Researchers have taken a second look at 8,000-year-old stone artifacts from the Sha’ar HaGolan site in Israel, and now think they may have been used for starting fires, not as “cultic phallic symbols.” Microscopic marks on the conical ends of the cylindrical objects could have been made by spinning them with a bow on fire […]

Chemical traces of  “black drink” have been found for the first time ever on pottery vessels from Cahokia. Black drink, which is mentioned in seventeenth-century accounts of Europeans exploring southeastern North America, is brewed from the leaves of a shrub that grows along the coast between eastern Texas and Florida, where it was served in shell […]