Ancient Facts

In Ancient Egypt, some people paid their taxes in honey.

Ancient Egyptians slept on pillows made of stone!

There's a lake under Antarctica that is 15-25 million years old called Lake Vostok.

Ancient Egyptians adorned sacred crocodiles with gold jewelry, including bracelets and earrings.

Julius Caesar likely had epilepsy, documented by ancient Roman writers including Plutarch and Suetonius, though some modern scholars believe his seizures may have been caused by strokes or other conditions.

In ancient Rome it was considered a sign of leadership to be born with a crooked nose!

Ancient Romans at one time used human urine as an ingredient in their toothpaste.

In 585 BC, a solar eclipse occurred in the middle of a battle between the Lydians and the Medes. They promptly ceased fighting and signed a peace treaty.

The dildo was invented at least 22,000 years before the wheel.

Ancient Egypt had at least 17 documented types of beer by 2400 B.C., including thick, sweet, dark, and date beers.

Ancient Greeks believed that redheads turned into vampires after they died.

In Ancient Greece, small penises were desirable, and big ones were for ‘old men and barbarians’

The oldest known Cinderella story comes from ancient Egypt, predating the European versions by over 2,000 years.

For 4,000 years after they started making cheese, Ancient Europeans were lactose intolerant.

Scientists are excavating the ruins of a major civilization which pre-dates both the pyramids and Stonehenge by over 7,000 years. In 15 years, they have uncovered only about 5% of the site.

Scientists have revived a flowering plant from a fruit stored away in permafrost by Arctic ground squirrel 32,000 years ago.

Sharks have been on the planet longer than trees.

The Lion's Mane Jellyfish is the largest jellyfish in the world. They have been swimming in arctic waters since before the dinosaurs (over 650 million years ago).

Mars had an oxygen-rich atmosphere around 4 billion years ago

The Library of Alexandria held up to 700,000 scrolls. To fill it, guards searched every ship in the harbor, seized any books on board, and kept the originals. It wasn't destroyed in one fire - it died over 500 years. Less than 1% of ancient Greek writing survives. Sophocles wrote 120 plays. Only 7 made it.

Stonehenge's central slab is the Altar Stone - a 6-tonne sandstone block. Scientists believed for a century it came from Wales. A study in Nature matched its mineral fingerprint to northeast Scotland, over 750 km away. That is the longest recorded stone haul of the Neolithic era. How Neolithic people moved it there remains unsolved - possibly by sea.