Archaeology

Jul 26th, 2024 - Through a basement door in southeastern Turkey lies a sprawling underground city — perhaps the country's largest — which one historian believes dates back to the ninth century before Jesus Christ. Archaeologists stumbled upon the city-under-a-city "almost by chance" after an excavation of house cellars in Midyat, near the Syrian border, led to the discovery of a vast labyrinth of caves in 2020. Workers have already cleared more than 50 subterranean rooms, all connected by 120 metres ... [Read More]

Jul 25th, 2024 - Archaeologists in Egypt have found the ancient burials of more than 60 people along with bronze coins and gold foil figurines, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced in a statement.  The team found the burials in the city of Damietta on the northern coast by the Mediterranean. Some of the graves date to the 26th dynasty (688 to 525 B.C.) while others appear to date to the Ptolemaic period (304 to 30 B.C.), the statement noted. The discoveries include pottery and shabti ... [Read More]

Jul 24th, 2024 - Archaeologists have discovered the remnants of a massive moat that once fortified the acropolis area where royalty lived in Jerusalem thousands of years ago. The steep, perpendicular sides of the moat would have made it "impassable" to intruders, according to a statement from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). For the past 150 years, researchers have searched tirelessly for the structure, which divided the city in two. Archaeologists remain unsure of when the large expanse — which ... [Read More]

Jul 23rd, 2024 - While searching the Nile River, a team of Egyptian and French archaeologists has discovered carvings, paintings and miniatures depicting ancient pharaohs. The underwater expedition took place near Aswan, Egypt, in an area that was flooded during the construction of the Aswan High Dam . Built between 1960 and 1970, it is one of the world's largest embankment dams, tasked with regulating the flow and flooding of the Nile.  Ahead of the dam's construction, a large effort led by UNESCO rescued ... [Read More]

Jul 22nd, 2024 - Modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) are the sole surviving representatives of the human family tree , but we're the last sentence in an evolutionary story that began approximately 6 million years ago and spawned at least 18 species known collectively as hominins.  There were at least nine Homo species — including H. sapiens — distributed around Africa, Europe and Asia by about 300,000 years ago, according to the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. ... [Read More]

Jul 21st, 2024 - For centuries, the legendary eruption of Mount Vesuvius that decimated the ancient city of Pompeii has been a celebrated subject of historical accounts and study. The catastrophic event has fascinated historians, archaeologists, and scientists alike, serving as a stark reminder of nature's destructive power. A complicated narrative in Pompeii A new perspective has emerged, unraveling a more complicated narrative of the natural disaster that brought the city to its knees almost 2,000 years ago. ... [Read More]

Jul 19th, 2024 - Since its 1922 discovery by Howard Carter, the tomb of King "Tut" has fascinated people and ignited periods of "Egypt-mania." Now through August, you can attend a King Tutankhamun exhibit, called "King Tut: His Tomb and His Treasures" at the Rhode Island Center in Washington. King Tutankhamun's real tomb hasn't toured the U.S. since 1979 and may never again, due to the fragile nature of the artifacts. Today it rests in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, where it was originally discovered. ... [Read More]

Jul 19th, 2024 - A number of paintings, inscriptions, and other artworks of several pharaohs were found in Aswan, on the heels of previous inscriptions found before the construction of the Aswan High Dam. A team of archaeologists just found large-scale inscriptions dedicated to pharaohs including Thutmose IV and Amenhotep III during an underwater survey of the Nile River in Aswan. The discovery was announced on Facebook by Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. According to the post, the mission was a ... [Read More]

Jul 6th, 2024 - Archeologists have uncovered the remnants of what seems to be a ceremonial temple dating back 4,000 years, buried beneath a sand dune in Peru's northern region of Lambayeque. The discovery, made in the desert district of Zana, also included human skeletal remains that may have served as offerings in religious ceremonies, according to a report by Reuters. Luis Muro, the lead archeologist from Peru's Pontifical Catholic University, said that while radio-carbon dating is still pending to confirm ... [Read More]

Jul 3rd, 2024 - Bone remains found in a Tibetan cave 3,280 m above sea level indicate an ancient group of humans survived here for many millennia. Bone remains found in a Tibetan cave 3,280 m above sea level indicate an ancient group of humans survived here for many millennia, according to a new study published in Nature. The Denisovans are an extinct species of ancient human that lived at the same time and in the same places as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Only a handful Denisovan remains have ever been ... [Read More]

Jul 2nd, 2024 - Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered 33 ancient tombs built into a hillside on the west bank of the Nile , near Aswan . The graves provide a rich trove of evidence for the study of ancient burial customs, social hierarchies and diseases. So far, excavations at the site, which dates to Egypt's Greco-Roman period (approximately 332 B.C.E. to 395 C.E.), have uncovered families buried together and ancient oil lamps possibly left behind by mourners. "We can imagine how spectacular it was when, ... [Read More]

Jun 28th, 2024 - Archaeologists believe they've discovered remains of an ancient Viking ship buried underneath a farm in Norway. According to  Science Norway ' s Ida Irene Bergstrøm, a team of experts unearthed a total of 70 iron rivets this summer that they believe are the pieces of a large Viking ship. The rivets were at the grounds of Jarlsberg Manor, an estate in southeastern Norway. "We've found a place for a ship burial," archaeologist and excavation leader Christian Løchsen ... [Read More]

Jun 25th, 2024 - More than 30 ancient graves were unearthed in the Egyptian city of Aswan, a site that has in the past offered a bounty of archaeological discoveries, since it has for millennia acted as a commercial nexus point. The find was announced this week by Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, which said that Italian experts also took part in the dig. Per the National , the 33 tombs that were found date to ancient Egypt's Late Period, the Ptolemaic period, and the Roman period, meaning that the ... [Read More]

Jun 24th, 2024 - The top fragment of a sarcophagus discovered at the Aswan site © - / Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities/AFP A new discovery of 33 ancient tombs in Egypt's southern city of Aswan could reveal "new information on diseases" prevalent at the time, the tourism and antiquities ministry said Monday. The tombs date back to the Ancient Egyptian Late Period and the Greco-Roman Periods, which collectively lasted from the seventh century BC until around the fourth century AD. The burials were found by a ... [Read More]

Jun 19th, 2024 - The world's oldest wine has been discovered at a Roman burial site in Spain , and one thing is clear — it definitely had body.  For roughly 2,000 years, the wine has been held in a glass funeral urn along with the cremated ashes of a man and a gold ring inside an ancient mausoleum in Carmona, a small town in the southern region of Andalusia , according to new analysis. The research was carried out by a team led by scientists from the University of Córdoba and published this ... [Read More]

Jun 7th, 2024 - The owner of the sarcophagus was long a mystery, until a researcher deciphered a cartouche. An archaeologist has identified a granite slab, found in the Abydos necropolis in Egypt, as belonging to the sarcophagus of Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II. The key to his discovery? Overlooked hieroglyphics carved into the stone fragment.    The artifact was unearthed under the floor of a Coptic structure in 2009, though its owner remained a mystery. From its decoration, researchers ... [Read More]