Picture of wild pig made at least 45,500 years ago provides earliest evidence of human settlement in region

The 19th-century whale hunt was a brutal business, awash with blubber, blood, and the cruel destruction of life. But between the frantic calls of “there she blows!”, there was plenty of time for creation too. Jessica Boyall explores the rich vein of illustration running through the logbooks and journals of Nantucket whalers.

New scholarship points to a paradox of historic scope: Our writing system was devised by people who couldn’t read

Secondary school teacher Lee Turnbull found the snaps in Devon just before Christmas

Walter Scott wrote fantasies about medieval Saxons—just the thing for Jazz Age Angelenos.

Republicans and Democrats in North Carolina are locked in a battle over which party inherits the shame of Jim Crow.

Early hominins succeeded by being generalists with basic, versatile tools.

His exhaustive coverage of the Vietnam War also led to the book “A Bright Shining Lie,” which won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1995, a WIRED cofounder challenged a Luddite-loving doomsayer to a prescient wager on tech and civilization’s fate. Now their judge weighs in.

Eric Green, head of the nation’s top genomics research institute, looks back on how far the field has come and shares his bold vision for the future.

Officials plan to host concerts and theater productions on the new, retractable platform

Much of the author’s work may have fallen into public ownership in the UK, but there are more restrictions on its use remaining than you might expect, explains his biographer

After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe wasn’t quite the horrible and backwards place earlier historians would have you believe. Modern scholars now look at the Dark Ages in a whole new light.

She was a physicist, too—and there is evidence that she contributed significantly to his groundbreaking science

A century ago, the age of radio began in Germany. Cultural broadcasts made radio popular, though the Nazis later used it for their propaganda.

All too often forgotten in dusty attics today, for centuries, lacework was all about how you flaunted your individuality. Lace helped you tell a story by weaving a veritable comic book strip of characters on the cuff of your sleeve.

Retired major Harold Skaarup explains how author Farley Mowat smuggled a V2 rocket into Canada after the Second World War.

Asian spices such as turmeric and fruits like the banana had already reached the Mediterranean more than 3000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought. A team of researchers has shown that even in the Bronze Age, long-distance trade in food was already connecting distant societies.

Bed Bath & Beyond’s plus-size mailer, known as Big Blue, has made it to TV, eBay, even a mobster’s kitchen drawer. “The poor mailmen,” the company’s former marketing V.P. said, “what we did to them.”

Archaeology is the closest thing we have to a time machine. Instead of using flux capacitors, however, archaeologists rely on technology like ground-penetrating radar, scanning electron microscopes, DNA sequencing, and of course, the good-old-fashioned shovel.