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-Europeans probably ate their dead loved ones instead of burying them 15,000 years ago. -According to a new study, the consumption of dead people was not essential, but a ritual. -Researchers also said people used the remaining bones as cups and chewed on them. Cannibalistic Europeans likely feasted on their deceased loved ones at funerals instead of burying them, according to a new study. Scientists now believe that cannibalism was widespread among Magdalenian Upper Palaeolithic people, who lived across Europe between 11,000 and 17,000 years ago, according to the study published in Quaternary Science Reviews. The study's researchers analyzed funerary...

From funerary masks to portraits Clockwise from left: The Ancient Egyptian funerary mask; A sculpted portrait placed on a coffin; A painted portrait like that of the boy dated back to Roman times; A woman wearing jewellery. These were removed from their mummy wrappings The so-called Fayoum portraits, more than 1,000 of them, are the largest body of ancient portable paintings to have survived. They are portraits, painted mostly on wood, of men, women and children, young and old, believed to have been painted in their lifetime, sometimes framed and displayed in the homes, and later sawn to fit just...