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The invention of the toilet accomplished many good things, but it did rob us of the chance at immortality - through our poop. Ancient humans have revealed some of their greatest secrets through paleofeces, the study of the waste they left behind. More »
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This is absolutely amazing. Audio archeologists have uncovered a wax cylinder phonograph record that bears a lost vocal recording of Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck. More »
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The hunt is on for shipwrecks belonging to the Minoans, the ancient culture that ruled the Mediterranean over 3,000 years ago. But these downed ships don't just reveal one culture - they unlock the secrets of vast ancient economies. More »
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Around 1,500 BCE, a student in ancient Babylon inscribed six riddles on a tablet. 3,500 years later, these proto-jokes lose a lot in the translation, but one thing's for sure: the Babylonians are saying something about your mother. More »
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This skull once belonged to somebody's pet, over 33,000 years ago. It's one of the earliest known examples of the domestication of dogs — and it might actually mean modern dogs aren't all related to each other after all. More »
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Are you big on science and science communication? If you are, do yourself favor and check out ScienceOnline2012 (or scio12 to those in the know), the sixth annual international meeting on science and the internet. More »
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All across the globe, there are monuments and tourist attractions that transform our otherwise boring reality into a gleefully tumescent fantasia. Here are the world's most otherworldly phallic vacation destinations. More »
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The fossils were lost, and nobody even knew it. For ages, a stockpile of over 300 specimens — including several collected by Charles Darwin on his historic Voyage of the Beagle — has been changing hands throughout England, hidden away inside a nondescript cabinet. More »
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The legendary 1922 discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb was the 62nd burial discovered in the Valley of the Kings. Amazingly, it wouldn't be until 2005 that a 63rd tomb was found. Now, a newly announced, pristine tomb is number 64. More »
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Going through old links this morning, I found a story originally published in New York Magazine back in 2009 about the waters of New York City-a maritime metropolis that, many forget, is also an archipelago. More »
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Did Egyptians cross the Pacific Ocean and wander the American Southwest thousands of years ago? In the early 20th century, claims of such a discovery were made by two Smithsonian-funded archaeologists, who spoke of a thriving civilization tucked within a series of caverns carved into the side of a remote portion of the Grand Canyon. What did the archaeologists find? What evidence did they bring back? Hell, did these men even exist? More »
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Many incredible works of art have been made using terracotta, including the world famous Terracotta Army created for the first emperor of China. But because terracotta is often simply unglazed clay, many of the finest works were lost long ago. More »
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As far as the people of ancient Pompeii were concerned, dead bodies and trash were basically the same thing, at least in terms of where they ended up. And that isn't even the grossest place Pompeii put its trash. More »
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From law-violating subatomic particles to entirely new, earth-like worlds, 2011 was an incredible year for scientific discovery. In the past 12 months, scientific breakthroughs in fields ranging from archaeology to structural biochemistry have allowed humanity to rewrite history, and enabled us to open to brand new chapters in our development as a species. More »
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Science tells us that humans evolved from more ape-like primates, but it's not every day that so much evidence winds up in one place. The skull replicas on this table belong to a whole slew of distant human cousins and ancestors. Taken together, the contents of this table represent 4.5 million years of human evolution. Can you name all of the species?

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For early hominid hunters, there was no greater prize than an elephant. Kill just one of those, and a tribe could eat well for days. But when the elephants suddenly disappeared, something remarkable happened: Our hominid ancestors became more intelligent. More »
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Ötzi is the name given to the 5,300-year-old body found in the mountains between Italy and Switzerland. Archaeologists had long thought Ötzi had been murdered in the Alps, perhaps after a long chase...but his stomach tells a different story. More »
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We know the history of medicine stretches deep into prehistory, but its exact origins remain mysterious. Simple surgery dates back to the stone age, and now there's evidence of basic medical knowledge that dates back to the dawn of humanity. More »
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Until recently, scientists thought humans first left Africa between forty and seventy thousand years ago. But the archaeological record keeps painting a far different, more ancient picture, one that took humans deep into the Arabian peninsula 100,000 years ago. More »
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For centuries, the iconic boulders of Stonehenge have puzzled researchers the word over — for what purpose were they erected? What manner of human rituals centered around the stones and their surrounding landscape? Now, an international team of archaeologists has chanced upon two previously undiscovered sub-surface pits that have shed new light on the Stonehenge mystery. More »
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Antonio Stradivari made over a thousand violins in his long lifetime. They're considered the most perfect violins ever made, and the 650 surviving instruments are incredibly valuable. Now, thanks to modern technology, every budding violinist could soon own an authentic Stradivarius. More or less. More »
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As long as 50,000 years ago, humanity was pretty good at the whole sailing thing, colonizing Australia and sailing on open water — but our evidence of advanced fishing technology doesn't reach back nearly as far that. Even though people have been catching sea life for millennia, but the evidence of deep-sea fishing only reaches back around 11,000 years. Part of the reason for this is that water levels have changed so much in the interim that finding old sites can be excruciatingly difficult. However, new research has pushed that date to almost 20,000 years ago, and potentially much further. More »
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Pharaohs were far from the only ancient Egyptians to be mummified. An entire ancient industry grew up around supplying people with mummified pets to accompany them into the afterlife. Business was even big enough to drive entire species extinct. More »
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An ancient human skull found in China shows evidence of blunt force trauma, meaning some other human probably hit him on the head. Considering how old the skull is, this might as well be considered the invention of violence. More »
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Archaeologists have discovered a bronze artifact in ancient Eskimo settlement...which is pretty surprising, considering ancient Alaska never actually went through the Bronze Age. This artifact was likely cast long ago in Asia before making its long, mysterious journey Northward. More »
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One of the side effects of the fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's regime is that archaeologists can now explore parts of the country's past that were long suppressed, starting with the lost cities of the ancient Garamantes civilization. More »
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The artistic skill and attention to detail on display in prehistoric cave paintings is nothing short of astonishing, but one unsolved mystery is whether prehistoric humans simply painted exactly what the saw, or if the art was more symbolic. And recently, we've come a lot closer to answering that question. More »
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The 1973 study "Graffiti: Some Observations and Speculations" by Dr. Harvey Lomas included this colorful chart matching bawdy vandalism from First Century Pompeii with its thematic descendants in Sixties Los Angeles. As you can see here, we've had our mind in the gutter for approximately two millennia. More »
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Sometimes it really pays to take a second look at old findings. The fragment of jaw bone pictured above, believed to have belonged to an anatomically modern human, was first discovered over 80 years ago in Kents Cavern, an archaeologically rich cave system located in South England. More »
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Yes, crystal skulls are real. Some extremely detailed crystal skulls were excavated from land previously held by Mayan and Aztec civilizations, and they're among the great ancient mysteries. More »
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Before the invention of modern navigational equipment, ancient sailors crossed the seas largely through their knowledge of the positions of the Sun and stars. So how did Vikings cross from Europe to America in the often foggy, cloudy northern Atlantic? More »
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At what point does sex cease to function as a purely practical means of reproduction? In other words, by what process does sex become something more than just a biological imperative; when do things like eroticism and sexuality emerge in an anthropological context? More »
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The old idea of Neanderthals as a species of brutish primitives has already been pretty well exploded, but this is as good a nail in the coffin as any: Neanderthals were treating themselves to fancy foods 250,000 years ago. More »
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For better or worse, agriculture is quite possibly humanity's defining development, allowing people to settle down in one place and build the complex civilizations that we live in today. But ancient humans weren't totally sure about this whole agriculture thing. More »
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This Etruscan ceramic fragment is over 2,600 years old, and it's quite possibly the oldest depiction of childbirth ever found in Europe. It's a marvelous sight to behold, but the person who actually discovered it hasn't even seen it. More »
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We know that humans reached North America between 40000 and 16000 years ago...and that's about all we know for certain. Anything in American prehistory before about 10000 years ago remains deeply controversial. But some mastodon bones found in the 1970s recently revealed major clues. More »
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The plague that wiped out over a third of Europe's population in the 14th century came from a bacteria known as Yersinia pestis. Now we've sequenced its genome...and it's weirdly, almost worryingly identical to its modern descendants. More »
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The oldest ever evidence that early humans painted has been found in South Africa, in the form of two kits for mixing and forming ochre, a reddish pigment used to dye clothing, paint, and create face paint. More »
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The amazing inscriptions on ancient cave walls represent some of humanity's first known creative work, but it wasn't just master artists who were allowed to paint. Kids as young as two or three were cave-painting 13,000 years ago. More »
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The fjords of Norway and the rugged coasts of the Patagonia region of Argentina are quite literally on opposite ends of the Earth, separated by thousands of miles and multiple hemispheres. And yet the two combine for one archaeological goldmine. More »
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