Scientists remain baffled over a mysterious 12-sided bronze object dating back to the Roman Empire -- theorizing it could be everything from a candle holder to a "cosmic symbol." There are many sides ...

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Researchers in ...

Archaeologists have long debated the origin of human symbolic behavior. The dominant idea was that only modern humans (Homo sapiens) were capable of complex symbolic thought and behavior; such as ...

“Archaeologists must solidly define what a symbol is …” (Coolidge, 2023). Archaeology is a field that traces the human past through material remains. Symbols are an important part of this process and ...

On the way to learning that one thing can represent another, young children often conflate the real item and its symbol. These errors show how difficult it is to start thinking symbolically About 20 ...

In the opening of Tim O’Brien’s heart-wrenching novel The Things They Carried, a fictional account of the author’s experiences in Vietnam, he lists items soldiers in Alpha Company carried into battle: ...

A new study used LEGO bricks to investigate the neurocognitive underpinnings of our engagements with symbolic objects. The study suggests that we experience symbolic objects as social entities. A new ...