Fossils From Some of the Last Homo Erectus Hint at the End of the Long-Lived Species Two million years ago Homo erectus evolved and became the first known human species to walk fully upright. New data reveals that it survived in the Indonesian island of Java a just over 100,000 years ago-long after it had vanished elsewhere. This means that […]
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Inuit Mummies Had Clogged Arteries Despite High Omega-3s The mummified Inuit scans of Greenland from the 16th century show that, despite a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids, the ancient hunters suffered from clogged-up arteries. Atherosclerosis — the build-up of fat, cholesterol, and calcium plaques in one’s arteries — is a leading cause of death in the wealthy countries of […]
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4,000-Year-Old Guide to the Ancient Egyptian Underworld May Be Oldest Illustrated ‘Book’ Few rides outside the subway system of New York City rival those mentioned in “The Book of Two Ways,” a mystical road map to the ancient Egyptian afterlife, when it comes to difficult travel. This user’s guide, a precursor to the corpus of Egyptian funerary texts known as […]
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Priceless Gold Coins Discovered in Ancient ‘Piggy Bank’ in Israel In an ancient harbor off Israel’s coast, a massive trove of thousand-year-old gold coins was unearthed. The hoard, discovered by members of an amateur scuba diving club for the first time, is Israel’s largest haul of gold coins ever unearthed. The finding raises the possibility that an ancient shipwreck, once […]
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Scythian Burial With Golden Headdress Found in Russia As the ancient Scythians travelled through Europe and Asia to discover subsequent archaeologists and left behind a trail of burial mounds, it was assumed that those buried with weapons were men. It was only with the advent of modern scientific analysis that it was revealed that women warriors were a common sight […]
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About 48 million years-ago a young snake died a few days after eating a lizard in a volcanic lake. The lizard had just eaten a beetle that was still in its stomach, and the evidence of this ancient food chain has been preserved for millions of years. The unique fossil has now been uncovered by researchers digging in the Messel […]
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It’s kind of like an evil eye, but the other way around: the good eye, brought about through lead-based kohl made up, unknowingly poisonous for ancient Egyptians but also had anti-microbial properties. Plus there was the magical aspect of invoking the gods Horus and Ra with the application of black makeup and further protective properties. In ancient Egypt people from all classes from laborers to royalty, applied the kohl in their eyes, as modern archaeologists and Egyptologists explain. But this phenomenon of thick, black […]
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The Varna Gold Treasure is considered the oldest gold treasure in the world or the oldest human processed gold in the world dating back to the time of the Chalcolithic (Aeneolithic, Copper Age) Varna Culture – 4,550-4,320 BC. The Varna gold treasure all from the Late Chalcolithic period in the Varna 5th millennium BC, is one of five or six […]
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In Peru, eleven 1000-year-old graves containing skeletons from the Moche civilization were found. Some were mutilated by removing their feet and tattoos imprinted on their skulls. Two children buried at the site were found with strange symbols illustrated on their skull fronts and one person was buried with a scepter. Another high-standing person was buried in a high-ceiling room and is thought […]
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‘ The Amazing Growth of the Christmas Tree’ Who would have imagined that one day the modest tree would be a huge global achievement? A couple of hundred years ago? Of course not Martin Luther, who is said to have decorated a tree with candles to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Nor Prince Albert, who set up the first Christmas […]
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