Sir Francis Drake’s Circumnavigation
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 5, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 Last reviewed: May 5, 2026. What Was Sir Francis Drake’s Circumnavigation? Sir Francis Drake‘s circumnavigation was an English voyage from December 1577 to September 1580 that became the second expedition to sail around the world after Magellan’s. Backed quietly by Elizabeth I, […]
The Longyou Caves
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 5, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 What Are the Longyou Caves? The Longyou Caves are a complex of twenty-four hand-cut sandstone chambers near the village of Shiyan Beicun in Zhejiang Province, eastern China. Workers carved them downward from the ground surface into a low hill, leaving smooth pillars, […]
The Linear A Script of the Minoans
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 5, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 What Is Linear A? Linear A is the writing system used by the Minoan civilization on Crete from roughly 1800 to 1450 BCE. It survives on about 1,400 inscribed objects, mostly clay tablets and votive items, and remains undeciphered. Although the signs […]
The Disappearance of Percy Fawcett
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 5, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 On the morning of 29 May 1925, Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett walked out of a place called Dead Horse Camp in the Brazilian Mato Grosso and into the green wall of the Amazon. With him were his eldest son Jack, twenty-one and […]
The Saqqara Bird: Ancient Egyptian Aircraft
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 5, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 What Is the Saqqara Bird? The Saqqara Bird is a small sycamore-wood object, roughly fourteen centimeters long, found in a tomb near Saqqara in 1898 and now held by the Egyptian Museum in Cairo as accession number JE 33109. Egyptologists classify it […]
The Treasure of the Copper Scroll
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 5, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 What Is the Copper Scroll, and Why Does Its Treasure List Refuse to Settle? The Copper Scroll is a Dead Sea Scroll unlike any other, hammered into thin copper sheets and inscribed with a list of sixty-four hidden caches of gold, silver, […]
The Anasazi: Vanished Native Americans
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 5, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 The people once called the Anasazi did not vanish. They moved. The cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde, the great houses of Chaco Canyon, and the masonry villages of the San Juan basin stand empty because the families who built them walked south […]
Zheng He’s Treasure Voyages
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 5, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 Last reviewed: May 5, 2026. What Were Zheng He’s Treasure Voyages? Zheng He‘s treasure voyages were seven Ming-dynasty maritime expeditions, conducted between 1405 and 1433, that sent a Chinese fleet across the Indian Ocean as far as East Africa. Commanded by the […]
The Voynich Manuscript
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 5, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 Last reviewed: May 5, 2026. What Is the Voynich Manuscript? The Voynich Manuscript is a 234-page early fifteenth-century codex written in an undeciphered script, illustrated with unidentifiable plants, naked figures bathing in green pools, and circular astronomical diagrams. Carbon-dated to 1404-1438 and […]
Modern Shamanism and Urban Spirituality
By Emilia Wellesley · Published May 5, 2026 · Updated May 13, 2026 Last reviewed: May 5, 2026. What Is Modern Shamanism, and Why Has It Surfaced in Cities? Modern shamanism is a contemporary spiritual practice that adapts trance, drum journeying, and spirit-relations from older Indigenous and Eurasian traditions for use in urban, secular settings. […]