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A Mexican archeologist hunting for a royal tomb in a deep, dark tunnel beneath a towering pre-Aztec pyramid has made a discovery that may have brought him a step closer: liquid mercury. In the bowels of Teotihuacan, a mysterious ancient city that was once the largest in the Americas, Sergio Gomez this month found "large quantities" of the silvery metal in a chamber at the end of a sacred tunnel sealed for nearly 1,800 years. "It's something that completely surprised us," Gomez said at the entrance to the tunnel below Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent, about 30 miles (50...

MessageToEagle.com - A Mexican archeologist hunting for a royal tomb in a deep, dark tunnel beneath a towering pre-Aztec pyramid has made a discovery that may have brought him a step closer: liquid mercury,' according to Reuters' report. In the bowels of Teotihuacan, a mysterious ancient city that was once the largest in the Americas, Sergio Gomez this month found "large quantities" of the silvery metal in a chamber at the end of a sacred tunnel sealed for nearly 1,800 years. "It's something that completely surprised us," Gomez said at the entrance to the tunnel below Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the...

Centre for Experimental Archaeology on Belfield campus is only one of its kind in the world.Brendan O’Neill at work on his early medieval round house on the UCD campus. How did our ancestors create the world they lived in? How did they survive without the modern accoutrements that make our lives easy? The question is at the heart of archaeology and forms the basis of a unique project in a quiet corner of University College Dublin’s sprawling Belfield campus. UCD is the only university in the world with a centre for experimental archaeology. It is not made of bricks and...

Megan Gannon March 14, 2015The eight eagle talons from Krapina arranged with an eagle phalanx that was also found at the site. (Luka Mjeda, Zagreb) Long before they shared the landscape with modern humans, Neanderthals in Europe developed a sharp sense of style, wearing eagle claws as jewelry, new evidence suggests. Researchers identified eight talons from white-tailed eagles — including four that had distinct notches and cut marks — from a 130,000-year-old Neanderthal cave in Croatia. They suspect the claws were once strung together as part of a necklace or bracelet. "It really is absolutely stunning," study author David Frayer,...

A rare cache of jewelry and silver coins, minted during the reign of Alexander the Great, has been discovered in a stalactite filled cave in northern Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced on Monday. The 2,300-year-old treasure was found by three members of the Israeli Caving Club who wriggled through a narrow passage at the entrance of the stalactite cave and wandered inside for several hours. Stashed inside a niche, one of the spelunkers, Hen Zakai, spotted two ancient silver coins. On one side of the coins was an image of Alexander the Great, while the other side portrayed...

The cauldron is finely decorated with designs and figures, including the head of the Greek god Achelous.France’s National Archaeological Research Institute (Inrap) on Wednesday revealed the discovery of an ancient grave site, probably that of a Celtic prince, which is helping shed light on trade between some of Europe’s earliest civilizations. Archaeologists uncovered the tomb dating from the fifth century BC in an industrial zone in the small town of Lavau, in France’s Champagne region. Inrap, which routinely scours construction sites in order to find and preserve the country’s archaeological heritage, began excavating at Lavau site in October 2014....

Screen Capture A video showing Islamic State militants with sledgehammers and power drills on a rampage inside the Mosul Museum shows the destruction of both reproductions and priceless originals from at least two important eras in the region’s history, said a British expert on Iraqi culture. Paul Collins, of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, in an email to Aleteia, said it was “distressing” to watch scenes of the destruction of colossal winged bulls of the seventh century BC. “These are certainly the real things and it looks from the video that the sculptures are those situated outside...

The frescoes of the Santa Priscilla catacombs in Rome call our knowledge of the past into question and challenge the teachings of the Church. Amanda Ruggeri investigates. When archaeologists in Rome at the end of the 19th Century began to excavate the Catacombs of Santa Priscilla, they hoped to find treasure: intricately carved monuments and vibrant frescoes of the type found in other ancient, underground cemeteries. Instead, they found devastation.

It has been called the most contested plot of land in the world — the fissure at which three major faiths come together, and break apart. There have been holy wars fought over it and holy writ foretelling of battles yet to come. It’s Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. But what if history got it wrong? What if the spot where Solomon built the first Jewish Temple, and Herod built the second, was actually about 600 feet to the south, in a place known as the ancient City of David? Enter Robert Cornuke. He travels the world solving Bible mysteries: Noah’s Ark,...

Nature experts have discovered a remarkable submerged forest thousands of years old under the sea close to the Norfolk coast. The trees were part of an area known as 'Doggerland' which formed part of a much bigger area before it was flooded by the North Sea. It was once so vast that hunter-gatherers who lived in the vicinity could have walked to Germany across its land mass.

Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience January 27, 2015An ancient human fossil discovered from the seafloor near Taiwan reveals that a primitive group of humans, potentially an unknown species, once lived in Asia, researchers say. These findings suggest that multiple lineages of extinct humans may have coexisted in Asia before the arrival of modern humans in the region about 40,000 years ago, the scientists added. Although modern humans, Homo sapiens, are the only surviving human lineage, others once walked the globe. Extinct human lineages once found in Asia include Neanderthals, the closest extinct relatives of modern humans; Denisovans, whose genetic legacy may...

At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers twice the area of Manhattan with sediment as deep as the Chrysler Building is high. On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction — toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface. The explanation is obvious to...

The Gospel of Mark has been discovered written on a tiny fragment of ancient papyrus, found within a mummy mask. During the era when the mask was created, papyrus was expensive, and the religious text was reused to create the decorative wear for the mummy. This discovery could represent the oldest gospel text ever found by archaeologists. The oldest samples of Christian scripture date from the Second Century of the Common Era. Pharaohs and wealthy individuals were often adorned with mummy masks made of gold and precious materials. Masks for people from lower economic classes were often manufactured from papyrus,...

The blue and gold braided beard on the burial mask of famed pharaoh Tutankhamun was hastily glued back on with epoxy, damaging the relic after it was knocked during cleaning, conservators at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo said Wednesday. The museum is one of the city's main tourist sites, but in some areas, ancient wooden sarcophagi lay unprotected from the public, while pharaonic burial shrouds, mounted on walls, crumble from behind open panels of glass. Tutankhamun's mask, over 3,300 years old, and other contents of his tomb are its top exhibits. Three of the museum's conservators reached by telephone gave...

Every year, usually at Christmas time, a so-called "mainstream" magazine takes up the topic of Christianity or the Bible. Often, Christians who believe the Bible get a fair hearing—other times, not so much. This latest time, it was Newsweek and journalist Kurt Eichenwald doing the "honors." Here's the title: "The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin." Actually, this piece is so ill-informed that it's a sin—not just against God but against good journalism. Al Mohler had this to say: "[Eichenwald's] article is a hit-piece that lacks any journalistic balance or credibility. His only sources cited within the article are from...

Thanks to the careful work of archaeologists, we learned more in the past year about Stonehenge's hidden monuments, Richard III's gruesome death and King Tut's mummified erection. From the discovery of an ancient tomb in Greece to the first evidence of Neanderthal art, here are 10 of Live Science's favorite archaeology stories of 2014. 1. An Alexander the Great-era tomb at Amphipolis [snip] 2. Stonehenge's secret monuments [snip] 3. A shipwreck under the World Trade Center [snip] 4. Richard III's twisted spine, kingly diet and family tree [snip] 5. A teenager in a "black hole" [snip] 6. Syria by satellite...

Hanukkah dig reveals stunning bracelet: Fragment of 1,600-year-old glass embossed with menorahs is unearthed in Israel The bracelet remains were found in Israel's Mount Carmel National Park Area was a settlement during the late Roman or early Byzantine period It was found in ancient box containing glass pieces discarded as waste Researchers say it may have been destined to be exported elsewhere Archaeologists in Israel have unearthed fragments of a glass bracelet stamped with seven-branched menorahs. The bracelet remains were found on the second night of Hanukkah in Mount Carmel National Park - once a large settlement during the late...

A team of archaeologists led by Dr Mykhailo Videiko of the Kyiv Institute of Archaeology has discovered the remains of a 6,000-year-old temple at a Trypillian culture village near modern-day Nebelivka, Ukraine.Trypillian culture derives its name from the village of Trypillia in Kyiv region, Ukraine, where artifacts of this ancient civilization were first discovered in 1896. Archeological excavations show that Trypillian people lived from about 5400 to 2700 BC on a vast area extending from the Carpathian piedmont, east to the Dnipro River, and south to the shores of the Black sea. The culture is characterized by advanced agriculture, developed...

Since 2009, archaeologists have been slowly excavating the ancient town of Magdala—thought to be the home of Mary Magdalene—near the Sea of Galilee. Among their finds has been a first-century synagogue where, experts say, Jesus likely preached. Image: Israel Antiquities Authority Although Jerusalem and Bethlehem are the sites most commonly associated with Jesus, Father Eamon Kelly—vice president of Israel's Magdala Center and vice chargé of the Pontifical Institute Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center—points out that Jesus spent almost his entire life in what is now northern Israel. "Eighty percent of Jesus' public life was here," he tells the Israeli...

Workers stand near the newly uncovered monumental entryway to the Herodian Palace in Herodium National Park, outside of Bethlehem in the West Bank. The entry, at right, is a corridor with a complex system of arches on three separate levels. The arches buttressed the corridor's massive side walls, allowing the king and his entourage direct passage into the palace courtyard. Israeli archaeologists are showing off the monumental, many-arched corridor that led to Herod the Great's hilltop palace near Jerusalem in the first century. The corridor in the ancient fortress of Herodium, about 7 miles (12 kilometers) south of Jerusalem,...