A groundbreaking discovery in southern Arizona has unveiled the oldest known firearm in the continental United States. A bronze wall gun, dating to the Coronado expedition of 1539–1542, was excavated in the Santa Cruz Valley, at a site discovered several...
Thanksgiving observances predate the feast of the year 1621 shared by the Wampanoag Indians and the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. Several myths have developed around the holiday feast that we call Thanksgiving, including what was on the original...
A historical document composed by King Otto I, better known as Otto the Great, to his English queen has been re-examined and re-dated by a medieval historian from the University of Exeter in the UK. In this document, which was...
Thanksgiving, celebrated annually in the United States, is a time-honored tradition marked by a feast that brings together family and friends. It is in essence a harvest festival, to give thanks for the successful harvest, and similar traditions occur around...
Claire Holleran/The Conversation Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II features a scene in which a senator, seated at a pavement cafe in Rome, reads a printed newspaper. The moment has caused history buffs around the world to wince – the printing press wouldn’t be...
A pair of scientists who study hominin fossils and human evolution in China and East Asia claim to have discovered a new human ancestor that appeared during the Late Quaternary or Middle Pleistocene era, about 300,000 years ago. They have...
When the mad Roman Emperor Caligula was assassinated in 41 AD, his uncle Claudius ran to one of the palace's apartments and hid behind a curtain. Claudius was soon discovered by the praetorian guards and escorted to their camp, where...
Once again Ancient Origins has been blocked by Facebook for posting content deemed not fit for general consumption. This is becoming an almost monthly occurrence, with the site being put on hold for the best part of a month each...
A circle of corroded bronze, measuring 12 inches (30cm) across, adorned with golden shapes, was unwittingly discovered in 1999 in Nebra, Germany, now famously coined the Nebra Sky Disc. More than 3,600-years-old, it is widely considered to be the oldest...
Scattered over 700,000 square kilometers (270, 271 sq mi) in the southern Pacific Ocean are the Tonga islands. On one of the 176 islands that make up Tonga, there stands one of the strangest megalithic monuments in the Pacific, a...
