How Vikings found the sun.
The Telegraph finds the truth behind a navigational legend – a stone that Vikings used locate the sun on cloudy days: Now experiments have shown […]
archaeology
A Viking burial.
From around 900 CE, in a boat on Scotland’s west coast, comes a dead Viking warrior. BBC reports on the most complete Norse grave site […]
Goblin holes!
Der Spiegel probes the long-buried secrets of the Erdstalls – Bavaria’s ancient underground mazes: At least 700 of these chambers have been found in Bavaria […]
Science Art: “Fig 44: Painting of a Bantu Wedding Dance” from The Pre-Historic Period in South Africa, 1910
Click to embiggen It’s a party! I can’t tell if those are balloons or knobkerries. Either way, windows would have been broken… were there windows […]
Found: God of silence. Slightly used. Won’t talk.
The (not exactly) god of silence and secrecy, Discovery reports, is at the heart of a new Egyptian antiquities mystery. Of four statues recovered by […]
Words on sling stones can SO hurt me.
That’s the gist of an AFP report on the messages ancient soldiers carved into their ammunition: Slingers, also known as sphendonetai, have been used in […]
Neanderthal Heaven.
Discovery News unveils the religious life of Neanderthals: The Neanderthals were found covered together with rocks burying their remains. The researchers believe it’s likely that […]
Go find Genghis Khan. Yes, YOU.
Washington Post extends an invitation to you – and to everyone else – to search for the tomb of the Mongol emperor: Through a Web […]
The jug or the loaf?
“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” is a question for paleontologists. Anthropologists ask a much more vexing question about bread and beer – […]
Miniature Holy War (over huge holy library)
The Jewish nation of Israel and the Muslim nation of Jordan are duking it out, BBC News reports, over the world’s oldest Christian library: A […]
When life was more easily lost
Science Daily takes us back to an age undreamed of, when shining cities gleamed like jewels beneath the stars. Hither came archaeologists, seeking what killed […]
SONG: Blood Sweat Horses (Hàn Xiě Mǎ)
SONG: “Blood Sweat Horses (Hàn Xiě Mǎ)”. (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: Based on “Mausoleum find rekindles ancient Chinas blood […]
Sacred greenhouses.
DiscoveryNews digs up evidence of American slaves holding religious rituals and conducting scientific research in the masters’ greenhouses: As they dug below a north-facing back […]
Science Art: The Kincaid Site in Massac County, Illinois, by Herbert Roe, 2004
At one point in history, one of the world’s largest cities was in America – and it wasn’t New York or Los Angeles. It was […]
Blood. Sweat. Horses.
Archaeology Daily closes in on the real story behind ancient China’s legendary blood-sweating horses: The bones of 80 horses unearthed from the mausoleum of a […]