Researchers from Sweden made headlines last week after claiming to have found the Arabic characters for “Allah” and “Ali” woven into Viking burial costumes. The discovery suggested a more intimate cultural relationship between the Vikings and the Arab world, but some experts are now questioning key assertions made by…

In 1944, Marcel Nadjari—a Greek Jew who was forced to remove bodies from the Auschwitz gas chambers—buried a letter in a forest near the camp. The text was rediscovered in 1980, but it was virtually unreadable. Using a new imaging technique, scientists have finally reconstructed the letter, and it’s providing…

A trove of new artifacts have been recovered from the Roman-era wreck that yielded the mysterious Antikythera Mechanism, including an arm made of bronze and a strange metal disc. But most intriguing of all, the latest survey suggests that seven bronze statues are still waiting to be discovered.

Marine archaeologists have discovered a German submarine off the coast of Belgium in the North Sea. The U-boat dates back to the First World War, and its near-pristine condition suggests the remains of all 23 sailors are still inside.

The number zero is something we all take for granted, yet its conceptual origin has eluded archaeologists and historians. An updated analysis of an ancient Indian manuscript is shedding new light on this longstanding mystery, showing that the symbol that would eventually evolve into the number zero emerged at least…

Stories and poems from the Medieval era contain accounts of fearsome female Viking warriors, yet historians and anthropologists have argued that such accounts are based in myth. A DNA analysis of a 10th century skeleton found in an iconic Swedish Viking Age grave suggests there’s some truth to these old tales—and that…

When we think about wine in Italian history, we think of the booze-soaked bacchanalias of ancient Rome. But it turns out that Italians were using wine to get their drunk on long before that, as evidenced by an exciting new discovery of the region’s oldest vino near a Copper Age site in Sicily. It’s a spicy meatball…

Conservators with Antarctic Heritage Trust have uncovered a perfectly preserved fruitcake that dates back to Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition, which began in 1910.

Distinctive zig-zag etchings on a prehistoric human bone found at Gough’s Cave in England suggests that Ice Age cannibals consumed human flesh not purely for the nutritional value, but as part of a sophisticated funeral practice.

Describing it as something that only happens in the movies, a team of Cambodian archaeologists have uncovered an 800-year-old sandstone statue weighing 440 pounds. Experts say it’s the most significant statue to be discovered in the famous archaeological site of Angkor Park in years.

Ötzi the Iceman—our favorite Copper Age corpsicle—is the gift that keeps on giving. A recent analysis of the metal found in the Neolithic hunter’s copper axe suggests a point of origin in Southern Tuscany, which is far from where Ötzi’s frozen body was found. This suggests a long-distance trade route might have…

Researchers in China have uncovered the skeletal remains of an unusually tall group of individuals who lived in China’s Shandong province some 5,000 years ago. With some reaching heights well over six feet, these Neolithic humans were a sign of things to come.

Thousands of years ago, indigenous people living in the California Channel Islands relied on a manufacturing process that exposed them to dangerous chemicals that likely compromised their health. The discovery shows that toxic substances of our own making have been around for a lot longer than we realized.

Late last month, an excavator operator was working at a peat bog in the Polish municipality of Mircze when he accidentally stumbled upon this glorious specimen of 14th century craftsmanship. The remarkably well-preserved longsword is a unique find for the area, and its discovery has prompted an archaeological…

An ongoing reexamination of an ancient Egyptian wooden toe is shedding new light on how the remarkable wooden prosthetic was manufactured, and whether it was used for cosmetic or functional purposes.