Images

Pottery bowl decorated with geometric designs in dark paint. Complete and handmade. 5200-4200 BCE. From Ur (city-Archaic), Southern Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. (The British Museum, London)

The Uruk Trough, one of the earliest examples of formal religious art from Mesopotamia. It was probably a cult object in the temple of Inanna (Ishtar); it cannot be used as a trough or basin. The carving shows sheep approaching a reed hut...

This horn is filled with bitumen and would originally have been attached to a bull's head. On the Temple's facade, there was probably extensive use of gold, bu this is the only piece to survive. Early Dynastic Period, 2500 BCE. From the Temple...

It was a Sumerian tradition to deposit or bury objects bearing inscriptions within temples and important public buildings. These recorded the names of the persons who were responsible for the building and also ensured divine protection. The...

Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains in Siberia, Russia. It is well known for human occupation stretching back as far as 280,000 years ago and shows signs of occupation by Neanderthals, Homo sapiens and Denisovans. All currently known Denisovan...

Map showing a possible scenario of the spread and evolution of Denisovans. On the right, it shows that Homo sapiens shares a common ancestor with the Neanderthals and Denisovans, who are sister species. There is evidence of interbreeding...

Replica of a Denisovan finger bone belonging to a young female, the original of which was found in Denisova Cave, Russia, in 2008. From this bone DNA was extracted that led to it being assigned to a new species, dubbed Denisovan, within the...

Replica of a male Denisovan (and designated as such since 2008 CE) molar, the original of which was found in Denisova Cave, Russia, in 2000 CE. The replica resides at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels, Belgium.

Map epicting locations described in Pausanias' Description of Greece, as found in the version translated and with a commentary by J. G. Frazer. Photograph by the British Library.

Manuscript of Pausanias' Description of Greece at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence, Italy, dating from 1485.