Blurs

Gemstones were far more than decorative objects to ancient societies. They could represent the gods, the heavens, royal authority, protection from evil, immortality and the power of nature.  Some were so highly prized that they travelled thousands of miles along ancient trade routes, connecting civilisations that might otherwise never have encountered one another. Lapis lazuli — The stone of the gods Civilisations: Ancient Egypt, Sumer, Mesopotamia and Persia Key symbolism: Divinity, royalty, the heavens and spiritual protection Lapis lazuli is an intensely blue rock, often scattered with golden flecks of pyrite. It was one of the most prestigious decorative materials in the ancient world. In ancient Egypt, it was fashioned into beads, amulets, scarabs and elaborate jewellery. It appears in objects associated with pharaohs, including the treasures of Tutankhamun. The stone was imported over vast distances, with a major ancient source at Badakhshan in what is now northeastern Afghan...

On a windswept rise above the north Antrim coast stands a small prehistoric monument with an evocative name: the Druid Stone. The name suggests ancient priests, secret ceremonies and perhaps human sacrifice beneath the shadow of a great stone. But there is a problem with the story. The monument almost certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with Druids. Instead, archaeologists believe the structure was built thousands of years before the Druids emerged as a recognisable religious class. And a new investigation at the site in 2026 is beginning to reveal more about the people who constructed it — and perhaps where their ideas came from. A Monument Above the Irish Sea The Druid Stone lies at Ballintoy in County Antrim, close to the spectacular coastline overlooking White Park Bay. Today, the remains occupy a small elevated position with commanding views across the surrounding landscape. It is a relatively modest monument compared with some of Britain's better-known megalithic structure...

In the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, something extraordinary happened inside a Roman villa at Herculaneum. A library was destroyed. But it wasn't completely destroyed. The papyrus scrolls inside were exposed to extreme heat, carbonising them into blackened, brittle cylinders. The writing survived in some cases, but the books became so fragile that opening them could destroy the very information researchers were trying to recover. For almost two thousand years, the knowledge inside remained effectively sealed. Now scientists are doing something that sounds completely backwards. They are burning scrolls on purpose. Not the ancient ones. They are making modern replicas, filling them with known writing, rolling them up and deliberately carbonising them. Then they scan the wreckage. The reason is simple: if researchers can understand exactly what happens to writing when a scroll burns, they may be able to work backwards from the damaged objects at Herculaneum and...

Imagine finding a sword from the Viking Age that contains steel of a quality surprisingly close to some much later forms of high-quality crucible steel. Stamped into the blade is a strange inscription: +VLFBERHT+. More than 170 swords bearing variations of the Ulfberht name have been identified. They have become some of the most intriguing weapons associated with the Viking world. But what made them special? And were Viking swordsmiths really using a lost technology that modern metallurgists still struggle to reproduce? What was an Ulfberht? Ulfberht isn't the name of a particular sword design. It is a name or inscription associated with a group of Viking Age swords. The spelling varies between examples, including forms such as +VLFBERHT+ and +VLFBERH+T. The swords generally date from around the 9th to 11th centuries. They have been discovered across a huge area of Europe, particularly in regions connected with Viking activity and trade. Their distribution suggests that the name ha...

Rising from the hills of southern Zimbabwe are the enormous stone walls of Great Zimbabwe. Built without mortar, some of its granite walls reach around 11 metres high. Massive stone enclosures, passageways, towers and carefully constructed structures form the remains of a sophisticated urban centre. But Great Zimbabwe has another story — one that is less about the people who built it than about the people who later refused to believe they had. For centuries, European writers and colonial authorities struggled to accept that a monumental stone city in sub-Saharan Africa could have been constructed by local African societies. Instead, alternative explanations were invented. Some claimed it had been built by Phoenicians. Others suggested Arabs, Egyptians or even the biblical Queen of Sheba. The archaeological evidence tells a very different story. What is Great Zimbabwe? Great Zimbabwe is a large archaeological complex in modern-day Zimbabwe. Its name comes from the Shona term dzimbahwe, ...

Could some of our ancestors have spent far more of the Ice Age beneath the surface than we realise? When we imagine humans during the Ice Age, we tend to picture hunters crossing frozen landscapes, wrapped in animal skins, tracking mammoths and reindeer across windswept plains. It's an image that has become almost synonymous with prehistoric humanity. But there is another possibility. When conditions became brutally cold, perhaps the smartest place to be wasn't out on the frozen landscape at all. Perhaps it was underground. Humans have been using caves and rock shelters for hundreds of thousands of years. We know that Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens repeatedly occupied caves, sometimes during extraordinarily cold climatic periods. But this raises a more intriguing question: Did some human groups retreat into underground environments for much longer periods during the most severe phases of the Ice Age? The answer isn't as straightforward as it might first appear. W...