AI is reading scrolls burned in Vesuvius.
The Guardian looks back at a carbonized papyrus scorched by the lava that consumed Pompeii. University of Kentucky computer scientists have been able to decipher […]
archaeology
Roman glass became photonic crystal
Physics Magazine joins Tufts University researcher Giulia Guidetti who has studied a glass shard that was broken and buried shortly after 100 B.C.E. that over […]
Stone Age flip-flops
PhysOrg reports on Witwatersrand researchers who’ve found tracks left by prehistoric footwear – a pair of flip-flop sandals that go back at least 75,000 years, […]
Neolithic engineers
The Guardian visits a huge, 5,000-year-old tomb complex on Scotland’s Orkney Isles that reveals a surprisingly sophisticated level of engineering know-how: The tomb measures more […]
Stonehenge’s altar is not like the other stones.
IFL Science takes a closer look at the massive stones of Stonehenge. Most of them seem to have been transported with great effort from a […]
Theater of Nero discovered in Rome.
The expat news magazine Wanted in Rome reports on an archaeological discovery in the shadow of the Vatican – a theater dedicated to the notorious […]
Bone jewelry means humans were in the Americas *before* the Bering Land Bridge.
IFLScience reports on some stylish, retro bangles coming from a Brazilian designer that are taking the world by storm … because they were made from […]
Ivory Lady was a prehistoric warrior queen (and maybe a warrior witch queen, too).
CNN reports on a Spanish discovery that a 5,000-year-old skeleton buried with an elephant tusk, an ostrich egg, an ivory comb and two daggers – […]
A human-like ape might have decorated the graves of its dead 330,000 years ago.
Science News reports on a controversy over Homo naledi, a human-like ape from 160,000 years before the first Homo sapiens, who might have been burying […]
SONG: In the Years Before A/C
SONG: “In the Years Before A/C”. ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: National Park Service, 1 May 2023, “National Park archeologists find remains of an underwater hospital and […]
Sunken cemetery, hospital found off the Dry Tortugas.
They used to be above water, but the National Park Service reports that divers surveying a sunken island off Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas […]
Cute, smiling mini-sphinx found in Egypt.
Riddles are funny! BBC reports on the discovery at the Hathor Temple in southern Egypt of a small sphinx with an engaging grin that might […]
Lake Huron reveals 19th-century shipwreck.
Ars Technica celebrates an underwater discovery: the surprisingly well-preserved wreck of the schooner barge Ironton, which went down in 1898 after colliding with the Great […]
Vikings brought animals to England, radioactive analysis shows.
Science News looks at a Viking burial site in England where animals were buried alongside humans, and finds that radioactive traces show these critters traveled […]
Oldest full sentence ever found is a warning against beard lice.
USA Today (among other outlets) celebrated the discovery of an inscription in the oldest known alphabet – a 3,700-year-old Canaanite ivory comb engraved with 17 […]