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Exact purpose of these ancient stone constructions is unknown. The main assumption is that they, perhaps, symbolized a border between the world we live in and the world of spirits. Labyrinths were used for rituals to help souls to cross over to the other world. Other hypothesis is that labyrinths, perhaps, served as fishing traps. However, the major flaw in this argument is that many labyrinths have been found inland throughout the world... After entering a labyrinth and circle several times around the center, you leave it through the same entrance. Just after several turns it becomes unclear how much...

A recent scientific study published in the renown "Europhysics News", The Magazine of the European Physical Society, (2012), Vol. 43, number 6, described how paleomagnetism study on several pyramid stones demonstrates the validity of Davidovits' theory on the artificial nature of Egyptian pyramid stones. ...Dr. Igor Túnyi ...and Ibrahim A. El-hemaly... made the following assumption (quote from their scientific paper): Our paleomagnetic investigation of the two great Egyptian pyramids, Kufu and Khafre, is based on the assumption that if the blocks were made in situ by the geopolymer concrete technique described above, then their magnetic moments would all have been...

"I am just begging them to forgive us, because we sold them. Our forefathers sold their brothers and sisters. I am not the person to talk to them. No! May their souls rest in peace, perfect peace. They should forgive us. They should," Posset said, wiping tears from his cheeks. "Qualified people will come and talk to them in due time. I feel so sad."

How Hannibal's crossing of the Alps with 30,000 soldiers was even harder than first thought as researchers find he took a perilous route on a narrow bridle path 9,500ft above sea level ****** Soil containing traces of horse manure has been carbon dated to 218BC, the time of HannibalÂ’s crossing, and shows that he took the Col de la Traversette, a narrow bridle path 9,500ft above sea level that links the Guil Valley in France with the Po Valley in Italy. Previous speculation that he took this direct route had been discounted because of its sheer difficulty, with gradients as...

For years scholars have debated what inspired William Shakespeare’s writings. Now, with the help of software typically used by professors to nab cheating students, two writers have discovered an unpublished manuscript they believe the Bard of Avon consulted to write “King Lear,” “Macbeth,” “Richard III,” “Henry V” and seven other plays. The news has caused Shakespeareans to sit up and take notice.

"They somehow seem to differentiate between humans and animals but also animals in different categories," Hallgren says. Two of the human skulls were female, four were male, and two belonged to people between the ages of 20 and 35. The researchers also found a nearly complete infant skeleton, whose tiny bones suggest the individual had been stillborn or died shortly after birth. The victims' skulls show obvious injuries. There is blunt force trauma near the tops of the heads, and they also appear to have other injuries that show signs of healing. The female skulls have injuries on the back...

Remotely detecting changes in landforms has long relied upon the interpretation of aerial and satellite images... More recently, data produced by photogrammetry and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) models have become commonplace for those involved in geographical analysis - engineers, hydrologists, landscape architects and archaeologists... In new research published this week in the journal Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, Cambridge archaeologists present a new algorithm, Multi-Scale Relief Model (MSRM), which is able to extract micro-topographic information at a variety of scales employing micro-, meso- and large-scale digital surface (DSM) and digital terrain (DTM) models... The TwoRains multitemporal remote sensing approach...

Tucked in the pages of a grimy, leather-bound almanac in the archives at New York's Union College was a tiny envelope with the hand-scrawled words "Washington's hair." A librarian who had been cataloging old books gingerly opened the yellowed envelope to find a lock of silvery hair tied with a thread. "It was one of those mind-blowing moments that happen every once in a while in a librarian's life," said John Myers, a catalog and metadata librarian at the college. "I thought, that doesn't mean George Washington, does it?" It apparently does.

High relief of standing dromedary on sandstone spur at center of image. Credit: © CNRS/MADAJ, R. Schwerdtner _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ At a remarkable site in northwest Saudi Arabia, a CNRS archaeologist and colleagues from the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH) have discovered camelid sculptures unlike any others in the region. They are thought to date back to the first centuries BC or AD. The find sheds new light on the evolution of rock art in the Arabian Peninsula and is the subject of an article published in Antiquity (February 2018). Located in the province of Al Jawf in northwest...

The approach, known as light detection and ranging scanning (lidar) involves directing a rapid succession of laser pulses at the ground from an aircraft. The time and wavelength of the pulses reflected by the surface are combined with GPS and other data to produce a precise, three-dimensional map of the landscape. Crucially, the technique probes beneath foliage - useful for areas where vegetation is dense. ... The team also found that Angamuco has an unusual layout. Monuments such as pyramids and open plazas are largely concentrated in eight zones around the city's edges, rather being located in one large city...

Facial hair is trendy worldwide these days, but in Jerusalem beards have never gone out of style, projecting religious mysticism, nationalism and ideals of masculinity. For men of all faiths in the holy city, a beard can be an important statement of religious devotion, connecting past generations to God through the tangled strands of history. Facial hair also reflects social mores in many communities. In some cases, it can even reflect one’s political views. Nowhere is this more visible than in Jerusalem’s Old City, where bearded ultra-Orthodox Jews, Christian clerics and devout Muslims all come into contact in a densely...

A team of archaeologists believe they may have discovered a spot where some of the architects of Stonehenge gathered and camped. The team have been investigating a causewayed enclosure -- these are thought to be ancient meeting places or centres of trade -- on army land at Larkhill close to Stonehenge. They found an alignment of posts that matches the orientation of the circle at Stonehenge, leading to the theory that Larkhill could have been some sort of blueprint for the temple. Si Cleggett, of Wessex Archaeology, conceded it was possible to suggest that any evidence of prehistoric settlement could...

A study suggests that early Neanderthals in southern Tuscany may have used fire to manufacture wooden tools used for foraging. In 2012, excavations for constructing thermal baths at Poggetti Vecchi, nestled at the foot of a hill in Grosseto in southern Tuscany, turned up a trove of wooden implements and fossil bones of the straight-tusked elephant Palaeoloxodon antiquus. The site was radiometrically dated to the late Middle Pleistocene, around 171,000 years ago, when early Neanderthals inhabited the region. Biancamaria Aranguren and colleagues report that most of the wooden implements were hewn from boxwood branches and likely used as digging sticks....

Leicestershire's young Nine-Day Queen showed bravery and humilityShe was Leicestershire’s own monarch – and the very first reigning queen of England. But the tragic story of Lady Jane Grey is often overlooked by historians. Only now does a three-part TV series – the second part is tomorrow at 9pm on BBC4 – shed any new light on Jane. Born in Bradgate in October, 1537, Jane’s life was as short as it was tragic. Beautiful and intelligent, she was reluctantly proclaimed Queen of England in 1553, aged just 15. She reigned for just nine days, before being imprisoned in the Tower...

A new interpretation of Serpent Mound, based on American Indian mythic stories portrayed in a remarkable series of pictographs from Picture Cave in Missouri, is offered by James Duncan, Carol Diaz-Granados, Tod Frolking and me in a paper published online last month in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. We argue that images of serpents and other supernatural beings on the walls of Picture Cave help us make sense of those parts of Serpent Mound that weren't restored. One group of pictographs shows a serpent facing a humanoid female with her legs spread apart next to a large oval that might be...

How Europeans evolved white skin By Ann Gibbons ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI—Most of us think of Europe as the ancestral home of white people. But a new study shows that pale skin, as well as other traits such as tallness and the ability to digest milk as adults, arrived in most of the continent relatively recently. The work, presented here last week at the 84th annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, offers dramatic evidence of recent evolution in Europe and shows that most modern Europeans don’t look much like those of 8000 years ago. The origins of Europeans...

A huge, trillion-ton iceberg about the size of Delaware broke free from Antarctica's Larsen C Ice Shelf in July 2017. As it moved away from its chilly birth mom and into the Weddell Sea, a vast expanse of water saw the light for the first time in up to 120,000 years. And this month, a team of scientists will venture to the long-ice-buried expanse to investigate the mysterious ecosystem that was hidden beneath the Antarctic ice shelf for so long. The newly exposed seabed stretches across an area of about 2,246 square miles (5,818 square kilometers), according to the British...

Summary: Who helped build the first trading networks in the earliest civilization? Scholars long thought that wandering nomads moving their flocks in the Near East helped spur urban growth by bringing stone, wood, and metals to the plains of Mesopotamia. That assumption was built, in part, on studies of modern-day nomads in Anatolia, Iraq, and Iran. Thanks to recent isotopic analyses from ancient sites, that view is under siege. Archaeologists like Emily Hammer from the University of Pennsylvania suggest that pastoralists did not stray far from home until long after cities like Ur and Mari flourished around 2000 B.C.E. That...

Measuring 12 to 13 cm per side and 1.4 cm thick, the stone, flattened with a whetstone or other tools, is shaped like an inverted triangle. While a horizontal line is drawn near the top side with a black pigment, an ellipse that apparently represents an eye and lines forming eyebrows and the nose are also painted on it. Although how the stone piece was actually used remains unclear, experts said the object may have been used for religious services and other purposes in ancient times. A painting of a human body drawn with pigments at the lower part of...

Positioned at the threshold of the densely populated sedentary regions of the Fertile Crescent to the west, and the arid, nomad-inhabited steppes to the east, it has not been continuously exploited by the region’s inhabitants. Here, the multidisciplinary team from the geo-archaeological mission has discovered particularly well-preserved sites, including a fortified surveillance network over the territory dating from the second millennium (2000 to 1550 BC). It is the first time that such an extensive fortified system has been discovered in the territory. This structure, exceptional in its extent and designed to protect urban areas and their hinterlands, is composed of...