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Full headline: Treasure trove of skulls reveal missing link in human evolution: Facial bones suggest early Neanderthals used their teeth as a 'third hand' The 17 skulls belong to a single population of a fossil hominin species This is the biggest collection of human fossils ever found on one site They shed light on pre-human evolution from around 400,000 years ago Skulls showed Neanderthal features in face and teeth but not elsewhere These features evolved due to eating and perhaps for use as a 'third hand' Study adds to theories that the Neanderthals developed their characteristic looks slowly, and intermittently,...

Archaeologists have discovered one of the earliest Roman military camps in the Carnuntum on the Danube near Vienna. The discovery of the extensive military camp, that is believed to be the size of six football pitches, was done using a high tech radar machine that can detect objects deep into the ground. The camp was unearthed at the Archaeological Park Carnuntum, located in Lower Austria between Vienna and the Slovakian capital Bratislava. It was discovered near to the remains of an ancient village and researchers believe it is probably the earliest military camp at Carnuntum. The discovery follows that made...

Estonian researchers believe they may have finally discovered the whereabouts of “Dracula’s” grave, which is in Italy and not the Romanian Transylvanian Alps as first thought. The inspiration behind Bram Stoker’s 1897 gothic novel “Dracula” is thought to be Vlad III, the 15th century Prince of Wallachia in Eastern Europe. Known posthumously as Vlad the Impaler, the ruler was known for his brand of cruelty across Europe, which included impaling his enemies. Vlad’s ultimate enemy were the Ottomans. Depictions of his endless cruelty made history books, securing his reputation as one of the biggest villains in Turkey’s collective consciousness, as...

Something You Didn't Know About Louisiana (Ilenos, Canary Islands) Intersurf.com Gilbert C. Din/Sidney Villere ISLENOS, CANARY ISLANDS The archipelago of the Canaries consists of seven main islands, having a total area of less than 6 percent of the size of Louisiana, lying about sixty-five miles west of Morocco in Northern Africa. They were formed as a result of volcanic activity. It is a rugged, mountainous terrain, and plains are almost nonexistent. Lack of water is a serious problem. The westernmost islands receive the most rain, while the two islands closest to the Sahara Desert and lower in elevation have some...

The Western Caucasus, extending over 275,000 ha of the extreme western end of the Caucasus mountains and located 50 km north-east of the Black Sea, is one of the few large mountain areas of Europe that has not experienced significant human impact. Yet dotted within the pristine landscape are thousands of ancient megalithic structures built many millennia ago. Archaeologists do not know who built them, where the stones came from, or what their true purpose was, leading to much speculation in the scientific community.The Russians call the megalithic structures dolmens, which means ‘portal tomb’, but despite the name, there is...

Teams of archaeologists, students and volunteers will return this month to the site of ancient Jaffa on the central coast of Israel to pick up where they left off in 2013, when they uncovered more of the sensational evidence of a fiery destruction at the site's ancient Amarna period New Kingdom Egyptian fortress gate... ...one team will continue the excavations at the famous fourteenth century B.C. Egyptian fortress gate complex, where in 2013 they uncovered the stark remains of an extensive violent destruction. Excavations in 2012... excavators discovered a commemorative scarab of Amenhotep III dated to the mid-fourteenth century B.C.,...

Working at the Funerary Complex of Harwa and Akhimenru in the west bank of the ancient city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor) in Egypt, the team of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor (MAIL) found bodies covered with a thick layer of lime (historically used as a disinfectant). The researchers also found three kilns where the lime was produced, as well as a giant bonfire containing human remains, where many of the plague victims were incinerated. Pottery remains found in the kilns allowed researchers to date the grisly operation to the third century A.D., a time when a series of epidemics...

Archaeologists says they have discovered an "incredibly important" medieval convent, cemetery and Tudor mansion in Ceredigion. Archaeologists working on the Llanllyr nunnery excavation [Credit: BBC] The location of Llanllyr nunnery in the Aeron Valley had been a mystery until now. Dr Jemma Bezant from University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) said it offered an unparalleled opportunity to find out more about monastic life. The public were able to view the site on Saturday. Dr Bezant said: "Medieval nunneries like this are incredibly rare with only one other known in Wales." The convent, founded by Lord Rhys ap Gruffudd in...

Egypt's leading prosecutor for public funds cases has cleared world-renowned Egyptologist Zawi Hawass on charges of wasting public money and illicit gains. Hawass, who served as antiquities minister under ousted president Hosni Mubarak, was also accused by former colleagues of neglecting Egypt's heritage sites and sending unique artefacts abroad, such as two Tutankhamun exhibitions in 2008. Further complaints alleged that Hawass was guilty of illicit gains through his clothing line, which features photos of himself and Egyptian artefacts. However, after two years of investigations into the complaints, Ahmed El-Bahrawi, First Attorney-General for Public Funds Prosecution, decided on Tuesday to dismiss...

Tomb number TT 209 in Assasif area on Luxor's West Bank was rediscovered yesterday by Spanish excavators. Minister of Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim has explained the context behind a tomb recently rediscovered in Luxor by a Spanish archaeological mission. The tomb was first discovered in 1904 by Sir Robert Mond, but Mond didn’t describe the tomb's architectural style or identify its occupant. The tomb was then abandoned and became buried beneath the sands. Egyptologists looked for it subsequently, but their efforts failed. "It is a very mysterious tomb," asserted Ibrahim, adding that the name of the tomb had changed several times...

A suspected Iron Age road, made of timber and preserved in peat for 2,000 years, has been uncovered by archaeologists in East Anglia. The site, excavated in June, may have been part of a route across the River Waveney and surrounding wetland at Geldeston in Norfolk, say experts. Causeways were first found in the area in 2006, during flood defence work at the nearby Suffolk village of Beccles. It is thought the road is pre-Roman, built by the local Iceni tribe. In AD60, the Iceni ambushed one Roman legion and sacked Roman settlements at London and Colchester before being defeated.

Britain's longest road, built almost a century ago, may actually have been used for 10,000 years. Archaeologists were stunned to discover evidence of a Mesolithic settlement alongside the A1, which stretches 410 miles from London to Edinburgh. The site, near Catterick in North Yorkshire, is believed to have been used by people travelling north and south as an overnight shelter, similar to today’s motorway service stations. Items discovered at the settlement include flint tools that date back to between 6000 and 8000 BC. Archaeologist Steve Sherlock said: “This was a place that people knew of – a place they could...

Tour operators in Egypt have this week held a conference to urge Italian tourists to return, after instability in the country prompted a crisis in the travel industry following the 2011 ousting of dictator Hosni Mubarak. Around 700 tour operators gathered this week at the ‘United for Egypt’ conference held at the Port Ghalib resort, La Stampa reported. Organizers from both countries hoped the meeting would give a much-needed boost to tourism to Egypt, which has seen a dramatic fall-off in recent years. “In 2008 in Egypt there were 1,073,159 Italian travellers. That number literally collapsed and in 2013 local...

According to Ethnos, ancient love inscriptions dating back to the early 6th and the late 5th centuries B.C., were recently discovered in Astypalea. Spirals, shapes of ships, tools in triangular shapes were mostly drawn by the Neolithic inhabitants of Astypalea. One of the first findings of the Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology, Andreas Vlachopoulos, was rock paintings located in Vathi at the Pirgos Peninsula and date back to 4th-3rd millennium B.C. In 2013, more unexpected findings were discovered, which present an aspect of privacy of the ancient Greek inhabitants in the early 6th and late 5th centuries B.C. The Secretary General...

On Monday, Minister of Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim said that the Spanish archaeological mission discovered a tomb of a senior statesman from ancient Egypt's eleventh dynasty in the Zeraa Abul Naga district of Luxor. Ibrahim added that the tomb consists of a well-carved square burial chamber. He said that the discovery was made while exploring one of three wells that date back to the seventeenth dynasty. Ali al-Asfar, head of the Egyptian Antiquities Department, said the tomb could have been used as a cache as it contained a large number of human relics. Also, tools and pottery, dating back to the...

Dozens of cremation graves dating to around 400 AD; the start of the Great Migration period, are being studied at Łężany, northeastern Poland, by a team from the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw... The burial ground was discovered accidentally in Autumn 2012 during forestry work with the initial excavations starting last year. The necropolis consisted of single graves with exclusively cremated human remains, the ashes were interred directly in the ground in either shallow scoops or in earthenware burial urns. Archaeologists have also located small clusters of human bones deposited in pure sand... Uniquely for this region four cicada...

Archaeologists from TVAS have unearthed the grave of a warrior who died at around the time of Caesar's Gallic Wars, in the 50s BC... The Iron Age people of this area were in essence pro-Roman, and the Emperor Claudius, a century later, launched an invasion, initially, to restore the local king Verica to his throne. Our deceased does not seem rich enough to have been a king, but his weaponry, and likely date of death, suggest he may have been one of the mercenaries Caesar claims were accustomed to fight for the Gauls against him, which he used as one...

Elephant Butte is a small city in New Mexico that calls itself the “Diamond in the Desert.” As KRQE News 13 reports, it was in this scenic location that a group of friends celebrating a bachelor party made an astonishing find – a giant fossil of the tusk and skull of what’s believed to be a Stegomastodon. According to the University of Nebraska State Museum, Stegomastodons were, “the last surviving member of a lineage of primitive tuskers called ‘gomphotheres’ which first entered North America 15 million years ago.”

Well-preserved specimen pushes back the timing of modern horse evolution. A group of Przewalski's horses, once considered extinct in the wild. Photograph by Michael Nichols, National Geographic Photograph courtesy D.G. Froese via Nature DNA shines a light back into the past, showing us things that fossils can't. But how far back can that light extend? Some of the oldest DNA sequences come from mastodon and polar bear fossils about 50,000 and 110,000 years old, respectively. But a new study published online today in the journal Nature reports the latest in the push for recovering ever more ancient DNA sequences. Samples...

(Phys.org) —A team of researchers working in the ancient Yanghai graveyard in China's Tarim Basin has uncovered what appears to be the earliest example of trouser wearing. The research team has published a paper in the journal Quaternary International describing the pants and why they were likely developed to assist with riding horses. The Tarim Basin in western China is host to the famous Yanghai tombs, a large ancient burial ground that dates back thousands of years—thus far over 500 individual gravesites have been excavated. In this latest find, two adult males (believed to be herders and warriors) both approximately...