Cleanliness in ancient societies was never just about comfort. It signaled status, health, and the everyday discipline of life in dusty cities and river valleys. Without modern plumbing or packaged ...

Sam Kean has gone back in time, at least in practice, for his new book "Dinner with King Tut." He talks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about "experimental archeology" and learning about ancient cultures.

An Old Babylonian clay hand tablet (circa 1800–1600 BCE) from the Yale Babylonian Collection that was likely used as a practice school exercise by a new scribe and a fingerprint of the scribe was left ...

Archaeologists in Turkey have just uncovered a shopping list,one that’s 3,500 years old. The discovery, made at the ancient site of Eski Alalah, is drawing attention for its unexpected nature. The ...

There is one archaeological site that has much in common with Rising Star: Sima de los Huesos (the “pit of bones”) in northern Spain. There, researchers have uncovered the remains of 29 hominins, ...

A 7,000-year-old grave site in present-day Oman indicates that the region’s Neolithic communities sometimes turned to an ...

When archaeologists study how ancient civilizations traveled, they can use evidence like wagons and stables and roads to understand how goods and people moved on land. But when they want to learn ...

Welcome to the ancient agora, the original social media of the ancient Greeks, where people could argue about... everything!

It is fair to say that the family tree of ancient humans is not written in stone. Just take the case of the Denisovans, the enigmatic ancient humans who were, until recently, known only from a few ...