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Archaeologists have confirmed the presence of a long-lost Roman military camp deep in eastern Germany. The 18-hectare site, found near the town of Hachelbich in Thuringia, would have sheltered a Roman legion of up to 5000 troops. Its location in a broad valley with few impediments suggests it was a stopover on the way to invade territory further east... The Hachelbich site, along with a battlefield near Hannover uncovered in 2008, show... that the Romans were willing to cross their frontier when it suited their political or military needs. The encampment was discovered in 2010, during routine excavations as part...

Artifacts included a battle axe, a knife, and a bronze buckle, all associated with burned human bones, initially thought to be dated to around 1000 - 1200 CE before analysis. Similar objects have been discovered in the Baltic Sea area and in Ladoga Karelia. Identical cape buckles have also been found in Gotland. But based on the University of Helsinki analysis, the cremation grave finds date to a time that is significantly earlier -- during the Viking Age between 775-980 CE, based on their application of AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) techniques... ...in the area between the towns of Loviisa and...

Archaeologists have found more than 600 relics from a huge battle between a Roman army and Barbarians in the third century, long after historians believed Rome had given up control of northern Germany. "We have to write our history books new, because what we thought was that the activities of the Romans ended at nine or 10 (years) after Christ," said Lutz Stratmann, science minister for the German state of Lower Saxony. "Now we know that it must be 200 or 250 after that." For weeks, archeologist Petra Loenne and her team have been searching this area with metal detectors,...

Until only two years ago, northern Germany was believed to have been a no-go area for Roman troops after three legions were wiped out by German tribesmen in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9. The revelation that two centuries later a Roman force mounted a punitive raid deep inside the tribal areas in AD 235 has changed all that, suggesting that a soldier-emperor, Maximinus Thrax, seriously attempted to subjugate the north of Germany. The debris from the battle is scattered over a wooded hill, the Harzhorn. An archeological dig there this summer turned up 1,800 artefacts. A...

WIESBADEN, Germany — A team of archaeology students and experts believe they have unearthed remnants of a Roman settlement from the second or third century near the construction site of an Army housing project, but the discovery isn’t expected to affect the project. The team, from nearby Mainz University, discovered a Roman coin, pieces of pottery, roof tiles, decorated bricks and 23 pieces of raw lead. The students also believe they have found the wall outlines of a building. "We think it’s from the first to third century after Christ," said Dr. Guntram Schwitalla, a district archaeologist in Hessen. "If...

Hessian Science Minister Eva Kühne-Hörmann on Thursday presented fragments of a 2,000-year-old bronze equestrian statue of Roman Emperor Augustus found recently in a stream near Giessen. "The find has meaning beyond Hesse and the north Alpine region due to its quality and provenance," Kühne-Hörmann said during the presentation with state archaeologist Dr. Egon Schallmayer and Director of the Roman-German Commission Dr. Friedrich Lüth. "We've rediscovered the remnants of early European history. The unique horse head is a witness to the broken dream of the Romans to create a united Europe under their rule," she added. On August 12, archaeologists pulled...

FRANKFURT - Scientists say a Roman horse head made from bronze and plated in gold has been discovered at an archaeological site in Germany. Hesse state archaeologist Egon Schallmeyer says the head is part of a horse and rider statue and "qualitatively one of the best (pieces) created at that time."

Archaeologists have discovered a Roman cemetery from about 300 A.D. in suburban Copenhagen with about 30 graves, a newspaper reported Wednesday. "It is something special and rare in Denmark to have so many (ancient Roman) graves in one place," archaeologist Rune Iversen was quoted as saying by the Roskilde Dagblad newspaper. The graveyard's exact location in Ishoej, southwest of downtown Copenhagen, was being kept secret until the archaeologists from the nearby Kroppedal Museum have completed their work, the newspaper wrote... Archaeologists found necklaces and other personal belongings, as well as ceramics for containing food. "It shows that we're dealing with...

9 March 2007 Crystal amulet poses question on early Christianity An overlooked crystal amulet in the National Museum suggests new understandings about Christianity's origins in Denmark King Harold Bluetooth brought Christianity to Denmark roughly 1100 years ago. At least that's what he declared on the Jelling Stone located in Jutland: 'King Haraldr ordered this monument made in memory of Gormr, his father, and in memory of Thyrvé, his mother; that Haraldr who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.' A tiny crystal amulet in the National Museum's archives suggests something quite different though, that...

Gibbon on global warming Yale University Professor Charles Hill is one of the Yale faculty's notable polymaths. Before joining the Yale faculty as diplomat in residence and lecturer in international politics, he seems to have been everywhere and done everything. His former student Molly Worthen titled her biography of Professor Hill The Man On Whom Nothing Was Lost (a book we wrote about here, here and here). Yesterday's Wall Street Journal carried a letter to the editor by Professor Hill responding to a Journal editorial on global warming hokum: "The fact that the earth's climate changes in cycles from warm...

This fifth or sixth century A.D. statue of the Buddha from northern India was found in a Viking treasure horde on the Swedish island of Helgö. Globalization is clearly not a recent phenomenon... [F]ew people got around as much as the Vikings. From their Scandinavian coves they visited, raided, traded with and settled in lands from Newfoundland to Baghdad. They conquered Britain, terrorized Ireland and France, settled Iceland, raided Spain and ranged throughout the Mediterranean basin. They established a major presence in Russia, the Ukraine and the Crimea, sending their longboats down the Volga into the Black Sea. They raided...

In the course of an educational dig in Gernsheim in the Hessian Ried, archaeologists from Frankfurt University have discovered a long lost Roman fort: A troop unit made up out of approximately 500 soldiers (known as a cohort) was stationed there between 70/80 and 110/120 AD. Over the past weeks, the archaeologists found two V-shaped ditches, typical of this type of fort, and the post holes of a wooden defensive tower as well as other evidence from the time after the fort was abandoned. An unusually large number of finds were made. This is because the Roman troops dismantled the...

Aerial Image of the foundation of a Roman stone building. Length of the leveling staff (White) at the upper edge of the Picture: 5 meters. Credit: Dennis Braks ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- During their first Gernsheim dig last year, Frankfurt University archaeologists suspected that a small Roman settlement must have also existed here in the Hessian Ried. Now they have discovered clear relics of a Roman village, built in part on the foundations of the fort after the soldiers left. This probably occurred around 120 AD. At the time the cohort (about 500 soldiers) was transferred from the Rhine to the Limes, and...

These are times not to tarry in the winds of fear but to concentrate now completely on the harvesting of souls for the gifts shall follow and be enacted with this movement( I see a Pendulum) for it is the heartbeat( Mercy /|\ Grace)and The "T"estimony of My Son. You see you are more than able bodied fishermen and greater than just an apostolic order for I created you bigger,wider,deeper and for greater things than these for My hand is upon you heavy now in these last hours and the fields are not only ripe but must be taken in...

It has been fourteen years since Muslim terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the religion of Islam was made visible to the American public. At the time, there were already many small and medium-size Muslim-only enclaves in many major western European cities – places where if a non-Muslim entered, he would most likely not return. The Internet was still young and far from ubiquitous. YouTube did not exist. Neither did Facebook or Twitter. Cell phone video was still a few years off, which is why we have so little footage of the actual events of that morning. Considering the...

On this anniversary of 9/11 I call to mind a post about the “Islamic Cultural Center” to be build near the site of the World Trade Center, but which was really a rabat, The first rabat appeared at the time of the Prophet.The Prophet imposed his rule on parts of Arabia through a series of ghazvas, or razzias (the origin of the English word “raid”). The ghazva was designed to terrorize the infidels, convince them that their civilization was doomed and force them to submit to Islamic rule. Those who participated in the ghazva were known as the ghazis, or...

Edit: nature abhors a vacuum. If Catholics scorn proselytism, the Muslims don't. (Rome) Two women covered from head to toe, and three young bearded men. They defy the hot midday heat and the sultry air. For a good quarter of an hour they posed for pictures against the backdrop of magnificent facade of St. Peter's Basilica and the mighty dome of St. Peter. An Islamic family, who, like thousands of tourists every day mad a commemorative photo, on vacation. It's an increasingly frequent image that one gets to see in Rome at St. Peter's Square. An image that was completely...

Cairo (AFP) - Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris has offered to buy an island off Greece or Italy and develop it to help hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from Syria and other conflicts. "...I'll...host the migrants and provide jobs for them building their new country," he wrote...he said:..."You have dozens of islands which are deserted and could accommodate hundreds of thousands of refugees."...the "main thing is investment in infrastructure"..."And if things improve, whoever wants to go back (to their homeland) goes back," said Sawiris,...

ROME (RNS) The Vatican has given its backing to a central Rome square being named after Martin Luther, a church reformer excommunicated by the pope nearly 500 years ago. A German Catholic priest and theologian, Luther was a key figure in the Protestant Reformation and sparked considerable controversy by challenging the authority of the Catholic Church. He denounced the corruption he saw among clergy in Rome and believed salvation came through faith alone — views that did not sit well with Pope Leo X. Luther was excommunicated in 1521 and was never allowed to return to the Catholic Church, but...

The current St. PeterÂ’s Basilica is one of the most beautiful churches in the whole world. With parts of it designed by such greats as Michelangelo and Bernini, it was was built over a 120 year period in the 16th and 17th centuries and remains the largest church in the world.But it was not the first St. PeterÂ’s Basilica.Before the current St. PeterÂ’s Basilica there was another church in roughly the same location with the same name, now often referred to as the Old St. PeterÂ’s Basilica.Here is a 19th century drawing of how the old basilica is believed to...