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Archaeologists in Peru have unearthed what is believed to be the largest single mass child sacrifice in history. The bodies of 227 victims, aged between five and 14, were found near the coastal town of Huanchaco, north of Peru's capital Lima. The children were believed to have been sacrificed over 500 years ago. The discovery comes barely a year after 200 child victims of human sacrifice were found at two other sites in the country. Archaeologists told AFP news agency that some of the bodies in this latest collection still had hair and skin when they were dug up. The...

In Jeremiah 15, God tells the prophet that “I will make [Jerusalem] an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth because of what Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, did in Jerusalem.” Can you imagine God saying that He’s going to make you “an object of horror”? Well, as God does, He kept His word. The wealth of Jerusalem’s inhabitants was given as plunder to invaders, only after they were starved, put to the sword, or enslaved. Of course, passages like this one, in which God “speaks,” are rarely taken seriously, much less historically, in academic...

The structure in which shattered jugs were found during the summer 2017 Israel Antiquities Authority dig, attesting to the destruction. (Eliyahu Yanai, Courtesy of the City of David Archive) On the eve of the Hebrew commemoration of the destruction of the Temples, archaeologists discover remnants of a blaze indicating the city was grander than thought New finds in the City of David confirm the veracity of the biblical account of the Babylonian capture and conquest of First Temple period Jerusalem. The event is commemorated next Tuesday on the Hebrew date Tisha B’av (August 1) in a day of fasting and...

Researchers discovered what they believe is evidence of the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem that is detailed in the Bible. Layers of ash, arrowheads, Iron Age potsherds, lamps, and jewelry from the period were uncovered on Mount Zion by a team led by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “For archaeologists, an ashen layer can mean a number of different things,” UNC Charlotte professor of history Shimon Gibson explained in a statement. “It could be ashy deposits removed from ovens; or it could be localized burning of garbage. However, in this case, the combination of an ashy layer full of...

Stone tools uncovered in Mongolia by an international team of archaeologists indicate that modern humans traveled across the Eurasian steppe about 45,000 years ago, according to a new University of California, Davis, study. The date is about 10,000 years earlier than archaeologists previously believed.

..... “For archaeologists, an ashen layer can mean a number of different things,” said Shimon Gibson, a UNC Charlotte professor of history and co-director of the project. “It could be ashy deposits removed from ovens; or it could be localized burning of garbage. However, in this case, the combination of an ashy layer full of artifacts, mixed with arrowheads, and a very special ornament indicates some kind of devastation and destruction. Nobody abandons golden jewelry and nobody has arrowheads in their domestic refuse.” "The arrowheads are known as 'Scythian arrowheads' and have been found at other archaeological conflict sites from...

An initial inspection of the ceramics found in the tomb allowed it to be dated to the late Minoan period, or 1400 to 1200 BC Archaeologists in Crete have discovered an intact Minoan-era tomb containing a well-preserved adult skeleton along with funerary vessels. An initial inspection of the ceramics found in the tomb allowed it to be dated to the late Minoan period, or 1400 to 1200 BC, a statement from the Ministry of Culture noted. The tomb was discovered during an emergency excavation in an olive grove outside the village of Kentri, in the eastern prefecture of Ierapetra, the...

Sometime between 1400 and 1200 B.C., two Minoan men were laid to rest in an underground enclosure carved out of the soft limestone native to southeast Crete. Both were entombed within larnakes—intricately embossed clay coffins popular in Bronze Age Minoan society—and surrounded by colorful funerary vases that hinted at their owners’ high status. Eventually, the burial site was sealed with stone masonry and forgotten, leaving the deceased undisturbed for roughly 3,400 years.

The remains of a mysterious Jewish city populated decades before the destruction of the First Temple was discovered on a site near Beit Shemesh about six months ago. The findings not only revealed evidence of the renewal of Jewish settlement in the area following the destruction wrought by Sancheiriv but also revealed evidence of the idol worship the Jewish people engaged in at the time. The findings of figurines and idols in the Jewish city corroborated the Tanach's (Jewish Bible) attribution of the destruction of the First Temple to idolatry. Sancheiriv (Sennacherib), the king of Assyria from 705 BCE to...

I was blessed to make a long planned all-day ride-a-long with a dear Dayton police friend from my church yesterday, just one day after the tragic mass shooting. The outpouring of love from the grateful citizens of the city of Dayton was overwhelming. Restaurants offered free food to cops, trays of cookies and donuts showed up at the station, people came up and wanted to hug officers, big waves with thank you’s were shouted our way. At traffic stops people rolled down their windows to voice their appreciation. The shooter was dropped by a hail of police bullets at the...

Six aligned standing stones have been discovered on a building site in Sion, southwest Switzerland, in what local authorities call an important archaeological find. "This discovery is of prime importance to help us understand social rituals at the end of the Neolithic period (around 2,500BC) in central Europe," says a press releaseexternal link from canton Valais's buildings, monuments and archaeology department. The find was made by chance during work for a new residential building in the Petit-Chasseur quarter of the cantonal capital Sion. This is the same area where, in the 1960s, several dolmens (collective tombs) and some 30 standing...

Between 1997 and 2016, researchers at an excavation near Ashkelon in Israel examined the remains of more than one hundred humans, remains that dated from the 12th to 6th centuries before Christ. The researchers hoped to find human DNA in order to answer an old question: Who were the Philistines? Where did they come from? As it turns out, the Philistines were exactly who the Bible says they were, and they came from where the Bible says they did. Amos 9 speaks of God bringing up the Philistines from Caphtor, just as he brought Israel out of Egypt. Deuteronomy 2...

Male academics, who comprise less than 10 percent of North American archaeologists, write the vast majority of the field's high impact, peer-reviewed literature. That's according to a new study in American Antiquity by Washington State University archaeologists Tiffany Fulkerson and Shannon Tushingham. The two scientists set out to determine how a rapidly evolving demographic and professional landscape is influencing the production and dissemination of knowledge in American archaeology. They found that women, who now make up half of all archaeologists in North America, and professionals working outside of a university setting, who account for 90 percent of the total workforce,...

The fragment above an artist’s impression of how the fish bottle would have looked. Credit: National Trust/Rod Kirkpatrick/F Stop Press ============================================================ Peter Moore discovered a fragment from a 1,800 year-old glass fish at the National Trust's Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire. The shard of intricately decorated glass is so rare it took experts from around the world two years to identify it. Wealth and influence Peter discovered the fragment while part of a team carrying out a dig to understand more about the north wing of the villa. The glass fish may have been used to hold exotic perfume and...

(JNS) The Israeli Antiquities Authority, Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Macquarie University of Sydney, Australia, have announced the discovery of what they believe is the biblical city of Ziklag, the Philistine city in which according to the Bible the young David took refuge from King Saul. Ziklag is mentioned in the Bible multiple times in relationship to David, who the Bible states received sanctuary in the city along with his army, with the permission of Achish, King of Gat. The site is also believed to be the place from which David left to journey to Hebron, where he was anointed...

Scientists discovered a strange, tall, humanoid wooden figure under four meters of peat in a Russian bog. The figure, dubbed the Shirgir Idol (after the bog where it was found), is more than twice as old as the Egyptian pyramids. Gold miners stumbled upon pieces of the wooden figure in 1894. 100 years later, radiocarbon dating helped researchers trace the sculpture back some 9,900 years, which made it the oldest monumental sculpture in the world. The most recent analysis of the idol, published in Antiquity journal, pegged the figure at about 11,500 years old.

In 1894, gold prospectors near the city of Yekaterinburg in Russia unearthed not gold, but wood, and a very special wood at that. Specifically, they unearthed what's now known as the Shigir Idol, a 5-meter (16-foot) carved wooden statue that was marked with recognizable human faces and hands, as well as several intricate markings. The statue was believed to be merely a few thousand years old, and it simply sat on display at a Russian Museum for many years. In 1990s, researchers conducted a radiocarbon analysis of the statues to finally determine how old it really is, and turned up...

　 Beaver's teeth 'used to carve the oldest wooden statue in the world' By The Siberian Times reporter 15 June 2017 Dating back 11,000 years - with a coded message left by ancient man from the Mesolithic Age - the Shigir Idol is almost three times as old as the Egyptian pyramids. Two years ago German scientists dated the Idol as being 11,000 years old. Picture: The Siberian Times New scientific findings suggest that images and hieroglyphics on the wooden statue were carved with the jaw of a beaver, its teeth intact. Originally dug out of a peat bog by...

<p>'A mysterious wooden idol found in a Russian peat bog has been dated to 11,000 years ago - and contains a code no one can decipher.</p> <p>The Shigir Idol is twice as old as the Pyramids and Stonehenge - and is by far the oldest wooden structure in the world.</p>

A stunning wooden statue pulled from a Russian peat bog 125 years ago has been dated as being 11,000 years old after 'sensational' new analysis. This means the remarkable Shigir Idol, which is covered in ‘encrypted code’ and may be a message from ancient man, is by far the oldest wooden sculpture in the world. Previous dating attempts claimed it was made 9,500 years ago. ... The idol was originally dug out of a peat bog in the Ural Mountains in 1890. 'The first attempt to date the idol was made 107 years after its discovery, in 1997. The first...