Christopher Columbus may have sailed the ocean blue in 1492, but some tiny blue beads beat him to it, reaching North America a few decades sooner, to become possibly the earliest European-made objects ...

European-crafted glass beads found at three different indigenous sites in northern Alaska date back to the pre-colonial period of North America, in what is an intriguing archaeological discovery.

Bronze Age bigwigs in what’s now Denmark wore brightly colored glass beads made in the workshops of Egyptian pharaohs and Mesopotamian rulers, a new investigation finds. Trade routes connected Egypt ...

Christopher Columbus’ status as a trailblazing explorer is in question — again. A handful of bright blue beads have thrust historians and archaeologists into debate over a new study that may challenge ...

Glass beads the size of blueberries found by archaeologists in a Brooks Range house-pit might be the first European item ever to arrive in North America, predating the arrival of Columbus by a few ...

This story is part of the August 19 Edition of Good Weekend. See all stories. I’ve lost my blue glass beads and I miss them. The beads were a souvenir of a few days in a lakeside Italian town, but ...