It all started more than three years ago. The company Iltirta, dedicated to disseminating knowledge about archaeology and a collaborator of the University of Lleida, designed a simple card game to liven up one of the days of the Iberian weekend that is convened annually at the archaeological sites of Catalonia. It was an incipient proposal, made with domestic and limited resources, with no other pretension than to provide a good time for tourists and enthusiasts.

The last twenty years of archaeological research have completely transformed the traditional view of Tartessos. Excavation work at the Casas del Turuñuelo site, in Guareña (Badajoz), has uncovered a bronze chariot from the 5th century BC with a structure and decoration absolutely unprecedented in the Iberian Peninsula. According to the initial interpretations of the research team, the only parallels for a piece of this kind are found in ancient Etruria, in present-day Italy, from where it could have originally come. The discovery confirms that it was a complex civilization connected with the great powers of the Mediterranean, which inhabited the southwestern peninsula between the 8th and 5th centuries BC.

Alongside the invention of the first stone tools, between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago, there was another great silent revolution: the invention of rope and sewing. In the archaeological sites of this period, ornaments made of bone, teeth, and shells with extremely fine perforations have been found, which were sewn onto clothing. The most conclusive evidence of this birth of textiles is a sculpture: the Venus of Lespugue (France), a statuette made of mammoth bone dated around 20,000 BC, which shows a woman dressed in a skirt (sculpted) made of long strips of twine suspended from a belt at the back of her body.

The Romans left a profound mark on the Iberian Peninsula, visible in Latin, Roman law, aqueducts, bridges, amphitheaters, and triumphal arches. Thanks to genetics, we now know that their arrival also changed the population's DNA. A study led by researchers from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and published in the journal iScience has obtained the most complete and precise picture to date of the history and genetic evolution of the Iberian peoples who inhabited the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula from the beginnings of the Iron Age until the Roman conquest, between 2,700 and 2,100 years ago.

The most complete tapir calf skeleton in Europe, an individual that lived four million years ago, has been found at the Camp dels Ninots archaeological and paleontological site in Caldes de Malavella, as part of excavation work.

"Ruins tell what people keep silent about," affirms archaeologist Alfredo González Ruibal (Madrid, 1976), who has spent two decades excavating the remnants of the Civil War and Francoism. He has explored mass graves, trenches, concentration camps, and shacks, and has eaten a pizza in the kitchen of the Pazo de Meirás, the summer residence of the Franco family until very recently. Pazo de Meirás, the summer residence of the Franco family until very recently. He has followed the trails of hunger and abundance. In País en ruinas (Crítica), he demonstrates that Spain is a great archaeological site of the repression of the war and the dictatorship, and that, indeed, many "treasures" that rebel against silence are hidden there.

Ermomir and Riquil·la were buried with great care in the year 966. The intention was clear: that no one could violate their eternal rest. To achieve this, a structure was designed that today we would describe as an impregnable tomb. Almost three meters deep, in an anthropomorphic pit, the couple was deposited naked, only wrapped in shrouds.

The more we know about Neanderthals thanks to archaeological research, the closer they get to us. We know they could speak, but we don't know if they invented stories. They cared for the sick and the dead, but we don't know if they hugged and cried at a burial. They painted objects and cave walls, but we cannot know if it was for a mystical purpose or to describe their daily lives. A new study led by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) further demolishes the image of Neanderthals as rough and primitive hunters: 115,000 years ago, populations in the Los Aviones cave (Murcia) were already planning shellfish consumption according to the season, with a clear preference for winter months.

We know many things about the Romans, because they left extensive documentation that mainly recounts their exploits, the intrigues of emperors, and the daily lives of ordinary mortals. A vast amount of archaeological evidence, both on land and at sea, has also uncovered everything they built and the technical advances they achieved. With bioarchaeology, it is even possible to know with precision what materials they used to make vessels as waterproof as possible and where they built and repaired them. And to delve into very specific details like those revealed by a new study published in Frontiers in Materials, with researchers from France and Croatia, which analyzes the coating of a Roman vessel (called Ilovik–Parzine 1), which sank approximately 2,200 years ago off the coast of what is now Croatia.

The musketeer D'Artagnan was made famous by the pen of Alexandre Dumas from the 19th century, but a recent discovery has reminded everyone that Charles de Batz-Castelmore, the Count of Artagnan, was actually a knight of flesh and blood during the 17th century. Precisely because the remains of his body could have been located under a church in Maastricht. The fate of the protagonist of The Three Musketeers has been a mystery for centuries.

In July 1348, there was a terrible massacre in the Jewish quarter of Tàrrega. We know its scope from the documentation of the Royal Chancellery, the account of Josef ha-Kohen, The Valley of Tears, and the excavations in the mass graves carried out in 2007 at the Roquetes site. Both children and women, adults and the elderly died, and in that indiscriminate and furious attack, swords, axes, other types of bladed weapons and tools, and stones were used. The bone remains show extreme violence and atrocious beatings. For the first time, we also have the origin and composition of their DNA. A study by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB)  promoted by the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya, which has been published in Genes, has for the first time traced the genetic history of a medieval Jewish community in the Iberian Peninsula. Until now, none had been done for this community before their expulsion in 1492.

There is scientific evidence that Viticulture was already present among Europeans 11,000 years agoBut there are many things we don't know about how that crop was grown. Now, a study published in the journal Nature Researchers have been able to trace the origins of Pinot Noir grapes back in time thanks to the genome of 54 archaeological grape seeds, including 47 samples from France and 2 from Ibiza, dating back 4,000 years. This in-depth analysis has led to several conclusions. One of the discoveries made by the team led by Ludovic Orlando, director of the Center for Anthropobiology and Genomics (CAGT) in Toulouse, is that the Pinot Noir variety has remained unchanged for 600 years, indicating continuous cultivation. The medieval sample, found in Valenciennes, is exactly identical to the modern variety.

A claw, a chair, a laundry paddle, a plume, a printing press, a dress, an urn, or a corset. These are some of the 25 objects that journalist Sílvia Marimon Molas, Culture Editor at ARA, has featured in the book Inventory of silenced stories (Eumo Editorial), an essential and highly educational journey through everyday objects that have been crucial in shaping our society today. Objects that Marimon links to both renowned and anonymous women who have too often been forgotten in history books.

Years ago, deciphering a manuscript or artifact was much more difficult. Scientific advances and new technologies have allowed archaeological discoveries to provide us with far more information, giving each relic a rich history that overturns what many books say. This year, Babylonian texts have been deciphered, a new date has been established for the discovery of fire, a rigorous report has been compiled on how the Counts of Urgell died, and we have been able to see what the temple where Cleopatra worshipped Isis looked like. However, none of this would be possible without human curiosity and the determination to find traces of our past. Without it, for example, we would never have been able to find Kissa.

Pla de l'Estany is one of the regions with the richest archaeological heritage in Catalonia. The Neolithic site of village of La DragaDating back some 7,000 years, this site is one of the most important on the Iberian Peninsula and is very close to the Serinyà burial caves and the Roman settlement of Vilauba, both of great interest. In recent times, exceptional remains, often remarkably well-preserved, have been discovered at all these locations, having remained hidden beneath the pond's waters for centuries. Now, all these finds will be exhibited in the renovated Banyoles Regional Archaeological Museum (MACB), which, after nearly 16 years of museographic redesign and renovations, is reopening its doors to help visitors understand 45 million years of history. The new space, spread across the upper floors of several heritage buildings in the town center, features more than 1,600 original pieces, many of which are being shown to the public for the first time. The previous museum displayed numerous replicas for security and conservation reasons. Bones of fauna dating back 40 million years, such as crocodiles and marine sirenians, or exceptional Neolithic objects containing organic material like wood or cord, fill the display cases of the renovated Banyoles museum.

The small Romanesque church of Santa Bárbara de Pruneres, in the Alta Garrotxa region, became a space dedicated to science and history. During a well-attended gathering held on a Sunday in mid-October, a piece of whale rib, approximately two meters long, was the object of veneration and analysis by a team of archaeologists from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), while more than a hundred worshippers witnessed the scene. The immense bone was taken down from the side chapel where it has been displayed since 2004 and placed in the center of the altar, from where the UAB scientists ceremoniously extracted samples for analysis.

The multidisciplinary team that has worked until this month at the Baza-1 site, in the province of Granada, has extracted new records of mammoths and an extinct species of mastodon. These remains make this Andalusian site the richest in Europe in fossils of this type of extinct elephant, in addition to having fossils of at least three mammoths, rhinoceroses, two species of three-toed horses, antelopes, giant bones and the last cofe.

What were the hands of ancient hominids like? And what could our ancestors have done with them? Analysis of fossils found in northern Kenya has shed some more light on these questions. These are the remains of a hand from Paranthropus boisei, one of the four species of hominids –along with theHomo habilis, heHomo rudolfensisand theHomo erectus– that coexisted in East Africa between 2 and 1 million years ago. Analysis of this primate's bones has revealed that it had grip strength similar to that of gorillas and tool-making skills similar to that of humans.

The first evidence of mummification dates back more than 10,000 years and has been located in the pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer societies of Southeast Asia, according to new research from the Australian National University. At the time, funerary culture dictated that bodies be placed in hyperflexed positions and, before burial, they be subjected to a long process of smoke-drying over fire "at relatively low intensities." Archaeologists claim that "they represent the oldest known cases of this type of artificial mummification in the world."

Archaeologists from the University of Girona (UdG) have located the platform of an ancient Roman temple at the site of the Santos Médicos in Sant Julià de Ramis, in Gironès. According to the researchers, the structure was built between 130 and 120 BC on the remains of an Iberian settlement, allowing them to accurately date this monumental construction to the Roman Republican era. With this discovery, the archaeologists conclude an excavation campaign that began in 2011, which has brought to light a wide range of archaeological remains spanning from the Iberian world to the medieval period.