While humans have been making their mark on the surfaces of this Earth for at least tens of thousands of years, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact moment our impulse to record what we saw tipped ...

A previously unknown ancient mask from southern Mexico contains an inscription that shows the language used there prior to the Maya civilization remains undecipherable, according to a new study by ...

As civilizations die, so do their forms of writing, top scholars of ancient cultures found in the first study to examine the extinction of writing systems. The research also showed that ancient ...

Academics may have finally pinpointed the predecessor to humanity’s first written language. Three researchers from the University of Bologna contributed to this longstanding debate in the latest issue ...

A small stone tablet pulled from the soil of western Georgia has opened a vast new mystery. Inscribed with dozens of unfamiliar symbols, the artifact appears to preserve a script that does not match ...

One immediately notices that Ancient Greek writing exclusively used uppercase letters, without any lowercase ones. This system is known as a majuscule script, originating from stone inscriptions, ...

SANTA CRUZ — While a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University, UC Santa Cruz history professor Elaine Sullivan unearthed ancient artifacts in Syria marked with an alphabetic script whose meaning ...

The Egyptians believed that hieroglyphs offered magical protection to people in this life and the afterlife, and inscribed the signs on monuments, statues, funerary objects, and papyri.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. The origins of writing in ancient Mesopotamia and beyond may rest ...

Often when archaeologists find a lost city or civilization, they have to puzzle out what life was like there based on buildings and objects like pots and weapons. But the researchers who recently ...