Story Archive
Hierapolis Plutonium’s CO₂ fissure helps explain ancient “gate to hell” tales
Carbon dioxide fissure at Plutonium temple matched ancient 'gate to hell' accounts. Strabo, described a space filled with dense misty vapour where animals led in fell dead and…
WF16,, Jordan's 11,300-year-old PPNA settlement, uncovered in 1996
WF16,, Jordan's 11,300-year-old PPNA settlement, uncovered in 1996. WF16, stands for Wadi Faynan 16, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site in the Faynan region of southern Jordan: in the…
Cultivation of wild barley, selective goat herding and malachite bead working at WF16
Cultivation of wild barley, selective goat herding and malachite bead working at WF16. Storage buildings, numerous pestles and mortars, and grains of wild plants including barley…
Structure O75: 20x18 m amphitheatre building used for 800 years
Structure O75: 20x18 m amphitheatre building used for 800 years. O75 is a large communal enclosure at the northern end of the WF16 settlement, semi-subterranean with pise surfaces…
WF16 burials under floors show bundled, plaster-wrapped bone offerings
WF16 burials under floors show bundled, plaster-wrapped bone offerings. Human burials at WF16 were often placed beneath the floors of structures or cut into the walls of earlier…
Atacama Desert skeletons show violence becoming lethal from c. 1000 BC to AD 1450
Atacama Desert skeletons show violence becoming lethal from c. 1000 BC to AD 1450. A 2023 study examined several hundred skeletons from the Atacama Desert coast of South America,…
Stone blade killed a person at Kaza Cave, Israel, ~100,000 years ago
Stone blade killed a person at Kaza Cave, Israel, ~100,000 years ago. A possible murder victim is dated to about 430,000 years ago, among the earliest evidence of deliberate…
San Juan ante Portam Latinam massacre pit (c. 3300 BC) held 338 mostly adolescent victims
San Juan ante Portam Latinam massacre pit (c. 3300 BC) held 338 mostly adolescent victims. El Trox cave in Spain contained five adults and four children; the adults were shot in…
Jebel Sahaba, Egypt-Sudan border, re-dated as a hunter-gatherer cemetery, not a battlefield
Jebel Sahaba, Egypt-Sudan border, re-dated as a hunter-gatherer cemetery, not a battlefield. Jebel Sahaba lies on the border between modern Egypt and Sudan, dates to about 14,000…
Sedentary hunter-gatherers at Aenohara, Japan, lived without farming c. 9500 BC
Sedentary hunter-gatherers at Aenohara, Japan, lived without farming c. 9500 BC. Aenohara in Japan dates to about 11,500 years ago and contained the remains of 52 huts, at least…
2,800-year-old Yeha palace in Ethiopia modeled as a 16-story structure
2,800-year-old Yeha palace in Ethiopia modeled as a 16-story structure. A roughly 2,800-year-old palace at Yeha in northern Ethiopia is dated to about 800 BC The building measures…
2026 permitted expedition scans 515-ft boat-shaped formation on Mount Ararat
2026 permitted expedition scans 515-ft boat-shaped formation on Mount Ararat. Ancient Sumerian maps are said to reference the formation's location, and Irving Finkel was credited…
Cornwell: preconceived goals corrupt fieldwork; reproducibility missing in archaeology
Cornwell: preconceived goals corrupt fieldwork; reproducibility missing in archaeology. University of Glasgow archaeologist David Cornwell said archaeologists who enter a site…
Piasa Bird petroglyph on Mississippi cliffs partly destroyed by limestone mining
Piasa Bird petroglyph on Mississippi cliffs partly destroyed by limestone mining. A giant bird-like monster image, the 'Piasa Bird', was painted on limestone cliffs on the…
25,000-year-old human teeth reveal earliest betel nut drug use
25,000-year-old human teeth reveal earliest betel nut drug use. Study of two early forager skeletons dated to 25,000-16,000 years ago and 7,600-6,300 years ago found unusually…
Two intact 12,000-year-old burials uncovered at Göbekli Tepe
Two intact 12,000-year-old burials uncovered at Göbekli Tepe. Two intact burials around 12,000 years old were found at Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey, the first intact…
Intact Chimu funerary platform with 38 burials found at Chan Chan
Intact Chimu funerary platform with 38 burials found at Chan Chan. A remarkably intact walled funerary complex was excavated at Chan Chan, also called Chimor, the capital of the…
Sphinx Temple megalithic construction and mysterious features
Sphinx Temple megalithic construction and mysterious features. The Sphinx Temple is a megalithic construction partly carved from the bedrock itself There is no direct entrance…
Ten monolithic bedrock pillars and interior granite features of Sphinx Temple
Ten monolithic bedrock pillars and interior granite features of Sphinx Temple. Ten monolithic pillars exist inside the Sphinx Temple: four along one edge, four along the other,…
Ear stelae found near the monument link feature to ancient worship practice
Ear stelae found near the monument link feature to ancient worship practice. Selim Hassan discovered ear stelae (Esteli) around the Sphinx in the 1930s The stelae date to the New…
Pre-Mississippian cultures built earthen pyramids at Holly Bluff and Poverty Point before Cahokia
Pre-Mississippian cultures built earthen pyramids at Holly Bluff and Poverty Point before Cahokia. The Coles Creek culture of Louisiana and Mississippi built pyramid towns…
Plum Bayou maintained trade network linking Arkansas to Gulf, Ozarks, and Great Lakes
Plum Bayou maintained trade network linking Arkansas to Gulf, Ozarks, and Great Lakes. Plum Bayou ceramics appear at Spiro in Oklahoma before the construction of Spiro's first…
2025 genetic analysis models Trypillians as 81% Balkan copper age ancestry
2025 genetic analysis models Trypillians as 81% Balkan copper age ancestry. Anatolian farming colonists spread into the Mediterranean and Balkans with less than 10% mixing with…
Trypillia farmers cultivated einkorn, emmer wheat, naked barley, and peas
Trypillia farmers cultivated einkorn, emmer wheat, naked barley, and peas. Archaeobotanical research identified crop varieties of einkorn, emmer, timopheevi wheat, naked barley,…
Settlements of the Cucuteni-Trypillia Culture emerged from Carpathian farming traditions around 5000 BC
Settlements of the Cucuteni-Trypillia Culture emerged from Carpathian farming traditions around 5000 BC. Pre-Cucuteni and Trypillia drew on traditions from Boian, Karanovo, Linear…
Trypillia culture declined around 3650-3500 BC before Yamnaya steppe interactions
Trypillia culture declined around 3650-3500 BC before Yamnaya steppe interactions. Trypillia culture lasted more than 2 millennia, from approximately 5000 to 2800 BC Peak period…
Experiments proved Trypillia house burnings needed 9x more wood than construction
Experiments proved Trypillia house burnings needed 9x more wood than construction. Experimental reproduction of a Trypillia house required 3.45 cubic meters of structural timber…
Video argues Stâncești kilns may have enabled copper smelting
Trypillia potters at Stancesti used dual-chambered kilns that enabled copper smelting. Analysis of materials from Tarpesti in Romania identified pottery recipes using selected…
Banditry and hazards faced by early pyramid explorers in Egypt
Banditry and hazards faced by early pyramid explorers in Egypt. Gabrielle Bremon in 1643 described water-filled hollows and shifting sands near the pyramids Pietro della Valle in…
Nathaniel Davidson discovers first relieving chamber above King's Chamber in 1765
Nathaniel Davidson discovers first relieving chamber above King's Chamber in 1765. German traveler Nathaniel Davidson discovered the first relieving chamber above the King's…
Zamut Kichel's 1588 climb of the shaft in the Great Pyramid
Zamut Kichel's 1588 climb of the shaft in the Great Pyramid. German traveler Zamut Kichel visited Giza in 1588 without hired janisaries due to limited funds Kichel climbed the…
Climate change correlates with collapse of Carpathian tell settlements c. 1600-1200 BC
Climate change correlates with collapse of Carpathian tell settlements c. 1600-1200 BC. A new ceramic style called Kosider, named after a Hungarian site, appeared around 1600-1450…
Spissky Stvrtok's unique stone fortifications differ from standard Otomani earth-and-timber defenses
Spissky Stvrtok's unique stone fortifications differ from standard Otomani earth-and-timber defenses. Typical Otomani fortifications feature a rampart of earth and clay reinforced…
Spissky Stvrtok may belong to Puchav culture, not Otomani, reclassifying it to Iron Age
Spissky Stvrtok may belong to Puchav culture, not Otomani, reclassifying it to Iron Age. When discovered in the early 1970s, the site was dated to the Otomani culture and…
2025 Sivas Cumhuriyet University expedition finds right-angle features and organic layers at Durupinar
2025 Sivas Cumhuriyet University expedition finds right-angle features and organic layers at Durupinar. A team from Sivas Cumhuriyet University conducted modern investigations at…
Historical investigations and debunking of Durupinar site as Noah's Ark
Historical investigations and debunking of Durupinar site as Noah's Ark. Ron Wyatt, a nurse from Tennessee with no archaeological credentials, began investigating the site in the…
Göbekli Tepe cellular rooms and tether points as spatial innovation
Göbekli Tepe cellular rooms and tether points as spatial innovation. Göbekli Tepe features drilled holes through stone that served as tether points, possibly for hanging textiles…
Karahan Tepe discovery of man riding leopard statue
Karahan Tepe discovery of man riding leopard statue. Recent discoveries at Karahan Tepe include a statue depicting a man riding a leopard The discovery is noted as significant but…
Skara Brae stone-slab toilet as earliest sanitation example
Skara Brae stone-slab toilet as earliest sanitation example. Skara Brae features stone slabs that allow modular construction, unusual in prehistoric building Skara Brae contains…
Catalhoyuk workshop with mud brick walls dated to 6,600 BC
Catalhoyuk workshop with mud brick walls dated to 6,600 BC. A low foundational mud brick wall at Catalhoyuk has been interpreted as a workspace partition
Researcher identifies narrative sequences in prehistoric rock art at Turkish sites
Researcher identifies narrative sequences in prehistoric rock art at Turkish sites. Serge Kasan has identified narrative sequences in prehistoric rock art carvings, including…
Ancient origins of constellation stories and the etymology of canicular days
Ancient origins of constellation stories and the etymology of canicular days. The origins of most constellation groupings are lost in deep prehistory and cannot be precisely dated…
LiDAR scans reveal buried road and terraces near Machu Picchu citadel
LiDAR scans reveal buried road and terraces near Machu Picchu citadel. LiDAR survey conducted within Machu Picchu National Archaeological Park LiDAR works by firing laser pulses…
Mandor wall discoveries reshape understanding of Machu Picchu landscape
Mandor wall discoveries reshape understanding of Machu Picchu landscape. The Mandor wall lies east of Machu Picchu Forms part of the wider cultural landscape surrounding the…
University of Warsaw Center for Andean Studies leads international cooperation
University of Warsaw Center for Andean Studies leads international cooperation. Director of the University of Warsaw's Center for Andean Studies highlighted importance of…
Bingham's discovery and surrounding ruins extend beyond Machu Picchu
Bingham's discovery and surrounding ruins extend beyond Machu Picchu. Hiram Bingham was the American explorer who discovered Machu Picchu in the early 20th century A local Quechua…
Cusco culture officials order targeted studies of newly found features
Cusco culture officials order targeted studies of newly found features. Culture officials in Cusco ordered targeted archaeological studies of the newly identified features Studies…
Inca megalithic paved highways crossed ancient Peru
Inca megalithic paved highways crossed ancient Peru. The Inca used massive paved stone highways during the Inca Empire Roads were made of megalithic paved stone with cement and…
Christian O'Brien's research on British and global megaliths
Christian O'Brien's research on British and global megaliths. Christian O'Brien studied natural sciences at Christ College Cambridge Spent years in Iran as exploration geologist…
Poverty Point and early North American earthworks
Poverty Point and early North American earthworks. Poverty Point is an example of the first massive constructions of earth and timber in North America Speaker dates Poverty Point…
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