Archaeology

Apr 24th, 2024 - In an otherwise relatively normal-looking field of eastern China's Anhui Province sits a large mound. When covered with grass and trees, the mound looks quite natural. But, when archaeologists began digging, they quickly realized this wasn't a normal hill. It was a massive 2,200-year-old tomb filled with treasure. Archaeologists spent the past four years excavating the mound outside Huainan , the Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said in an April 17 news ... [Read More]

Apr 24th, 2024 - Hundreds of skeletons found in cemeteries on the Great Hungarian Plain reveal clues about nine generations of Avars, a mysterious warrior culture that dates back nearly 1,500 years. A new analysis of the remains suggests that men stayed put while women married into the culture and that it was common for people to have multiple partners. In a study published Wednesday (April 24) in the journal Nature , an international team of researchers conducted DNA analysis on 424 skeletons located in four ... [Read More]

Apr 22nd, 2024 - Worker spots muddy lump — and solves 116-year-old puzzle. See the ancient Roman find They called it the Four Gods Stone. A dark brown rock shaped by a carver and weathered by the centuries, it depicted four ancient Roman deities: Hercules, Juno, Mercury and Minerva. In Roman times, the stone once sat atop a prominently placed pillar, known as a Jupiter column, but archaeologists found it buried in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1908. Ever since, the Four Gods Stone sat in a museum. The rest of ... [Read More]

Apr 21st, 2024 - French archaeologists made several astonishing discoveries in Rue de Beaucaire in Nîmes, including roads, skeletal remains, funeral pyres, and well-preserved glassware. According to Archaeology Magazine (via INRAP ) they date back to somewhere between the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. and 2 A.D. and were made near the Via Domitia, once a major Roman trading route. A previously undiscovered road, about 50-feet wide and constructed of stone slabs, was also uncovered during the latest dig. So ... [Read More]

Apr 17th, 2024 - Archaeologists have uncovered a treasure trove of evidence that humans once occupied a cave in Saudi Arabia formed by flowing lava, shedding light on the fascinating history of human life in the region. The discoveries recorded by the international team of researchers include rock art and animal bones, revealing both how people used the cave network and what their diets were made up of while they were there. The age of these findings indicates the cave, called Umm Jirsan, was regularly used as ... [Read More]

Apr 17th, 2024 - The discovery, at the ancient site of Ucanal, is believed to reflect a political regime change in the 8th or 9th century Archaeologists working in Guatemala have discovered the burnt remains of Maya royalty in a temple-pyramid at Ucanal, a site 280km north-east of Guatemala City. Removed from a royal tomb, the bodies appear to have been ritually burnt as a display of political regime change. "The finding of the burnt royal human remains was a total surprise," says archaeologist Christina ... [Read More]

Apr 15th, 2024 - Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious prehistoric monument in what has been described as an "unprecedented" discovery. The ancient structure emerged during excavations carried out by the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) in the commune of Marliens, eastern France, which lies about nine miles southeast of the city of Dijon. Excavations at the site have revealed a series of human occupations spanning thousands of years from the Neolithic period (or New ... [Read More]

Mar 25th, 2024 - Colorful paintings of daily life in ancient Egypt have been discovered in a tomb dating back more than 4,300 years. The tomb, known as a mastaba, was found in the pyramid necropolis of Dahshur, about 25 miles south of Cairo, during a recent Egyptian-German archaeological mission. Dahshur is the southernmost of the great pyramid necropolises of the Old Kingdom in the vicinity of the ancient capital of Memphis. The main attractions there are two large pyramids of King Sneferu: the so-called Bent ... [Read More]

Mar 15th, 2024 - Researchers have discovered 10 shipwrecks , including one estimated to be more than 5,000 years old, off the coast of Greece, along with scattered ancient artifacts from around the globe. Using Homer's "Iliad" as a guide, an underwater archaeological team made the discoveries during a four-year survey off the coast of Kasos, a small island in the Aegean Sea, the Greek Ministry of Culture announced  Wednesday. During the underwater missions, teams found the remains of 10 doomed ships, ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2024 - Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter.  . Excavations of an archaeological site in Panama have revealed the grave of a religious leader buried over 1,200 years ago alongside a cache of gold objects — and numerous other human remains. Researchers found the ancient tomb in El Caño Archaeological Park, a site in Coclé province known as a hotbed for pre-Columbian discoveries, particularly lavish burial chambers. The newfound enclosure, built around 700, is the ... [Read More]

Mar 13th, 2024 - Archaeologists have uncovered the missing upper part of a "huge" statue depicting an ancient Egyptian pharaoh. A joint Egyptian-American archaeological mission discovered the statue part during excavations conducted in the vicinity of el-Ashmunein, a town in the Minya governorate, the country's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (MTA) said in a statement. Just outside the modern town in Upper Egypt lies the archaeological site of the ancient city of Khmun, or Hermopolis Magna, which had been a ... [Read More]

Feb 12th, 2024 - An underwater stone wall discovered in the Baltic Sea near Germany was built about 11,000 years ago for hunting reindeer when the location was dry land, a new study indicates. The researchers suggest the local prehistoric people built the wall; its remaining parts were crafted from 1,670 stones and stretch about two-thirds of a mile (975 meters) long, stand 3 feet (1 m) tall and are 6.5 feet (2 m) wide. The team discovered the wall via sonar and dives to the location, which is at a depth of ... [Read More]

Feb 2nd, 2024 - The ancient human family tree is complicated. An evolutionary trajectory that was once presented as a straight line has been abandoned, and our history is envisioned as a " muddy delta " or " braided stream " representing the interplay between physical and cultural adaptations across species. The story of the Homo genus is a saga that spans more than 2 million years and at least three continents, demonstrating our ancestors' ability to adapt to nearly any environment. Africa Homo habilis Named ... [Read More]

Jan 31st, 2024 - Archaeologists have debated whether Neanderthals or modern humans made stone tools that are found at sites across northern Europe and date from about 40,000 years ago. A new excavation at one site in Germany turned up 45,000-year-old bone fragments that, when analyzed for mitochondrial DNA, proved to be from Homo sapiens. This is the earliest evidence that modern humans overlapped with Neanderthals in northwest Europe, thousands of years before Neanderthals went extinct. A genetic analysis of ... [Read More]

Jan 30th, 2024 - Archaeologists in central Sweden have unearthed a 5,500-year-old stone chamber containing several burials from the Early Neolithic period — but many of the largest bones, including skulls, seem to have been removed around the time the dead were placed there. "This differs from what we usually see in megalithic graves," Karl-Göran Sjögren , an archaeologist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and first author of a new study about the find, said in a statement . "Usually, ... [Read More]

Jan 30th, 2024 - 'Unusual urn' — still filled with 3,000-year-old human remains — found in burial mound At least 3,000 years ago, an "unusual" urn was filled with human ashes and buried within a round barrow, or burial mound, atop a ridge in England. The cremated remains have sat nestled in the ground, surrounded by millennia's worth of other remains and artifacts — until now, according to a Jan. 26 new release from Cornwall Council's Cornwall Archaeological Unit (CAU). Recent upgrades to a ... [Read More]