The Past

Going door-to-door on All Hallows Eve to beg for ‘soul cakes’?

A recent discovery pushes back the date on when dinosaurs first engaged in social behavior.

Historians know how military technologies evolved, but the reasons why remain poorly understood.

Long assumed to be a devoted vegetarian, ancient sloths were fine with some meat.

Time and again, studies have found a connection between authoritarian ideals and meaning in life — a notion backed up by historical documents.

The microscopic tardigrades are an elusive species. Fossils are rare, but each new find adds a piece to their unsolved evolutionary puzzle. 

The new book “Lost Cities, Ancient Tombs” documents 100 archaeological discoveries that changed the world.

Air conditioning may keep a room cool, but using it is heating up the planet. It is time for something new — or old.

During World War II, Nazi engineers allegedly tried to create UFO-shaped military aircraft.

Often called modern-day dinosaurs, cassowaries are one of only a few birds known to have killed humans.

A 5,300-year-old mummy teaches us the global history of tattoos.

The stone camel sculptures, seven in total and originally uncovered back in 2018, far predate more famous monuments.

Our ancestral cousins far more intelligent than we credit them for, and they did things most of us cannot.

As Russia’s youth welcomed a new era of capitalism in the 1990s, their parents and grandparents clung to fleeting memories of Soviet life.

An unexpected finding shows us how little we know about the early human story in our region.

Fossilized footprints found at an excavation site in southwest New Mexico prove humans colonized the continent much earlier than previously thought.

In the perilous mountains of Tibet, archaeologists unearthed ancient hand and footprints that seem to be the creative work of children.

The peasant turned czarist advisor has come to be known and feared as the devil incarnate, but was he really as demonic as we have been led to believe?

Whenever the climate cooled, our hominin ancestors would set up shop in the Arabian Peninsula and vanish again when the planet warmed up.

What we can learn from our complicated relationship with boredom.

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes is often labeled a quintessential Spanish artist, but his allegiance may well have lied with the French Enlightenment instead.

Searching for happiness in the midst of personal or societal crises are nothing new.

How the British obsession with tea triggered wars, led to bizarre espionage, and changed the world — many times.

Before it fueled Woodstock and the Summer of Love, LSD was brought to America to make spying easier.

In ancient Greece, the Olympics were never solely about the athletes themselves.

Long before Alexandria became the center of Egyptian trade, there was Thônis-Heracleion. But then it sank.

From “mutilated males” to “wandering wombs,” dodgy science affects how we view the female body still today.

Smallpox was nothing new in 1721.

For decades, researchers have proposed that climate change and human-caused environmental destruction led to demographic collapse on Easter Island. That’s probably false, according to new research.

Discovering fossilized insects is difficult, but a new find suggests a unique place to look.