Archaeology

Oct 25th, 2025 - It's quick and easy to access Live Science Plus, simply enter your email below. We'll send you a confirmation and sign you up for our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date with the latest science news. A 2,700-year-old pottery sherd discovered near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is the first known correspondence between the Assyrian Kingdom to the Kingdom of Judah ever found in the city. The 1-inch-long (2.5 centimeters) sherd (the term archaeologists use to describe fragments of pottery) is ... [Read More]

Oct 24th, 2025 - You can now listen to Fox News articles! A 1,500-year-old synagogue was recently uncovered in northern Israel — a discovery that sheds light on the enduring Jewish presence in the region that also gave rise to early Christianity. The synagogue was found in the Yehudiya Nature Reserve in the Golan Heights, known in the Old Testament as Golan. Its discovery was announced by the University of Haifa on Oct. 5. The structure measures roughly 43 feet wide by 56 feet long. Influenced by ancient ... [Read More]

Oct 23rd, 2025 - A story of stars, trees, solar bursts, and Vikings. A pair of 13th-century Icelandic texts known as the "Vinland Saga" describes the journey of famous Norse explorer Leif Erikson to a land the Vikings called Vinland. Although there's plenty of poetic license in the saga, researchers have long believed that the essence of the saga is true, and Leif did reach Vinland — a place in North America. The discovery of a clearly Viking site in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland in the 1960s is the ... [Read More]

Oct 23rd, 2025 - Europeans weren't the first people to collect fossils in Australia. Australia's First Peoples may or may not have hunted the continent's megafauna to extinction, but they definitely collected fossils. A team of archaeologists examined the fossilized leg bone of an extinct kangaroo and realized that instead of evidence of butchery, cut marks on the bone reveal an ancient attempt at fossil collecting. That leaves Australia with little evidence of First Peoples hunting or butchering the ... [Read More]

Oct 23rd, 2025 - You can now listen to Fox News articles! Archaeologists in Turkey recently uncovered over 60 ancient tombs in Colossae, a biblical city immortalized in the New Testament. The discoveries were reported by Anadolu Agency (AA), a state-run outlet in Ankara, on Oct. 6. Colossae, part of the Aegean region, sits in the foothills of Mount Honaz. The city is best known for being the home of the early Christian community to which St. Paul addressed his Epistle to the Colossians, the 12th book of the New ... [Read More]

Oct 19th, 2025 - Archaeologists finally decode the age of Egypt's ancient Karnak temple The ancient site of Karnak is one of the most impressive places to visit in Egypt. Situated just a short distance from the Nile, this enormous temple complex was once considered to be the spiritual center of Thebes. With its presence carved into tall columns and sprawling courtyards, this hallowed location has been a place of devotion to deities like Amun-Ra, Montu, and Mut for more than 3,000 years. The biggest and most ... [Read More]

Oct 19th, 2025 - NEW YORK (AP) — The powerful gods of ancient Egypt are having a get-together on Manhattan's Upper East Side. That would be at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's been more than a decade since the museum's last big Egypt show, so "Divine Egypt" — a lavish exploration of how ancient Egyptians depicted their gods — is a major event, as evidenced by the crowds packing the show since its Oct. 12 opening. After all, few things excite the museum-going public like ancient Egypt, ... [Read More]

Oct 5th, 2025 - CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian antiquities officials on Sunday said a Pharaonic painting has disappeared from the famed Saqqara necropolis just outside of Cairo, becoming the latest artifact to disappear in a country known for its rich history. Mohamed Ismail, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the limestone painting was in the tomb of Khentika in the Saqqara necropolis. The mastaba tomb, which housed the painting, was found in the 1950s, and hasn't opened since 2019, he ... [Read More]

Oct 4th, 2025 - LUXOR, Egypt (AP) — Egypt on Saturday opened a tomb of a pharaoh for visitors after more than two decades of renovation in the southern city of Luxor, as it prepares for the official opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The huge tomb of Amenhotep III, who ruled ancient Egypt between 1390 B.C. and 1350 B.C., is located on the western side of the famed Valley of the Kings. It was found in 1799 by two people and its contents were looted, including the sarcophagus, Egyptian ... [Read More]

Sep 26th, 2025 - You can now listen to Fox News articles! Egyptian archaeologists recently uncovered a hidden harbor at an ancient temple connected to Cleopatra VII – an unexpected find for historians.  The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery of the harbor on Sept. 18. It was found at the Temple of Taposiris Magna, about 30 miles west of Alexandria. The temple, built in the Ptolemaic era, was dedicated to Osiris, the Egyptian god of the afterlife. Though the temple ... [Read More]

Sep 23rd, 2025 - It all used to be so simple. The story of how we – that is Homo sapiens , today's humans – emerged from Africa and spread across what's become Europe and Asia was a neat, straightforward narrative. It began around 50,000 years ago when our brains experienced a lightbulb moment of advancing cognition and creativity, stimulating our ancestors to journey beyond our cradle continent. When they reached Eurasia, around 40–30,000 years ago, they encountered another group of humans, a ... [Read More]

Sep 18th, 2025 - The 14,000-year-old smoked mummies in Southeast Asia are rewriting burial history By the time the ancient Egyptians were wrapping their dead in linens and sealing them in golden tombs, a very different kind of preservation was already widespread across tropical Southeast Asia. Thousands of years earlier, hunter-gatherers there had discovered a way to cheat decay, not with desert air, but with fire and smoke. Now, an international team of archaeologists has traced that practice back more than ... [Read More]

Sep 7th, 2025 - Archaeologists in Jerusalem have discovered a rare, miniature gold coin that depicts the Egyptian queen Berenice II and dates to the reign of her husband, the third ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt. The Ptolemies were a Macedonian royal dynasty founded by one of Alexander the Great's generals, Ptolemy I Soter, during Egypt's Hellenistic period (circa 323 to 30 B.C.). The coin was likely minted in Alexandria 2,270 years ago, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), which made ... [Read More]

Aug 31st, 2025 - You can now listen to Fox News articles! Archaeologists recently unearthed two churches in Egypt that are over 1,500 years old, offering rare evidence of Christianity's rise in the country's Western Desert.  The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery in a press release in late July. The churches were found at Kharga Oasis, an ancient settlement roughly 350 miles southwest of Cairo.  The site is known for its notable ancient Christian remains , including ... [Read More]

Aug 25th, 2025 - From carved figurines to coins, skeletons, and even entire settlements, the railway has opened up a new golden age of archaeology. When the HS2 railway was first announced, a lot of people were understandably thrilled. The railway is supposed to link Britain's two largest cities, London and Birmingham, via a new, high-speed railway, and then extend even further. But a lot of people were excited for a completely different reason: archaeology. Before engineers can build the tracks, stations, ... [Read More]

Aug 14th, 2025 - A discovery on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi has pushed back the timeline of early human sea crossings and deepened the mystery of who made them. Archaeologists have unearthed stone tools at a site in southern Sulawesi called Calio that are at least 1.04 million years old, and possibly as ancient as 1.48 million years. Because Sulawesi has always been surrounded by deep, fast-moving waters, whoever made them would have needed to travel across open ocean. "This is by far the earliest known ... [Read More]