Archaeology

Aug 30th, 2025 - Archaeologists in drought-hit Iraq have discovered 40 ancient tombs after water levels in the country's largest reservoir declined, an antiquities official said Saturday. The tombs, believed to be over 2,300 years old, were unearthed at the edges of the Mosul Dam reservoir in the Khanke region of Duhok province in the country's north. "So far, we have discovered approximately 40 tombs," said Bekas Brefkany, the director of antiquities in Duhok, who is leading the archaeological work at the ... [Read More]

Aug 27th, 2025 - Tiny stone artifacts discovered in Uzbekistan may be the oldest known arrowheads, a new study suggests. It remains unclear whether these stone tools were created by modern humans, Neanderthals or some other group. Archaeologists found the tools at the site of Obi-Rakhmat in northeastern Uzbekistan. Previous excavations uncovered a variety of stone tools at the site, such as thin and wide blades, and smaller "bladelets." But numerous small, triangular points — called "microliths" — ... [Read More]

Aug 26th, 2025 - After Mount Vesuvius erupted, the famous city of Pompeii didn't remain a ghost town for as long as we thought. The Roman city of Pompeii was the site of one of Antiquity's biggest tragedies. Between 10,000 and 20,000 people lived in it in AD79. When the nearby Vesuvius volcano erupted, Pompeii (and most of its inhabitants) were buried under ash. The city was destroyed almost instantly; thousands were killed. The city, including its buildings, was sealed by ash and seemed untouched until its ... [Read More]

Aug 26th, 2025 - Bay of Aarhus, Denmark  — Below the dark blue waters of the Bay of Aarhus in northern Denmark, archaeologists search for coastal settlements swallowed by rising sea levels more than 8,500 years ago. This summer, divers descended about 26 feet below the waves close to Aarhus, Denmark's second-biggest city, and collected evidence of a Stone Age settlement from the seabed. It's part of a $15.5 million six-year international project to map parts of the seabed in the Baltic and North ... [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 25th, 2025 - By Share Scientists have uncovered the world's oldest evidence of human-Neanderthal interbreeding: a 140,000-year-old child from Israel's Skhul Cave. The fossil shows a unique blend of traits, revealing that humans and Neanderthals were mixing tens of thousands of years earlier than once believed. Fossil Discovery Challenges Human Evolution Timeline An international team of researchers from Tel Aviv University and the French National Centre for Scientific Research has uncovered the earliest ... [Read More]

Aug 25th, 2025 - Archaeologists lift ancient treasures from Abu Qir Bay. The sea gives and the sea takes. Now, it has given back pieces of a lost 2,000-year-old city. Off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, cranes lifted statues, coins, and stone anchors from the Mediterranean. Divers cheered from the water's edge as fragments of temples, harbor docks, and a sphinx emerged into the sunlight for the first time in two millennia. Egyptian officials say the site, located in Abu Qir Bay, may be an extension of the ... [Read More]

Aug 24th, 2025 - You can now listen to Fox News articles! An ancient baptistery was recently unearthed in France – and archaeologists say the discovery sheds light on Christian rituals from over 1,500 years ago. The baptistery, dating back to the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., was found next to an ancient cathedral in Vence, a commune less than 10 miles west of Nice . While the cathedral was discovered earlier this year, the baptistery was only uncovered this summer. Fabien Blanc Garidel, the supervising ... [Read More]

Aug 23rd, 2025 - by Bryce Barker, Tiina Manne, New research conducted at Walufeni Cave, an important archaeological site in Papua New Guinea, reveals new evidence of long-distance interactions between Oceania's Indigenous societies, as far back as 3,200 years ago. Our , published in the journal Australian Archaeology , is the first archaeological research undertaken on the Great Papuan Plateau. The findings continue to undermine the that early Indigenous societies in this region were static and unchanging. ... [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]

Jul 24th, 2025 - Archaeologists believe they have found one of the oldest burial sites in the world at a cave in Israel, where the well-preserved remains of early humans dating back some 100,000 years were carefully arranged in pits. The findings at Tinshemet Cave in central Israel, published in an academic journal earlier this year, build on previous discoveries in northern Israel and add to a growing understanding of the origins of human burial. Of particular interest to archaeologists are objects found ... [Read More]

Jul 15th, 2025 - You can now listen to Fox News articles! Archaeologists recently uncovered a mysterious Roman-era settlement site in Germany, complete with building remains and hundreds of artifacts dating back nearly two millennia. The Schafbreite site, located within the western German town of Delbrück, has been settled since the first century A.D. The site was recently excavated by the Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe (LWL).   In a June 13 statement, the LWL announced the results of its ... [Read More]

Jul 10th, 2025 - The tomb of a Mayan king has been discovered by Texas archaeologists in Caracol, Belize, marking the first time researchers in the ancient city have found a ruler's identifiable resting place. Caracol dates back to 900 B.C., according to the Caracol Archaeological Project , and lasted centuries until the collapse of the Maya civilization in A.D. 800-900. At its peak, the city had a population of over 100,000 people. Today, the city is the largest Mayan archaeological site in Belize, the project ... [Read More]

Jul 2nd, 2025 - For the first time, scientists have sequenced the oldest and complete DNA set of an ancient Egyptian man, dating to when the pyramids were first constructed. The analysis, published in Nature on Wednesday, showed the remains belonged to a potentially well-regarded pottery worker - one who may have lived into his 60s. With DNA analysis that has until now been limited, the study reveals clues about people's movements around that time: Twenty percent of his ancestry showed relations to people in ... [Read More]

Jun 23rd, 2025 - For the past 100 years, Egyptologists thought that when the powerful female pharaoh Hatshepsut died, her nephew and successor went on a vendetta against her, purposefully smashing all her statues to erase her from public memory. Now, a new study finds that's not quite the case. Although many statues of Hatshepsut were intentionally broken, the reason behind their destruction has nothing to do with her gender or even blotting out her existence, an Egyptologist says. Rather, Hatshepsut's statues ... [Read More]

Jun 19th, 2025 - The pharaoh Ramesses II is one of the best known warrior rulers of ancient Egypt , famous for his military victories and great public works. He ruled Egypt for two-thirds of a century (roughly 1279 to 1213 B.C.) during the New Kingdom period, and died when he was around 90 years old, an astonishing age for the time. But how did Ramesses II die and what happened following the celebrated pharaoh's death? First, let's start with Ramesses II's ascension to the throne. He became pharaoh after his ... [Read More]