archeology

A translucent opalized fossil turtle tail bone, donated to the Australian Opal Center by opal miners Graeme and Christine Thompson.

These Fossils Preserved in Opal Are a Gorgeous, Iridescent Window Into the Past. Scientists Are Fighting to Save Them from the Black Market

Cloaked in white dust and surrounded by expansive plains, the town of Light...

Cloaked in white dust and surrounded by expansive plains, the town of Lightning Ridge produces the bulk of the world’s precious black opal. This rare gemstone, prized for its dazzling play of color, hides out...

Scientists at the 11,500-year-old remains of two infant girls at the Upward Sun River in Alaska's Tanana River Valley near Fairbanks

The 11,500-Year-Old Remains of a Baby Could Reveal How Humans First Came to the Americas

DNA from a six-week-old girl is helping resolve long-standing controversies

Why Did Cannibals Eat Other People? (Hint: It's Not For the Calories)

No matter how hungry you are, you'd be very unlikely to sit down to a pipin...

No matter how hungry you are, you'd be very unlikely to sit down to a piping hot bowl of Larry—or anyone else, for that matter. In other words, you wouldn't eat another person. Cannibalism has...

A Chinese farmer walks on a restored section of the Xiaohekou Great Wall, a wild stretch of the Great Wall, in Suizhong county, Huludao city, northeast China's Liaoning province, Sept. 21, 2016.

Part of China's Great Wall Has Been Cemented Over in a Shocking 'Restoration' Job

The appalling work, carried out at the behest of local officials, has provo...

The appalling work, carried out at the behest of local officials, has provoked a furious backlash

This Might Be the World's Oldest Ax

Ancient tool is older than scientists originally thought

$In this August 2012 photo provided by Marta Mirazon Lahr, researcher Frances Rivera, right, Michael Emsugut, left, and Tot Ekulukum excavate a human skeleton at the site of Nataruk, West Turkana, Kenya. This skeleton was that of a woman, found lying on her back, with lesions on her neck vertebrae consistent with a projectile wound. She also had multiple fractures on one of her hands. In a paper released on Jan. 20, 2016, by the Nature Journal, scientists said it’s one of the clearest cases of violence between groups among prehistoric hunter-gatherers.$

This Discovery Shows Humans Have Been Killing Each Other for 10,000 Years

The discovery may be the earliest proof of warfare.

Revolutionary War-Era Ship Found Under Virginia Building Site

They also found a privy