Images

A crested bronze helmet, Rutigliano (Bari), southern Italy. 430-400 BCE. (National Archaeological Museum of Taranto, Italy)

A Roman mosaic flooring with geometrical designs, Tarentum, southern Italy. 2nd century CE. (National Archaeological Museum of Taranto, Italy)

A bronze statue of Zeus, Tarentum, southern Italy c. 530 BCE. (National Archaeological Museum of Tarento, Italy)

A bronze helmet with cheek-pieces. 3rd century BCE, Tarentum, southern Italy. (National Archaeological Museum of Taranto, Italy)

Two columns, all that remains of an Archaic temple dedicated to Poseidon at Tarentum, southern Italy.

The Ubsunur Hollow Biosphere Reserve, depicted here, contains some of the last stretches of the so-called mammoth steppe; an ecosystem in which the woolly mammoth thrived during the Pleistocene.

This carcass of a young woolly mammoth, nicknamed 'Yuka', is on display in Moscow after being found in an astonishingly good condition in Siberia. It died around 39,000 years ago and was between 6 and 11 years old.

The Venus of Brassempouy is one of the earliest known realistic representations of a human face. It belongs to the Gravettian culture of Upper Palaeolithic Europe and was probably carved between c. 26,000 and c. 24,000 years ago. It was made...

This is a baked clay foundation peg, which was dedicated by Entemena, king of Lagash. It refers to a treaty with the king of Uruk. The political bond between Lagash and Uruk mentioned in this text is the earliest formal interstate relationship...

This detail is part of a mosaic column, which may have stood at the side of the entrance into the temple. The whole column originally had a core of palm-wood (now perished). A layer of bitumen coated that wood. The mosaic inlay pieces (mother-of-pearl...