History Facts
Explore the past, one discovery at a time. Browse our articles on archaeology, ancient DNA, lost civilizations and new interpretations of history, presented in publication order.
In 396, Saint Jerome described a church in northern Italy. More than 1,600 years later, archaeologists have found the building—and clues to how its city helped give rise to Venice.
Read the story →
For decades, mammoth ivory at this German Ice Age site could have come from ancient remains. Newly uncovered bones and cut marks raise a more challenging possibility: that people hunted mammoths themselves.
Read the story →
Two brothers buried 725 kilometres apart hint at lives on the move in late Roman Iberia. Their story sits inside a larger surprise: Rome reshaped the peninsula’s ancestry more deeply than the migrations that followed.
Read the story →
A reflective shape in a remote Pacific lagoon looked like a clue to Amelia Earhart’s disappearance. Archaeologists found a humbler answer—and a reminder of how difficult it is to read a mystery from fragments.
Read the story →
A broken spearpoint, a cooking pot and a worked glass shard hint at millennia of life along the Minnesota River. Now magnetic signals are helping archaeologists locate what plowing left hidden underground.
Read the story →
A hearth, a vanished wooden post and a pit may be traces of an ancient shelter. Together, they offer a rare glimpse of how people began making a home in a new land.
Read the story →
More than 30 ceramic vessels and a possible copper mask accompanied a child at a temple in coastal Peru. The grave raises a striking question: how could status be expressed before a person could speak—or act?
Read the story →
A stone coffin bearing a Roman name contained a man who died centuries later. New dating narrows the mystery—but two Westminster abbots still fit the evidence.
Read the story →
A trace of animal protein has survived where its source material is long gone. It may help explain how people at a South African site used ochre—and what the pigment touched.
Read the story →