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Ancient Babylonian School Tablets Reveal What Students Were Really Taught 2,500 Years Ago
More than 2,500 years ago, Babylonian school tablets were part of a demanding education built around copying signs, words and texts again and again. Instead of spelling exercises or multiplication tables, a student might work from a clay tablet containing the names of gods, a…
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Inside the Anglo-Saxon Neighborhood That Once Thrived Beside the Vatican
More than a thousand years ago, an English traveler arriving in Rome could reach the area beside the Vatican and St Peter’s and find a community where people from Anglo-Saxon England were not simply passing through. Recent excavations beneath the Palazzo della Rovere have added…
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Anatolia’s Oldest Known Glass Bottle Reveals a Mystery From the Hittite World
More than 3,600 years ago, someone in Central Anatolia handled an object that would have been extraordinary even by the standards of the Bronze Age: a large, carefully decorated glass bottle. Found at Büklükale, a settlement on the Kızılırmak River southeast of Ankara, the vessel…
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A Tiny Lead Venus Changes the Story of a Roman Village Near Ancient Aquincum
For four years, archaeologists excavating a Roman village northwest of ancient Aquincum have been reconstructing the practical side of life there through houses, pottery, tools and traces of everyday work. This season, they found something the site had not produced before. A small lead figurine…
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What Did People Sleep On 2,000 Years Ago? Graves in Poland May Hold the Answer
What did a comfortable bed look like nearly 2,000 years ago in northern Europe? An unusual discovery inside ancient graves in Poland may offer part of the answer. Archaeologists studying organic remains from the vast cemetery at Czarnówko in northern Poland have identified traces of…
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First In Situ Defensive Wall Discovered at the Phrygian Midas Fortress in Türkiye
Archaeologists working at Yazılıkaya, also known as Midas Fortress, in central Türkiye have uncovered a substantial section of an ancient defensive wall still standing in its original position. Researchers already knew that fortifications once surrounded parts of the Phrygian stronghold. Cuttings and wall beds carved…
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A Roman Temple at Blaundos Was Built Inside a Sacred Space Centuries Older Than Itself
Archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Blaundos in western Türkiye have uncovered a 250-meter-long enclosure wall that shows the city’s North Temple was built inside a sacred precinct already centuries old. The North Temple dates to roughly 1,900 years ago, but the wall surrounding its…
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10,500-Year-Old Wooden Remains Found 20 Meters Beneath a German Lake
Deep beneath a lake in northern Germany, archaeologists have found remarkably preserved wooden remains dating back some 10,500 years. The discovery could provide rare evidence of how Mesolithic hunter-gatherers built and organized the places where they lived. The wooden remains were discovered in Lake Arendsee…
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A Christian Church Was Built Around a Mysterious Life-Size Figure in Ancient Sudan
On a granite hill overlooking the Nile’s Third Cataract in northern Sudan, archaeologists are reconstructing the history of a remarkable site. At its center stands the ruin of a seventh-century Christian church built around a much older, life-size human figure carved into the rock. The…