In the southeastern area of the city of Rome, archaeologists excavating inside the Triton Baths, built in the 2nd century A.D. within the monumental complex of the Villa di Sette Bassi, discovered that during Late Antiquity the baths were converted into a Christian church. This change in use, documented directly in the course of the […]
Posted inScience
Why Did Some Animals Become Fossils While Others Simply Vanished? A Study Reveals That Size Matters
Why did some animals from ancient eras become fossils, while others simply disappeared without a trace? The answer, at least in part, may lie within their own bodies, according to a study from the University of Lausanne (UNIL) published in Nature Communications. Researchers found that the size and chemical composition of an organism play a […]
Posted inArt, Prehistory
New Dating Confirms That Realistic Figures and Abstract Symbols Coexisted in Altamira from Very Early Stages
A recent study on the cave paintings of the Altamira Cave in Santillana del Mar, Cantabria (Spain) has concluded that some of the artworks it contains could be much older than previously believed, dating back more than 30,000 years. Although the cave was discovered more than 140 years ago, the exact chronology of the artworks […]
Posted inScience
160 Million Years Ago, Giant Flying Reptiles Learned to Walk and Conquered the Earth
A team of paleontologists from the University of Leicester has managed to decipher one of the many enigmas of the dinosaur era—the exact moment when pterosaurs, the large and unsettling flying reptiles that soared through the skies of the Mesozoic, adapted their anatomy to walk on land with the same skill they used to dominate […]
Posted inAncient Rome
Gaius Pontius, the Samnite Leader Who Defeated the Romans at the Caudine Forks and Was an Ancestor of Pontius Pilate
Throughout its long history, Rome achieved numerous military victories that allowed it to grow, expand, and dominate nearly the entire known world in Antiquity. But it also suffered defeats, and some proved especially painful due to the circumstances in which they occurred. One of them, surely among the worst due to the humiliation it entailed, […]
Posted inClassical Archaeology
Pompeii Relives Its Last Day: Discoveries in the House of Helle and Phrixus Reveal a Desperate Attempt at Survival
In a city doomed to eternity by the fury of Vesuvius, every stone, every crack, and every object tells a story. The most recent comes from the House of Helle and Phrixus, a modestly sized yet richly decorated home, whose final moments have been reconstructed thanks to archaeological research published in the E-Journal degli Scavi […]
Posted inAncient Egypt, Art
First Known Visual Representation of Our Galaxy Discovered in Egyptian Art
The fascination with figuring out the part that the Milky Way may have played in the culture and religion of ancient Egypt has led astrophysicist Dr. Or Graur, associate professor at the University of Portsmouth, to identify what may be the first known visual representation of our galaxy in Egyptian art. In his study, published […]
Posted inScience
All but one of Andromeda’s 37 satellite galaxies point toward the Milky Way—something so strange it challenges current cosmology
A recent study published in Nature Astronomy has revealed that the dwarf galaxies orbiting around Andromeda, our neighboring galaxy, are distributed in such an uneven way that it calls into question the most widely accepted cosmological theories. According to the researchers, this asymmetric arrangement is so extreme that it is almost impossible to explain with […]
Posted inIron Age Archaeology
The Secrets of Mycenaean Gold in Thessaly: A Study Reveals How Jewelry Was Made 3,500 Years Ago
A team of researchers has analyzed more than 165 gold objects found in four monumental tombs in the Bay of Volos, in the Greek region of Thessaly, revealing fascinating details about how Mycenaean craftsmen worked with this precious metal more than 3,500 years ago. The study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, offers […]
Posted inStone Age Archaeology
Submerged Circular Structures Discovered from Scotland’s Earliest Inhabitants, Who Arrived by Crossing Doggerland
A group of archaeologists and scientists, led by Professor Karen Hardy from the University of Glasgow, has discovered evidence of what may be one of the earliest known human populations in Scotland—stone tools found on the Isle of Skye that belong to the period known as the Late Upper Paleolithic (LUP), approximately between 11,500 and […]
