Geometric signs on cave walls and ancient artifacts may be some of humanity’s earliest graphic communications. By Heather Pringle. (May 29, ’16)

Kumari Kandam is the legendary lost continent of Lemuria, the center of Tamil Civilization, which existed in the Indian Ocean. By R.S. Pandey.

The researchers said they found evidence to suggest the civilisation flourished around 8,000 BC, not 5,500 as was believed. By Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey. (May 29)

Archaeologists say the mummified remains, found near one of the oldest cities in the Americas, probably belong to a noblewoman aged 40 to 50. By Alan Yuhas. (Apr. 23)

Construction workers in southern Spain unearth 600 kilograms of Roman coins stored inside clay jars. Six hundred kilograms of bronze coins were discovered inside 19 amphoras, some of them recovered broken.

Women are woven deeply into the history of science, stretching back to ancient Egypt, over 4,000 years ago. But because their contributions often go unacknowledged, they fade into obscurity—and the threads of their influence today aren’t as apparent as they ought to be. By Emily Temple-Wood.

A new law in Germany seeks to eliminate the trade in ancient artifacts. It was written to target people like Leonardo Patterson, whose long career selling plundered objects from Central America throws a spotlight on the dubious industry. By Konstantin von Hammerstein.

Elaine Ling considers herself an old soul, which may explain why she’s long been drawn to some of the oldest human creations on the planet: ancient stones... By Jordan G. Teicher.

Archaeologists have uncovered a trove of previously undocumented rock art in northern Arizona, including a prehistoric solar calendar that has been marking the seasons for more than 700 years.

It’s a two-mile trudge through forested, swampy ground to reach Point Rosee, a narrow, windswept peninsula stretching from southern Newfoundland into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Last June, a team of archaeologists was drawn to this remote part of Canada by a modern-day treasure map: satellite imagery revealing ground features that could be evidence of past human activity.

This could change our understanding of the mysterious Etruscan civilization in Italy. By Annalee Newitz.

Bioarcheologists are getting better at measuring the toll of ancient pathogens. By Caroline Wazer.

In the Egyptian portion of the Libyan Desert, there’s a cave called “The Cave of Beasts” that contains over 5,000 cave paintings. Also known as Wadi Sura II, the cave was only discovered in 2002 by amateur explorers. Among the depictions of animals and dancing humans, there’s a curious portion of wall covered in hundreds of hand prints. The cave art was created at least 7,000 years ago, using the technique of placing a hand...

When the so called Islamic State group took control of Palmyra, it destroyed the 2,000-year-old Temple of Bel and executed the man who looked after it.

Instagram photographer m1rasoulifard captures the structural and artistic intricacies of iran's most renowned places of worship and cultural complexes.

One year ago a man took a pneumatic drill to the statue of a winged bull at the gates of the ancient city of Nineveh, near Mosul in modern Iraq. It's one of countless treasures destroyed by vandals, militants or military action in the region in the last 15 years. Kanishk Tharoor and Maryam Maruf tell the first of 10 stories about ancient objects that have now been lost.

The first complete sequences of the Y chromosomes of Aboriginal Australian men have revealed a deep indigenous genetic history tracing all the way back to the initial settlement of the continent 50 thousand years ago, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology today.

An Animated History of Writing

The Rapa Nui people, who have lived on Easter Island since before Europeans arrived, accomplished incredible feats of engineering. But some centuries ago, their numbers dwindled. What kickstarted the collapse of this civilization? By Eva Botkin-Kowacki.

Archaeologists have uncovered what is believed to be the largest and best-preserved Bronze Age wooden wheel ever found in the U.K., at a site that has been described as “Britain’s Pompeii." The astonishing new find has been revealed not long after the team excavating the site in the soggy fens of Cambridgeshire announced that they had found some of the most perfectly preserved Bronze Age houses, thought to date to around 3,000 years old.