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ISIS barbarians have destroyed a 2,000-year-old gate close to their Iraqi stronghold of Mosul. The breathtaking structure is known as the Gate of God, and used to guard the ancient Assyrian city Nineveh. The destruction of the ancient structure, also called the Mashki Gate, has been confirmed by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, and the Antiquities Department in Baghdad has not denied the demolition. The terrorists demolished the ancient gate using military equipment, according to activists in Mosul. ISIS thugs have destroyed many of Iraqi historic sites and monuments, including the Assyrian city of Nimrud, the Winged...

After 30 years and millions of dollars of restoration, 1500-year-old Santa Maria Antiqua, buried beneath the Roman Forum by an earthquake in 847, has finally reopened to the public, and it is stunning: “This church is the Sistine Chapel of the early Middle Ages,” Maria Andaloro, an art historian involved in the project, told Reuters. “It collected the very best of figurative culture of the Christian world between Rome and Byzantium.” Being buried by the earthquake saved the church from being altered in later centuries, particularly during the Counter-Reformation, said Prof Andaloro. Among the most significant frescoes is a depiction...

A thousand years after the Vikings braved the icy seas from Greenland to the New World in search of timber and plunder, satellite technology has found intriguing evidence of a long-elusive prize in archaeology — a second Norse settlement in North America, further south than ever known.

Archaeologists in Italy have discovered what may be a rare sacred text in the Etruscan language that is likely to yield rich details about Etruscan worship of a god or goddess. The lengthy text is inscribed on a large 6th century BCE sandstone slab that was uncovered from an Etruscan temple. A new religious artifact is rare. Most Etruscan discoveries typically have been grave and funeral objects. “This is probably going to be a sacred text, and will be remarkable for telling us about the early belief system of a lost culture that is fundamental to western traditions,” said archaeologist...

Europe went through a major population upheaval about 14,500 years ago, at the end of the last ice age, according to DNA from the bones of hunter-gatherers. Ancient DNA studies published in the last five years have transformed what we know about the early peopling of Europe. The picture they paint is one in which successive waves of immigration wash over the continent, bringing in new people, new genes and new technologies. These studies helped confirm that Europe's early hunter-gatherers - who arrived about 40,000 years ago - were largely replaced by farmers arriving from the Middle East about 8000...

Credit: University of Leicester. This model of King Richard III’s grave shows the king’s remains in-situ shortly after their discovery by University of Leicester archaeologists beneath a car park in Leicester in 2012. The model has been generated using Agisoft’s Photoscan from photographs taken during the excavation. If you would like to learn more about the search for King Richard III please visit www.le.ac.uk/richardiii.

Archaeologists in Israel are "astonished and surprised" after finding artifacts dating back to Jesus' time at a local orphanage and military complex in Jerusalem. The Israel Antiquities Authority said this week that it has found numerous rare and important artifacts, some dating back to the Second Temple period, buried deep beneath the Schneller compound in Jerusalem, which had previously served as a orphanage and later an Israeli army base. The Schneller compound first served as an orphanage in the 1800's, and then as an occupation area for German soldiers during World Wars I and II. It later became a base...

A bear bone found in a cave may push back dates for the earliest human settlement of Ireland by 2,500 years. The bone shows clear signs of cut marks with stone tools, and has been radiocarbon dated to 12,500 years ago. This places humans in Ireland in the Palaeolithic era; previously, the earliest evidence of people came from the Mesolithic, after 10,000 years ago. The brown bear bone had been stored in a cardboard box at the National Museum of Ireland for almost a century.

CAIRO — Radar scans of King Tut's tomb have revealed two spaces on the north and east chambers of the pharaonic mausoleum that could contain the "discovery of the century," Egypt's antiquities ministry said Thursday. Antiquities Minister Mamdouh al-Damaty told a press conference that metal and organic masses were revealed by the scans, signaling that the rooms could possibly contain funerary objects. "It could be the discovery of the century. It's very important for Egyptian history and the history of the world," he said, adding that the chambers may well have belonged to a king or queen. Further tests will...

Scientists have pieced together an early human habitat for the first time, and life was no picnic 1.8 million years ago. Our human ancestors, who looked like a cross between apes and modern humans, had access to food, water and shady shelter at a site in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. They even had lots of stone tools with sharp edges, said Gail M. Ashley, a professor in the Rutgers Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences. But "it was tough living," she said. "It was a very stressful life because they were in continual competition...

Archaeologists discover First Temple-era seals, one with a woman's name. Rare find that sheds significant light on owner's life. Archaeologists have found two ancient seals with Hebrew names, dating back to the time of the First Temple, in Jerusalem's City of David. The objects belonged to a woman and a man, Elihana bat Gael and Sa'aryahu ben Shabenyahu. "Finding seals that bear names from the time of the First Temple is hardly a commonplace occurrence, and finding a seal that belonged to a woman is an even rarer phenomenon," said a researcher with the project. The artifacts were discovered in...

By studying and excavating ancient burial grounds, we can learn about how final respects were paid when people died during ancient times. The artifacts located alongside these remains also provide insight into what items people valued and what they believed about the afterlife. A 2013 discovery of an ancient burial ground near Bethlehem is providing new information about one civilization that lived approximately 4000 years ago. In 2013, efforts began to build an industrial park near Bethlehem, leading to a discovery that may prove to offer fresh insights about the ancient world. The area where the industrial park was to...

According to the Times of Israel, the artifact is made of brass, silver, shells and stones. It was covered in plaster and found near a window in the church that reportedly was built by Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena in the fourth century. Although officials confirmed that the artifact has been cleaned up, it is not on display, and there are no images of it as yet.Ziad al-Bandak, a Palestinian presidential adviser for Christian Affairs, said the artifact is, “of great religious and historical value.” The church itself is built over the cave where the birth of Jesus...

Amateur archaeologist Tom Garner had time to kill and took a drive along Pensacola Bay in the Florida Panhandle. Spying a newly cleared lot, he poked about, hoping to find artifacts from the city's rich history dating back centuries to the Spanish explorers. Garner stumbled upon some shards of 16th Spanish pottery. "There it was, artifacts from the 16th century lying on the ground," said Garner, a history buff whose discovery has made him a celebrity in archaeological circles. Experts have confirmed the find as the site of the long-lost land settlement of a doomed 1559 Spanish expedition to the...

It's not the first underground city to be discovered in the region; there are some 250 known subterranean dwellings of various sizes hidden within the fantastical landscape. The two biggest are Kaymakli and Derinkuyu; the latter is estimated to have been able to house up to 20,000 people. Both cities have been known for decades. But this new underground town, hiding beneath a centuries-old castle on a hilltop right in NevÅŸehir, just might be the biggest. One early estimate by geophysicists put its area at nearly five million square feet and its depth at 371 feet. If those estimates are...

Scientists say they have uncovered the remains of the earliest known massacre victims, dating from approximately 10,000 years ago. Archaeologists believe the victims were members of an extended family group of hunter-gatherers who were slaughtered by a rival group.

Silty fen preserved burning houses and domestic objects inside them to reveal unprecedented view of life 3,000 years ago. Almost 3,000 years after being destroyed by fire, the astonishingly well preserved remains of two Bronze Age houses and their contents have been discovered at a quarry site in Peterborough. The artefacts include a collection of everyday domestic objects unprecedented from any site in Britain, including jewellery, spears, daggers, giant food storage jars and delicate drinking cups, glass beads, textiles and a copper spindle with thread still wound around it. The remains of the large wooden houses, built on stilts in...

A view of the Rio Platano biosphere reserve in Honduras, where explorers over the past century have claimed several times to have spotted the White City Honduras said Thursday it was starting a major archeological dig for a mysterious, ancient "White City" supposedly hidden in jungle in its northeast that explorers and legends have spoken of for centuries. "Today a group of archeologists and scientists is traveling to the White City to start excavations in coming days," President Juan Orlando Hernandez said in a speech to private universities. The hope is that they will uncover incontrovertible proof of the existence...

As the terrorist group ISIS is pushed out of northern Iraq, archaeologists are resuming work in the region, making new discoveries and figuring out how to conserve archaeological sites and reclaim looted antiquities. Several discoveries, including new Neanderthal skeletal remains, have been made at Shanidar Cave, a site in Iraqi Kurdistan that was inhabited by Neanderthals more than 40,000 years ago. Additionally, though ISIS did destroy and loot a great number of sites, there are several ways for archaeologists, scientific institutions, governments and law enforcement agencies in North America and Europe to help save the region's heritage, said Dlshad Marf...

Scientists have grown a tree from what may be the oldest seed ever germinated. The new sapling was sprouted from a 2,000-year-old date palm excavated in Masada, the site of a cliff-side fortress in Israel where ancient Jews are said to have killed themselves to avoid capture by Roman invaders. Dubbed the "Methuselah Tree" after the oldest person in the Bible, the new plant has been growing steadily, and after 26 months, the tree was nearly four feet (1.2 meters) tall.