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Irbil, Iraq, has a long, long, long history
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Mummies From Around the World Had Hardened Arteries
Mummies from cultures across the globe have one thing in common—plaque in their arteries
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Ancient Tooth Plaque Shows Our Ancestors Used to Feast on Weeds
Purple nutsedge is a pest today, but thousands of years ago it was probably valued for its cavity-preventing properties
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Some Ancient Assyrians Ignored the Advent of Writing for Thousands of Years
It took thousands of years for Assyrians to finally give up primitive record-keeping methods
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Wrestling Was Fixed, Even in Ancient Rome
New analysis of an ancient document reveals classical roots of fake wrestling
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Humans Have Been Messing With China’s Yellow River for 3,000 Years
When humans try to tame nature things rarely go according to plan
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When Trees Are Cut Down, Angkor’s Temples Begin to Crumble
People usually think of trees’ destructive impacts on Angkor, but they also protect those iconic temples
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More Than 200 Hidden Paintings Were Discovered on the Walls of Angkor Wat
Researchers discovered the images by digitally enhancing photos of the temple’s walls
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These Cold War Satellite Images Revealed 10,000 Undiscovered Archaeological Sites
Images of the Middle East from the 1960s showed thousands of archaeological sites—some of which have already been destroyed
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Could Noah’s Ark Float? In Theory, Yes
Basic physics suggests that an ark carrying lots of animal cargo could float, but science doesn’t support other facets of the biblical tale
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Ancient Wandering Shepherds Spread Crops Across Eurasia
The nomadic shepherds of central Asia joined east and west
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Where Are All the Babies in Archaeological Sites?
To figure out whether ancient people cremated their babies, archaeologists set some piglets on fire
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Conches Evolved To Be Smaller Because of Hungry Humans
Conches began maturing when they were smaller in order to breed before humans snatched them up
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This 3,000-Year-Old Human Skeleton Reveals the Earliest Known Example of Cancer
Skeletal scans of the remains, which were found in Sudan, shows the cancer had spread before the victim died
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Neanderthal Hunters Probably Didn’t Herd Mammoths Off Cliffs
Not that it’s impossible, in general; it just probably didn’t happen at this one particular spot
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The Mystery of This 500-Year Old Mummy Is Only Beginning To Be Solved
For more than a century, no one in Germany knew where this mummy came from
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Ancient Cities Developed in a Surprisingly Similar Way to Modern Ones
The same mathematical equations that describe patterns of modern urban sprawl are equally suited to explaining the development of ancient cities
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The Oldest Human Footprints Ever Discovered Outside of Africa Have Already Been Washed Away
Casts and computer images are all that’s of footprints made 900,000 years ago on the British coast
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No One Knows Why Ancient Egyptians Built This 4,600-Year-Old Pyramid
The new pyramid joins the list of other mysterious step pyramids built before the Great Pyramid at Giza
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Neanderthals Went Extinct 30,000 Years Ago, But Their DNA Is Still in the Human Genome
Some of the Neanderthal genes made important contributions while others made us more susceptible to disease
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