Archaeology

Nov 5th, 2025 - New research comparing stone tools found at sites across the US and on Japan's northernmost island suggests a different timeline and mode of travel for the first humans to arrive in North America The first people to migrate to North America may have sailed from north-east Asia around 20,000 years ago. Experts have argued that prehistoric people in Hokkaido, Japan, used similar stone tools to those later found in North America, and suggest that seafarers may have travelled to the continent ... [Read More]

Nov 5th, 2025 - Finding the oldest Maya site ever documented was only the beginning of archaeologist Takeshi Inomata's discoveries. After locating the Aguada Fénix site buried in the jungle of southern Mexico in 2017, Inomata and his team began digging downward and uncovered a massive cross-shaped pit. Inside the pit were pigments of blue azurite to the north, green malachite to the east and yellow ochre to the south, as well as marine shells interspersed with axe-shaped clay offerings to the west, says ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 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. QUICK FACTS Milestone: Staircase to King Tut's tomb uncovered When: Nov. 4, 1922 Where: Valley of the Kings, Egypt Who: An archaeological team led by Howard Carter On a sunny morning, Egyptian workers were clearing the sands at the Valley of the Kings, when they uncovered the hint of stone ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - Thousands of visitors streamed through the Grand Egyptian Museum on Tuesday as almost the entire collection of King Tutankhamun's treasures — over 4,500 artefacts — was displayed together for the first time since the young pharaoh's tomb was discovered in 1922. Curated and conserved over nearly two decades, the collection was unveiled to the public two days after the museum's lavish opening ceremony on Saturday.  In a vast, dimly lit main hall spanning four levels, visitors ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - After two decades and an estimated cost of $1bn, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) opened its doors to the public on Tuesday, just a few days after the official opening ceremony on Saturday. Regarded as the world's largest archaeological facility for a single civilisation, the museum is located 2km (1.2 miles) from the pyramids of Giza and 8km (5 miles) from the capital, Cairo. The complex spans nearly 500,000sq metres (5,381,900sq ft) and will house more than 100,000 ancient artefacts from the ... [Read More]

Nov 4th, 2025 - Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. . I n 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his team stumbled across a descending staircase amid rubble and debris near the 12th century B.C. tomb of King Ramses VI in Luxor, Egypt. On this day—Nov. 4, 1922—103 years ago, they had discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Later that same month, on Nov. 26, Carter and another egyptologist named Lord Carnarvon, who bankrolled the search, would enter the surprisingly intact inner ... [Read More]

Nov 3rd, 2025 - A 12-meter-wide burial mound has no body, but plenty of mystery Construction crews weren't expecting to make headlines when they broke ground near the village of Wolkertshofen in Bavaria. The project was just a new water retention basin, and a standard one at that. But because the area had a history of ancient settlements, archaeologists were on-site to keep an eye out. At first, they turned up a few pottery shards. Then they hit something far more unusual. Beneath the topsoil, workers ... [Read More]

Nov 2nd, 2025 - 'I screamed out of excitement', one of the researchers said. Archaeologists working near Temple Mount in Jerusalem were exploring a pile of earth from an ancient drainage canal. They found a few artifacts, including a seemingly unimportant broken piece of pottery. Just 3 centimeters across, the piece has faint wedge-shaped marks pressed into its surface. Those marks turned out to be cuneiform script, a message written nearly 2,700 years ago. That fragment has now turned out to be the first ... [Read More]

Oct 31st, 2025 - We now have only the second high-quality genome from an ancient Denisovan human, which reveals there were more populations of this species than we thought For only the second time, researchers have obtained the full genome of a Denisovan, a group of ancient humans who lived in Asia. The DNA was extracted from a single 200,000-year-old tooth found in a Siberian cave. The genome reveals that there were at least three populations of Denisovans, with different histories. It also shows that early ... [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 22nd, 2025 - Hundreds of coins depicting Cleopatra VII, an Egyptian pharaoh who was a lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, have been discovered at Taposiris Magna, a temple site from ancient Egypt . On top of that, the same team recently found a submerged port on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt and say that it's possible that her tomb could be located underwater near the port. Both finds are part of "Cleopatra's Final Secret," a new documentary that premieres on the National Geographic channel Sept. 25 ... [Read More]

Sep 21st, 2025 - The ancient Egyptians took a number of measures to safeguard the pyramids. But did they ever resort to booby traps? The answer, Egyptologists told Live Science, is an emphatic no. "No, they didn't use booby traps in the pyramids, but they could make it damn difficult to get in!" Reg Clark , an independent scholar and Egyptologist who has written extensively about ancient Egyptian tomb security, told Live Science in an email. It's not clear where the idea of booby traps inside Egypt's pyramids ... [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]