The Past

Human beings are descendants of these early tetrapods – at least those who made a new life on land.

Can a shared language promote peace? Some people think so.

While becoming a monk is an evolutionary dead end for the individual, celibacy reaps benefits for the group as a whole.

In a nod to its addictive qualities, it was first dubbed “Some More.”

Long before Christopher and Magellan, ancient explorers voyaged into the unknown and brought home extraordinary tales.

Using data collected from ancient civilizations across the world, researchers identified the most significant factors in human development. War came out on top. 

More than 300 years ago, a Spanish ship laden with unspeakable treasure sank after a battle. Because of greed, the treasure remains on the sea floor.

Predatory dinosaurs with big skulls tend to have tiny arms. Researchers propose there might be a direct link between those traits.

When you’re a genius, how do you make ends meet?

Long before tobacco arrived from the Americas, ancient civilizations in the Old World were getting high off hemp smoke and opium. 

New research finds that dinosaurs were already adapted to living in cold climates before the end-Triassic mass extinction. But how?

Fossils of Australopithecus in a South African cave are one million years older than previously thought. This challenges the consensus that humans first evolved in East Africa.

Three out of four Russians accused of witchcraft were men.

The architecture and infrastructure found may well have required the greatest amount of skilled labor of any construction from the same time period in the entire continent. 

The weird and wild ways mummy fever swept through Europe.

Unlike other world rulers, Genghis Khan was laid to rest not inside an elaborate mausoleum but an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia. Maybe.

Before gunpowder was introduced to the West, medieval Arabs devised grenades using crockery.

In the Canaan religion, Yahweh was a lesser god, who was assigned the land of Israel. Here’s how he became “God Almighty.”

The ancient Maya enjoyed filling their teeth with gemstones. A new study reveals how the procedure was done and how it didn’t kill them.

In terms of sheer productivity, “-gate” has no peer. Wikipedia’s list of -gates has over 260 entries.

The long-standing debate over whether dinosaurs were more like birds or lizards is drawing to a close.

An elaborate device called the Mechanical Turk defeated Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte at chess. Edgar Allan Poe revealed the hoax.

Experimental archaeology is the practice of recreating past events using knowledge and tools available at the time. Sometimes, it involves elephants.

Robinson v. California helped to established a rehabilitative ideal: addiction should be dealt with as a therapeutic matter.

Before the war, medical experts treated the body as a sum of its parts. Conditions like wound shock and brain damage called for a change in perspective.

Privateers pillaged British merchant ships in the name of liberty — and profit.

Human sacrifice appears to be as old as humanity itself. Still, experts disagree on how and where the practice first originated.

Searching for truth in unorthodox ways can be a valuable exercise. But Anatoly Fomenko’s alternate world history is just plain weird.

These astounding inventions show that civilizations of the past were a lot more advanced than we might have thought.

To the ancient Greeks, exotic animals were proof of mythological creatures. To the ancient Romans, they were oddities and adversaries.