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When the experienced rock carving hunter Tormod Fjeld was driving his daughter Ada to a nearby location, the two of them decided to take a closer look beneath Kolsåstoppen, a hill in Bærum, Eastern Norway.That was when they found something remarkable: magnificent ships carved into the rock.Perhaps these carvings show people in Norway 3,000 years ago -- sitting in their ship, maybe even wearing helmets.They also spotted a large footprint of the sole of a foot, as well as a hand with five thick fingers.And then more ships appeared -- some carved upright, others upside down.

2007—Year of the Lapita? Volume 61 Number 1, January/February 2008 by Mark Rose Polynesian Breakthroughs A Polynesian chicken (Anita Gould) and a Chilean chicken bone (Courtesy Alice Storey) There was no doubt about including in our 2007 Top Ten the discovery that chicken bones from ancient Polynesian sites in Tonga and Samoa and El Arenal, a Chilean site occupied between A.D. 700 and 1390, had identical DNA. The chicken was domesticated in Southeast Asia, but how it arrived in the New World before Europeans arrived was a mystery. Now it seems that Polynesian seafarers brought them, adding to the evidence...

First Chickens in Americas Were Brought From Polynesia By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD Why did the chicken cross the Pacific Ocean? To get to the other side, in South America. How? By Polynesian canoes, which apparently arrived at least 100 years before Europeans settled the continent. That is the conclusion of an international research team, which reported yesterday that it had found “the first unequivocal evidence for a pre-European introduction of chickens to South America,” or presumably anywhere in the New World. The researchers said that bones buried on the South American coast were from chickens that lived between 1304 and...

Preparing a bowl of chicken soup for a loved one when they’re sick has been a common practice throughout the world for centuries. Today, generations from virtually every culture swear to the benefits of chicken soup. In the U.S., the dish is typically made with noodles, but different cultures prepare the soothing remedy their own way. Chicken soup as a therapy can be traced back to 60 A.D. and Pedanius Dioscorides, an army surgeon who served under the Roman emperor Nero, and whose five-volume medical encyclopedia was consulted by early healers for more than a millennium. But the origins of...

[Summary] Chickens outnumber all other species of birds by an order of magnitude and they are humanity's single largest source of animal protein. Yet for 2 centuries, biologists have struggled to explain how the chicken became the chicken. Now, the first extensive study of the bird's full genome concludes that people in northern Southeast Asia or southern China domesticated a colorful pheasant sometime after about 7500 B.C.E. People then carried the bird across Asia and on to every continent except Antarctica. The research team also found that the modern chicken's chief ancestor is a subspecies of red jungle fowl named...

For the Polynesian islands, that meant the arrival of agricultural crops like breadfruit, yams and taro, as well as domesticated animals like dogs, pigs and chicken. The early settlers also used slash-and-burn agriculture to remove forests and fertilize the soil and likely hunted many seabirds to extinction. To get a more precise view of how human behavior impacted the islands, Swift and her colleagues used stable isotope analysis. Carbon analysis is based on the way plants process carbon dioxide: most agricultural products are classified as C3 plants, while tropical grasses are usually C4 plants. If rat bones show a higher...

A Roman ship that sank about 2,200 years ago off the Adriatic coast... known as Ilovik–Paržine 1, was found in 2016 near the Croatian island of Ilovik. Archaeologists have examined the hull and cargo before, but recent work has focused on the material used to seal the ship's exterior -- substances meant to keep water out and protect the wood from damage...Most of the coating was made from pine-based pitch, produced by heating resin from conifer trees. In one case, the material included beeswax mixed with pitch. This combination would have made the coating more workable and slightly more flexible...

Spanish archaeologists have documented over 30 shipwrecks in the waters between the Rock of Gibraltar and the port of Algeciras.This discovery follows a three-year study titled Project Herakles. Led by the University of Cádiz, the team identified 151 archaeological sites and 134 total wrecks, according to The Guardian...The researchers worked with colleagues from the University of Granada to document 34 specific wrecks.These vessels represent a diverse array of eras and cultures:Punic era: One ship dating back to the fifth century B.C.Roman period: 23 Roman ships and two late Roman ships.Medieval period: Four vessels, including three that may clarify seafaring practices...

Over 17,000 years ago this original contingent crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia to Alaska and began peopling the New World. Fossil DNA shows an affinity between this migratory current and the populations of Siberia and northern China. Contrary to the traditional theory it had no link to Africa or Australasia. The new study also reveals that once they had settled in North America the descendants of this ancestral migratory flow diversified into two lineages some 16,000 years ago. The members of one lineage crossed the Isthmus of Panama and peopled South America in three distinct consecutive waves. The first...

The Lagoa Santa (or "Luzia") Group (Minas Gerais, Brasil) A skull belonging to a roughly 20 year old woman was unearthed in Brazil by the French archaeologist Annette Laming-Emperaire in the 1970s. She died before being able to do much work on her dicovery. Annette Laming-Emperaire at work in her Lapa Vermelha excavation. The skull was later re-discovered by Brazilian Prof. Walter Neves and analyzed. He also excavated more remains in the same cemetery-like site where the original "Luzia" had been found. Neves named the ancient lady "Luzia" in analogy to the famous and much older African "Lucy" - the...

A new study of the 37,000-year old remains of the "Deep Skull" - the oldest modern human discovered in island South-East Asia - has revealed this ancient person was not related to Indigenous Australians, as had been originally thought. The Deep Skull was also likely to have been an older woman, rather than a teenage boy. The research, led by UNSW Australia Associate Professor Darren Curnoe, represents the most detailed investigation of the ancient cranium specimen since it was found in Niah Cave in Sarawak in 1958. "Our analysis overturns long-held views about the early history of this region," says...

'First Americans were Australian' This is the face of the first known American, Lucia The first Americans were descended from Australian aborigines, according to evidence in a new BBC documentary. The skulls suggest faces like those of Australian aborigines The programme, Ancient Voices, shows that the dimensions of prehistoric skulls found in Brazil match those of the aboriginal peoples of Australia and Melanesia. Other evidence suggests that these first Americans were later massacred by invaders from Asia. Until now, native Americans were believed to have descended from Asian ancestors who arrived over a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska and...

The suggestion that the artists who painted the Bradshaws were not the ancestors of the current aboriginal owners of the land has sparked consternation among the latter...Many aboriginal people also dislike the pictures, some referring to them as “rubbish art”, and for generations many have made efforts to paint over them or to obliterate them... This is a treasure of which Australia should be very proud, yet when I went there this year I found people surprisingly reluctant to talk about it, almost as though they were ashamed. This may be understandable coming from the aborigines, who may be concerned...

Geneticists re-examining the first settlement of Australia and Papua-New Guinea by modern humans have concluded that the two islands were reached some 50,000 years ago by a single group of people who remained in substantial or total isolation until recent times. The finding, if upheld, would undermine assumptions that there have been subsequent waves of migration into Australia. Analyzing old and new samples of Aborigine DNA, which are hard to obtain because of governmental restrictions, the geneticists developed a detailed picture of the aborigines’ ancestry, as reflected in their Y chromosomes, found just in men, and their mitochondrial DNA, a...

Ibiza became part of the Islamic world in the year 902, when it was conquered by the Umayyad Emirate of Córdoba. Settlement followed rapidly, taking place within little more than a generation, and by the twelfth century the island had developed into a modest but active urban centre within al-Andalus.Positioned along key maritime routes, Ibiza was not an isolated outpost but part of a dynamic network linking Iberia, North Africa, and the wider Mediterranean. This broader context helps explain the striking diversity uncovered in the new study, published in Nature Communications.The research team analysed 13 individuals buried between the tenth...

New examination of artifacts recovered from a tomb discovered in 1927 near the Etruscan site of Bisenzio suggests that luxury materials from the western Mediterranean were traded in the interior of the Italian peninsula, according to a report in La Brújula Verde. Located in central Italy's necropolis of Olmo Bello, the rectangular stone cist contained cremated remains, weapons, and ceramics dated to between 750 and 725 B.C. Andrea Babbi of Italy's Institute of Heritage Science said that one of these artifacts, a bronze brooch, had been wrapped with a thin, ornamental silver wire shaped by a series of grooved rollers....

Paul Whitewick explores the incredible journey of Pytheas, an ancient Greek geographer who first mapped Britain and ventured into the Arctic Circle. Despite being largely forgotten and doubted by contemporaries, this explorer's detailed observations of the North and tidal patterns were ultimately proven accurate. The Greatest Explorer - You've NOT Heard of - Just VANISHED | 15:59 Paul Whitewick | 246K subscribers | 91,617 views | November 30, 2025

According to a Greek Reporter article, archaeologists led by Panayiota Galiatsatou of Greece's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities have investigated a submerged harbor complex off the eastern coast of the Peloponnese. The platform had been built in shallow water in order to take advantage of the natural harbor and nearby defensive hill. Pottery recovered from within the platform suggests that it dates to the Roman period. This year, the research team examined structures that had been built on top of the platform. These features have roughly square shapes and are made of stones. The team members now think that the stones...

In 1938, a statue was discovered at Pompeii, subsequently known as "The Pompeii Lakshmi". It is a sycretistic statue, combining elements of the Roman Venus, and the Hindu Lakshmi, and is our main evidence for aspects of Hinduism, or at least Hindu deities, in the Roman world. Hinduism in the Roman Empire: A Quick Overview | 2:41 The Historian's Craft | 132K subscribers | 10,254 views | April 6, 2026

Science in Poland reports that several shipwrecks have been found off the coast of Libya, near a shallow rock formation at the ancient Greek port of Ptolemais. The city was founded by Egypt's Ptolemaic Dynasty between the late fourth and third centuries B.C., and remained an active port until the seventh century A.D. "This is a place where disasters must have occurred periodically," said Piotr Jaworski of the University of Warsaw. He and Bartosz Kontny were conducting an underwater survey when they saw the 300-foot-long stretch of shipwrecks. "Over the centuries, the level of the Mediterranean Sea has risen slightly,...