Whole cities are not supposed to disappear between dusk and dawn – yet history keeps proving otherwise. From volcanic avalanches to collapsing mountains, sudden burial has turned thriving streets into frozen time capsules and, sometimes, mass graves. Today’s scientists read those sealed layers like reporters at a crime scene, reconstructing the minutes that changed everything ...
Across the high deserts and canyon country of what is now Utah, the Fremont people flourished for centuries, then seemed to fade from view around the thirteenth century. Archaeologists have long puzzled over the mystery: granaries still tucked into cliffs, rock art etched with unmistakable trapezoidal figures, and villages that look paused rather than ended. ...
A strange ceramic vessel shaped like a penguin stands out in the dry deserts of southern Peru, where the Nazca culture thrived between 100 BCE and 800 CE. It shows how curious and aware they were of their surroundings. This 1,600-year-old “Penguin Vessel,” which is now in the Art Institute of Chicago, makes us wonder: ...
In 1860, a farmer in the quiet Slovak village of Ivanka pri Nitre found something much more unusual than roots or rocks, a beautiful crown with gold panels buried in the ground. Historians, archaeologists, and art experts would spend the next hundred years arguing about whether this accidental discovery was the lost treasure of Byzantine ...
Deep in the Caucasus Mountains, a cave has yielded a discovery that shatters long-held assumptions about Neanderthals. A 9-centimeter (3.5-inch) spear tip, carved from the leg bone of a bison and hardened in fire, has been dated to 70,000–80,000 years ago making it the oldest bone weapon ever found in Europe. But what’s truly groundbreaking? ...
For tens of thousands of years, people have been enthralled with red not only for its beauty but also for its power, symbolism, and usefulness. Red colors have shaped art, trade, war, even survival from the deep, earthy tones of ochre to the vivid carmine of crushed cochineal bugs. But why did prehistoric people travel ...
For nearly a century, an enigmatic mummy sat quietly in the collections of the University of Turin’s Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (MAET), her secrets locked beneath darkened skin. Donated before 1930 with no archaeological records, her origins were a mystery until now. A recent study has revealed something extraordinary: a series of rare facial ...
Gargi Chakravorty
