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Language

The 3,000-year-old clay relic at the heart of the British contest recorded the military victories of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I.

The Mystery of the World’s Oldest Writing System Remained Unsolved Until Four Competitive Scholars Raced to Decipher It

In the 1850s, cuneiform was just a series of baffling scratches on clay, waiting to spill the secrets of the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia

A humpback whale

Humpback Whale Song Shares a Key Pattern With Human Language That Might Make It Easier for the Animals to Learn

Despite humans and whales being separated by millions of years of evolution, our vocalizations follow the same principle outlined in Zipf’s law

Ancient DNA reveals Indo-European speakers came from a region where multiple populations mixed and migrated over time.

Ancient DNA Sheds Light on the Origins of Indo-European Languages

New research suggests that the first Indo-European speakers lived in southern Russia 6,500 years ago, challenging long-standing debates about the language family’s origins

Researchers just revealed previously hidden text from a 2,000-year-old scroll called PHerc. 172, which is housed at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries.

Using A.I., Researchers Peer Inside a 2,000-Year-Old Scroll Charred by Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption

For the past two years, citizen scientists and scholars have been working to reveal the previously hidden texts of the Herculaneum scrolls

The papyrus dates back to between 129 and 132 C.E.

Researchers Have Deciphered a Nearly 2,000-Year-Old True Crime Papyrus

The Greek document details a court case in ancient Palestine involving tax fraud and provides insight into trial preparations in the Roman Empire

Seals with the signs and symbols of the Indus Valley civilization are waiting to be deciphered.

Officials Are Offering $1 Million to Anyone Who Can Decode This Ancient Script

The enigmatic Indus Valley civilization left behind a script that today’s historians haven’t yet deciphered. While amateur theories abound, scholars are increasingly relying on computer science to crack the code

The silver amulet contained a thin foil scroll.

New Research

Archaeologists Say This Tiny Amulet Is the Oldest Evidence of Christianity Found North of the Alps

Discovered in central Germany, the 1,800-year-old silver artifact held a tiny scroll, which researchers have now deciphered using high-resolution scans

Merriam-Webster has been printing English dictionaries since 1831.

‘Polarization’ Is Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2024

The winning word beat out finalists such as “demure,” “pander,” “totality,” “fortnight,” “allision” and “democracy”

Smithsonian magazine’s top science titles this year.

The Ten Best Science Books of 2024

From a deep dive on a fatal space shuttle disaster to a study of a dozen iconic trees, these are our favorite titles this year

"Brain rot," which is now linked to social media overload, first appeared in Henry David Thoreau's Walden in 1854.

‘Brain Rot,’ the Scourge of the Chronically Online, Becomes Oxford’s 2024 Word of the Year

The term refers to “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state” that’s linked to spending extensive stretches of time scrolling through low-quality content

The York Theatre Royal says Richard III has been given a voice so he can finally "speak for himself."

Listen to the Resurrected Voice of Richard III—Who Speaks With an Unexpected Accent

A team of experts has created a digital avatar of the maligned monarch, who speaks with a Yorkshire accent. The 15th-century king was born in Northampton, but he spent much of his life in northern England

Jools Lebron's viral social media video about being "very demure, very mindful" while getting ready for work led to a massive increase in the use of the word "demure."

‘Demure’ Is Dictionary.com’s Word of the Year for 2024

The term’s popularity skyrocketed after content creator Jools Lebron used it in a now-viral TikTok video, in which she described being “very demure, very mindful”

The clay cylinders were found in a tomb containing six skeletons.

Archaeologists Say These Mysterious Markings Could Be the World’s Oldest Known Alphabetic Writing

Found etched into clay cylinders in Syria, the strange symbols date to around 2400 B.C.E.—500 years before other known alphabetic scripts

A cylinder seal (left) engraved with symbols that was used to press markings into wet clay (right)

New Research

The World’s Earliest Writing System May Have Been Influenced by Older Symbols Found on Stone ‘Cylinder Seals’

Thousands of years ago, our ancestors used symbols to track the sale of textile and agricultural products. New research suggests that these markings informed the development of writing

Researchers translated the cuneiform writing, which is characterized by symbols gouged into moist clay.

Cool Finds

Researchers Decipher Cuneiform Tablet—and Discover It’s a Furniture Receipt

The small clay rectangle is engraved with an ancient Semitic language known as Akkadian

Two chimpanzees at the Budongo Conservation Field Station in Uganda

Chimpanzees Take Turns in Fast-Paced Conversations, Just Like Humans Do

A new study finds the average chimpanzee response time in gestured conversations is 120 milliseconds, which isn’t that far from the human average of 200 milliseconds

The origins of the word "OK" have long been a subject of scholarly debate.

How One Man Discovered the Obscure Origins of the Word ‘OK’

From Civil War biscuits to a Haitian port town, theories about the word’s beginnings abounded

Elephants at Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, on May 3, 2024. Elephants use low, rumbling vocalizations to call to others and while caring for their young.

African Elephants May Call Each Other by Name

In a new study, a computer model was able to identify the recipient of an elephant’s call more than a quarter of the time, which scientists say is significantly greater than chance

Measuring more than five and a half feet long and three inches thick, the fragment represents almost an entire wall of the sarcophagus.

Ramses II’s Long-Lost Sarcophagus Has Finally Been Identified

An Egyptologist recently concluded that a fragment of an overlooked granite coffin bears the great pharaoh’s name

Latyr Sy, a Senegalese percussionist and singer, was one of 75 researchers who played music for the study.

Why Do Humans Sing? Traditional Music in 55 Languages Reveals Patterns and Telling Similarities

In a global study, scientists recorded themselves singing and playing music from their own cultures to examine the evolution of song

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