Stones, Bones, and Wrecks

The view from above—sometimes way above—has revealed lost cities, forgotten pyramids, and ancient trading routes.

The USCGC McCulloch was part of the Asiatic Squadron, a group of U.S. Navy warships that fought in the 1898 Battle of Manila Bay.

The front (left) and back (right) of a 3000-year-old copper mask. Small holes near the edges suggest the mask could have been attached with threads. Someone tried to repair the fracture near the left eye—note the holes near it.

Its discovery complicates the long-standing idea that metalworking began on the continent in Peru.

Watanabe. 2017. The Auk: Ornithological Advances.

One fossil expert developed a new system for classifying extinct ducks and geese.

A strange calculation machine from an ancient Roman shipwreck is still unlocking its secrets.

Two views of an adult Homo naledi cranium found in the Lesedi Chamber of the Rising Star cave system in South Africa, where the remains of 15 individuals were discovered in a different cave in 2013.

Scientists date the intriguing hominin remains to 335,000–236,000 years ago—and find three more bodies.

Academics at the University of Mississippi want to construct a new lab to study the remains and build a visitor's center and a memorial.

With enough funding, they will analyze—and then reinter—the remains of people buried between 1707 and 1859 in a Baptist cemetery—and mental_floss will be in the lab with them.

Opening March 20, "Mummies" lets visitors peer inside remains thousands of years old—all without disturbing or unwrapping them.

Despite its fame, Stonehenge remains one of the world's most mysterious megalithic sites.

Perhaps even more puzzling than the meaning of their creation is how they were built in the first place.

Welcome to Myra, where a Greek bishop became a power player in early Christianity.

The Antikythera Mechanism is in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece.

The mysterious Antikythera mechanism—sometimes called 'the world's first computer'—has fascinated scholars for decades.

Reproduction of woodcut, 1483. Wikimedia Commons // CC BY 4.0

And when did women and babies start surviving it?

We spoke to archaeologist Murat Gülyaz about the phenomenal dig.

Forgery of art and antiquities is far from a modern phenomenon.

The brain imprints itself on the inside of the skull. These impressions have been key to the study of the evolution of the human brain.

Noblewoman Louise de Quengo was still fully clothed in a wool dress, cape, bonnet, and shoes.

Photo courtesy of G. Cole, C. Rando, L. Sibun, and T. Waldron; UCL Institute of Archaeology

"I've never seen anything quite like that before, nor have my colleagues, and we were very excited."

Kennewick Man's genome was sequenced at the GeoGenetics lab at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen.

Scientists have cracked the genome of a man who died in the Pacific Northwest 8500 years ago—and his descendants still live nearby.

For thousands of years, people have buried their treasures to keep them safe from authorities and marauders or as offerings to the gods. Every now and then, someone is lucky enough to find one of these long-lost hoards. Here are seven of the best finds in

All it took to locate the bones of Richard III was 500 years, a psychic vision, and a grassroots movement.

There’s more to the common parking lot than broken beer bottles and fender benders from that guy who was texting. Oceans of asphalt, it seems, are hiding an astonishing trove of archeological treasures.

Because some of the statues are set deep into the ground, and because the heads on the statues are disproportionately large, many people tend to think of them as just big heads.

4 Amazing Archaeological Discoveries Spotted by Satellite

100 Years After It Sank, This Coast Guard Ship Will Remain in Its Watery Grave

Rainy Season in the Andes Reveals the Oldest Known Copper Death Mask

A New Way to Tell If a Dead Duck Could Fly

The Enduring Mystery of the Antikythera Mechanism

Puzzling Human Relative Homo Naledi May Have Lived at the Same Time as Our Ancestors

Up to 7000 Former Mental Institution Patients are Buried Beneath a Mississippi Medical Center

Archaeologists Need Your Help to Study 100+ Graves in Philadelphia

Archaeologists Need Your Help to Study 100+ Graves in Philadelphia

18 Mummies From Peru and Egypt Come to the American Museum of Natural History

6 of the World’s Most Mysterious Standing Stones

St. Nick's Real Hometown Is an Ancient City in Turkey Entombed in Mud

15 Intriguing Facts About the Antikythera Mechanism

Just How Old Is C-Section Birth?

Archaeologists Unearth More of a Massive Underground City

7 Antique Forgeries Made in Antiquity

Tracing the Evolution of the Human Brain Through Casts of the Inner Skull

Archaeologists Discovered Fully Dressed 350-Year-Old Body

Archaeologists Discover 7-lb. Calcified Uterus in British Cemetery

Kennewick Man's DNA Solves Scientific Controversy

7 Incredible Hoards Discovered in the Past 7 Years

Unearthing Richard III: The Luckiest Find in History

5 Remarkable Things Discovered Under Parking Lots

The Easter Island "Heads" Have Bodies