolithic, also known as the Middle Stone Age, according to a … Read more
It’s long been assumed that men were hunters and women were gatherers, but a new study reveals that both sexes have been equally adept at hunting in hunter-gatherer cultures. An international team of scientists made the finding after examining data culled from dozens of academic papers, published over the past 100 years, that focused on … Read more
Archaeologists in Germany have unearthed a sword from a Bronze Age burial, and the weapon is in such good condition that it still gleams. The 3,000-year-old sword, discovered in the town of Nördlingen in Bavaria, was found in the burial of a man, woman and child. It appears that the trio were buried in quick … Read more
The Nazca Lines, a group of hundreds of mysterious geoglyphs etched into the desert in Peru, have mystified scientists for nearly a century. People from ancient civilizations made the drawings over a period of hundreds of years, beginning around 200 B.C. By analyzing the style and subject matter of the drawings and the methods used … Read more
Ancient DNA reveals that the Picts, the “painted people” of Scotland who fought off the Romans, weren’t an enigmatic group that migrated from faraway lands. Instead, the Picts had local roots and were related to other Iron Age people in Britain, a new study finds. An analysis of eight skeletons from two Pictish cemeteries, published … Read more
A rare stash of 1,000-year-old ironwork, which sat for 40 years in a family’s basement in Norway, is now seeing the light of day after a woman discovered the hoard during some spring cleaning. The hoard consists of 32 iron ingots that look like small spatulas and date back to the Viking Age (A.D. 793 … Read more
