Most of us have heard the one about if you cross your arms over your chest you’re feeling defensive or if you’re fiddling with your hair while talking you feel nervous – but is there really any truth to some of these body language stereotypes? Reading body language can be a useful skill in understanding

More than 2,000 mummified ram heads and a palatial Old Kingdom structure have been uncovered by archaeologists at the King Ramses II Temple of Abydos. The finds, located roughly 270 miles (435 kilometers) south of Cairo, come from a period of over 1,000 years, from the Sixth Dynasty to the Heroic Age, making some of

Looking to the stars for constellations that preside over birth and life has a long and complex history, and archaeologists have just uncovered a small piece of it. A spectacular series of relief paintings on the ceiling of an ancient Egyptian temple depict 12 signs of the zodiac, and you might be surprised to recognize

For all the damage that the 2019 Notre Dame fire wrought, it presented archaeologists in Paris with a unique opportunity to peer into through the landmark’s history. Parts of the famous cathedral that were concealed for centuries are now being picked apart and put back together, providing a window into the architectural innovations that once

Countless shelves line the walls of a basement at Denmark’s University of Odense, holding what is thought to be the world’s largest collection of brains. There are 9,479 of the organs, all removed from the corpses of mental health patients over the course of four decades until the 1980s. Preserved in formalin in large white

We might be getting closer to understanding why hundreds of large stone structures were built across the deserts of northwest Saudi Arabia thousands of years ago. According to an in-depth new analysis, the mysterious, rectangular enclosures were used by Neolithic people for unknown rituals, depositing animal offerings, perhaps as votives to an unknown deity or

There’s a new group of people on Earth who believe they’re aliens. Star people, or starseeds, are individuals who believe they have come to Earth from other dimensions to help heal the planet and guide humanity into the “golden age” – a period of great happiness, prosperity, and achievement. It might sound a little crazy

March 14 is celebrated as Pi Day because the date, when written as 3/14, matches the start of the decimal expansion 3.14159… the most famous mathematical constant. By itself, pi is simply a number, one among countless others between 3 and 4. What makes it famous is that it’s built into every circle you see

We humans may no longer have tails, but perhaps we have more in common with our smaller primate relatives than we thought. An analysis of accidentally broken stones used by macaques to crack nuts shows that monkeys have inadvertently been fracturing chunks of rock startlingly similar to the intentionally-created tools found at the world’s earliest

Right now, your brain is keeping track of the passage of time without your awareness, letting you focus on better things like reading this story. This happens automatically, but not consistently. The brain’s perception of time can fluctuate, with some moments seeming to stretch or shrink relative to each objective second. While these wrinkles in

Which hand you prefer to write, eat, and brush your teeth with shouldn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Yet scientists have been studying human handedness for over a century and discovered it can show a lot about how human brains can work differently. And since creativity is a measure of how we

A peculiarly gruesome artifact has been uncovered during archaeological digs in England, hearkening back to long lost cultural practices that today we can only try to imagine. Several years ago, near a village just a few kilometers north-west of Cambridge called Bar Hill, archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) dug up a comb

Are you scared of clowns? You are not alone. Coulrophobia, or the fear of clowns, is a widely acknowledged phenomenon. Studies indicate this fear is present among both adults and children in many different cultures. Yet it is not well understood due to a lack of focused research. While numerous possible explanations of the phobia

Humans have known since the time of the Roman Empire that we’re more readily truthful while under the influence. That’s where the idea behind the term “truth serum” comes from. Truth serum refers to a number of mind-altering drugs that are supposed to make you incapable of lying, but the reality is no drug is

The bones of nomads who lived in what is now southeast Europe thousands of years ago have just yielded humanity’s earliest evidence of equestrianism. According to an analysis of wear on the bones of individuals of the Yamnaya culture that lived across the Eurasian steppe between 3021 to 2501 BCE, these people didn’t just keep

Hunter-gatherers took shelter from the ice age in Southwestern Europe, but were replaced on the Italian Peninsula according to two new studies, published in Nature and Nature Ecology & Evolution today. Modern humans first began to spread across Eurasia approximately 45,000 years ago, arriving from the near east. Previous research claimed these people disappeared when

Prehistoric stone tools found in a cave in Poland 50 years ago were recentlyidentified as some of the oldest ever discovered in the region. The tools from the Tunel Wielki cave in Małopolska are between 450,000 and 550,000 years old. This dating may allow scientists to learn more about the humans who made them, and

High up on the Colorado Plateau, in what is today the state of New Mexico, sit the remains of what was once a city of epic proportions. From the 9th to the 12th century CE, the tens of thousands of ancestral Puebloan people who lived in Chaco Canyon occupied massive buildings stretching up to four

Of the roughly three billion base pairs making up the human genome, only around 2 percent encodes proteins, leaving the remaining 98 percent with less obvious functions. Dismissed by some as useless ‘junk DNA‘, its origins, effects, and potential purpose in the evolution of life has attracted the attention of biologists ever since it was

A cave in southern France has revealed evidence of the first use of bows and arrows in Europe by modern humans some 54,000 years ago, far earlier than previously known. The research, published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, pushes back the age of archery in Europe by more than 40,000 years. The use

More than 2,000 years ago, a young woman on the Italian island of Sardinia died for unknown reasons. Her body was buried face down in a tomb at the Monte Luna necropolis, the front of her skull pierced by something sharp. The grave, which dates to about the second or third century BCE, was uncovered

An in-depth analysis has finally revealed the make-up of a bizarre ‘mummified mer-monkey’ housed at the Enju-in Temple in Asakuchi City, Japan. The peculiar artifact has been an object of curiosity for decades, though according to an accompanying note it’s oceanic origins are purported to date back centuries. At a total of 30 centimeters (1

Archaeologists have uncovered what could be a rare example of an ancient sex toy carved from wood, found in a Roman fort known for a plethora of phallic motifs. The ruins of Vindolanda fort sit near Hadrian’s Wall in England on the borderlands of what was once the great Roman Empire. On this politically tense

Something strange and rather wonderful happens when two people are working together on the same task, a new study shows: key regions of their brains sync up, suggesting we can match each other’s neural activity when we’re in groups. In the study, 39 pairs of volunteers were asked to design the interior of a virtual

In 15th century England, a woman by the name of Lady Isabel German tucked herself away in a room of the All Saints Church near York. For 28 years, she lived in religious solitude as an ‘anchoress‘, praying and contemplating God from the confines of a sealed cell. Five hundred years later, remains thought to

To other primates, humans must look extremely odd. We are the only species with a general lack of fuzz, and yet for some reason, we have a whole bunch of hair sprouting from random spots on our body, like the summit of our heads. Scientists still don’t really understand why that is, but new evidence

The wreck of the ill-fated RMS Titanic has long fascinated historians, oceanographers, and filmmakers alike. Now, an hour and 21 minutes of rare and mostly unreleased footage is about to be revealed to the public for the first time totally for free, hosted on the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s (WHOI) YouTube page. The uncut footage

Under the shadow of the Cold War, many in the world feared the impending prospect of a nuclear winter. According to a new report, our focus has since drifted from its horrors, leaving us with a general lack of awareness that could be dangerous for the future of humankind. It goes without saying that the

Nobody on Earth has fingerprints quite like yours. Even if you happen to have an identical twin, the swirling arrangement of ridges on your hands and feet will be exclusive to you. Scientists have had their suspicions on what factors might decide your unique pattern of prints, but have struggled to pin down the exact

Between 75,000 and 50,000 years ago, humans began to make their way across the megacontinent of Sahul, a landmass that connected what is now Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and the Aru Islands. New research reveals more about the routes used by these early humans and the length of time it took for them to fully

A Brazilian man has passed away from injuries he received last month when a concealed handgun he was wearing discharged near an operating MRI machine, shooting him in the abdomen. The 40-year-old lawyer and vocal supporter of gun ownership is reported to have retained the weapon in spite of verbal and written requests to remove

Have you ever suffered through tales of greatness from a self-absorbed “friend” who reminds you of Michael Scott from The Office – and not in a good way? Have you been betrayed by a colleague out of the blue, undermined on a project by the office mean girl, or had a work friendship dropped altogether

When booking a flight, do you ever think about which seat will protect you the most in an emergency? Probably not. Most people book seats for comfort, such as leg room, or convenience, such as easy access to toilets. Frequent flyers (this author included) might book their seat as close as possible to the front

Archaeologists have revealed what could be the oldest stone tools ever found, and they think someone other than our closest Homo ancestors may have made them. Unearthed in 2016 at Nyayanga, Kenya, on the banks of Lake Victoria, the ancient implements fit with the design of the Oldowan toolkit, the name given to the earliest

A trio of codebreakers has accidentally stumbled upon a lost series of secret letters written by Mary, Queen of Scots in the years before her execution in 1587. The incredible, seven-year-long correspondence was encrypted so successfully, the documents were archived in an unmarked file and mistakenly placed in a part of France’s national library involved

A new analysis of 125,000-year-old bones from around 70 elephants has led to some intriguing new revelations about the Neanderthals of the time: that they could work together to deliberately bring down large prey, and that they gathered in larger groups than previously thought. The bones belonged to straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), a now extinct

If you walk through the woods and pass a beehive, you may catch the sweet scent of honey in the wind and suddenly be flooded with memories: having tea with grandma or eating warm biscuits on a Sunday morning. If you were taking that walk 300,000 years ago with a Denisovan – a now-extinct hominid

Bar charts and line graphs are both designed to help us visualize data. They are tools to convert numerical information into pictorial narratives that can be more easily comprehended. They don’t change the data; they simply represent it. They do represent it in different ways, however, and even those slight differences can be enough to

Oscar-Claude Monet was a vital founder of the impressionist art movement in the 19th century, and some scientists now think the French painter’s revolutionary style was heavily influenced by air pollution. At the beginning of his career, Monet painted cities and landscapes that sharply contrasted with the sky. As the fallout from the Industrial Revolution

Humans and dolphins on the southern coast of Brazil have created a carefully synchronized ‘dance’ to shepherd as much migrating mullet into their nets and mouths as possible. Traditional fishers in the city of Laguna have been working with Lahille’s bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus gephyreus) to capture fish for more than 140 years. From above,

An analysis of the residue on ceramics found in an ancient embalming workshop has given us new insights into how ancient Egyptians mummified their dead. Even more astonishingly, a team of scientists has been able to link different substances to the specific parts of the body on which they were used. This discovery is, in

A burly figure emerges from the shadows of a forest, only to lumber off into the cover of trees once again. It’s a scene that’s been caught from the corner of a thousand human eyes, yet no one is any closer to looking a Bigfoot or a Sasquatch square in the face. If someone were

Great Zimbabwe was the first major city in southern Africa, home to an estimated 18,000 people at its peak. Yet no one really knows why it now lies in ruins. The demise of the once-thriving Medieval metropolis is sometimes boiled down to drought and a drying climate, but archaeologists have now found evidence of careful

​An urgent search was underway in Western Australia on Saturday after a tiny radioactive capsule was reported to have gone missing while being transported from a mine. ​The 8 millimeter by 6 millimeter silver capsule, which is used in mining operations, has been unaccounted for since mid-January, emergency services said. It contains the radioactive substance