Archeaology

Linear A is a logo-syllabic script used for administrative purposes on Bronze Age Crete. Together with Cretan Hieroglyphic, it is one of two writing systems created by the Minoan civilization. Upon its template, the Mycenaeans later created the Linear B script to register their dialect of ancient Greek. Linear B …

The 120,000-year-old animal bone fragment with six incised lines is one of the oldest representations of abstract patterns produced by Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age hominins and the oldest known so far in the Levant. The 120,000-year-old engraved bone with six deliberately produced incisions from the Nesher Ramla site, …

While evidence for the important role of purple dyes in the ancient Mediterranean goes back to the early 2nd millennium BCE, finds of dyed textiles are extremely rare, and the 3,000-year-old pieces of purple-dyed wool textile from the Timna Valley in Israel are the oldest currently known in the Southern …

The Chumash Indians, hunter-gatherers centered on the south-central coast of Santa Barbara, were using highly worked shells as currency as early as 2,000 years ago, about 1,000 years earlier than archaeologists thought. Chumash cupped beads from purple dwarf olive sea snails (Olivella biplicata). Image credit: Lynn Gamble / SBMNH Collection. …

A team of archaeologists from the United States and Mexico have detected mixtures of tobacco and a non-tobacco plant called the Mexican marigold (Tagetes lucida) in residues taken from a collection of 14 pre-Columbian Maya bottle-shaped containers known as flasks. The discovery paints a clearer picture of ancient Maya drug …

A team of archaeologists from Australia and Indonesia has discovered two figurative paintings of the Sulawesi warty pig (Sus celebensis) — a species of small (40 to 85 kg), short-legged pig with characteristic facial warts — in Leang Tedongnge and Leang Balangajia 1 caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. …

An international team of archaeologists and paleoanthropologists has discovered a large collection of 2-million-year-old stone tools, fossilized bones and plant materials at the site of Ewass Oldupa in the western portion of the ancient basin of Olduvai Gorge (now Oldupai) in northern Tanzania. The discovery reveals that the earliest Olduvai …

Archaeologists have unearthed a frescoed thermopolium (a hot-food-drink shop) in Pompeii, an ancient Roman city frozen in time after the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. The 2,000-year-old thermopolium in the Pompeii archeological park, near Naples, Italy. Image credit: Parco Archeologico di Pompei. “Thermopolia, where drinks and hot …

The Aral Sea basin in Central Asia and its major rivers, the Amu Darya and Syr Darya, were the center of advanced river civilizations, and a principal hub of the Silk Roads over a period of more than 2,000 years. The region’s decline has been traditionally attributed to the Mongol …

An analysis of ceramic lipid residues from rural and urban sites of the Indus Civilization in northwest India provides chemical evidence for milk, meat of animals like pigs, cattle, buffalo, sheep and goat, and possible mixtures of products and/or plant consumption. An artist’s reconstruction of the gateway and drain at …