The Amazing Monolithic Churches of Ethiopia
	Ethiopia is the only African country that kept its own language and writing for over 25 centuries and the only African country with a strictly national writing system. Christianity rooted in Ethiopia starting the 4th century. The kingdom of Aksum was at its peak. Ezana, the most illustrious king of this dynasty, chose as counselors two Syrian Christians, Frumentius and Aedesius. The first was invested bishop by the Saint Athanasius of Alex ... [read more >>]
	08 April 2008, 09:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

35,000-Year-Old Stone Tools Found in Australia
	America still had to wait for an Ice Age to pass when modern humans entered Australia. Australian Aborigines make one of the world's oldest continuous culture (perhaps just the Bushmen of South Africa are older); some Australian archaeological sites revealed a 40,000-year-old Aboriginal presence. Now, a ... [read more >>]
	08 April 2008, 04:28GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest People in North America: 14,300 Years Old
	All the anthropologic manuals talk about the Clovis people as the first Native Americans. But South American fossils show that the continent was already inhabited by Asian Blacks (the type of the Papuans and Australian Aborigines) by the time Clovis entered North America. And a new research pub ... [read more >>]
	04 April 2008, 03:00GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Time of the Megaliths
	On the European plains, mysterious giant stones are found, forming alleys, circles or giant tables called "dolmens". They are the first monuments built by the mankind. A granite forest of dolmens and menhirs covers the Menec Field, near Carnac (French Brittany). In total, there are abou ... [read more >>]
	31 March 2008, 16:46GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Debunked Myths About How the Egyptian Pyramids Were Built
	There is nothing more defining for the Egyptian civilization than the royal tombs called pyramids. Donald Redford, professor of Classics and ancient Mediterranean studies at Penn State has attempted, on Physorg.com, to explain how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, based on ... [read more >>]
	28 March 2008, 09:45GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Neolithic: the New Stone Age
	The Neolithic (New Stone Age) was a period in the technological development of Homo sapiens that started at the end of the Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, and ended around the Mediterranean Sea and other areas about 5,500 years ago, when the Bronze Age started. It was the period when first human settlements appeared. People left caves for huts made of branches, stones, adobe or bricks, depending on the resources of the place. The gathered hu ... [read more >>]
	25 March 2008, 12:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

One Miracle: The Petrified Forest
	One of the wonders of the American southwest is found in northeastern Arizona: an enormous petrified forest, a real geological treasure the scientists learned about to the end of the 19th century. Petrified Forest National Park from Arizona comprises a surface of 218,533 acres (341.5 sq mi; 885 km²) of petrified wood, mostly of the coniferous species Araucarioxylon arizonicum, 170 million years old, since the Jurassic epoch. ... [read more >>]
	20 March 2008, 10:19GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Trove of Ice Age Axes Found on the Bottom of the North Sea
	During the Ice Age, the North Sea was just a grassy plain dwelt by mammoths, deer and ... humans. Now, the Dutch Jan Meulmeester, an amateur archaeologist, has discovered a unique collection of Stone Age hand axes made of material coming from the bottom of the North Sea. 28 axes, possibly up to 100,000 years old, were encountered in marine sand and gravel scooped up by Hanson, a British construction materials company. The axes were acc ... [read more >>]
	18 March 2008, 05:04GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Toraja: The Burial that Can Ruin You
	Indonesia makes the world's largest archipelago, with 17,000 islands. One of its largest islands is Sulawesi (Celebes), which is like a bridge between Australia and Asia. A particular universe in Sulawesi is represented by Tana Toraja ("the Land of the Highlanders"), in the southern part of the island, dominated by the Rante-Kombola peak, 3,455 m (11,516 ft) tall. The Toraja people consider that the soul is the most im ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2008, 17:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Carnac: The Most Expensive Megalithic Fields
	On the southern part of the French Brittany, near the town of Carnac (Karnag) and the village of Locmariaquer, very close to the Gulf of Morbihan, the most expensive Neolithic (New Stone Age) menhirs in the world are to be found. "Menhir" comes from the Celtic words "maen" (stone) and "hir" (long). These constructions were built 6,000 to 4,500 years ago, a time when European life experienced dramatic chang ... [read more >>]
	10 March 2008, 09:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Enigma of the Olmecs
	The Olmecs preceded the Maya culture by about a millennium and represent the oldest complex civilization in the Americas. They were the first to invent a writing system, as revealed by stone (serpentine) blocks, the so-called Cascajal blocks, found in 2006 in Southern Veracruz, Mexico. Their civilization is regarded as "mother" culture for the much more famous Maya and Aztec civilizations. Their culture flourished b ... [read more >>]
	28 February 2008, 09:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Chinese Stone Forest
	The most spectacular calcareous relief in the world could be considered the Chinese Stone Forest. The Stone Forest National Park of Shilin-Lunan (Yunnan) is located in the Lunan Yu Autonomous County, 126 km (79 mi) southeast of Kunming, at altitudes of 1,700-2,000 m. It has an area of over 340 square km (135 square mi) but, together with the forests and localities, the surface of the National Park goes to 400 square km (160 squar ... [read more >>]
	26 February 2008, 08:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Enigma of Stonehenge
	Stonehenge represents one of the most beautiful prehistoric places worldwide, located on the plain of Salisbury, about 130 km (80 mi) off London. Why was it raised there? The assembly was not formed just of the megaliths we see today, but it also comprised a circular fortification and an odd ring made of filled holes. The vertical and horizontal stones of Stonehenge look like having been made by a carpenter. The oldest stage of the ... [read more >>]
	15 February 2008, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

7 Fossil Forests
	1.A rain forest represents an explosion of life, the peak of biological diversity on Earth. But the trees that make the current rainforest emerged during the Cretaceous, at the sunset of the dinosaur realm. So, when did the first rainforest appear? And how did it look like? The underground workings of a coalmine, in Illinois, US, revealed the world's oldest rain forest: it is 300 million years old, from the Carboniferous perio ... [read more >>]
	20 December 2007, 10:23GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Petra, the Ancient City Built in Stone
	Ancient cities were usually located on main rivers whose waters were a source of food and sometimes protection. But on the northwestern extremity of the Arabian Desert there was a city renowned for its lack of water: Petra. In the arid areas of the Middle East the caravan routes connected cities located at great distances from each other. But camels, despite their extraordinary resistance, require halts for drinking. 2,000 years ago, Petra ... [read more >>]
	12 December 2007, 08:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What's An Obelisk?
	Their origins are traced in ancient Egypt, but they "traveled" around the world, reaching cities like Istanbul, London, Paris, Rome and New York. The obelisk is a stone column with four sides thinning towards the upper part and ending with a pointed, pyramidal top. The oldest obelisks are 4,000 years old, while the "youngest" about 2,000. Most obelisks are made of red granite carved by ancient Egyptians. They were ... [read more >>]
	29 November 2007, 02:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Kidney Stone: Causes and Treatments
	About 300,000 people annually in US enter the hospitals because of the kidney stones (medically called renal lithiases). The pain is excruciating, like that felt by women when giving birth. Some believe this condition is something recent, linked to modern lifestyle and junk food. In reality, people have been tortured by this condition for centuries. Even in the Egyptian mummies, thousands of years old, researchers found kidney stones. ... [read more >>]
	08 November 2007, 17:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest Sea People: 164,000 Years Ago
	Amongst many theories trying to explain the humans' physical appearance is that of the marine ape. But a new research reveals the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens living 164,000 years ago on the sea shore and feeding on sea food. Besides the so-called 'beach party', the new research shows a much more advanced behavior in our species for those times than previously believed. The discoveries have been made in a cave in Sout ... [read more >>]
	18 October 2007, 07:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Most Expensive Diamond: A Blue Vivid
	Perfection is to be found in this stone: a blue diamond sold at $7.98 million, establishing a new record as the most expensive gemstone per carat bought at auction. The buyer is Moussaieff Jewellers of London, a specialist in rare stones and the stone was sold by a private Asian collector at a Sotheby's auction in Hong Kong. The 8 minute bidding for the emerald-cut 6.04 carat diamond resulted in its sale for $1.32 millio ... [read more >>]
	09 October 2007, 15:11GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Stone Tools Reveal the Longest Uninterrupted Prehistoric Maritime Voyage
	Before Columbus and the Vikings, other sailors could have entered the Americas: the Polynesians. This is strongly suggested by chickens grown by tribes in Peru and Chile, which do not have European ancestry, but Polynesian, but also by some cultural facts common to tribes of the Amazon and Malayo-Polynesians from Indonesia and Pacific, like the use of hammock, blowpipe and the "Big House" of the tribe. And even that common fringe ... [read more >>]
	01 October 2007, 06:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The World's Largest Diamond Ever Found!
	Diamonds may be a woman's dream but this one would break her neck if put on a necklace: it has the size of two fists, 7,000 carats and doubles what was till now the world's largest known diamond, the Cullinan or "Great Star of Africa", found in South Africa in 1905. The new one has been found by a small mining company also in South Africa in an unknown location, but check is still required. Security is tightened arou ... [read more >>]
	31 August 2007, 13:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Stone Age Settlement Found at 35 ft (12 m) Depth on the English Channel
	Once, Britain was a peninsula attached to Europe, but when the ice melted at the end of the Ice Age, it flooded the English Channel, turning Britain into a special island with such special people ... Now, erosion on the floor of the Channel exposed a Stone Age settlement just off the Isle of Wight, found to be 8,000 years, just a bit before the complete melting of the huge glaciers covering Europe at that time. "This is the onl ... [read more >>]
	10 August 2007, 06:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Fossil Trees Still Having Wood!
	This is somehow like the case of the frozen mammoths that still have meat on them. But if those mammoths are tens of thousands of years old, these trees are 8 million years, dating back from the time when Europe was a subtropical wet paradise. The trees look like ghost forests, but this rare cluster of fossilized trees can offer a lot of information to the scientists. The 8 million-year-old swamp cypress forest was discovered ... [read more >>]
	02 August 2007, 07:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Oldest Sailors Found on the Island of Beauty Goddess
	People were still carving stone for tools when they started seafaring adventures. Tools of the most ancient seafarers known by now were found on the seabed off Cyprus: they are over 12,000 years old, long before the island became populated with its first permanent inhabitants, 10,000 B.C. The newly found items could explain more the early history of Cyprus and Mediterranean seafaring. The pre-Neolithic (before "New Stone Age") ... [read more >>]
	20 July 2007, 05:37GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Greatest Dinosaur Hunter
	They may not be famous like Brad Pitt or Mick Jagger but they are the masterminds due to which you can enjoy Jurassic Park and all dinosaur-linked issues. And the Chinese paleontologist Xu Xing seems to be the rock star of this domain. "Three years ago someone said to me: ‘You are in the top three in history in terms of how many new species you have named’," Xu told AFP. "I had more than 20, I think, then. Over the past ... [read more >>]
	13 July 2007, 05:43GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Did Early Humans Cope With the Largest Volcanic Explosion in the Last 2 Million Years?
	This eruption was almost as disastrous as the meteorite impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. 74,000 years ago, the Sumatran Toba (western Indonesia) volcano threw the world in a volcanic winter followed by a severe ice age after expelling 720 cubic miles (3,000 cubic kilometers) of magma and huge amounts of sulfuric acid that reached even Greenland. Ice cores clime records showed that the world was colder by 5.4 - 9° F (3 - 5° C) for hundr ... [read more >>]
	06 July 2007, 03:26GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

MythBusters Solve the Mystery of Stone Age Arrowheads
	When they found some odd looking stones dated tens of thousands of years ago, archaeologists already made a picture of the way people lived during Stone Age. Early people left a lot of projectile points made of stone which must have been affixed to arrow and spear shafts. Are those stones really projectile points? Which were the technological advantages or disadvantages of an arrowhead? Two anthropologists of the University of Wyoming, ... [read more >>]
	26 June 2007, 04:12GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Largest Stone in the World
	In Central Australia, at the eastern edge of the Gibson Desert, there is a sandstone horst, Ayers Rock, appreciated to be "the world's largest rock", rising 348 m (1,142 ft) over the desert plateau (its maximum height is of 863 m (2,831 ft)), with a circumference of 9.4 km (5.8 mi). This is what erosion left from an ancient mountain. It has many springs, waterholes, rock caves and ancient paintings, being listed as a Wor ... [read more >>]
	15 June 2007, 15:16GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Olive Stones Remove Metals from Contaminated Waters
	Olive oil consumption keeps rising as it is considered much healthier than other food oils. But the olive oil extraction leaves large amounts of agricultural residues, like olive vegetable water, browse leaves and solid waste. A new research made by Dr. Germán Tenorio Rivas, a member of the research group "Solids concentration and bioremediation" from the Department of Chemical Engineering of the University of Granada (Unive ... [read more >>]
	29 May 2007, 05:44GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Largest Pyramid Was Built From Inside Out
	The mystery of one the seven great wonders of antiquity (and the only one that still survives) may have been solved: the 4,500-year-old Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Cheops could have been built from the inside out. The 146.6 m (480.9 ft) tall pyramid has 3 million stone blocks, each weighing roughly 2.5 tons, and there has been a deep mystery of how the Egyptians placed the blocks in the Great Pyramid. Previous theories have stated tha ... [read more >>]
	31 March 2007, 06:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Archaeologists Dug Up a Stone Age Human Carnage
	In the 1960s, archaeologists found the remains of 14 people at Wayland's Smithy, near Uffington White Horse, Oxfordshire. The bones were dated employing the latest technique at between 3590 - 3560 BC, and many clues made experts imagine that the people may have been killed in a Neolithic (“The Last Stone”) Age massacre. The diggings were carried out by English Heritage with the help of Cardiff University and the Uni ... [read more >>]
	13 March 2007, 08:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia