Some lakes give up shipwrecks, and Arendsee, in northern Germany, has already given up one. What archaeologists brought to light in 2026 is something else: wood carved by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers up to 10,500 years ago. (The Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age, is the stretch of European prehistory after the last Ice Age and before farming.) […]

In southwestern Germany, an open-air museum and a website present the Heuneburg as the “Celtic city of Pyrene”, a settlement already thriving when Rome was still a small village on the Tiber. The name comes from Herodotus. The problem, according to a study published in The Antiquaries Journal, is that the Greek historian was almost […]

Around 30 million years ago, a heavily built animal prowled the area that is now Vallbona de les Monges, in Lleida province (Catalonia, northeastern Spain). It had a long head, prominent cheekbones and formidable jaws lined with large, sharp teeth. Paleontologists call it the hell pig. The nickname misleads. Its kinship with modern pigs is […]

Most of the Persian kings whose names we know are Cyrus, Darius, Cambyses, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, Khosrow. Each has a number after his name, and they belong to different dynasties and eras. But they share one thing: they were all men. In the whole history of that vast empire, only three women sat on the throne. […]