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Found on the western side of what was once the Templo Mayor complex in Tenochtitlan, in modern Mexico City, the partially unearthed skull rack was likely built between 1485 and 1502 and may have been about 112 feet (34 meters) long and 40 feet (12 meters) wide. Mostly belonging to young adult men, but also to women and children, several of the unearthed skulls feature holes on both sides, suggesting they belonged to a tzompantli. This was a rack on which the skulls of sacrificed people were arranged on wooden poles and displayed... To make the scene even more horrifying,...

But experts say the five that he identified in Bosnia-Herzegovina are natural hills.Despite his many critics, maverick archaeologist Sam Osmanagich stands by his claims that he has uncovered not one, but five structures which he says are pyramids in Visoko in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dr Osmanagich, who earned his doctorate on the history of civilisations at the University of Sarajevo in 2008, was in Singapore recently for a conference, where he spoke about his work on pyramids. The 55-year-old claims that he has discovered the "biggest complex of pyramidal structures in the world" comprising five pyramids, all connected by underground tunnels. The...

The ancient city of Ephesus and the Diyarbakir Fortress and its surrounding Hevsel Gardens have become the latest historical sites in Turkey to be inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in July. Turkey’s next nomination is the Stone Age cult site of Gobeklitepe, located in Sanliurfa province not far from the turbulent Syrian border. The site’s discovery began with a coincidence reminiscent of a movie plot. In 1983, local farmer Mahmut Kilic found a carved stone while plowing his field in the village of Orencik. He took it to the Sanliurfa Museum, where it was to wait a decade...

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...

The fragments making up the 6th century AD marble slab with a christogram and a donor’s inscription below it have been discovered by the archaeologists excavating the Bishop’s Basilica of Ancient Parthicopolis in Bulgaria’s Sandanski over a period of 25 years. Photo: TV grab from BNT Archaeologists excavating the so called Bishop’s Basilica of the Ancient Roman and Early Byzantine city of Parthicopolis located in the town of Sandanski in Southwest Bulgaria have discovered the last fragment from a marble slab with a christogram, a Christian symbol consisting of a monogram of letters standing for the name of Jesus Christ.The...

Elasmosaurs had extremely long necks, small heads and paddle-shaped limbs for swimming Photo: Nobu Tamura Researchers in Alaska have uncovered the bones of a prehistoric marine reptile dating back 70 million years. This is the first time an elasmosaur has ever been unearthed in this state. Its vertebrae were discovered embedded in an eroding cliff. Curvin Metzler (left) and Dr Patrick Druckenmiller on the cliff face where the elasmosaur was discovered  Photo: University of Alaska Museum of the North Elasmosaurs had extremely long necks, small heads and paddle-shaped limbs for swimming. • Scientists study remains of massive Dreadnoughtus dinosaur, in pics...

Science continues to prove the Bible on a regular basis. This time, archaeologists from Bar-Ilan University in Israel have uncovered what appears to be the hometown of the giant Goliath. The town, called Gath, was occupied until the ninth century B.C. In biblical accounts, the Philistines — the mortal enemies of the Israelites — ruled the city. The Old Testament also describes Gath as the home of Goliath, the giant warrior whom the Israelite King David felled with a slingshot.The new findings reveal just how impressive the ancient Philistine city once was, said lead archaeologist of the current excavation,...

A massive gate unearthed in Israel may have marked the entrance to a biblical city that, at its heyday, was the biggest metropolis in the region. The town, called Gath, was occupied until the ninth century B.C. In biblical accounts, the Philistines — the mortal enemies of the Israelites — ruled the city. The Old Testament also describes Gath as the home of Goliath, the giant warrior whom the Israelite King David felled with a slingshot. The new findings reveal just how impressive the ancient Philistine city once was, said lead archaeologist of the current excavation, Aren Maeir, of Bar-Ilan...

Archaeologists at Israel's Bar-Ilan University announced on Monday the discovery of a massive gate and other fortifications in the ruins of Gath, the hometown of the Bible's Goliath. The ancient gate is one of the largest ever discovered in Israel and evidence of the Philistine city's power in the 10th and ninth centuries B.C.E, head archaeologist Professor Aren Maeir says. It even made a brief appearance in the Bible when David, Goliath's slayer and future king of Israel, "acted like a madman, making marks on the doors of the gate and letting saliva run down his beard."

The cat paw print on the Roman roof tile. David Rice ================================================================================================================== Paw prints made by a cat 2,000 years ago have been found on a Roman roof tile kept at a museum in south west England. Dug up in Gloucester in 1969, the tile fragment had long lain unnoticed at Gloucester City Museum. Only recently, a researcher spotted the cat’s paw on the tile while going through the finds from the 1969 archaeological excavation. “At that time the archaeologists seem to have been more interested in digging things up than looking at what they found,” David Rice, curator at...

Elongated head was bound in tribal tradition 2,000 years ago Skeleton with long skull was unearthed in Arkaim, central Russia It's thought to belong to a woman living almost 2,000 years ago Her skull is elongated because it was bound out of tribal tradition Arkaim is known as Russia's Stonehenge because it may have been used by ancient people to study the stars, like the British site A skeleton with an unusual-shaped skull has been unearthed on a site known as Russia's Stonehenge. When images of the remains were first published, UFO enthusiasts rushed to claim they were proof that...

Archaeologists in Israel have found a rare inscription of the name of an apparently influential person from the time of King David, a name that is also mentioned in the Bible, according to Israel Antiquities Authority. Archaeologists have discovered a 3,000-year-old large ceramic jar with the inscription of the name "Eshbaal Ben Beda," The Associated Press reported Sunday. The Old Testament book of 1 Chronicles in 8:33 and 9:39 identifies the fourth son of Saul as Eshbaal, also written as as Ish-bosheth. "Ner was the father of Kish, Kish the father of Saul, and Saul the father of Jonathan, Malki-Shua,...

Virtual unwrapping software has revealed verses from the Book of Leviticus in a charred parchment scroll, making it the oldest biblical text after the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced on Monday. Found 45 years ago inside the Holy Ark of the synagogue at Ein Gedi, on the western shore of the Dead Sea, the 2.7-inch scroll was dated by C14 analysis to about 500 AD. “This is the first time in any archaeological excavation that a Torah scroll was found in a synagogue, particularly inside a Holy Ark,” the IAA said in a statement. ... To...

Ancient Assyrian tablets, dictating social arrangements including women's rights, dating back to 4,000 years have been excavated in the Central Anatolian province of Kayseri, a local newspaper reported Thursday. Prof. Fikri Kulakoglu of Ankara University told Dogan News Agency that the Kultepe-Kanis-Karum trade colony site where the tablets were unearthed was remarkable. He said the tablets revealed detailed information about the Assyrians, spanning from commercial trade to the nitty-gritty of the local social life. "From women's rights to the adoption of children and marriages arranged at birth, the tablets include all kinds of civilizational and social data from Anatolia 4,000...

Animals go extinct, places too. And stories change. Boaz, a small village in Richland County, Wis., has only 156 people these days. There are a half-dozen streets, a couple of taverns, a small park with a baseball diamond and, on the outskirts, a historic marker describing the village's lone claim to fame: "the Boaz Mastodon." The story on the marker is the one that's been told to schoolchildren for almost a century as they stare up at the mastodon skeleton, enshrined in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geology Museum. It is a story that, until now, has endured largely unchanged: One...

Wessex Archeology says it has in recent years found remains from World War II mess kitchens in the area.Archeologists say they have unearthed several tins filled with U.S. Army bacon and sunscreen at Salisbury Plain, England, home of the famous Stonehenge ruins. Wessex Archeology shared the find on its website in celebration of American Independence Day. Salisbury Plain has been a British military training ground since the early 20th century, but U.S. military forces staged there in preparation for the 1944 invasion of Nazi-occupied France during World War II. "The military has been on Salisbury Plain for decades so it's...

Swedish archaeologists have unearthed what is presumed to be a dolmen, or a portal tomb, that is believed to be over 5,000 years old near the megalithic monument Ale's stones in southern Sweden... Despite a few days of rain, the archaeologists have managed to uncover enough of the site to see that what they have found is like to be a dolmen, a type of megalithic tomb, most often consisting of three or more upright stones supporting a large flat horizontal capstone... According to reports, the archaeologists have found what they believe is an imprint of the tomb, which must...

A Jerusalem family ripping up its living room floor found a staircase lost for 2,000 years, leading to a large ritual bath carved out of bedrock. It took the family some years to call in the authorities and show them the discovery beneath their house, in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ein Kerem. Throughout the interim, the family blocked off the entrance to the mikveh with wooden doors, and simply continued to live over it. When they did call in the Israel Antiquities Authority, beneath the doors, the archaeologists found the carved stone staircase leaving to a big mikveh, 3.5 meters...

Collinsium ciliosum, a Collins' monster-type lobopodian from the early Cambrian Xiaoshiba biota of China. Credit: Javier Ortega-Hernández A new species of 'super-armoured' worm, a bizarre, spike-covered creature which ate by filtering nutrients out of seawater with its feather-like front legs, has been identified by palaeontologists. The creature, which lived about half a billion years ago, was one of the first animals on Earth to develop armour to protect itself from predators and to use such a specialised mode of feeding. The creature, belonging to a poorly understood group of early animals, is also a prime example of the broad variety...

Archaeologists from the University of Reading will start a three-year excavation on land between the prehistoric monuments of Stonehenge and Avenbury this summer. Exploring the Vale of Pewsey in Wiltshire is expected to reveal more about the lives of the people who worshipped at Stonehenge. The work will be done in collaboration with Historic England, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Wiltshire Museum. The site is a barely explored archaeological region of huge international importance. The project will investigate Marden Henge. Built around 2400 BC Marden is the largest henge or Neolithic earthwork in the country and one of...