Human Origins / Prehistoric Culture

Giant Mound Is Like an Underground Stonehenge

Radar and sonar reveal sarsen stones buried under Silbury Hill. 02.13.2008

75. Were the First Americans Wiped Out By an Asteroid?

Giant explosion may have caused continent-wide fires and a 1,000-year cold spell 01.14.2008

Kings Who Controlled the Sun

Pre-Incan rulers used a precise observatory to assert power. 06.01.2007

Pyramid Building Saps the Soul

An ancient poem spills Egyptian blues. 12.07.2006

Central Asia's Lost Civilization

The unveiling of a 4,000-year-old civilization calls into question conventional ideas about ancient culture, trade, and religion. 11.30.2006

Just in Time for Halloween

Researchers say 4,500 years ago, some Mexicans hacked off their own teeth to the gum line and plugged in jaguar dentures. 10.10.2006

First Americans

Skulls show who got here first. 12.13.2005

More Hobbit Bones

Frodos from Flores are multiplying. 10.14.2005

Discover Dialogue: Evolutionary Biologist Mark Pagel

Human cultural groups have behaved as if they were different species 05.01.2005

Archaeology

01.02.2004

Human Origins

01.02.2004

America's Culture of War

About 800 years ago, Native Americans in the Southwest began building stone citadels and sky-high pueblos. What were they afraid of? 05.01.2003

Archaeology

01.01.2003

La Marmotta

As humans emerged from the Stone Age, they built little cities. The discovery in central Italy of a 7,800-year-old settlement reveals the dawning of Western civilization 11.01.2002

The Amazon Trail

Anna Roosevelt's ventures into the jungles of South America have turned up traces of human settlements far older than archaeologists ever suspected 05.01.2002

First to Ride

Archaeologist Sandra Olsen doesn't care much for living horses—it's their bones she likes. And no wonder: they may have led her to one of the most important finds in the history of humankind 03.01.2002

Human Origins

Year In Science 01.13.2002

Lost City

Has an American archaeologist finally found the home of the 20,000 workers who built the great pyramids of Giza? 10.01.2001

The Genetic Mystery of Music

Does a mother's lullaby give an infant a better chance for survival? 08.01.2001

Making a Modern Mummy

Two Egyptologists resurrect a 4,000-year-old tradition--and it works! 03.01.2000

Style of the Nile

Re-creating the chemistry and cosmetics of Queen Nefertiti 09.01.1999

The Dead Wives Club

07.01.1999

A Tale of Two Archeologists

A tale of two obsessed archeologists, one ancient city, and nagging doubts about whether science can ever hope to reveal the past 05.01.1999

Venerable Beads

10.01.1998

The Fiscal Frontier

Over the past three millennia, money has had many incarnations, but none--most likely--as strange as what is yet to come. We asked a group of thinkers to cast their eyes toward the future and describe what they envision. 10.01.1998

The Cradle of Cash

When money arose in the ancient cities of Mesopotamia, it profoundly and permanently changed civilization. 10.01.1998

Prehistoric Pet

07.01.1998

Art or Lump?

07.01.1998

Ancient Altered States

What do squiggles, dots, and spirals on rock walls mean? Ask your local shaman—or archeologist Dave Whitley. 06.01.1998

New Women of the Ice Age

Forget about hapless mates being dragged around by macho mammoth killers. The women of Ice Age Europe, it appears, were not mere cavewives but priestly leaders, clever inventors, and mighty hunters. 04.01.1998

American Cannibal

Signs of an ancient horror lie buried in the southwestern desert. And with them lie hints of a complex societycaught up in turbulent times. 02.01.1998

Archeology Watch

The Earthmovers—Centuries before Egypt's first pyramids were built, and long before Stonehenge, Native Americans constructed large earthen mounds in Louisiana. 02.01.1998

The Year in Science: Animals 1997

Man's Oldest Friend 01.01.1998

The Year in Science: Archeology 1997

Clovis R.I.P. 01.01.1998

Heart Art

11.01.1997

Ancient Abuse

09.01.1997

Stone Age Surgery

09.01.1997

The People of the Bog

Two thousand years ago the residents of northwest Europe had the puzzling habit of killing certain men, women, and children and tossing the bodies into bogs. Today their mummies are casting light on the murky times in which they lived. 08.01.1997

Stone Age Wood

06.01.1997

Hominid Hardware

05.01.1997

Mummy Threads

02.01.1997

New World Pompeii

Fourteen hundred years ago a central American volcano erupted, encasing an entire village in ash. Today that modest village is revealing what no stone temple or gold mask ever could: the details of ordinary life. 02.01.1997

The New Americans

01.01.1997

Maya Blue

10.01.1996

Oldest American

09.01.1996

Grim Figurines

08.01.1996

Early Etchings

07.01.1996

The Basket Age

01.01.1996

Calendar Redux

11.01.1994

Tea'd Off

09.01.1994

Northern Exposition

02.01.1994

Golden Window on a Lost World

Tens of millions of years ago the residents of Carribean forest were trapped in glowing ribbons of resin. Today they're telling scientists what their world was like. 08.01.1993

Paleolithic Paint Job

Two French archeologists are trying to get closer--much closer--to an ancient act of creation. 07.01.1993

Speaking With a Single Tongue

Like many animal species, thousands of languages are in danger of extinction. At stake is the world's cultural heritage. 02.01.1993

A Question of Size

Bigger is better, right? So why in the world have Pygmies opted for smallness? 05.01.1992



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