The Kaaba, a shrine at the center of the Great Mosque in Mecca, considered the most sacred spot on Earth by Muslims. (Credit: By ESB Professional/Shutterstock)
Why isn’t Mickey Mouse a god?
This is a serious question for researchers studying the evolution of religion, and it offers some insight into the question of why some religions have persisted while others haven’t.
The so-called Mickey Mouse problem is an oft-cited, catchy critique of the idea that religion is merely a by ...read more
A 15,000-year-old projectile may provide indirect evidence for how and when people first arrived in the Americas. (Credit: Center for the Study of the First Americans, Texas A&M University)
Thousands of artifacts from a site in Central Texas, including a dozen projectile points, have provided researchers with new clues about the arrival and spread of First Americans on the continent. The items, which are up to 15,500 years old, hint that the Americas may have been populated i ...read more
Some of the data painstakingly recovered from digs each year is irretrievably lost. (Credit: krugloff/Shutterstock)
Archaeology – the name conjures up images of someone carefully sifting the sands for traces of the past and then meticulously putting those relics in a museum. But today’s archaeology is not just about retrieving artifacts and drawing maps by hand. It also uses the tools of today: 3D imaging, LiDAR scans, GPS mapping and more.
Today, nearly all archaeological fieldwor ...read more