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Three Teutonic battle axes from the late Middle Ages have been found by engineers who remove World War II artillery shells left the forests in the Forest District Wipsowo (Warmia and Mazury). Historic weapons will be donated to the museum. Engineers stumbled upon the historic axes by chance, while searching the woods metal detectors. The weapons have been initially identified by an archaeologist as late-medieval Teutonic battle axes. Iron axes were close to each other, shallow underground, among the roots of trees. "It can be assumed that this is a deposit that someone left for better times. Perhaps the person...

More than 3,300 years ago, in a newly built city in Egypt, a woman with an incredibly elaborate hairstyle of lengthy hair extensions was laid to rest. She was not mummified, her body simply being wrapped in a mat. When archaeologists uncovered her remains they found she wore "a very complex coiffure with approximately 70 extensions fastened in different layers and heights on the head," writes Jolanda Bos, an archaeologist working on the Amarna Project, in an article recently published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. Researchers don't know her name, age or occupation, but she is one of hundreds...

Underwater excavations led by Ankara UniversityÂ’s Research Center for Maritime Archaeology (ANKÃœSAM) have uncovered sunken ships ranging from the second century B.C. to the Ottoman period in Ä°zmirÂ’s Urla district. A recent excavation uncovered a ship estimated to date back 4,000 years, which experts say would make it the oldest sunken ship to have been discovered in the Mediterranean. Urla Port is one of TurkeyÂ’s rare underwater excavation sites. Professor Hayat Erkanal, the head of Limantepe excavations for the underwater ancient city of Klozemenai and director of ANKÃœSAM, said the port dates back to the seventh century B.C. Klozemenai, he...

...The tiny artifact could attest to the fabled military campaign that Sheshonq I waged in the region nearly 3,000 years ago, researchers say... The site, which was discovered during excavations in 2002, was home to intense metal production during the Early Bronze Age, between about 3000 B.C. and 2000 B.C. But there is also evidence of more recent smelting activities at Khirbat Hamra Ifdan during the Iron Age, from about 1000 B.C. to 900 B.C. The hieroglyphic sequence on the scarab reads: "bright is the manifestation of Re, chosen of Amun/Re." That moniker corresponds to the throne name of Sheshonq...

The massive circular structure appears to be an archaeologist's dream: a recently discovered antiquity that could reveal secrets of ancient life in the Middle East and is just waiting to be excavated. It's thousands of years old -- a conical, manmade behemoth weighing hundreds of tons, practically begging to be explored. The problem is -- it's at the bottom of the biblical Sea of Galilee. For now, at least, Israeli researchers are left stranded on dry land, wondering what finds lurk below. The monumental structure, made of boulders and stones with a diameter of 230 feet, emerged from a routine...

According to China.org.cn, the tomb complex covers an area measuring 173,325 square metres, stretching 550m in length and 310 meters in width, and is the second largest tomb to have ever been discovered in the country... Qin Shi Huang (260-210BC) was the first emperor to unify China and enact major economic and political reforms across the country. China had previously consisted of a multitude of warring states and kingdoms, each under the control of feudal overlords, leading to much instability... After the death of Qin Shi Huang's father, he took the throne at the age of 13. His mother took...

While Francis Scott Key's song was known to most Americans by the end of the Civil War, the flag that inspired it remained an Armistead family keepsake. It was exhibited occasionally at patriotic gatherings in Baltimore but largely unknown outside of that city until the 1870s. The flag remained the private property of Lieutenant Colonel Armistead's widow, Louisa Armistead, his daughter Georgiana Armistead Appleton, and his grandson Eben Appleton for 90 years. During that time, the increasing popularity of Key's anthem and the American public's developing sense of national heritage transformed the Star-Spangled Banner from a family keepsake into a...

<p>"Archaeologists in Israel have discovered a massive compound dating back to the Byzantine era, which was used for “industrial-scale” production of wine and olive oil.</p> <p>The site at Ramat Bet Shemesh about 19 miles west of Jerusalem contains an oil press, wine press and colorful mosaics, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority.</p>

An Israeli museum on Thursday unveiled what it says in the oldest known Jewish prayer book in the world, dating back to the 9th century A.D. The prayer book, about 10 centimeters (four inches) long and seven centimeters wide, is written in Hebrew, contains about 50 pages, and is still in its original binding. It was donated to the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem by Oklahoma businessman Steve Green, a devout Christian and owner of one of the largest collections of rare biblical artifacts in the world. Green’s family controls the Hobby Lobby crafts store chain, which won a closely-watched...

Nutrition and health in agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers 22. April 2009, 2:21 UhrLow-carb diets, Paleolithic diet, Paleopathologymreades139 comments 87 When I wrote the Overcoming the Curse of the Mummies chapter in Protein Power, I wrote mainly about the evidence of disease found in the mummies of ancient Egyptians and correlated this disease with their high-carbohydrate diet.  Along with all the material on mummies, which is the part everyone seems to remember, I wrote about a study done in the United States in the 1970s that persuasively demonstrated the superiority of the hunter diet as compared to an agricultural diet, which no...

In 1491, German cartographer Henricus Martellus created a map of the world that would help Christopher Columbus navigate the Atlantic. Today, the map holds secrets about what Europeans in the 15th Century knew about geography. But unfortunately much of its historic text has faded. But now a team of researchers in the US is using a technique called multispectral imaging to uncover the hidden information that Columbus had at his fingertips. In 1491, cartographer Henricus Martellus created a map of the world that would help Christopher Columbus navigate the Atlantic. Today, it holds secrets into what 15th Century Europeans knew...

The modern European gene pool was formed when three ancient populations mixed with one another within the last 7,000 years, Nature journal reports. Blue-eyed, swarthy hunters mingled with brown-eyed, pale skinned farmers as the latter swept into Europe from the Near East. But another, mysterious population with Siberian affinities also contributed to the genetic landscape of the continent. The findings are based analysis of the genomes of nine ancient Europeans.

A structure once believed to form part of an ancient town is identified as a 5,000 year old monument believed to have been used to honour the Mesopotamian moon god 'Sin' A stone monument in the shape of a crescent moon found in northern Israel is more than 5,000 years old, archaeologists have said. The structure, known as Rujum en-Nabi Shua'ayb or Jethro Cairn, is located near the Sea of Galilee and predates the construction of Stonehenge, the Great Pyramid in Egypt, as well as the writing of the Bible. It was initially discovered in the early part of the...

Sponge divers first discovered the 2,000-year-old shipwreck off the Greek island Antikythera in 1900. They recovered fragments of bronze statues, corroded marble sculptures, gold jewelry and, most famously, the Antikythera mechanism, a clocklike astronomical calculator sometimes called the world's oldest computer. Teams led by Jacques Cousteau pulled up more artifacts and even found human remains when they visited the wreck in the 1950s and 1970s. But none of those previous expeditions had access to the Exosuit, a one-of-a-kind diving outfit that weighs 530 lbs. (240 kilograms), and can plunge to the extraordinary depths of 1,000 feet (305 meters) and stay...

This map shows how Europe would look if every separatist movement was granted its dream of independence. With the Scottish referendum just days away, the issue of regions breaking away from their traditional rulers is looming large over the continent. The map features well-known separatist movements, such as the powerful and vocal Basque Nationalist movement in northern Spain and southwestern France, as well as the more obscure, such as the Savoyan League, which supports the independence of the Savoy region of France, which has a population of around 405,500.

The modern European gene pool was formed when three ancient populations mixed within the last 7,000 years, Nature journal reports. Blue-eyed, swarthy hunters mingled with brown-eyed, pale skinned farmers as the latter swept into Europe from the Near East. But another, mysterious population with Siberian affinities also contributed to the genetic landscape of the continent. The findings are based on analysis of genomes from nine ancient Europeans. Agriculture originated in the Near East - in modern Syria, Iraq and Israel - before expanding into Europe around 7,500 years ago. It really does look like the indigenous West European hunter gatherers...

The oldest human footprints ever found outside Africa, dated at between 850,000 and 950,000 years old, have been discovered on the storm-lashed beach at Happisburgh in Norfolk, one of the fastest eroding stretches of the British coast. Within a fortnight the sea tides that exposed the prints last May destroyed them, leaving only casts and 3D images made through photogrammetry – by stitching together hundreds of photographs – as evidence that a little group from a long-extinct early human species had passed that way. They walked through a startlingly different landscape from today’s, along the estuary of what may have...

ORIGINAL TITLE IN CHINESE: 关注性别失衡：艺术家创作女兵马俑(双语) When Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China, anticipated his death more than 2,000 years ago, he wanted an army of warriors to guard his mausoleum forever and protect him in the afterlife。 　　So he ordered the creation of some 8,000 terra-cotta soldiers, along with hundreds of terra-cotta horses and chariots, to be buried with him in his tomb. Historians speculate the soldiers were modeled after eight individuals. When the statues were discovered by workers digging a well in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, in 1974, the world was stunned by the spectacular funerary art...

The Parthenon represents, for many, a golden age in human achievement: the 5th-century b.c. Greek flowering of democracy, sciences, and the arts. But what if its chief ornament, the Parthenon frieze, turned out to be not an embodiment of reason and proportion—of stillness at the heart of motion, quiet piety, and enlightened civic responsibility—but (or, rather, also) something darker, more primitive: a representation of the critical moment in an ancient story of a king at war, a human sacrifice, and a goddess’s demand for virgin blood? That’s the argument at the heart of The Parthenon Engima. The plot involves not...

A hoard of Roman treasure believed to have been hidden from Boudicca in the first century has been discovered by archaeologists in Colchester. The collection, including fine gold and silver jewellery, had been buried for safekeeping during the early stages of Boudicca's Revolt, Colchester Archaeological Trust said. It represents the first hoard of precious metals ever found in Colchester town centre and is thought to have belonged to a wealthy Roman woman, who stashed the treasure under her house when she heard the vengeful queen's armies were approaching. The archaeologists said the hoard was found under the floor of a...