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BOFFINS have discovered the ruins of a 3,000-year old castle underwater – and believe they have finally found what they’ve been looking for. Archaeologists who have been searching Lake Van – the second largest lake in Turkey – for decades have discovered what they believe is a lost city. The castle is thought to be an Iron Age relic of the Urartu civilisation – also called the Kingdom of Van – which lived in the area from the 6th to the 9th century BC. The remarkable discovery was made by archaeologists from the Van Yüzüncü Yıl University and a team...

Baked clay tablets from ancient Assyria, dating back as much as 4,000 years, could reveal the locations of 11 'lost cities' in modern-day Turkey. Harvard researchers analysed tablets found in the ancient city of Kanesh, the 12,000 cuneiform trade records include business transactions, accounts, seals and contracts. The researchers used mathematical models based on the price of goods and how frequently goods travelled between trade hubs to track down the locations of the ancient cities. Researchers reconstructed an economic network of trade goods such as wool, wine and precious metals across the Anatolian plateau in the 19th Century BC. The...

One of the most revered relics in the ancient Buddhist world was the Buddha’s begging bowl. A rough outline of its long convoluted history is this – it was supposedly given to the people of Vesali by the Buddha when he passed through the city on his way to Kusinara. In the 1st/2nd century King Kanishka took it to Pushapura, now Peshawar, where a string of Chinese pilgrims reported seeing it between the 3rd and the 9th centuries. The importance of the bowl is attested by numerous depictions of it in Gandhara art, usually shown on the pedestal of Buddha...

SNIP Lowe tells Entertainment Weekly the encounter took place in the Ozark Mountains, which stretch through Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. Lowe says he and his sons were camping there to investigate a bigfoot-like creature known to locals as a “wood ape” during a shoot for “The Lowe Files” when something began to approach their camp. Lowe says he was lying on the ground thinking he was going to be killed. SNIP

(Odds are, a little elbow grease and some lube will get those STENs up and running again.) A couple remodeling an old home in north-central France found a cache of ammo, grenades and submachine guns hidden under a granite floor, The Lyonne Republicaine reported. The find was made in July by the couple in the Quarré-les-Tombes area, about 150 miles away from Paris. Cached under the floor were three STEN guns, over a dozen Britsh Mills bomb type fragmentation grenades, three handguns, more than 1,000 rounds of ammo, and several Bren light machine gun magazines. Two of the sub...

It is one of the oldest fragrances in the world. Nicolas Baldovini's team at the Institut de chimie de Nice (CNRS/UNS) has just discovered the components that give frankincense its distinctive odor: two molecules found for the first time in nature, named "olibanic acids" by the scientists. Their research results have just been published online, on the website of the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition. It is mentioned more than twenty times in the Bible, where it is one of the gifts offered by the Three Wise Men. Frankincense (also called olibanum1), one of the world's oldest fragrances, is a...

A new History series invites top detectives and coders to resolve the gruesome almost 50-year-old mystery."The Zodiac Killer is the most notorious unsolved murder cases in the history of the United States," retired Detective Supervisor in Criminal/Gang Homicide Division of LAPD Sal LaBarbera tells us. Sal along with Ken Marine Corp vet and cold case specialist Kenneth Mains and a team of computer code crackers are determined to solve this serial killer mystery in History’s brand-new series, The Zodiac Killer: Case Close? [Read more: The best shows on BT TV this month] Here's all you need to know about the...

After the hammer went down on the staggering Leonardo da Vinci sale Wednesday night — $450.3 million dollars for a painting of disputed quality — it was difficult for the auctioneer and potential bidders to turn their attention to the other lots. “The air sucked out of the room after that,” said Paul Gray, a partner at Richard Gray Gallery. “It was kind of hard to move on.” And even into the next day, the art world continued to grapple with what seemed like a new landscape, with auction traditions upended and the ceiling suddenly limitless. Would this sale push...

You can’t put a price on beauty; you can put a price on a name. When the National Gallery in London exhibited a painting of Christ in 2011 as a heretofore lost work by Leonardo da Vinci, the surprise in art historical circles was exceeded only by the salivating of dealers and auctioneers. The painting, “Salvator Mundi,” is the only Leonardo in private hands, and was brought to market by the family trust of Dmitry E. Rybolovlev, the Russian billionaire entangled in an epic multinational lawsuit with his former dealer, Yves Bouvier. On Wednesday night, at Christie’s postwar and contemporary...

It looks like a North Carolina man is holding a priceless piece of New Mexico history. Experts have verified a tintype picture bought for just dollars is that of Billy the Kid and the man who killed him, Sheriff Pat Garrett. It’s a find that could be worth millions. A cool old picture of five men in the Old West went up for sale at a flea market in Ashville, North Carolina in 2011. It caught the attention of history buff Frank Abrams, who decided to spend the $10 to buy it. The picture sat up on a wall as...

An "exceptional and rare" medieval treasure trove including more than 2,200 gold and silver coins has been found in France in what has been called a "remarkable" discovery by archaeologists. It's the kind of discovery archaeologists dream of. While investigating an area next to the former Benedictine monastery Cluny Abbey in eastern France, a research group came across a pile of medieval treasure. Photo: Alexis Grattier/University of Lyon II "It's an exceptional and extremely rare treasure," said Anne Flamman from France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). "We understood straight away that it was a unique discovery and I...

Good thing Steve Martin came along before it was a thought crime to have a sense of humor: Comedian Steve Martin’s rendition of “King Tut” is triggering social justice warriors at Reed College because they see it as a form of cultural appropriation. For moonbattery at its most Jacobinic, there is no better place to look than a college located in Portland, Oregon. The song, originally performed on “Saturday Night Live,” actually criticizes the commercialization and trivialization of Egyptian history and presents a caricature of the Treasures of Tutankhamun traveling exhibit that toured seven United States cities from 1976 to...

Today is the anniversary of the birth of James A(bram) Garfield (1831-1881), 20th President of these United States, in Moreland Hills, Ohio. Born to a widowed farm wife, Garfield worked at a series of menial jobs but eventually attended Williams College, graduating in 1856. He entered politics as a Republican and served in the Ohio State Senate until the outbreak of the Civil War, in which he saw combat as a Union major general. In 1862 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served in that body until 1880, after 1876 as Republican Leader of the House....

Shuwaymis is an area about 370 km southwest of the city of Ha’il, near the town of al-Ha’it, in southern Ha’il province. The petroglyphs were known by local Bedouin for centuries, but only drawn to the attention of authorities by a local school headmaster, Mamdouh al Rasheedi, in 2001. Professor Saad Abdul Aziz al-Rashid, calls Shuwaymis “a unique and very important find.” The setting differs significantly from Jubbah in being surrounded by striking lava flows that impede travel, especially by camels and horses. Wadis are therefore important avenues for herders, and it is in these valleys that Neolithic and later...

A prehistoric lion cub has been found in permafrost on the bank of Tirekhtykh River of the Abyisky district of Yakutia by local resident Boris Berezhnov. The young beast's head was resting on a paw in frozen ground for up to 50,000 years, as shown in these amazing first pictures. The preservation is so good that it raises hopes of cloning the species back to life, he said. The discovery is seen as better preserved than two tiny cave lion cubs found in the same Siberian region in 2015.

This past Oct. 29, Iranians marked the international day of Cyrus the Great, the ancient ruler of the Persian empire whose legacy is credited with forging the Iranian national identity. King Cyrus II is held in great regard in Iran for creating the largest empire of civilized nations then known in the world, around 600 years before Christ. King Cyrus was not only a master military strategist, he differed from other conquerors of the time in his tolerance of the customs and cultures of those who came under his rule. He was the author of the world’s first human rights...

Archaeologists have discovered an 'exceptional' treasure trove of precious objects at the Abbey of Cluny, a former Benedictine monastery in France's Saône-et-Loire More than 2,000 objects have been found, including silver deniers - or pennies - Islamic gold coins, a signet ring and several gold items. The discovery is the first time that gold coins from the Arab lands, silver French deniers and a signet ring have ever been found together in a single, enclosed complex. Researchers from the Universite Lumiere Lyon discovered the items as part of an archaeological dig at the Abbey of Cluny, which started in 2015....

A painting by Italian Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci that depicts Jesus Christ holding an orb sold for a world record $450.3 million at Christie’s auction house in New York Wednesday night. The painting, called "Salvator Mundi," Italian for "Savior of the World," is one of fewer than 20 paintings by Leonardo known to exist and the only one in private hands. The buyer was not immediately identified. The highest price ever paid for a work of art at auction had been $179.4 million, for Picasso's "Women of Algiers (Version O)" in May 2015....

Archaeologists in Boston have unearthed surprising luxury items from the 17th century, shedding new light on the lives of Puritans in the city. Items found include an extravagant fragment of 17th-century Venetian glassware and part of an Italian plate decorated with a flower that dates from around 1630, which may be the oldest piece of European ceramic ever found in Boston. “The items are significant because we rarely see them, archaeologically,” Joe Bagley, city archaeologist for Boston’s Landmarks Commission, told Fox News via email. “Also, Puritan Boston is often seen as an extremely conservative, reserved, and religious location in the...

Human remains buried by a pair of monks in China over a millennia ago are claimed to belong to Buddha. Believers say the 2,000 pieces of cremated bones belonged to Siddhartha Gautama, whose teachings became the foundations of the Buddhist religion. The cremated bones were found in an ceramic box with an inscription claiming they belong to Buddha, who is believed to have died 2,500 years ago. The box was found in Jingchuan County, China, alongside more than 260 Buddhist statues.