Dig a trench for a canal that will run 107 kilometres (66 miles) across northern France and you expect scraps: a stretch of road, perhaps, or a lone farmstead. At Sermaize, in the Hauts-de-France region, archaeologists from France’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) found something much rarer. It is a complete workshop, with […]

Of all the animals shown in the tombs and art of ancient Egypt, very few have a name. Almost all of those that do are dogs. A handful of horses are named too, though far fewer survive. Cats, the animal most of us now associate with Egypt, are a different story. The literature offers only […]

A metal detector has pulled a small lead statuette of Venus Pudica out of a forest in the Buda Hills, northwest of Budapest. It is the first religious object recorded at the Roman village of Pilisszentiván–Hárs erdő, a rural settlement in the province of Pannonia. Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) has been excavating it for four […]

Around 1880, men cutting peat at Dejbjerg, in western Jutland (Denmark), began pulling bronze pieces out of the bog that shone as if they were new. Some assumed it was gold. Others had a more down-to-earth suspicion: the equipment of an illicit still, hidden in the marsh to make moonshine. Both versions are recorded on […]

A team led by Academician Vasil Nikolov—who has spent years studying the Old Continent’s first salt-production center—has made a sensational discovery in Provadia-Solnitsata, Europe’s oldest city. They uncovered traces of beer production dating back to the period between 5600 and 4350 BC. According to the researchers, this constitutes the earliest evidence of beer production within […]