Archaeology

New archaeological research reveals that leaders centralized the Angkor Wat agriculture system shortly before its decline.

Scanty remains of a modern human 45,000 years old found in the Balkans show our ancestors coexisted with Neanderthals in Europe for around 8,000 years.

Paleontologists are searching for the answer to how carnivorous dinosaurs went from pipsqueaks to titans.

Newfound Homo sapiens remains date to between about 46,000-44,000 years ago, researchers say.

Death might have taken weeks; it might have been days. But when it struck, it struck ruthlessly.

Fossilized tail bones indicate Spinosaurus, a menacing dinosaur bigger than T. rex, was definitely able to swim.

In Turkey, the Ilisu Dam's flooding of the ancient town of Hasankeyf offers a lesson in how societies choose the sites they preserve or destroy.

Fragments of a comet likely hit Earth 12,800 years ago, and a little Paleolithic village in Syria might have suffered the impact.

A prehistoric human species that lived in Europe 1.2 million to 800,000 years ago is emerging as a contender to be our last common ancestor with Neanderthals.

The more we look at Mars, the more signs of ancient water we find. Now a study suggests that the Red Planet could have been home to hot springs.

The Bahariya and Farafra depressions have some of the rarest landscapes in Egypt, making one forget, for a moment, that the Pyramids are the country's biggest attraction.

The debate over Earth's oldest fossils fuels the search for our deepest origins.

Meet the man building the world's biggest — and probably only — reference collection of pull tabs.

Exactly why hunter-gatherers enduring the frigid realities of life 25,000 years ago would construct the 40-foot diameter building is a fascinating question.

Mesoamericans living thousands of years ago participated in a ballgame that carried tremendous social, political, and spiritual importance.

Months of testing confirm earlier suspicions that the fragments were made in modern times. What happens next?

The tiny skull of a hummingbird-size dinosaur has been found trapped in amber, raising important questions about the evolution of birds and the surprisingly early trend toward miniaturization.

One of Easter Island's world-famous moai statues has been destroyed in an accident.

Thought to be more than 4,000 years old, the Dolmen of Guadalperal was "invisible" for almost 60 years until it unexpectedly reappeared.

A farmer led archaeologists to an ancient stone, which told the tale of a great king defeating King Midas. Yes, that King Midas.

Scientists and conservators are finally able to return to what was once an Andean war zone.

The treasure trove could help answer questions about what happened during the disastrous Franklin Expedition.

One of the world's oldest artworks has been discovered inside a working Indonesian mine. How has it survived this long?

Scientists studying the remarkably well-preserved remains of an Ice Age bird have identified the specimen as a horned lark.

New research has revealed that the common ancestor of Neanderthals and Denisovans interbred with its own predecessor, a population of "superarchaic" hominids.

Archeologists have discovered a 7,000-year-old Neolithic well in eastern Europe, which they believe is the oldest wooden structure in the world.

Paleontologist Peter Roopnarine wants to bring forgotten fossils into the spotlight.

Discovered on the island of Lindisfarne, the artifact was likely once part of a Hnefatafl board game set.

Almost imperceptible today, and certainly invisible to the naked Neolithic eye, the curious rotation of the houses can be attributed to an esoteric glitch in the brain — a psychological process called pseudoneglect.

Matt Kiddle went out for a leisurely ride with his 4-year-old son. In addition to the fresh air and the coastal view, there were some ancient human remains along the way.

Nestled in the leaf litter of Northeastern Iowa, on rubble piles beside the region's chilly bluffs, lives a tightly coiled, quarter-inch endangered snail.

Extensive water channels built by indigenous Australians thousands of years ago to trap and harvest eels for food have been revealed after wildfires burned away thick vegetation in the state of Victoria.

A group of students tried out a whole mess of archaeology-inspired techniques.

No one believed the first 18th century European explorer who claimed to have found a Roman city poking out of the sand in the North African desert, and the full extent of the 50-hectare site wouldn't be realized and excavated in its entirety until the 1950s.

In the Samoan archipelago, experts are using new technology to unlock ancient secrets of a long-lost pyramid.

The newly discovered monument featured standing stones that were arranged in a circular pattern around a spot bearing the distinctive traces of a powerful lightning strike. Intriguingly, the new research indicates that the structure itself may have been deliberately built to attract lightning.

Anthropologists may have found the last H. erectus group to succumb to extinction.

The piece of Birch tar, found in Denmark, contained the mouth microbes of its ancient chewer, as well as remnants of food to reveal what she ate.

Researchers in Turkey have uncovered modified Neolithic human teeth that were worn as pendants, perhaps in a necklace or bracelet.

"Greater Adria" existed hundreds of millions of years ago— here's what we know about it.

Wood planks unearthed during subway construction in Rome show just how far the empire's trade networks spread.

The ship is one of only a handful of such graves ever found mostly intact in Norway.

Mysterious 609-million-year-old balls of cells may be the oldest animal embryos — or something else entirely.

This place has everything: acidic puddles, lava lakes, an old skeleton that became the basis of our understanding of human evolution — everything!

Researchers have used AI to locate and identify 142 new geoglyphs in Nazca, Peru.

The decipherment of Linear B, the earliest form of Greek, was a history changing achievement, but decoding the older Linear A would open a new window on the origins of European culture.

Anthropologists believe the remains point to the first-ever discovery of human-made mammoth traps, which would've been used to hunt the massive animals 15,000 years ago.

A contentious new paper traces the origins of modern humans to ancient wetlands in Africa, a claim other researchers have called far-fetched.

The man is thought to have been at least 46 years old and suffered from extensive dental and joint disease.

Deep beneath the Black Sea, off the coast of Bulgaria, ancient Greek ships are revealing answers to the mystery of the Noah's Ark flood.

I recently flew over two mysterious master-planned communities carved into the barren desert of northwestern New Mexico. They are only about 100 miles apart as the crow flies, but they could not be more different.

The stone weighs 0.62 carats, while the internal gem weighs 0.02 carats. It may be more than 800 million years old.

Archaeologists and architects alike have long wondered why 15th century Incans built the grand citadel of Machu Picchu in what is now Peru where they did, high in the remote Andes atop a narrow ridge.

Receding water levels in Spain's Valdecañas Reservoir has exposed a stone monument dating back to between 4,000 to 5,000 years ago.

Canterbury Museum says find overturns presumption pelagornithids evolved in northern hemisphere

Built in the fifth century, Sri Lanka's Sigiriya fortress attracted the attention of British archaeologists in the 1800s, who were amazed by its leonine rock art and beautiful frescoes.

Archeologists are continuing to discover ruins of lost civilizations under water — what have they found so far?

Cranes first appeared in ancient Greece over 2,500 years ago, but new research suggests a primitive lifting machine — a kind of forerunner to the crane — was in use around 150 years earlier.

From gorgeous artworks to grimacing corpses, archaeologists are still uncovering the truth about life — and death — in the doomed city.

Working from remains discovered during archaeological excavations, sculptor and archaeologist Oscar Nilsson combines his two disciplines to reconstruct the faces of people who lived hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of years ago.