Jane O'Shea articles

Beneath a quiet stretch of Arctic land lies a scientific effort that pushed technology to its breaking point. The Kola Superdeep Borehole exposed unexpected heat and geological surprises that challenged decades of assumptions, leaving behind unanswered questions.

At first glance, Wuwangdun seemed like another quiet rise in the land outside Huainan in China’s Anhui province. However, archaeologists had suspected for years that something monumental sat under the soil. When work finally began in earnest, those suspicions turned out to be right. Beneath layers of earth and centuries of shifting area lay one of the largest and best preserved Chu-state tombs ever found, complete with chariot pits, lacquerware, and enormous wooden structures built for someone who clearly held elite status. What researchers uncovered opened an unexpected window into a kingdom that flourished more than 2,200 years ago.

Mass tourism has turned once-pristine destinations into overcrowded nightmares, while some extraordinary places remain relatively unknown. For all globe-trotters, here is a list of 22 skips and 22 must-sees for your bucket list.

During a Mexican highway expansion project, crews encountered structural elements that did not meet modern standards. That discovery triggered an immediate report to Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which dispatched a salvage team. The details behind this find offer a clear look into how heritage protection operates alongside major infrastructure projects and why this process remains essential for documenting Mexico’s past.

How you behave onboard can dramatically affect your journey—for better or worse. Check out what makes your flight neighbors remember you fondly and what will land you in a Reddit story.

Every history textbook said agriculture came first, then religion, then monumental architecture. Gobekli Tepe flipped that entire sequence upside down. The logistics alone seem impossible, yet the ruins are undeniably real.

You don’t need a marble palace to learn something new about the Roman Empire. Sometimes a construction project does the job. At Saint Romain-en-Gal, just outside Lyon, archaeologists uncovered a monumental mausoleum built by a wealthy Gallo-Roman family in the first century AD. Its plan echoed the celebrated Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome, and that parallel says a lot about how local elites displayed influence. Curious about how one burial structure alters long-held assumptions about power and identity in Roman Gaul? Then stick around, this discovery is worth your time.

For centuries, the quiet banks of the Tollense River in northern Germany seemed ordinary, until new research revealed traces of a massive Bronze Age clash buried beneath the soil. Recent analyses of recovered arrowheads now suggest a large-scale conflict that drew in warriors from distant regions.

Researchers found rows of ancient wooden stakes beneath the waters off Grado, evidence of a constructed shoreline that no longer matches what you see today. The discovery shows how earlier communities shaped and defended this coast in ways now hidden. And the story only gets stranger from here—keep reading.