Archaeology
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'Knife-wielding orca' and alien-looking figures among 300 Nazca Lines discovered in groundbreaking AI study
By Harry Baker published
Scientists used AI to find 303 never-before-seen geoglyphs in Peru's Nazca Desert, including abstract humanoid figures, ancient ceremonies, "decapitated heads" and a "killer whale holding a knife."
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Cave of Swimmers: 9,000-year-old rock art of people swimming in what's now the arid Sahara
By Jennifer Nalewicki published
This series of paintings, found inside a cave in the Sahara, shows a pair of swimmers.
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2,700-year-old shields and helmet from ancient kingdom unearthed at castle in Turkey
By Owen Jarus published
The martial artifacts found at the temple complex were likely offerings that an ancient kingdom made to their chief god.
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Did Roman gladiators really fight to the death?
By Owen Jarus published
Being a Roman gladiator was a bloody business, but did all gladiators really fight to the death?
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South African rock art of mystery creature 'strangely flexed like a banana' might be tusked reptile that predated dinosaurs
By Julien Benoit published
Cave art created by the San, the indigenous hunter-gatherers of South Africa’s Karoo region, may have been inspired by fossils of long-extinct reptiles.
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When was steel invented?
By Tom Metcalfe published
No one knows for sure when steel was invented, but some of the earliest examples crop up in the first millennium B.C. in Central and South Asia.
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Ancient civilizations knew how to keep cool in deadly heat. We need to resurrect that lost knowledge now.
By Adriana Zuniga-Teran published
Builders knew how to keep people cool in hot, dry climates thousands of years ago. It's time to get that knowledge back.
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People in Scandinavia may have used boats made of animal skins to hunt and trade 5,000 years ago
By Jennifer Nalewicki published
The people who created the Pitted Ware Culture may have used seal hides to build boats.
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Cocaine found in mummified brains reveal that New World drug came to Italy 200 years earlier than thought
By Soumya Sagar published
Researchers unexpectedly found traces of cocaine in the mummified brain tissue of 17th-century people buried in a crypt in Milan.
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Man buried with large stones on his chest to prevent him from 'rising from the grave' unearthed in Germany
By Tom Metcalfe published
Archaeologists in Germany have unearthed a "revenant" grave where a man was buried with large stones on his chest to prevent him from rising from the dead.
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