A recent discovery in Gibraltar has unveiled one of the most advanced manufacturing sites of the ancient world: a Neanderthal tar distillation oven dating back 65,000 years. Hidden in Vanguard Cave, part of the UNESCO-listed Gorham’s Cave Complex, this find...
A recent discovery at the Drumanagh promontory fort in North Dublin is reshaping our understanding of Ireland’s Iron Age trade networks. The find—a 2,000-year-old charred fig—is the earliest evidence of exotic fruits in Ireland, suggesting links to the Roman Empire....
In the quiet and peaceful village of Aquileia, in northern Italy near the Adriatic Sea coast, archaeologists from the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) found something remarkable and unexpected. While performing excavations just to the...
John Pearce/The Conversation In the amphitheatre of Gladiator II, Ridley Scott trains his lens on fighters and emperors – but no account of ancient gladiators is complete without including its devotees. Eclipsing the modern superfan in adulation for their heroes,...
History is full of inventive, albeit disturbing, methods of making people squirm, confess, or simply regret their life choices. Among these is the lesser-known but utterly bizarre practice of ‘goat’s tongue torture’. While not as famous as the rack or...
Even before the rise of the great Maya civilization, the people who occupied Central America’s Yucatan Peninsula were applying their engineering skills to make the land more productive and liveable. This was made crystal clear by a recent discovery by...
For 275 years, the Ptolemies ruled as Egypt’s last, enduring dynasty. Each king carried the name Ptolemy, and each queen carried the name Cleopatra, Berenice, or Arsinoe. They are remembered for their epic final moments - the Ptolemies knew how...
Written nearly a thousand years ago, the Kitab al-tabikh (book of cookery) written by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, is the most comprehensive work of its kind. It includes more than 600 recipes for culinary and medicinal dishes, including a well-known ancient...
Astronomers have observed stars that are accelerating through space at a shockingly rapid pace. Normally this is assumed to relate to gravitational forces in some way, or to the natural emissions of the stars that might be causing them to...
A complete pylon of a Ptolemaic temple called Batlmy, described as a ‘significant milestone’, has been found on the western side of the main temple in Sohag, an ancient and modern city along the fertile west bank of the Nile....
