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Tiny holes in the bones indicate that they passed through a large bird’s digestive system, according to Professor Pawel Valde-Nowak of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. It’s not clear, however, whether the bird attacked and ate the young Neanderthal or scavenged the remains of a dead child. Believed to be about 115,000 years old, the bones are the oldest human remains ever discovered in Poland. Experts from the Jagiellonian University and Washington University in St. Louis confirmed that the remains are digital bones from a child’s hand. The Archaeological Museum of Krakow and the Polish Academy of Sciences also participated...

Part of one of the inscriptions found at Kom Ombo, a temple in southern Egypt. The image at the top of the inscription appears to show the king Seti I with the gods Horus and Sobek.A giant stone engraving that fits together like a jigsaw puzzle, found in a temple in southern Egypt, may reveal new information about a pharaoh named Seti I, who launched a series of military campaigns in North Africa and the Middle East after he became pharaoh in about 1289 or 1288 B.C., several Egyptologists told Live Science. The engraving has both drawings and hieroglyphs...

The genetic variation within the Scythian nomad group is so broad that it must be explained with the group assimilating people it came in contact with. This is shown in a new study on Bronze and Iron Age genetics of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, situated in the Black Sea region... This is likely the strategy needed for the group to have been able to grow as fast, expand as vast and to remain established for as long as they did. The findings emphasize the importance of assimilation to maintain Scythian dominance around the Black Sea region... The vast area of the...

Çatalhöyük was a large settlement inhabited from about 7100 BC to 5600 BC by early farmers, and is located in what is now central Turkey. The site showcases a fascinating layout in which houses were built directly next to each other in every direction and stands out for its excellent preservation of finds... For this study, the researchers analyzed vessel sherds from the West Mound of Çatalhöyük, dating to a narrow timeframe of 5900-5800 BC towards the end of the site's occupation. The vessel sherds analyzed came from open bowls and jars, as shown by reconstructions and had calcified residues...

Researchers at the University of York and the British Museum have discovered traces of opiates preserved inside a distinctive vessel dating back to the Late Bronze Age. Vessels of this type, known as 'base-ring juglets', have long been thought to have links with opium use because when inverted they resemble the seed head of the opium poppy; they are known to have been widely traded in the eastern Mediterranean ca. 1650 - 1350BC. Researchers used a range of analytical techniques to study a particular juglet housed in the British Museum, which is a sealed vessel, allowing the contents inside to...

An intact tomb from the early Mycenaean era (1650-1400 BC) has been unearthed by archaeologists in the region of Nemea, southern Greece. According to the Culture Ministry, the tomb is among the largest ever found in the region and is set apart by the short yet wide path leading to its entrance along with other features that place it in the early phase of the Mycenaean civilization. It was found in a Mycenaean cemetery in Aidonia. The Mycenaean civilization, with its palatial states, urban organization, sophisticated art and writing system, flourished in Greece in the 17th-12th centuries BC.

Saga Vanecek found the relic in the Vidöstern lake while at her family's holiday home in Jönköping County. The sword was initially reported to be 1,000 years old, but experts at the local museum now believe it may date to around 1,500 years ago.

While uncovering an impressive destruction level dating to the second half of the ninth century B.C.E., when Gath was the largest of the five cities of the Philistines and perhaps the largest city in the Land of Israel during the Iron Age, excavators found an exceptionally well preserved horned altar reminiscent of the Israelite horned altars described in the Bible (Exodus 27:1–2; 1 Kings 1:50)... But why does this altar have only two horns, when we know from the Bible and excavated examples that the altars of both the Israelites and, later, the Philistines, typically had four horns? The fact...

Emory University and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University completed a summer of excavations at the Sanctuary of Great Gods on Samothrace in northern Greece on August 8... focused on the stoa in the western section of the sanctuary and the monuments on the terrace it stood on, as well as on the publication of the area's findings.Emory professor Bonna Wescoat was top excavator for a new five-year research project, carried out through the American School of Classical Studies in Athens and supervised by the Evros Ephorate of Antiquities... Findings suggest that there was religious activity on...

...this subterranean tomb of 52 m2... impressive number of figures (nearly 260, including gods, humans, and animals) painted on the walls of the largest chamber. Of course other Roman tombs from the Decapolis also offer sumptuous mythological decor, but none of them can hold a candle to this one in terms of iconography... Whoever entered the tomb, before it was closed, first glimpsed on his left banqueting deities lying on beds, and tasting offerings brought by humans smaller than themselves. Again to the left of the entrance, a second painting with a country landscape shows peasants busy working the earth...

On the afternoon of Oct. 4, 2011, a backhoe dug into an excavation pit in Elmhurst, Queens, and struck iron. Construction workers assumed they had hit a pipe. But when the claws of the backhoe emerged from the ground, it was dragging a body clothed in a white gown and knee-high socks. Scott Warnasch, then a New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner forensic archaeologist, initially viewed the finding as a recent homicide. “It was recorded as a crime scene,” Warnasch, 52, told The Post. “A buried body on an abandoned lot sounds pretty straightforward.” It turned out to...

A growing body of evidence shows that language doesn’t just give people a set of words to express their thoughts. It actually can have a heavy influence on those thoughts and on the behaviors they lead to. What would this mean for the thinking and behavior of a person who learns a “pure language”?

Everybody interested in finding the true history of the Giza pyramids and The Sphinx, will have no doubt heard the theory proposed by Geology professor, Robert Schoch and the late, great John Anthony West, that The Sphinx was originally a lion that was subject to water erosion. The theory states that this could only have happened between 5,000 and 10,500 BC, a time period that is far earlier than the orthodox date attributed to the construction of the Sphinx, which is 2558 to 2532 BC. Robert Temple, in his book The Sphinx Mystery, believes the Sphinx was carved as Anubis...

Named Ledumahadi mafube, the new dinosaur species weighed 12 tons, stood about 13 feet high at the hips, and is one of the closest relatives of sauropod dinosaurs. Sauropods, weighing up to 60 tons, include well-known species like Brontosaurus. They ate plants and stood on four legs, with a posture like modern elephants.Ledumahadi mafube evolved its giant size independently from sauropods.“It shows us that even as far back as 200 million years ago, these animals had already become the largest vertebrates to ever walk the Earth,” said Professor Jonah Choiniere, a researcher in the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University...

Credit: Chris Ford via Flickr ====================================================================== Humans did not accelerate the decline of the 'Green Sahara' and may have managed to hold back the onset of the Sahara desert by around 500 years, according to new research led by UCL. The study by a team of geographers and archaeologists from UCL and King's College London, published in Nature Communications, suggests that early pastoralists in North Africa combined detailed knowledge of the environment with newly domesticated species to deal with the long-term drying trend. It is thought that early pastoralists in North Africa developed intricate ways to efficiently manage sparse...

The rock carvings -- known as petroglyphs -- have been discovered in their thousands atop hillocks in the Konkan region of western Maharashtra. Mostly discovered in the Ratnagiri and Rajapur areas, a majority of the images etched on the rocky, flat hilltops remained unnoticed for thousands of years... animals, birds, human figures and geometrical designs are all depicted. The way the petroglyphs have been drawn, and their similarity to those found in other parts of the world, have led experts to believe that they were created in prehistoric times and are possibly among the oldest ever discovered. "Our first deduction...

The bizarre creature was discovered in Island Beach State Park, New Jersey on May 4. Stephanie Hall discovered the body of the six-foot animal while she was returning from a run. She’d encountered a seal on the way out and – wanting to give it a bit more room on the way back – she went further up the beach and found the fish. “I saw this head of something scary in the sand just over a dune,” said Mrs Hall. “I thought it was bizarre and cool looking so I took some pictures.“Anyway I had no idea what it...

...the latest discovery to surface in the archaeological dig they have led since 2001: a painted tomb from the 2nd century B.C. In excellent condition, the tomb depicts a banquet scene, fixed by pigments. Twice the size of Pompeii, the ancient city of Cumae is located 25 km west of Naples on the Tyrrhenian Sea facing the island of Ischia, at the Campi Flegrei Archaeological Park. Ancient historians considered Cumae the oldest Ancient Greek settlement in the western world. Founded in the latter half of the 8th century B.C. by Greeks from Euboea, the settlement grew quickly and prospered over...

The Minoan palace of Zominthos was a complex with three-story buildings grounded in the rock at 1,200 meters above sea level. As early as 2000 BC, worshippers began placing offerings in clefts in the rock, such as "egg cups" - simple cup-shaped vases with a disc-like base - both painted and plain. The honorary director of the Antiquities Department, Dr Efi Sapounas-Sakellarakis, spoke enthusiastically... The palace of Zominthos, she notes, had more than 150 rooms. "...The large limestone floor slabs, which look like marble... were brought there from a quarry 20 kilometers away." ...This section yielded bronze daggers, seals, stone...

Ancient ruins found in the Israeli wilderness could solve the biblical mystery of the Exodus, archaeologists claim. According to the Bible, Moses liberated the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and led them through the wilderness of Sinai, before they crossed the River Jordan into the promised land of Canaan. Yet no historical basis for the legend exists, and experts generally agree the Israelites were in fact native to Canaan - an ancient region covering modern day Israel. However, scientists are now analysing whether ruins near the River Jordan are proof of a nomadic Israelite people crossing into the ancient land...