Archaeology

Three fossil skulls recovered from the windswept scrabble of Ethiopia’s dry and barren Afar rift valley lend archaeological credence to the theory that modern humans evolved in Africa before spreading around the world.

The fossils include two adult males and one child and are estimated to be 160,000 years old. They were found among stone tools and butchered hippopotamus bones. Cut marks on the skulls suggest an early form of mortuary practice.

In 1911, an innkeeper from the Peruvian town of Aguas Calientes led Hiram Bingham on a scramble up a steep, jungle-tangled embankment to the extensive ruins of an Inca settlement that was named Machu Picchu for the neighboring mountain.

Bingham, a professor from Yale University who was exploring in the region, later wondered in his book, Lost City of the Incas, whether anyone would believe what he had found.

When it’s cold outside, modern humans don a sweater to ward off the chill. But how and when early humans began to develop an ability to cope with different climates has been a great puzzle in the study of human evolution. The answer is important because it suggests when early humans were able to migrate out of tropical Africa and settle all corners of the globe.

The oracle of Delphi in Greece was the telephone psychic of ancient times: People came from all over Europe to call on the Pythia at Mount Parnassus to have their questions about the future answered. Her answers could determine when farmers planted their fields or when an empire declared war.

The Pythia, a role filled by different women from about 1400 B.C. to A.D. 381, was the medium through which the god Apollo spoke.

Most humans yearn for immortality. This desire to extend human life is the root of mummification all around the world, says a science journalist who explores the subject in a new book.

“Mummification is closest to [immortality],” says Heather Pringle, a science journalist from Vancouver, Canada. “It is a way of keeping something of us for future generations.”

The Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon takes up 13 lines of the Bible. Those lines created a legend that has spawned thousands of pages of literature, sculptures, paintings, circus acts, operas, and even a restaurant in Houston, Texas.

But did the queen really exist?