History & Culture

Tauchira Gate in Ptolemais in 2006, view from the west. Credit: Miron Bogacki. Source: European Journal of Archaeology

Ancient marks crack the code of a 2,000-year-old building site

More than 620 mysterious marks carved into the limestone blocks of an ancient Libyan gate have revealed how stonemasons organised their work more than 2,000 years ago.

  • Exploration of metal ore outcrops on the slopes of the Huarmey Valley. © M. Giersz, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (via Archeowieści.pl)

    Ancient metal waste reveals 2,000-year-old trade route across the Andes

    A tiny piece of metallurgical waste found in the hand of a young man buried in pre-Inca Peru suggests that metals used to make tools were transported hundreds of kilometres from present-day Bolivia.

  • Burial of a woman buried with a sickle and padlock from the 17th-century cemetery in Pień, Source: Pień Project/TSE Evolution

    ‘Vampire’ grave mystery deepens as 17th-century woman ‘may have been an outsider’

    A 17th-century woman buried with a sickle around her neck and a padlock on her toe may have come from outside the local community, while a mysterious copper object placed in her mouth suggests locals took further measures to protect themselves from her after death, new research shows.

  • Reconstruction of a mammoth and a hunter, Natural History Museum, Munster, Germany, credit: Adobe Stock
    World

    Ice Age hunters may have targeted female mammoths, ancient DNA reveals

    Ice Age hunters may have preferred hunting female woolly mammoths, according to an analysis of ancient DNA from more than 500 mammoth bones.

  • Paweł Dąbrowski. Credit: Tomasz Walów

    Teeth reveal what Wrocław residents ate 200 years ago

    The teeth of Wrocław residents who lived more than 200 years ago have revealed what was on their plates, from wheat, rye and barley to peas, beans, pork and Baltic herring.

  • Source: the University of Warsaw press release
    Technology

    Polish researchers test safer way to remove old conservation layers from historic paintings

    Polish scientists have developed a nanocomposite gel that has been used to safely remove old conservation materials from a historic painting by renowned artist Włodzimierz Tetmajer.

  • Adobe Stock
    Life

    Europe's primeval landscape wasn't endless forest after all, surprising study finds

    Europe's primeval landscape was not an endless expanse of dense forest as long believed, but a patchwork of woodland, meadows and grasslands maintained by large grazing animals, according to a new study.

  • Fragments of exaggerated anthropomorphic figures. Damage caused by weathering. Credit: Paweł Polkowski

    Ancient Egyptian rock art reveals two very different relationships between humans and animals

    For thousands of years, prehistoric artists in Egypt’s Dakhleh Oasis carved humans and animals into desert rocks — but they did not always tell the same story. Some images show people and wildlife existing side by side in harmony, while others portray hunting, control and violence.

  • Giraffe held on a rope. Credit: Paweł Polkowski

    Climate change threatens Egypt’s ancient rock art as Polish archaeologists race to document it

    Thousands of ancient rock carvings scattered across Egypt’s Western Desert are slowly disappearing. Rising temperatures, stronger winds, increasingly regular heavy rainfall and human activity are damaging some of Africa’s richest collections of prehistoric art, while Polish archaeologists are working to document what remains before it is lost.

  • Credit: Wikipedia/ public domain

    Cannibalism disappeared because it was too costly for human survival

    Cannibalism did not disappear by accident. It became too costly for the societies that practiced it, with long-term human consumption driving epidemics and ultimately contributing to population decline, according to a new study by Polish and Czech scientists.

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    Polish scientists supercharge probiotic to fight Salmonella

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  • The 18 volcano myths that could put lives at risk

  • Watching people touch can trigger physical reactions in our own bodies, study finds

  • Ancient marks crack the code of a 2,000-year-old building site

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Tauchira Gate in Ptolemais in 2006, view from the west. Credit: Miron Bogacki. Source: European Journal of Archaeology

Ancient marks crack the code of a 2,000-year-old building site

More than 620 mysterious marks carved into the limestone blocks of an ancient Libyan gate have revealed how stonemasons organised their work more than 2,000 years ago.