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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.

Tulane University researchers Marcello Canuto and Francisco Estrada-Belli are part of a team of researchers who uncovered ancient cities in northern Guatemala through the use of jungle-penetrating LiDAR (light detection and ranging) technology. Credit: American Association for the Advancement of Science ======================================================================== Tulane University researchers, documenting the discovery of dozens of ancient cities in northern Guatemala through the use of jungle-penetrating Lidar (light detection and ranging) technology, have published their results in the prestigious journal Science. The article includes the work of Marcello Canuto, director of the Middle American Research Institute at Tulane, and Francisco Estrada-Belli, a research assistant professor...

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian archaeologists draining water from a temple in the southern city of Aswan have uncovered a sandstone sphinx likely dating to the Ptolemaic era, the antiquities ministry said on Sunday.

Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered a village with remains that predate the pharaohs by around 2,000 years. Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities said that the Neolithic site was discovered in Tell el-Samara, about 87 miles north of Cairo. Chief archaeologist Frederic Gio said his team found silos containing animal bones and food, indicating human habitation as early as 5,000 B.C. Pottery and stone tools were also found. The pharaonic era began around 3,000 B.C. and the Giza pyramids were built 500 years later. The village is one of the oldest found in the Nile Delta, according to a Facebook post by...

New research published today in the journal Science Advances overturns more than a century of thought about the source of turquoise used by ancient civilizations in Mesoamerica, the vast region that extends from Central Mexico to Central America. For more than 150 years, scholars have argued that the Aztec and Mixtec civilizations, which revered the precious, blue-green mineral, acquired it through import from the American Southwest. However, extensive geochemical analyses reveal that the true geologic source of Aztec and Mixtec turquoise lies within Mesoamerica. Geochemist Alyson Thibodeau, assistant professor of earth sciences at Dickinson College, and a team of researchers...

Some of the most enigmatic human-made objects from Europe's late Stone Age — intricately carved balls of stone, each about the size of a baseball — continue to baffle archaeologists more than 200 years after they were first discovered. More than 500 of the enigmatic objects have now been found, most of them in northeast Scotland, but also in the Orkney Islands, England, Ireland and one in Norway. Archaeologists still don't know the original purpose or meaning of the Neolithic stone balls, which are recognized as some of the finest examples of Neolithic art found anywhere in the world. But...

This Monday, June 4, 2018 photo shows a detailed figurine of a king's head on display at the Israel Museum, dating to biblical times, and found last year near Israel's northern border with Lebanon, in Jerusalem. A palm-sized enigmatic sculpture of a king's head dating back nearly 3,000 years has set off a modern-day mystery caper as scholars try to figure out whose face it depicts. The 5-centimeter (2-inch) head is an exceedingly rare example of figurative art from the Holy Land during the 9th century BC, a period associated with biblical kings. (AP Photo/Ilan Ben Zion) _________________________________________________________________________ An enigmatic...

The final voyage of the President includes an account of a sea battle with pirates, a great storm and how the only two survivors were attacked by Cornishmen on the shore The final voyage of the President includes an account of a sea battle with pirates, a great storm and how the only two survivors were attacked by Cornishmen on the shore Enter your postcode to see news and information near you Community updates, Crime Statistics, Local News & Events and much more... Storm Brian batters Porthleven in Cornwall Divers have discovered cannons and an anchor thought to be from...

Sometimes the most extraordinary finds occur by sheer luck. At least that was the case of a fourth century B.C. chamber tomb that came to light five weeks ago during the construction of an aqueduct in a Rome suburb, when an earthmover accidentally opened a hole in the side of the chamber... The tomb contained the remains of four occupants -- three men and a woman -- and funerary wares. Archaeologists are calling it "the Tomb of the Athlete" because of the presence of two bronze strigils, the instrument used by ancient Greek and Roman athletes to scrape sweat from...

Credit: Mathieu Duval ========================================================================= First direct dating of an early human tooth confirms the antiquity of Homo antecessor, western Europe's oldest known human fossil species. A previous find from the unit TD6 of Atapuerca Gran Dolina archaeological site in northern Spain has yielded more information about our early human lineage. An international team of researchers from Australia, China, France and Spain has conducted the first direct dating study of a fossil tooth belonging to Homo antecessor (H. antecessor), the earliest known hominin species identified in Europe. The study shows that H. antecessor probably lived somewhere between 772 000 and 949...

18th century map of the Inner Austrian districts of Görz and Trieste created between 1789 and 1797. Credit: University of Bristol ====================================================================== A lost world in a former empire in Europe has been brought to life thanks to University of Bristol researchers who used artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to analyse 47,000 multilingual pages from newspapers dating back to 1873. The study, published in Historical Methods, aimed to discover whether historical changes could be detected from the collective content of local newspapers from the Princely County of Gorizia and Gradisca. The findings reveal a series of political and cultural events...

The body of a man buried in northern Italy 2,000 years ago shows signs that he died after being nailed to a wooden cross, the method used for the execution of Jesus described in the Christian Bible. Although crucifixion was a common form of capital punishment for criminals and slaves in ancient Roman times, the new finding is only the second time that direct archaeological evidence of it has been found. A new study of the skeletal remains of the man, found near Venice in 2007, reveals a lesion and unhealed fracture on one of the heel bones that suggests...

Aboriginal settlement in Australia was no accident but the result of large-scale migration by skilled maritime explorers, research shows. Experts have made the finding using wind and ocean current modelling, similar to that deployed in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The process was designed to simulate likely routes between the islands of Timor and Roti and more than 100 now-submerged islands off the Kimberley coast. “There’s always been a lot of speculation about how Aboriginal people made it to Australia and a lot of people have argued that people might have made it here by accident,” study...

Archaeologists have unearthed the final resting place of an ancient racehorse among the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii in Italy. The horse was discovered in Pompeii’s northern outskirts, beyond the walls of the Roman city. The stable where the horse belonged to a villa in Pompeii’s suburb of Civita Giuliana. Experts discovered the horse’s remains when they were investigating tunnels used by tomb raiders, according to a Facebook post.

I mention here that not long after the excavation many began to describe the Great Boat of Khufu as the black box to the construction of the pyramids, and that its contents would reveal all the information that would bring us in proximity to the solution of the great mystery. With this I am in complete agreement, if only because this strange water vehicle, or I should say construction machine, plays a central role in my own theory. While I quite understand if you are somewhat mystified, I beg of you to continue on this exciting road of discovery. Perhaps...

A lost city dating to the rule of King David from the Old Testament has been uncovered in Jerusalem. King David is an ancestor of Jesus, according to biblical sources, which say he ruled around BC 1,000. Experts say that recently-found ruins date to the 10th century BC. This ties in with the timeframe for when the bible says King David existed, making the link between the two 'plausible', researchers claim. The finding is likely to fuel the debate surrounding whether Biblical figures such as King David actually existed, however.

The only recorded palimpsest in which a Christian text has been effaced to make way for the Islamic holy text is to go on sale at Christie’s An “extraordinary” discovery by an eagle-eyed scholar has identified the shadowy outlines of passages from the Bible behind an eighth-century manuscript of the Qur’an – the only recorded palimpsest in which a Christian text has been effaced to make way for the Islamic holy text. French scholar Dr Eléonore Cellard was looking for images of a palimpsest page sold a decade earlier by Christie’s when she came across the auction house’s latest catalogue,...

Evidence for the largest single incident of mass child sacrifice in the Americas— and likely in world history—has been discovered on Peru's northern coast, archaeologists tell National Geographic. More than 140 children and 200 young llamas appear to have been ritually sacrificed in an event that took place some 550 years ago on a wind-swept bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, in the shadow of what was then the sprawling capital of the Chimú Empire. Scientific investigations by the international, interdisciplinary team, led by Gabriel Prieto of the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo and John Verano of Tulane University, are ongoing. The...

A priceless 16th-century casket containing the embalmed heart of a French queen consort has been found after it was snatched by thieves earlier this month. The theft of the 500g solid golden box containing Anne of Brittany's heart had fuelled fears the relic would be melted just for its weight in gold. The casket was taken along with other relics after robbers reportedly broke in through a window of the Thomas-Dobree museum in the western French city of Nantes. French police arrested two men who then led them to the buried haul on Saturday. Anne of Brittany was born in...

Fewer than 40 such eggs are held in public collections today (The Buffalo Museum of Science, BSNS Q 257) ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ hen humans first arrived on the island of Madagascar around 1500 years ago, they encountered an array of remarkable species that have since gone extinct: gorilla-sized lemurs, giant tortoises, tiny hippos and a huge, long-necked, flightless bird that lumbered through Madagascar’s forests and laid the largest eggs of any known vertebrate, including dinosaurs. The eggs of the Aepyornis, also known as the elephant bird, were a highly valuable food source for Madagascar’s human settlers. With a volume roughly equal to...