There’s a temperature nothing in the universe has ever touched. It’s called absolute zero, equal to -273.15°C (-459.67°F), the point at which the particles that make up matter would lose all their kinetic energy and simply stop moving. In 1848, the British physicist William Thomson — better known as Lord Kelvin — proposed making that […]
The site is provisionally dated to a six-century stretch, from the 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD, offering a window into funerary rites practiced by a population that neither buried nor cremated its dead — long before that same principle produced the famous Towers of Silence. The find comes from Odirmon, a site […]
In 2016, paleontologist David DeMar Jr. was crawling across a rocky outcrop in northeastern Montana, hunting for fish fossils, when he spotted a dark, reddish-brown nodule about half the size of a golf ball. He picked it up and looked at it through his hand lens. On its surface was something he didn’t expect: a […]
Two skeletons from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi had something strange going on in their mouths. Not cavities. Not the usual wear from a tough diet. Deep, rounded grooves cut into the teeth — a pattern no archaeologist had documented before, and one nobody could explain. The answer, published in Science Advances, pushes the known […]
Long before anyone built a kiln on purpose, the ground itself may have shown people how. A new study argues that a wave of prehistoric wildfires in the southern Levant, more than 9,000 years ago, scorched the region so thoroughly that it left behind naturally baked clay — and that Neolithic communities, watching the aftermath, […]
For years, a small fragment of papyrus lay unnoticed in the collections of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo. No one had looked closely at it until, in early 2026, Belgian papyrologist Nathan Carlig of the University of Liège realized what he had in front of him: a previously unknown fragment of the […]
In 2006, geneticist Bryan Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, published the results of a study that had taken him a decade to complete. His team had collected and analyzed the mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome of 10,000 volunteers from England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, with the aim of reconstructing the […]
In Ancient Greece, there was an expression to describe someone who had lived through a terrifying experience: it was said of him that he had gone down to the cave of Trophonius. It was not an empty metaphor. In Lebadea, a city in Boeotia located about 120 kilometers northwest of Athens, there existed for more […]
For more than seven decades, phosphorus has represented one of the great paradoxes in the study of the origin of life. This element, indispensable for the existence of living beings as we know them, forms the structural backbone of DNA and RNA, allows cells to store and transfer energy through the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP), […]
The archaeological research in the ancient sanctuary of Apollo in Gortyna, the famed Cretan city whose epigraphic legislation marked a milestone in the history of Greek law, has concluded its summer season with a series of findings that consolidate the importance of the site as a first-class religious center during the formation of the polis. […]
For decades, paleontologists have used the presence of stones inside the skeletons of dinosaurs as an indicator that the animal was herbivorous. These stones, known as gastroliths, have been found in numerous species and were assumed to serve to grind plant material in the stomach, just like many birds do today. However, this relationship has […]
A ritual well with unique characteristics has emerged in the archaeological area of the ancient Etruscan city of Kainua, near Marzabotto, in a discovery that the scientific community is already describing as extraordinary. Located within the sacred precinct dedicated to the deity Uni, the well has brought to light a collection of exceptionally crafted objects […]
Megaliths —those enormous stone blocks that have stood for millennia— continue to fascinate archaeologists and the general public. A recent compilation of books published between 2025 and 2026 shows that, although research has advanced by leaps and bounds thanks to new technologies, some fundamental questions remain without definitive answers. Who built these monuments? Why did […]
Excavations by the University of Catania at the Tava Tepe site, located in western Azerbaijan, have uncovered an archaeological complex that upends established notions about Late Bronze Age communities in the Caucasus region. What was initially interpreted as an isolated domestic structure, dated to around 1300–1000 BCE, has turned out to be the last link […]
The Minister of Culture and Tourism of Turkey, Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, has announced the discovery in the ancient city of Sardis, in the province of Manisa, of a male marble sculpture approximately 2,500 years old, a piece that, due to its monumental dimensions and unusual state of preservation, stands out as an exceptional find for […]
The Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, under the Greek Ministry of Culture, has completed an official inspection at a point along the shoreline of the island of Andros following a report from a private individual who alerted authorities to the presence of archaeological remains on the seabed. The technical team, composed of an archaeologist, a conservator, […]
The archaeological survey work carried out in the area of Carrarzu Iddia, in the municipality of Bortigali in central-western Sardinia, has culminated in the discovery of a new Giants’ Tomb that until now had remained completely hidden by the dense Mediterranean scrub. The monument is situated on the southern slope of Crastu Littu, an elevation […]
The stone walls of the Gate of Tauchira, in the ancient city of Ptolemais (modern Libya), have preserved for more than two thousand years a silent record of the activity of its builders. These are 626 stonemason marks engraved on the limestone blocks that form this monumental fortified entrance. A research team from the University […]
An international team of researchers has documented through airborne laser scanning the existence of an extensive multicultural civilization that thrived in the Southwestern Amazon between 600 B.C. and 850 A.D., and that housed millions of people at its peak. The findings, published after meticulous fieldwork covering approximately 4,500 square kilometers, transform the current understanding of […]
The systematic excavations that have been underway since 2020 in the plain of Manzikert (in Turkish Malazgirt), in eastern Anatolia, have provided a new set of material evidence that makes it possible to better understand the military operations carried out around the fortress during the second half of the 11th century. Turkey’s Minister of Culture […]
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