When we think of modern innovations, we often picture digital devices, advanced medicine, or sleek engineering. But what if many of the ideas we call “modern” were already in use thousands of years ...

Sometimes, clues about ancient technology are hidden in the most mundane things. In this case, Tel-Aviv University archaeologist Erez Ben-Yosef and his colleagues went rummaging through heaps of slag, ...

Firebricks have been around for thousands of years. Industries use them to store heat from burning fossil fuels; newer versions conduct electricity. Firebricks could save over $1.2 trillion in ...

In the East African Rift Valley, there is a sedimentary basin called Olorgesailie. For 700,000 years, the early humans living there used stone hand axes. These large, clunky, oval tools were the ...

Somehow, ancient Mesopotamians carved elaborate scenes on the sides of crystal cylinders just centimeters tall. They even did this in reverse, so a cylinder would imprint its owner’s mark when rolled ...

New technologies and academic collaborations are helping scholars at the University of Chicago analyze hundreds of ancient documents in Aramaic, one of the Middle East’s oldest continuously spoken and ...

In 2010, scientists achieved what had once seemed impossible: they sequenced the genome of a Neanderthal, based on tiny fragments of DNA from ancient bones. It was an astonishing feat that kicked off ...