Ancient news stories

Deep in the murky waters of an ancient lake in Turkey lie mysterious ruins that researchers believe could be part of a forgotten city, rewriting human history.

In a shallow cave high on a cliff in Chalcatzingo, Mexico, scientists documented three red glyphs in the 1980s, but the paintings received relatively little attention. Fast forward to the present day, and researchers have returned to the cave to take a closer look at what the ancient painted symbols mean. Their interpretations of what these rock paintings are and could represent are detailed in a study published in the journal Antiquity.

Bones from extinct elephant-like creatures discovered along the shore of Lake Tagua Tagua in central Chile bear human-made cut marks and were found alongside stone tools, revealing that some of the first humans to live there were killing and eating these animals 13,000 years ago, new research shows.

Imagine picking up a black stone from an old riverbed in Brazil. Its surface shines like glass, but inside it is riddled with tiny holes. Break it open, and you would find not one crystal, but a tightly packed mass of miniature diamonds. Where did this strange stone come from? A study suggests that an ancient impact may have helped carry carbon-rich material deep into Earth.

Consciousness may have evolved to help living things resolve competing needs when their survival is at stake, rather than simply emerging from greater intelligence. This theoretical account was published in Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Southeastern Europe and the Balkans are a key region for understanding the European Neolithic. Many ways of life and economic systems that continue to shape our lives today first emerged there in Europe and later spread across the continent. In an article published in the journal Archaeologica Austria, researchers have published the latest data on the Vinča site at Opovo Ugar-Bajbuk.

According to a new study led by physicist Luis Anchordoqui of Lehman College in the US, in a Universe with a dark dimension, all primordial black holes (PBHs) must be five-dimensional – barring some exotic, unknown new physics at low energies. They can’t help themselves otherwise.

Archaeologists excavating in the ancient Hittite capital of Hattusha have uncovered a fragment of the world’s oldest peace treaty, signed around 1269 B.C.

In November 2024, archaeologists monitoring a Czech construction site noticed something emerging from the ground: mammoth bones. As earth was cleared, the discovery became an Ice Age scene. Thousands of animal remains lay with broken stone points, traces of fire, and red ochre….The deposit may preserve evidence of repeated mammoth hunts around 27,000 years ago. The study was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

Researchers thought these fossils belonged to late Neanderthals, until they realized they were our own kind. The study has been published in the journal Heritage.

Blanco and her team’s idea is that the Universe could be full of technological civilizations that rise, collapse, rebuild, and rise again – spending long stretches in technological dormancy. If so, that could explain the cosmic silence we’re currently experiencing. The research has been published on arXiv.

About 40 years ago, researchers found ancient ship carvings on a temple wall in Cyprus, possibly all carved at once at the tail end of the Bronze Age, around the time of the infamous Bronze Age collapse. Then, decades later, a new study revealed they had missed nearly two dozen ancient carvings. The study was published in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology.

Our new study published in the journal Libyan Studies shows how we uncovered the earliest known large-scale construction of a probably defensive nature in North Africa beyond the Nile Valley. It’s about 4,000–3,500 years old…This discovery pushes back the evidence for organized defensive architecture in the Maghreb and suggests that societies in this region at this time were more complex and structured than previously believed.

An international research team has re-examined historical fossil collections from Lebanon using modern methodology. The results, published today in two complementary studies in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, show that the Levant served as an important corridor for animals and various human lineages during the Pleistocene and that environmental conditions in the central part of the region differed significantly from those in the south.

“The tooth itself is in immaculate condition. It’s the most complete mastodon molar from our area, and the most spectacular mastodon molar that I’ve ever seen. I had chills and shivers up and down my spine,” said paleontologist Wayne Thompson in a statement. “It’s another puzzle in the Ice Age saga that we can put into place.”

Virtually all cultures and eras fizz with magic. You might call it a secret ingredient of human life because magic takes so many forms and serves so many functions.