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Where did... Hungarian, Finnish, and Estonian -- come from? ...The analysis, led by a pair of recent graduates with oversight from ancient DNA expert David Reich, integrated genetic data on 180 newly sequenced Siberians with more than 1,000 existing samples covering many continents and about 11,000 years of human history. The results, published this month in the journal Nature, identify the prehistoric progenitors of two important language families, including Uralic, spoken today by more than 25 million people.The study finds the ancestors of present-day Uralic speakers living about 4,500 years ago in northeastern Siberia, within an area now known as...

800 pages, thousands of entries, and almost a million words. The Domesday Book, England's earliest surviving public record. Amidst a grave crisis, William the Conqueror embarked on an extraordinary bureaucratic endeavor: the Domesday Book. Dr Stephen Baxter uncovers the immense scale of the 1086 survey, detailing who owned what across England down to the last pig. But why did William do it and what did it mean for the kingdom that he had just conquered? The Intriguing Mystery Of William The Conqueror's Domesday Book | 51:49 Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries | 811K subscribers | 9,669 views | July 19,...

During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the ancient city of Diocaesarea, known today as Uzuncaburç, was a bustling hub in southeastern Turkey. Its well-preserved ruins consist of colonnaded streets filled with shops. According to the Daily Sabah, recent excavations within one of those properties has unearthed a unique set of 1,600-year-old artifacts that is offering new insight into commercial life in the city and its standardized system of weights and measures. Archaeologists from Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Mersin University discovered a complete balance scale and five iron weights that appear to be shaped like the Greek letters,...

Lithuanian and Latvian languages are not Slavic and not Balto-Slavic. I made a deep esearch and I can say that both Baltic languages are definitely not Slavic, not even close, and neither Balto-Slavic. They should be separated into a very early separation branch similar to Armenian. There are very few Slavic-sounding words in both Baltic languages and those words were borrowed in near modern times. All other words (99,999999%) in both Baltic languages don't even remind of any Slavic language. There are words that sound Arabic, Franco, Latin, Greek, even English and Italiamn and even Pacific, but very few Slavic...

According to a statement released by Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), LMU researcher Enrique Jiménez was able to decipher a Babylonian hymn that had been lost for 2,000 years. Jiménez, in collaboration with the University of Baghdad, is working on digitizing all cuneiform tablets from the legendary ancient Sippar Library, once located on the banks of the Euphrates River north of Babylon. Using artificial intelligence, the team was able to identify 30 different fragmentary pieces from the same composition, which turned out to be a previously unknown hymn consisting of 250 lines. The piece was written by an ancient...

Cambridge scholars have finally cracked a 130-year-old medieval literary puzzle: the Song of Wade, a long-lost gem of English literature.Previously believed to be a monster-filled epic, new research reveals it was actually a chivalric romance -- a tale of knights, battles, and courtly intrigue.A few lines of text in an 800-year-old medieval sermon document stumped the literature scholars.The breakthrough came from correcting a long-standing misreading in a medieval sermon: the word "elves" was mistakenly transcribed by a scribe, and the correct word is "wolves.""Changing elves to wolves makes a massive difference. It shifts this legend away from monsters and giants...

Over 1,000 years ago, Norse explorers reached North America from Greenland, centuries before Christopher Columbus. Join historian Dan Snow as he explores how ancient Viking sagas about the discoveries of legendary Norse explorer Leif Erikson offer clues to where these intrepid adventurers may have landed. This clip is from The Vikings Uncovered (2016). What The Viking Sagas Reveal About Who Really Discovered America | 3:58BBC Timestamp | 853K subscribers | 68,830 views | July 8, 2025

For thousands of years, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were the oldest epic stories that Europeans know of. But is it possible that Homer was, in turn, influenced by the stories of other civilizations to the east of Greece? We are joined by Mary Bachvarova, an expert on both the ancient Greek and Hittite traditions, to explore this fascinating question. This is episode 42 of the "Ancient Greece Declassified" podcast. A Hittite Version of the Trojan War?! | 1:03:07 Lantern Jack | 10.2K subscribers | 329,200 views | November 28, 2021

To love and be loved is something most people want in their lives.In the modern world, we often see stories about the difficulties of finding love and the trials of dating and marriage. Sometimes, the person we love doesn't love us. Sometimes, we don't love the person who loves us.Ancient Greeks and Romans also had a lot to say about this subject. In fact, most of the issues people face today in their search for love are already mentioned in ancient Greek and Roman literature.So, what did they say? And is the advice they put forward still relevant for modern...

How did the Egyptians forget Hieroglyphs? | 10:53 toldinstone | 587K subscribers | 586,513 views | April 25, 2025 Chapters: 0:00 Introduction 0:53 Introducing hieroglyphs 2:15 Hieroglyphs in Roman Egypt 3:10 The great temples 3:53 Decline of the temples 5:04 FlexiSpot 6:28 Vanishing hieroglyphs 7:40 Roman ignorance of hieroglyphs 8:44 Hieroglyphica 9:28 Mysterious or powerless

After 2,600 years, the world gains a fourth poem by Sappho John Ezard Friday June 24, 2005 The Guardian (UK) Plato believed Sappho should be honoured not merely as a poet but as a Muse. Photo: Getty A newly found poem by Sappho, acknowledged as one of the greatest poets of Greek classical antiquity and seen by some as the finest of any era, is published for the first time today. Written more than 2,600 years ago, the 101 words of verse deal with a theme timeless in both art and soap operas; the stirrings of an ageing body towards...

A newly analyzed inscription found in Sinai, Egypt, has stirred new debate among scholars after a language researcher claimed it may include the words, “This is from Moses.” The carving, located near an ancient turquoise mine in the south-central region of the peninsula, was photographed using high-resolution imaging technology that brought faded markings into clearer view. The markings belong to a group of rock-cut writings known as Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions. These early alphabetic characters were first documented in 1904 and are believed to date back to around 1800 BCE. The particular panel under review, labeled Sinai 357 and located across from...

The Times of Central Asia reports that archaeologists from the National Museum of Tajikistan made a number of significant discoveries at the site of Khalkajar near the village of Sarband. Among them was a unique two-handled ceramic jug dating from the time of the Kushan Empire, which was one of the most influential and powerful states of ancient Central Asia that encompassed parts of present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Dating to between the first and third century a.d, the vessel contains a faint painted inscription written in the Bactrian language. Linguistic experts determined that it reads, "This water...

Anadolu Agency reports that excavations at the site of Olympos in the current-day region of Antalya revealed new evidence that attests to the site's early Christian history. Inside a building known as Church No. 1, the team uncovered mosaic floors featuring geometric patterns, floral motifs, and Greek inscriptions, some of which bear the names of individuals who are believed to be among the church's early benefactors. "These finds confirm Olympos as one of the richest ancient cities in the Lycia region in terms of mosaic flooring," said excavation director Gökçen Kurtuluş Öztaşkın. Another inscription near the structure's entrance reads, "Only...

The Venus of Willendorf, a small ochre-coloured figurine from the Paleolithic period, takes her name from the village in northern Austria where she was excavated on August 7, 1908 by three Austrian paleontologists... On the 100th anniversary of her excavation, this Venus is being honoured with a special exhibition at the museum, alongside other artefacts from the same period. Carved from oolitic limestone, she is a round woman, standing with her arms resting on her breasts and belly, her bowed head hiding her face but showing off elaborate hair... The first and only statuette of her kind before the...

A statue of the Roman goddess Venus was found on the construction site of a future hotel in the center of Zadar, about a meter high, preserved from the knees to below the chest, made of marble, and about 1800 years old, reports Slobodna Dalmacija. "Academician Nenad Cambi, our greatest expert on antiquity, believes that it is most likely a statue of the goddess Venus. Its full height was about two meters, and it was probably on a pedestal in the atrium of this ancient urban villa where we are now," said Smiljan Gluščević. A statue of the Roman goddess...

The House of Vettii, one of the largest in Pompeii, was named for its two owners, Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus. It contains a great many frescoes which have been rediscovered after Pompeii was destroyed in the volcanic explosion of 79 AD. I've also uploaded my Blooper reel made for IBM Research's 25th anniversary of Computer Science. Quick and dirty, done in the middle of the night, it's a humorous class in how to make a video. While my boss' video played on one TV, this one had an audience stacked 8 deep in front of another TV....

Nude statue is latest artwork to be deemed inappropriate by social media giantCases of art censorship on Facebook continue to surface. The latest work deemed “pornographic” is the 30,000 year-old nude statue famously known as the Venus of Willendorf, part of the Naturhistorisches Museum (NHM) collection in Vienna. An image of the work posted on Facebook by Laura Ghianda, a self-described “artivist”, was removed as inappropriate content despite four attempts to appeal the decision. The early Stone Age statue, which depicts a voluptuous woman with prominent labia, was discovered in Austria in 1908 and is famed for its detailed carving...

Researchers have determined that a nearly five-inch-tall limestone figurine of a woman found by a farmer near the city of Kołobrzeg in 2022 dates to more than 6,000 years ago, according to a report in The Art Newspaper. The statuette was dubbed the "Venus of Kołobrzeg," a reference to similar Neolithic figurines with accentuated breasts unearthed throughout Europe that scholars believe were fertility symbols. The oldest known example, which was found in 2008 at southern Germany's Hohle Fels Cave, is some 40,000 years old. The Kołobrzeg Venus is the only such figurine discovered north of the Carpathian Mountains. Researchers noted...

The Bayeux Tapestry, a 230-foot-long linen cloth crafted in the eleventh century, depicts scenes from William the Conqueror's invasion of England and his defeat of Harold Godwinson, England's last Anglo-Saxon king, at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. (See "Unfolding the Bayeux Tapestry," January/February 2021.) There are detailed images of boats, horses, battles, fish, and even of Harold himself. Only four actual places in England are shown on the tapestry -- one being Harold's residence -- but their locations have been hard to identify. "Despite the tapestry's relative notoriety," says Newcastle University archaeologist Duncan Wright, "it's unusual that little concerted...