Blog Articles

By: Greg Schmalzel

Why did Native Americans fortify their villages? Most people jump to the obvious answer - because they were threatened by the evil colonists… And yes, in the centuries following Eu...

By: Greg Schmalzel

Why are humans so prone to violence? Look around you and you’ll see no shortage of it. Turn on the news, and you’ll see war. Turn on social media, and you’ll find street fights. An...

By: Greg Schmalzel

Decades ago, researchers found a crushed skull in Hubei, central China. This year it was digitally restored. The new analysis challenges parts of our story about human origins — bu...

By: Greg Schmalzel

I love archaeology because it’s not just about objects. It’s about people and the world we once experienced. Sometimes it reveals a beautiful world that ancient artists left behind...

By: Greg Schmalzel

When I say the word “Caveman”, what image pops into your head? Do you envision a hairy ape-like man with a club? Maybe you thought of one of the Flintstones characters from the 196...

By: Greg Schmalzel

Archaeologists were wrong about the Amazon. For years, this rainforest was painted as an untouched wilderness, incapable of supporting complex societies. But new tools are revealin...

By: Greg Schmalzel

Why did humans evolve in Africa? Why this continent and not Europe, Asia, or the Americas? Think of the Earth like a giant laboratory. Each continent is a workstation running its o...

By: Greg Schmalzel

What if I told you that Kansas, smack in the center of the United States, once had a shoreline? And beyond that shoreline was an ancient world of creatures long extinct. It sounds ...

By: Greg Schmalzel

What if some of the greatest windows into our ancient past were never found? What if they remained buried, and we never got to experience their beauty or acquire the knowledge they...

By: Greg Schmalzel

Humans have always been fascinated by volcanos. I mean, how could we not be? They’re huge, powerful, and dangerous. We hike them, study them, and try to prepare for their eruptions...

By: Greg Schmalzel

Many years before tie‑dye shirts and LSD electrified San Francisco, ancient vision‑seekers gathered beneath desert skies to chew peyote buttons and journey into altered realms. Fli...

By: Greg Schmalzel

Twelve thousand years ago, South America stood on the brink of collapse. Megafauna like the giant ground sloth and toxodon were vanishing under the invasion of Native American hunt...