Smart News History & Archaeology

Artists Roderick and Rozell Sykes founded St. Elmo Village, a creative enclave that could become a Los Angeles historic landmark, in 1969.

How Los Angeles Plans to Preserve the City's Black Cultural Heritage

Just 3 percent of L.A.'s historic landmarks commemorate African American history. A new three-year project hopes to change that

A previously unknown Thomas Gainsborough portrait of composer Antonín Kammel

Cool Finds

Newly Discovered Gainsborough Portrait Reveals Likeness of Overlooked Composer

The acclaimed British artist's painting of Czech musician Antonín Kammel may be worth upward of $1.3 million

The markings on the slab may represent river systems, settlements, fields and barrows.

Cool Finds

Is This 4,000-Year-Old Bronze Age Slab the Oldest Known Map in Europe?

New research suggests the stone, first discovered in 1900, may have represented the territory of an ancient king

Egyptian officials moved 22 mummies—including 18 kings and 4 queens—to the newly opened National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.

Why Egypt Paraded 22 Ancient Pharaohs Through the Streets of Cairo

Officials organized the lavish, made-for-TV event in hopes of revitalizing the country's tourism industry

The team used LiDAR scanning and computer modeling to recreate the acoustics of Linlithgow Palace's chapel.

Art Meets Science

Hear a 16th-Century Concert Recreated by a 'Musical Time Machine'

Researchers modeled the acoustics of Linlithgow Palace in Scotland to transport listeners back to a 1512 performance

Ancient people brought the crystals to the rock shelter.

Cool Finds

Crystals Found in Kalahari Desert Challenge Assumptions About Where in Africa Human Culture Arose

The 105,000-year-old items may have held religious meaning

The William F. Winter Archives and History Building in Jackson, Mississippi

Mississippi Returns Hundreds of Native Americans' Remains to Chickasaw Nation

Decades after their bones were placed in storage, the state has repatriated the remains of 403 Indigenous ancestors

A stone-lined latrine was one of the few surviving remnants of a medieval hall in Oxford's Jewish quarter.

Cool Finds

Medieval Jews in England Kept Kosher Laws, New Research Suggests

An 800-year-old trash dump in Oxford reveals adherence to Jewish dietary codes

The imported parrots and scarlet macaws were mummified between 1100 and 1450 A.D.

Cool Finds

Mummified Parrots Found in Chile Suggest Vast Pre-Hispanic Trade Network

People in South America likely kept the birds as exotic pets whose feathers were prized for their use in headdresses and hats

The Archive of Healing lists traditional remedies, procedures and practices from all seven continents.

How a New Digital Archive Preserves—and Protects—Indigenous Folk Medicine

UCLA's database features hundreds of thousands of entries detailing traditional healing practices

The warriors were buried with several layers of feather bedding.

Cool Finds

These Iron Age Swedish Warriors Were Laid to Rest on Luxurious Feather Bedding

Researchers say the various types of bird feathers used may hold symbolic significance

Retouched composite image of the mural and its surroundings

Cool Finds

3,200-Year-Old Mural of Knife-Wielding Spider God Found in Peru

Local farmers accidentally destroyed 60 percent of the shrine complex that houses the ancient Cupisnique painting

Akhenaten, father of Tutankhamun and husband of Nefertiti, ruled Egypt between roughly 1353 and 1336 B.C.

Art Meets Science

Is This the Face of King Tut's Father, Pharaoh Akhenaten?

New 3-D reconstruction visualizes what KV55, a mummy long thought to be the ancient Egyptian ruler, may have looked like

The site of the rabbit burrow has apparently been occupied by different groups over the millennia.

Cool Finds

Burrowing Bunnies in Wales Unearth Trove of Prehistoric Artifacts

Rabbits on Skokholm Island discovered Stone Age tools and fragments of a Bronze Age cremation urn

This recreated wooden building resembles one that may have housed enslaved people on John Dickinson's Dover, Delaware, plantation.

Graves of Enslaved People Discovered on Founding Father's Delaware Plantation

A signee of the U.S. Constitution, John Dickinson enslaved as many as 59 men, women and children at one time

Candida Alvarez's Estoy Bien (2017) provided the inspiration for the title of a new exhibition at El Museo del Barrio.

How a Sweeping Survey in NYC Redefines What It Means to Make 'Latinx' Art

A new triennial at El Museo del Barrio features a wide range of works by 42 artists and collectives

A 300-thread count sari woven out of a hybrid Dhaka muslin thread

How Modern Researchers Are Trying to Recreate a Long-Lost Fabric

Dhaka muslin was immensely popular for millennia, but the secrets of its creation faded from memory by the early 20th century

An undated view of the Seven Hills of Bonn by Josephine Butler, who campaigned for sex workers' rights and pushed Parliament to raise the age of consent

Pioneering Victorian Suffragist's Unseen Watercolor Paintings Are Up for Sale

Seven landscape scenes by 19th-century British social reformer Josephine Butler are headed to the auction block

Hunter-gatherers in what is now Russia likely viewed the wooden sculpture as an artwork imbued with ritual significance.

New Research

This Wooden Sculpture Is Twice as Old as Stonehenge and the Pyramids

New findings about the 12,500-year-old Shigir Idol have major implications for the study of prehistory

Archaeologists confirmed the find in late 2019 but only announced the news now due to delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. This drawing shows what the St. Mary's Fort may have looked like.

Cool Finds

Researchers Discover Ruins of Maryland's Earliest Colonial Site, a 386-Year-Old Fort

A team used ground-penetrating radar to identify the outlines of a defensive outpost at the St. Mary's settlement

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