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This documentary rewrites the history of South America: Did Roman slaves escape to the "New World" 2000 years ago?In 146 B.C., Rome attacked Carthage. The fate of the survivors: they became Roman slaves. This thrilling South America centric documentary poses a thought-provoking question: Could some of these Carthaginian refugees have fled their Roman captors, journeying across the Atlantic to seek refuge in the untamed landscapes of South America?Unveiling for the first time, compelling evidence that sheds new light on this hypothesis, our documentary delves into fresh archaeological findings in the lush Amazon, employs cutting-edge genetic analyses of South Americas contemporary...

The Lost Red Paint People | 55:12The Land of Façade | 199 subscribers | 1,407 views | April 25, 2023Lost Red Paint People [YouTube search]

Enigmatic "ivory rings" found in dozens of Anglo-Saxon burials in England have long baffled archaeologists, who weren't sure of the rings' origin and which animal they came from — elephants, walruses or mammoths. But now, scientific techniques have revealed that these rings likely came from African elephants living about 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) away, a new study finds.The finding indicates a trading network brought the objects from eastern Africa and across post-Roman Europe to England...The researchers analyzed one of seven so-called "bag rings" found in graves at an early Anglo-Saxon cemetery, dated to between the late fifth and early sixth...

Swedish archaeologists in cooperation with the antiquities department have excavated two burial tombs at the site of Dromolaxia-Vyzakia that they believe belonged to two rich families judging by the nature of the finds, they said on Friday.This large Late Bronze Age city, which flourished between 1630 and 1150 BC, is situated along the shores of the Larnaca Salt Lake near the mosque of Hala Sultan Tekke.Both tombs contained material from the outgoing 15th and the 14th centuries BC, which chronologically corresponds to the Late Cypriot IIA-B period, the Late Helladic IIIA1-2 and the famous Egyptian 18th Dynasty. One of the...

Diamond miners recently discovered a ship that went down 500 years ago after draining a man-made lagoon on Namibia’s coast. While shipwrecks are often found along Africa’s Skeleton Coast, this one just so happened to be loaded with $13,000,000 worth of gold coins. It also answers a centuries–old mystery and is what some archaeologists are calling one of the most significant shipwrecks ever found. The wreck was first discovered along the coast near Oranjemund by geologists from the mining company De Beers in April 2008. One reason it took centuries to find is because it was underneath the ocean floor....

N THE YEAR 985, ERIK THE RED, A VIKING EXPLORER, LED A GROUP OF ICELANDIC FARMERS TO ESTABLISH A SETTLEMENT ON THE WEST COAST OF GREENLAND. Archaeological findings indicate that the settlement thrived for more than four centuries, but the story of the settlement left a lasting impact. Surprisingly, the pursuit of locating the descendants of these settlers greatly influenced European and American perceptions of Greenland for many generations. In his recently published book titled “The Vanished Settlers of Greenland: In Search of a Legend and Its Legacy,” Associate Professor Robert Rix asserts that the lost Norse settlement played a...

New research suggests humans lived in South America at the same time as now extinct giant sloths...Scientists analyzed...pendants made of bony material from the sloths...Dating of the ornaments and sediment at the Brazil site where they were found point to an age of 25,000 to 27,000 years ago...

The Phoenicians were, for a long time, significant rivals to the Greeks in dominating Mediterranean trade. Interestingly, they shared quite a few similarities to the ancient Greeks. But what do we actually know about them? Did a place called Phoenicia even really exist? Where Did The Phoenicians Live? The homeland of the Phoenicians was in the Levant. Originally, they lived in the entire region where Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon now are. Their northern border was marked by ancient Syria. Their homeland was called Phoenicia. Some of the major Phoenician cities in this area were Byblos, Tyre, Sidon and Arwad. However,...

Analysis of bones, from what was once the world's largest bird, has revealed that humans arrived on the tropical island of Madagascar more than 6,000 years earlier than previously thought... A team of scientists led by international conservation charity ZSL (Zoological Society of London) discovered that ancient bones from the extinct Madagascan elephant birds (Aepyornis and Mullerornis) show cut marks and depression fractures consistent with hunting and butchery by prehistoric humans. Using radiocarbon dating techniques, the team were then able to determine when these giant birds had been killed, reassessing when humans first reached Madagascar. Previous research on lemur bones...

This foraging occupation of one site effectively doubles and confirms the length of Madagascar’s known occupational history and thus the time during which people exploited its environments. The rock shelter yielded a stratified assemblage with small flakes, microblades, and retouched crescentic and trapezoidal tools, probably projectile elements, made from cherts and obsidian, some brought more that 200 km. The assemblage from the top layers of the site is well dated to 1050–1350 A.D. This was achieved using carbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), as well as ceramic typology imported from the Near East and China. Below this layer is...

Studies prove people of Madagascar came from Borneo and Africa mongabay.com July 8, 2005 Studies released earlier this year found the people of Madagascar have origins in Borneo and East Africa. Half of the genetic lineages of human inhabitants of Madagascar come from 4500 miles away in Borneo, while the other half derive from East Africa, according to a study published in May by a UK team. The island of Madagascar, the largest in the Indian Ocean, lies some 250 miles (400 km) from Africa and 4000 miles (6400 km) from Indonesia. Its isolation means that most of its mammals,...

An Ancient Link to Africa Lives on in Bay of Bengal By NICHOLAS WADE Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago east of India, are direct descendants of the first modern humans to have inhabited Asia, geneticists conclude in a new study. But the islanders lack a distinctive genetic feature found among Australian aborigines, another early group to leave Africa, suggesting they were part of a separate exodus. The Andaman Islanders are "arguably the most enigmatic people on our planet," a team of geneticists led by Dr. Erika Hagelberg of the University of Oslo write in the journal Current...

The job cuts are part of cost-cutting measures by the magazine’s parent company, Walt Disney.

An old sewer pipe needed repair in Trondheim in mid-Norway last year. A last-minute dig to save possible archaeological objects yielded a surprising and rare result: a gaming piece with runes... The area that was excavated was a mere four metres long, but it turned out to be very deep.At 3,8 metres under today's surface, the archaeologists found birch bark dated to around 1000-1150 AD. Slightly higher up they found a layer of coal dated to around 1030-1180 AD.The gaming piece in soapstone was found between these two layers...The find is unusual for Trondheim, where only two items with runic...

Asian sailors came to the west coast of America in 1587. Within a century they were settled in colonies from Mexico to Peru Cape Sebastian in Oregon perches above two forested declivities along a rocky patch of the state’s southern coast. Travel there today, and you are likely to miss a roadside marker that reads:Spanish navigators were the first to explore the North American Pacific Coast. Beginning fifty years after Columbus discovered the Western continents, Sebastian Vizciano [sic] saw this cape in 1603 and named it after the patron saint of the day of his discovery. Other navigators, Spanish, British,...

The Turkish DNA Project, an online endeavor to track Turkish genetics, is enraged at the popular genealogy site Ancestry.com and has called for it to be boycotted for stating an inconvenient truth: many, and possibly most, modern Turks are the descendants of the Greeks who once formed the overwhelming majority of the population of the land that is now Turkey. In this as in so many other instances, the truth hurts, but that doesn’t make it any less the truth.

Archaeologists have uncovered a mysterious sanctuary in the central Netherlands made of burial mounds and ancient offerings of human and animal bones that has striking similarities to Stonehenge. The 4,000-year-old site was discovered in the town of Tiel and, like prehistoric stone circle Stonehenge, tracked the position of the sun on the solstices. “The largest mound served as a sun calendar, similar to the famous stones of Stonehenge in England,” the municipality of Tiel said in a statement. “This sanctuary must have been a highly significant place where people kept track of special days in the year, performed rituals and...

Irish Origins | The Genetic History of Ireland | 35:39Study of Antiquity and the Middle Ages | 247K subscribers | 1,597,851 views | March 19, 2022

An ancient inscription discovered on a 14th century church in Spain's Galicia region has been identified as Gaelic; the first written evidence of the northern region’s Irish and Scottish heritage. For centuries it has gone unnoticed, weathered by Galicia’s incessant drizzle but still visible to those with an eagle-eye. On one of the granite walls of Santiago church in the small town of Betanzos, a small previously unintelligible inscription five metres above ground kept historians and epigraphists, or people who study ancient inscriptions, baffled for decades. Researchers working for a private association called the Gaelaico Project now believe they've finally...

One of the things that makes Iceland unique in Europe is the fact that Icelanders know the year the first settler, Ingólfur Arnarson, came to Iceland from Norway. The Icelandic script, Íslendingabók (Book of Icelanders), written by Ari the wise, tells of the first men coming to Iceland on explorations. Three expeditions came to Iceland, but the first men who came to Iceland to live there permanently were Ingólfur and Hjörleifur. The two came to Iceland in 874. Hjörleifur was killed by his slaves, which only left Ingólfur and his wife Hallgerdur Fródadóttir. They settled in Reykjavík, now the capital...