Archaeology: Facts, Trivia, Quizzes, Brain Teasers & More

The presence and contents of a fossilized nest suggest that Australopithecus africanus lived in a dry, savannah-like environment.

The scroll was reduced to charcoal 1400 years ago.

The hooks are about 23,000 years old.

An ancient kitchen mishap proves that culinary incompetence is timeless.

Human remains are a rare find for sunken ships. Discovering a skeleton in one of the most famous shipwrecks in the world is even rarer.

Ancient Peruvians were the first in the world to dye fabric blue, beating the Egyptians to it by 1600 years.

Parks Canada is still confirming the discovery, but all signs point to the wreck being the HMS Terror.

Some researchers see evidence of a fall in 3D reconstructions of her bones. Others are doubtful.

Researchers analyzed 20 sets of human remains from one of the many workhouses where entire families were institutionalized—and made to work long hours—as a "remedy" to poverty.

The wreck is the second oldest ever found in the Great Lakes.

John Cooke via Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain

But who was behind the hoax?

For much of the 20th century, scientists believed that the first settlers of the Americas could only have arrived one way.

The pre-Columbian mound had long been characterized as a testament to male power and warfare.

Sarah&Boston via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0

The stench was likened to an extra-pungent Roquefort.

The boy did "irreversible" damage while trying to make the ancient art more visible.

It was one of the most cataclysmic floods on Earth in the past 10,000 years.

The piece of jewelry has been entrusted to the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

It pushes back the date of the earliest known cancer in a human ancestor by more than a million years.

Walter Montgomery via Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain

Excavations in a likely site have uncovered dozens of artifacts from the late 16th century.

Researchers say the bodies of infants and fetuses were a ‘prized source of knowledge’ for British anatomists.

Archaeologists excavated the ground around cashew trees and found capuchin nut-cracking tools dating back to the 13th century.

Even though hundreds of years had passed, archaeologists could still detect signs of wear and soot on the lamp’s opening.

For years, historians have known that Jewish workers escaped the Nazi massacres at Ponar, but not where their tunnel was located.

“The big question we had was, ‘Who were these people?’ We didn't really have any idea where they came from."

ARCHAEOLOGY

What Long-Dead Bees Can Tell Us About Our Ancestors

Scientists Decipher Charred Biblical Scroll Using 'Virtual Unwrapping'

Scientists Discover World's Oldest-Known Fishhooks in Okinawa, Japan

Archaeologists Discover Pot With 3000-Year-Old Burnt Cheese

2000-Year-Old Skeleton Found at Ancient Shipwreck

The Blue in Your Blue Jeans Is at Least 6000 Years Old

Has the HMS Terror Shipwreck Been Found in Arctic Canada?

Did Lucy Die After Falling out of a Tree?

Irish Teeth Reveal the Chemical Signature of the Great Famine

Three Retirees Discover a Shipwreck From 1803 in Lake Ontario

DNA Shows Infamous ‘Piltdown Man’ Hoax Was Two Parts Human, One Part Ape

Study: The First Americans Didn't Arrive by the Bering Land Bridge

Archaeologists Find Remains of "High-Status" Women in Cahokia Burial Mound

340-Year-Old Cheese Recovered From Swedish Shipwreck

Young Boy Accidentally Ruins 5000-Year-Old Stone Age Carving in Norway

Have Scientists Found Evidence of the Great Flood of China?

Irish-American College Student Finds 12th Century Brooch on Galway Beach

Scientists Find the Earliest Human Cancer in a 1.7-Million-Year-Old Toe

Archaeologists Find ‘New Clues’ in Search for Roanoke’s Lost Colonists

How 18th- and 19th-Century Babies Contributed to Science

Monkeys Have Been Using Tools for 700 Years

Israeli Lifeguard Finds 900-Year-Old Oil Lamp on Beach During Morning Jog

Archaeologists Discover Holocaust Escape Tunnel in Lithuania

Ancient DNA Sequenced from "Sky Cave" Burials in Nepal