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Ancient History
A small Ohio town tried to escape America’s addiction to rectangular grids. It didn’t last long.
New radiocarbon dating reveals astonishing insights.
These scrolls are the only remaining intact library of ancient Rome — and they will crumble at a touch.
The Trojan War was fought in Finland and Ulysses sailed home to Denmark, says one controversial theory.
Archaeologists have identified what may be Europe’s oldest human-made megastructure.
The study suggests that human ancestors expanded across Europe faster than previously thought.
The discovery suggests that the "Boring Billion" period of evolution on Earth wasn't so boring after all.
New DNA analyses raise questions over the theory that Christopher Columbus and his men brought syphilis to Europe.
Skilled hunters adapted to the changing landscape and left tantalizing clues to who they were.
Millennia ago, philosophers like Anaximander grasped that nature is the ultimate recycler.
Archaeologist Bernard Frischer spent decades uploading the ruins of the Eternal City to the cloud. Here’s what it looks like.
With the invention of the leap year, the Julian calendar was used worldwide for over 1500 years. Over time, it led only to catastrophe.
Like many of us, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius hated waking up early, but his stoic philosophy always helped him get out of bed.
A basement renovation project led to the archaeological discovery of a lifetime: the Derinkuyu Underground City, which housed 20,000 people.
When battles raged in ancient cities, their rocks blazed so brightly that they could be reoriented according to Earth's magnetic field.
Along with obsidian that dazzled scientists in Canada.
The Parthenon embodies the ideals of perfection Classical Greeks sought from architecture. The neighboring Erechtheion offers something else.
From Æthelred the Unready to Halfdan the Bad Entertainer, these strange epithets colored the legacy of four rather unlucky historical figures.
The volcano’s historic eruption preserved an ancient library, but rendered its content illegible. A public competition aims to change that.
These nematodes complicate how we understand evolutionary lineages.
Perhaps it’s not just an oddly shaped hill, after all.
A single knife is sometimes worth more than a thousand armies.
Long before the birth of Julius Caesar, the Roman Republic appointed all-powerful dictators to protect their state in times of crisis. They were remarkably self-restrained and obedient to the Roman Constitution.
This necropsy represents an early entry in what would become a tradition of performing autopsies to consider an individual’s sanctity.
Gladiators fought in rounds, and there were referees to enforce rules. Only rarely were gladiators killed.
The clash of academic archaeology and what might be called folk archaeology comes into stark focus at Stonehenge.
Destruction of the Ukrainian dam unleashed a catastrophic flood—and surfaced centuries of cultural heritage. Now there’s a call not to rebuild it.
By the end, even his mom wanted him gone.