Ancient

Machu Picchu was built by the Incas, one of several cultures that settled in the Central Andes over thousands of years. Matthew Butcher By Elizabeth PennisiMay. 7, 2020 , 12:00 PMSome of the world’s more famous and closely examined archaeological sites pepper the hillsides of the Central Andes, documenting an invention of farming and the…

By Donna Lu This Martian cliff may have been cut by hundreds of thousands of years of water flowing over itFaculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University We know from images of Mars’s surface that the planet once had plenty of flowing water, but now we’ve found the first evidence of a river that flowed there for…

By Colin Barras A dagger from the tomb of the pharaoh Tutankhamun is made of meteoritic ironrobertharding / Alamy The sky is an enormous iron container filled with water and chunks of it occasionally fall off and plummet to Earth as iron meteorites. Or, at least, that’s what ancient Egyptians seem to have thought. Iron…

By Michael Le Page When archaeologists find ancient faeces, knowing who left it is important Tim Wright/Getty Images Dog faeces can still be troublesome thousands of years after being dumped. Archaeologists can end up in deep doodoo if they mistake it for human faeces. But now an artificial intelligence system has been developed to discern…

By Colin Barras In Mulan: Rise of a Warrior, Zhao Wei plays Hua Mulan – a character that may have been based on real ancient female warriorsCredit: Collection Christophel/Alamy © Starlight International Media Group Ancient remains found in the Mongolian steppe suggest that the story of the female warrior Mulan may have been inspired by…