Satan is often shown in popular depictions with horns on its head, furry legs and cloven hooves of a goat. But just why is the devil depicted with horns and hooves? It turns out that historians don’t agree on when this depiction of the devil became popular and where it came from. The devil’s appearance … Read more
In the late 18th century, a man was buried in Griswold, Connecticut, with his femur bones arranged in a criss-cross manner — a placement indicating that locals thought he was a vampire. However, little else was known about him. More than 200 years later, DNA evidence is revealing what he may have looked like. (And yes, he … Read more
A series of sudden and colossal spikes in radiation levels across Earth’s history could have come from a series of unknown, unpredictable and potentially catastrophic cosmic events, a new study has revealed. Named Miyake events after the lead author of the first study to describe them, the spikes occur roughly once every 1,000 years or … Read more
Scholars may have just discovered a fragment of the world’s oldest complete star map. The map segment, which was found beneath the text on a sheet of medieval parchment, is thought to be a copy of the long-lost star catalog of the second century B.C. Greek astronomer Hipparchus, who made the earliest known attempt to … Read more
Archaeologists in the east of England have unearthed the remains of an elaborate hall that Anglo-Saxon monarchs and warriors feasted in roughly 1,400 years ago. The remains of the royal hall — near the village of Rendlesham in Suffolk, about 70 miles (110 kilometers) northeast of London — are only a few miles north of … Read more
The Day of the Dead might sound like a solemn affair, but Mexico’s famous holiday (opens in new tab) is actually a lively commemoration of the departed. The nationwide festivities, which include a massive parade in Mexico City (opens in new tab), typically begin the night of Oct. 31 with families sitting vigil at grave … Read more
Copper mines in Israel’s Negev Desert — ancient sites that may have inspired the legend of King Solomon’s mines of gold — were abandoned 3,000 years ago, when people there used up all the plants to make charcoal for smelting, a new study finds. The researchers studied fragments of charcoal from ancient furnaces in the … Read more
Just as waterfront mansions are status symbols for today’s rich and famous, ancient artificial islands in the British Isles known as crannogs may have been used by elites to display their power and wealth through elaborate parties, a new study finds. A crannog is “an artificial island within a lake, wetland, or estuary,” Antony Brown … Read more
Stonehenge is one of the world’s most iconic, and mysterious, prehistoric monuments, and it has intrigued people for thousands of years. Scholars are still unsure exactly who built it and why, though many believe it was a religious site. Its circular layout aligns with the movements of the sun. But did the equally mysterious druids … Read more
Druids were religious leaders in what is now Britain and France. They were “philosophers, teachers, judges, the repository of communal wisdoms about the natural world and the traditions of the people, and the mediators between humans and the gods,” Barry Cunliffe, an emeritus professor of European archaeology at the University of Oxford, wrote in his … Read more
