Ancient history

On This Day: Jean-Francois Champollion announces his success at decoding the Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is inscribed with an official decree carved in three different languages: two forms of Egyptian script, hieroglyphs and Demotic, as well as ancient Greek.

The Rosetta Stone.
The Azcatitlan Codex, an ancient Aztec pictorial manuscript on loan from France, is displayed at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City on September 17, 2026

France loans Mexico rare Aztec manuscript as nations celebrate 200 years of diplomatic ties

ONCE A poverty-stricken farming community, Wuzhen is now a must for visitors to Zhejiang province.

Hangzhou offers a glimpse of China’s journey from silk to silicon

“From ancient dice to modern apps, the Middle East's fascination with games of chance has endured for over four thousand years.”

A short history of games of chance in the Middle East


Bacchus or theater mask? Rare 1,900-year-old Roman find in the Netherlands

Alongside an oil lamp were four ceramic plates, two jugs, a cup, a glass bowl and a bronze bowl, and archaeologists debate its meaning.

The lamp, after cleaning.

Scientists found a 3.5-meter dolphin fossil in a desert that was once an ancient ocean

The fossil, discovered in July, measures three and a half meters and will undergo exhaustive analysis before public display.

Whale fossils in the Ocucaje desert, Peru.

Why this small dinosaur from Mongolia is rewriting the story of dome-headed evolution

Dated to about 108 million years ago, the fossil preserves roughly 90 percent of the skeleton, including the first pachycephalosaur hand and stomach stones.

Artist illustration of Z. rinpoche.

A 3,000-year-old divination archive found in Turkey

Cuneiform tablets mentioning crown princes and kings provide new insights into how ancient empire used bird omens for state decisions.

Some of the tablets found.

Sparta and Athens: History's wartime lessons for a modern-day Israel - analysis

As Netanyahu evokes "super-Sparta," Israel may be repeating the mistakes that left both city-states devastated after decades of war.

Repulse of Pyrrhus from Sparta', 1890. Pyrrhus, in retreat at the Siege of Sparta, 272 BC from Spartans defending their city under command of Areus I. From "Cassell's Illustrated Universal History, Vol. I - Early and Greek History", by Edmund Ollier.

Study: Oldest mummies predate ancient Egypt by 6,000 years

Researchers analyzed 54 skeletons from 11 sites, detecting prolonged low-temperature heating and tightly bound 'fetal' postures consistent with deliberate processing before burial.

Smoked mummies kept in private households in Papua, Indonesia, photographed in January 2019.

Ancient lentils in the canary islands survived 2,000 years, DNA shows

Genetic analysis reveals indigenous cultivation practices and crop continuity dating back to the 3rd century CE.

Lentil plant grown at Fuerteventura.

Older than Neanderthal rites? New papers double down on the Homo naledi burial hypothesis

Researchers say remains of at least 15 individuals in the Rising Star cave were deliberately placed and quickly covered by sediments, countering claims of accidental deposition.

A facial reconstruction of Homo naledi.

Three new 7.7-million-year-old elephant skulls unearthed in Turkey

“This year we can talk about the year of the elephant. From 2018 until now, we had identified two skulls, but only this year did we find three” described an archeologist.

Illustration: The skull of an asian elephant.

'Palm-sized predator' with outsized teeth rewrites lizard origins

Scientists used the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility to X-ray the tiny fossil and reveal high-resolution details.

An illustration of the newly discovered lizard ancestor.