Archaeology

Twice a year, during the longest day and night, the sun’s path aligns ever so gently with the ruins of Stonehenge. During the summer solstice, viewers can see the sun’s rise crest the central heel stone. The winter solstice sees the sun set across the site’s altar stone. Use this interactive to tour the historic site and check its current skyscape.

Dubbed Teotihuacán or City of the Gods by the Mexica, this city was first inhabited in the 2nd century CE and ultimately became an important cultural landmark for the Aztec empire. Located roughly 30 miles north of Mexico City, contemporary ruins contain a 200-foot tall Pyramid of the Sun, ancient neighborhood grids, and more. Explore the city in this virtual helicopter tour.

The Maya village of Ceren in El Salvador was preserved by volcanic ash from 1,400 years ago, revealing insights into ancient Maya commoners' lives. Ceren villagers had autonomy in their daily activities, and excavations reveal evidence of communal decision-making and event hints at the presence of a community sauna. Dive into more of the archaeological finds on how businesses were run, how they prepared for disaster, and more.

Without recourse to ancient menus, how can historians know what our ancient human ancestors—as far as 3 million years ago—ate on a daily basis? Researchers evaluate several factors, including the type of teeth the species had evolved, chemical analysis of the teeth, patterns of wear and tear on teeth, as well as food scraps found in the vicinity of ancient remains. Learn the approach to discovering ancient hominin diets.

Copan is a Mayan temple located in western Honduras, where Mayans dwelled for roughly 2,000 years. The acropolis there was abandoned in the tenth century but rediscovered in the 19th, and excavations of its many structures and tunnels continue to reveal more about Mayan history. Click through to tour its major temple and tunnels in this informative, impressive interactive.

In 1991, anthropologist Johan Reinhard was trekking up the snowy face of a dormant volcano when he came face to face with the mummified remains of a teenager who had been sacrificed to the Incan gods centuries earlier. The story of “Juanita the Ice Maiden” is just one of the riveting tales featured in this four-part series from the popular podcast "History Hit".

Lidar is a cutting-edge tool using lasers from an aircraft to map the elevations of huge swaths of land across the world. This technology has been especially effective in archaeology. It has revealed dozens of lost major historical sites concealed beneath overgrown brush and forests. From Canadian forts to Mayan settlements, check out these 32 significant finds from lidar.

The extremely dry climate of China's western province of Xinjiang has preserved mummy-like dessicated corpses from as long as 4,000 years ago. The so-called Tarim Basin mummies were discovered in Central Asia at the start of the 20th century and have since been studied by archaeologists, genome experts, and more. Take a look at their extremely well-preserved blonde braids and other features while reading about them in this essay.

If there was a real-life inspiration for Indiana Jones, it may well have been Hiram Bingham, the Yale University historian who set out to find the rumored “lost city” of the Inca. This short feature from the BBC’s History magazine explains how this son of missionaries brought international renown to the site and to himself. In the process, he sparked an international feud that would last more than a century.

From the time he came upon Machu Picchu in 1911, Hiram Bingham began removing artifacts and human remains from the site and bringing them back to Yale University. Yale's Peabody Museum held them for 100 years, despite demands by the Peruvian government and the public that they be repatriated. Finally, in 2011, Yale returned thousands of items, including ceramics, jewelry and human skeletons.