Painted altar in Maya city of Tikal reveals aftermath of ancient coup
The altar marks the presence of an enclave of foreign elites from Teotihuacan.
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Kiona N. Smith
Science correspondent
Kiona is a freelance science journalist and resident archaeology nerd at Ars Technica. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Texas A&M University and is currently based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she shares her office with two dogs, a gecko, and a wildly impractical number of books. When she's not at her desk, she's typically knitting, playing tabletop RPGs, or chasing Pokemon.
Recent stories by
Kiona N. Smith
Archaeologists just mapped a Bronze Age megafortress in Georgia
This recently mapped Bronze Age fortress is just one among hundreds.
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Studies pin down exactly when humans and Neanderthals swapped DNA
We may owe our tiny sliver of Neanderthal DNA to just a couple of hundred Neanderthals.
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Dog domestication happened many times, but most didn’t pan out
Our relationship with wolves, dogs, and even coyotes has always been complicated.
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Ancient fish-trapping network supported the rise of Maya civilization
The Maya were landscape engineers on a grand scale, even when it came to fishing.
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To invent the wheel, did people first have to invent the spindle?
The physics of spinning objects may have seeded concepts key to the wheel.
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More evidence that humans were in North America over 20,000 years ago
That means people must have been in the Americas even longer than we thought.
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These are the oldest stone tools ever found in the United States
Indigenous people have been in the Americas longer than archaeologists once thought.
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Most Read
Neanderthals spread diverse cultures across Eurasia (before we came along)
Two recent archaeological studies reveal a lot more than Neanderthal diets.
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When diplomacy fails: After gifts, Teotihuacan turned on Maya cities
The monkey is the oldest known captive, exported primate in Mesoamerica.
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Surgeons performed a successful amputation 31,000 years ago in Borneo
The skeleton of an individual known as Tebo 1 dates to around 31,000 years old.
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Ancient DNA points to where the Black Death began
Medieval villages in northern Kyrgyzstan may have been very close to ground zero.
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Years after finding it, archeologists enter chamber under a Peruvian temple
The room was lost even to generations of people who lived and worshipped at the site.
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Pompeii victim had spinal tuberculosis when he died
The study also sequenced the victim's entire genome.
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Lidar reveals networks of pre-Columbian cities and towns in Bolivia
The western Amazon basin was home to its own pre-Columbian civilization, the Casarabe.
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Inca priests used natural antidepressants for nefarious purposes
Cocaine and one of the main ingredients in ayahuasca may have kept victims calm.
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This is what the Salisbury Plain looked like before Stonehenge
The monument's builders didn't have to clear dense forests after all.
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Melting ice in a Norwegian alpine pass reveals a 1,500-year-old shoe
The shoe is one of hundreds of artifacts that trace ancient paths through the mountains.
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We don’t know who made the giant stone jars found in northern India
Local oral history suggests the jars are probably massive, ancient burial urns.
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This is the oldest known use of the Maya calendar
It was almost destroyed by a construction project 2,200 years ago.
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Ancient Peruvian was buried with tools for cranial surgery
He was also buried with the partial skulls of two former patients.
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Archaeologists unearth ancient Sumerian riverboat in Iraq
The bitumen-coated boat once plied the waterways around one of the world’s first cities.
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A tsunami wiped out ancient communities in the Atacama Desert 3,800 years ago
Life in the Atacama took 2,000 years to return to normal.
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The world’s oldest pants are a 3,000-year-old engineering marvel
Strong in some places and flexible in others, the pants were designed for horseback riding.
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Robotic dog will be on patrol in Pompeii
We promise this isn't an April Fools' Day post.
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Largest Aztec temple was decorated with over 100 starfish
The offering dates to just a few decades before the empire fell.
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A 40,000-year-old Chinese stone tool culture unlike any other
Not every culture left a mark on those around it.
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Early humans kept getting their heads knocked in
Repeated fractures, many of which have healed.
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Members of our species were in Western Europe around 54,000 years ago
At least one child left behind a baby tooth to prove it.
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The oldest hominin fossil ever found in the Levant
The fossil hints that early members of our genus expanded out of Africa in waves.
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Long-lost sphinxes of Egyptian king Amenhotep III unearthed at Luxor
The sphinxes are the latest finds to emerge from a 25-year restoration project.
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Researchers date the oldest known human skull at 233,000 years
Omo I is the oldest skull with clearly Homo sapiens features, including a chin.
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High-speed rail construction reveals Roman town in the UK
The town grew from an Iron Age village of about 30 roundhouses alongside a road.
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First victim of the tsunami that trashed the Eastern Mediterranean found
The remains of a young man and a dog lay buried beneath rubble for 3,500 years.
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At least 2 hominin species lived at Laetoli site 3.6 million years ago
Ancient hominin Lucy may have walked alongside yet another bipedal hominin species.
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This decorated mammoth ivory pendant is 41,500 years old
The pendant is the oldest example of a style that swept Paleolithic Europe.
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