At Ancient Origins, we believe that one of the most important fields of knowledge we can pursue as human beings is our beginnings. And while some people may seem content with the story as it stands, ...

The Great Pottery Throw Down held its final on March 9. The Channel 4 series has crowned its 8th winner. But which potter came out on top? The winner of The Great Pottery Throw Down for 2025 has ...

This discovery provides an exceptionally clear window into the agricultural practices of early Mesopotamian farmers. Between the sixth century BC and the early first millennium BC, the farmers ...

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or ...

Researchers have identified an extensive Mesopotamian canal network that supplied ancient farms in the Eridu region with water from the Euphrates river before the first millennium B.C.

Researchers mapped over 4,000 canals in the Mesopotamian region around Eridu, history’s first city. The research team found that the canals irrigated more than 700 farms in the region ...

That enabled Mesopotamian rule to be personal and indeed dynastic. “The king was not just the most powerful private individual; he embodied a distinct organism.” Kings were described as ...

Researchers have uncovered a vast and well-preserved network of ancient irrigation canals in the Eridu region of southern Mesopotamia, shedding new light on early farming practices. The research team, ...

Illustration of Mesopotamian urban center. Credit: Discovering Mesopotamia. Archaeologist and scholar Giorgio Buccellati’s book At the Origins of Politics describes how Mesopotamia’s urban ...

A remarkable aspect of the discovery is that, unlike other Mesopotamian regions where river courses changed drastically over the centuries, in the Eridu region, the Euphrates remained relatively ...

A recent study in PLOS One explores how the invention and growing know-how of pottery techniques may have affected the human brain. Researchers investigated with neurophysiological techniques that ...