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Great Riddles in ArchaeologyWednesday Evenings, October 2011 through June 2012 From the knights of King Arthur’s roundtable to the deepest depths of Atlantis, some of the world’s greatest archaeological riddles have eluded us for centuries. Discover and explore these mind-boggling riddles in the next season of the Penn Museum’s popular monthly lecture series presented by current archaeologists and scholars. Mark your calendars for Great Riddles in Archaeology, offered the first Wednesday of every month, October 2011 through June 2012. General Admission is $5 per event in advance or $10 at the door. Subscriptions to all nine events are available for...

A geology team has contradicted claims that bluestones were dug by Bronze Age man from a west Wales quarry and carried 240 miles to build Stonehenge. In a new twist, Open University geologists say the stones were in fact moved to Salisbury Plain by glaciers. Last year archaeologists said the stones came from the Preseli Hills. Recent research in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology suggests the stones were ripped from the ground and moved by glaciers during the Ice Age. Geologists from the Open University first claimed in 1991 that the bluestones at one of Britain's best-known historic landmarks had...

Archaeologist Steve Burrow made the discovery after reading a book by Sir Norman Lockyear published almost 100 years ago... Sir Norman - the man who discovered helium - had travelled to the site, otherwise known as the Hill of Black Grove, and measured the alignment of the sun at Easter... "I came across this reference in a book dating back to 1908 but nobody had checked it, nobody had gone and verified it in person," he said... Mr Burrow, a curator of Neolithic archaeology at the National Museum of Wales, delayed his book by a year to test the theory....

Stonehenge was a site for sore eyes in 2300BC By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent Last Updated: 2:48am GMT 27/11/2006 Stonehenge was the Lourdes of its day, to which diseased and injured ancient Britons flocked seeking cures for their ailments, according to a new theory. For most of the 20th century archaeologists have debated what motivated primitive humans to go to the immense effort of transporting giant stones 240 miles from south Wales to erect Britain's most significant prehistoric monument. Druids gather at Stonehenge for sunrise on the summer solstice. A new book suggests the gathering should take place in December...

Research Casts New Light on History of North America Research by a Valparaiso University geography professor and his students lends support to evidence the first humans to settle the Americas came from Europe, rather than crossing a Bering Strait land-ice bridge. Valparaiso’s research shows the Kankakee Sand Islands – a series of hundreds of small dunes in the Kankakee River area of Northwest Indiana and northeastern Illinois – were created 14,500 to 15,000 years ago and that the region could not have been covered by ice as previously thought. Newswise — Research by a Valparaiso University geography professor and his...

Land-ice Bridge, New Research Suggests -- Research by a Valparaiso University geography professor and his students on the creation of Kankakee Sand Islands of Northwest Indiana is lending support to evidence that the first humans to settle the Americas came from Europe, a discovery that overturns decades of classroom lessons that nomadic tribes from Asia crossed a Bering Strait land-ice bridge. Valparaiso is a member of the Council on Undergraduate Research. Dr. Ron Janke began studying the origins of the Kankakee Sand Islands – a series of hundreds of small, moon-shaped dunes that stretch from the southern tips of Lake...

Professor Peter Donnelly, of Oxford University, said the Welsh carry DNA which could be traced back to the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago. The project surveyed 2,000 people in rural areas across Britain. Participants, as well as their parents and grandparents, had to be born in those areas to be included in the study. Prof Donnelly, a professor of statistical science at Oxford University and director of the Wellcome Trust centre for human genetics, said DNA samples were analysed at about 500,000 different points. After comparing statistics, a map was compiled which showed Wales and Cornwall stood out. Prof...

Ohio's StonehengeFort Ancient is largest, best preserved earthwork of its kind in America. Its purpose is not known By Bob Downing Beacon Journal staff writer A sign identifies one of the prehistoric earthworks at Fort Ancient State Memorial. Ohio law forbids walking off trail or on any mound or earthwork.OREGONIA - Fort Ancient remains a mystery. The extensive earthen mounds and walls in southwest Ohio are unlikely a fortress, although they might have been used for social gatherings and religious ceremonies and astronomical viewings. The site, atop a wooded bluff 235 feet above the Little Miami River in Warren County,...

5000-YEAR-OLD AXE HEAD FOUND ON STONEHENGE WORLD HERITAGE SITE By David Prudames 19/09/2003 Photo: field walkers from Wessex Archaeology covered a 90-hectare area in three weeks in search of ancient artefacts. Photo: Elaine Wakefield. © Wessex Archaeology. Archaeologists have discovered a 5000-year-old polished stone axe head during an investigation of an area that forms part of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site. Dating back to the Neolithic Age - 3000 to 2500 BC - the axe head was found, along with a leaf-shaped arrowhead, during a three-week field walk of farmland by Wessex Archaeology. Covering a 90-hectare area, the farmland is...

Stonehenge Didn't Stand Alone, Excavations Show James Owen for National Geographic News January 12, 2007 Recent excavations of Salisbury Plain in southern England have revealed at least two other large stone formations close by the world-famous prehistoric monument. One of the megalithic finds is a sandstone formation that marked a ritual burial mound; the other, a group of stones at the site of an ancient timber circle. The new discoveries suggest that many similar monuments may have been erected in the shadow of Stonehenge, possibly forming part of a much larger complex, experts say. The findings were part of the...

The study, published in the current issue of the journal Antiquity, indicates that two quarries in the Preseli Hills of Pembrokeshire, in southwest Wales, are the source of Stonehenge’s bluestones. Carbon dating revealed such stones were dug out at least 500 years before Stonehenge was built — suggesting they were first used in a local monument that was later dismantled and dragged off to England. The very large standing stones at Stonehenge are sarsen, a local sandstone. The smaller ones, known as bluestones, consist of volcanic and igneous rocks, the most common of which are called dolerite and rhyolite. Geologists...

High in the skies over Kazakhstan, space-age technology has revealed an ancient mystery on the ground. Satellite pictures of a remote and treeless northern steppe reveal colossal earthworks — geometric figures of squares, crosses, lines and rings the size of several football fields, recognizable only from the air and the oldest estimated at 8,000 years old. The largest, near a Neolithic settlement, is a giant square of 101 raised mounds, its opposite corners connected by a diagonal cross, covering more terrain than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Another is a kind of three-limbed swastika, its arms ending in zigzags bent...

SALEM, N.H. — Using the astronomical chart on a table in the covered tower, visitors aim their gaze along worn arrows to huge, upright stones hundreds of feet away. Beyond each slab of granite, clearings stretch the eye to the horizon on a dazzling day in late summer New Hampshire. On Wednesday's autumnal equinox, people will flock to the woods near the Massachusetts state line, watch the sun rise or fall over the massive chunks of granite and decide for themselves whether they're standing amid relics of ancient history or pure hooey.

Discovery of Oldest Known Art and Agriculture Calendar in New World MU Researcher Unearths Earliest Known Western Sculptures and Astronomical Alignments in Peru's Temple of the Fox. Andeans Used Myth and Astronomical Markers to Determine Agricultural Calendar. Project Buena Vista unearths a personified disk flanked by foxes at the Temple of the Fox in Peru. Newswise — In one of the most significant archaeological and anthropological finds in recent history, Robert Benfer, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Missouri-Columbia, has discovered the earliest astronomical alignments and sculptures in the round, which is a sculpture designed to be viewed...

Buried megaliths discovered at stone circle site Archaeologists have discovered an arc of buried megaliths that once formed part of the great stone circle at Avebury in Wiltshire. The National Trust says the existence of these enormous stones, originally constructed more than 4,500 years ago, has remained a puzzle for the last 300 years. Visitors to Avebury will see most of the standing megaliths in the western half of the stone circle. The famous map of Avebury drawn up by William Stukely in the 1720s showed that many of the stones in the south east and north east quadrants of...

<p>For centuries Stonehenge has mystified and enraptured archaeologists and visitors.</p> <p>So maybe it is not surprising that another monumental wonder from prehistory has been overlooked for so long – even though it is just a mile away.</p> <p>Experts have discovered an 'extraordinary' line of giant stones that dates back more than 4,500 years.</p>

The tomb was a relic of the first settlers in the Spanish Cristovo de Cea region and was originally built some 4000 years before the birth of Christ. Every builder, tradesman and DIY enthusiast knows the embarrassment of making a howler on the job, whether it's taps installed the wrong way round or a wonky shelf. But few will know the sheer panic these Spanish workmen probably felt when they discovered they had smashed up a 6,000-year-old Neolithic tomb and replaced it with a concrete picnic table. The tomb was a relic of the first settlers in the Cristovo de...

A 12-METRE monolith, hacked out of limestone by stone-age humans some nine thousand years ago, has been found at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The enormous stone totem, now split in two and sitting in the Sicilian Channel between Tunisia and Sicily, was hewed from a rocky outcrop some 300m away when the Mediterranean Sea was still a dry basin. It’s now under 40m of water. The new study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, says the area was submerged about 9350 years ago (give or take 200 years) when the last Ice Age retreated. Before that time the...

Our ancient Irish ancestors carved images of an ancient eclipse into giant stones over 5,000 years ago, on November 30, 3340 BC to be exact. This is the oldest known recorded solar eclipse in history. The illustrations are found on the Stone Age "Cairn L," on Carbane West, at Loughcrew, outside Kells, in County Meath. The landscape of rolling hills is littered with Neolithic monuments. Some say that originally there were at least 40 to 50 monuments, but others say the figure was more like 100... Martin Brennan and Jack Roberts discovered that the sun illuminates this chamber on the...

New theory on Stonehenge mystery Experts believe the stones may have been levered into place A fresh theory on how Stonehenge was built has been tested out by a group of experts and enthusiasts. Gordon Pipes, of the Stonehengineers group of scientists and archaeologists, has suggested that levers may have been used to move the giant stones. They have tested his "stone-rowing" theory which involves a 45-tonne stone being levered on a track of logs. "It's akin to rowing a boat, weights can be picked up with levers using body mass and balance," said Mr Pipes. Mr Pipes, from Derby,...