News
Move Over, Pollock: Research Confirms Neanderthals Made Splatter Paintings
Pigment found on rocks in a Spanish cave was applied by humans 60,000 years ago using splattering and blowing techniques.
Archaeology
News
Scholars Decipher 3,200-year-old Rock Reliefs That Depict the Cosmos
Over 200 years since they were discovered, researchers may have finally deciphered the elaborate Hittite carvings.
News
The Little-known Indigenous History of “Titanium White”
Long believed to be discovered by lab researchers in 1908, researchers found evidence of the pigment in centuries-old Inca ceremonial objects.
News
New Machine Learning Can Match Ancient Pottery Fragments
Scientists have successfully taught computers to perform the complex task of rapidly sorting thousands of fragmented pottery designs into differing stylistic categories.
News
To Preserve Ancient Mosaics, Experts Are Burying Them Underground
The Getty Conservation Institute has undertaken numerous mosaic reburials in Tunisia, Lebanon, and Cyprus over the years.
News
The World’s Oldest Home Unearthed in South Africa
The findings at Wonderwerk Cave are huge for paleoanthropology, which seeks to understand human evolution.
News
Stone-age Crystals Challenge Conceptions of Where Civilizations Emerged in Africa
The discovery in the Kalahari Desert disrupts the prevailing notion that human origins were linked to coastal environments.
News
Archaeologists Locate Site of Harriet Tubman’s Family Home
A small coin dated 1808 led archaeologists to identify the area as the former site of the plantation where Tubman lived before escaping enslavement in 1849.
Art
See a 4,000-Year-Old 3D Map of France
Researchers believe the Bronze Age stone bears a crude map of an area in France’s Brittany region.
News
Ancient Cave Painters May Have Limited Their Oxygen for Creative Inspiration
Cavernous conditions and fire may have contributed to an “altered states of consciousness."
News
Ancient Antikythera Mechanism, the “World’s First Computer,” Is Reconstructed
The device, which is thought to predict planets’ movement, was found in the sea in 1901, salvaged from a wrecked merchant ship.
News
Mural of Knife-Wielding Spider God Found on 3,200-year-old Temple in Peru
The spider is thought to be associated with rain and fertility rituals that might have taken place in the shrine and its attendant complex of buildings.