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GALVESTON — A U.S. Navy submarine that can roll on wheels across the ocean floor will leave Pier 40 today on a weeklong expedition to search the deep for evidence of ancient human habitation. The Navy's only nuclear-power research vessel, the NR-1, will carry scientists looking for signs of early humans who may have lived on a coast that 19,000 years ago extended 100 miles farther into the Gulf of Mexico than it does today. If scientists on the expedition, dubbed "Secrets of the Gulf," find evidence that humans roamed those ancient shores, it would push back the earliest known...

<p>Washington — A people who may have been ancestors of the first Americans lived in Arctic Siberia, enduring one of the most unforgiving environments on Earth at the height of the Ice Age, according to researchers who discovered the oldest evidence yet of humans living near the frigid gateway to the New World. Russian scientists uncovered a 30,000-year-old site where ancient hunters lived on the Yana River in Siberia, some 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle and not far from the Bering land bridge that then connected Asia with North America.</p>

Archaeologist Greer Jarrett at Lund University in Sweden has been sailing in the footsteps of Vikings for three years. He can now show that the Vikings sailed farther away from Scandinavia, and took routes farther from land, than was previously believed to have been possible. In his latest study, he has found evidence of a decentralised network of ports, located on islands and peninsulas, which probably played a central role in trade and travel in the Viking era. Traveling in the wake of the Vikings | 5:35 Lund University | 29.4K subscribers | 18,547 views | May 20, 2025 From...

The Herald Scotland reports that prior to the construction of a new housing development in Guardbridge, Fife, archaeological excavations uncovered traces of some 10,000 years of local history. The historic village takes its name from a sixteenth-century bridge that led pilgrims across the River Eden to St. Andrews, but a team from GUARD Archaeology recently unearthed evidence that the site was a hotspot of human occupation far earlier than that. During the Upper Paleolithic period, some of Scotland's first inhabitants made flint tools at the site. Later, early Neolithic farmers left many pits across the area, which contained burnt cereal...

As Phoenician sailors ventured into the waters of the western Mediterranean Sea to establish new settlements in the early first millennium b.c., they deliberately brought the familiar scents of home with them, according to a statement issued by the University of Tübingen. Researchers from the University of Tübingen and the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) recently analyzed more than 50 miniature ceramic vessels found in ancient tombs, houses, and sacred areas at a Phoenician site on the island of Motya, off the west coast of Sicily. The study determined that all had been made in southern Phoenicia, near present-day Beirut,...

A civilization confident in itself reads the Iliad. A civilization in decline denounces it. Guess which one we are. A confident civilization does not quake at the sight of Homer. It does not avert its gaze from Pericles or issue trigger warnings before mentioning Caesar. It does not treat the Iliad like some toxic spill to be cordoned off by hazmat crews. Yet ours does. As Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath warned in Who Killed Homer?, the gravest threat to the classics is not public indifference but professors themselves—men and women who, having ceased to teach Homer, now cower...

Ancient Chinese written documents record that by the second century a.d., a vast trade network had already been established connecting peoples and goods from the Mediterranean, the Near East, India, and Asia. This has been confirmed by archaeological excavations throughout Southeast Asia, which have uncovered various items such as Indian jewelry, Roman glass, and Persian pottery. According to a Science News Today report, however, a comprehensive new study has revealed that silver coinage may be the key to truly understanding just how interconnected these distant regions actually were. Found at many archaeological sites across this region, the coins feature a...

During the last Ice Age, modern humans had ongoing encounters with more than one variety of now-extinct Pleistocene-era hominin.Those encounters, according to new research, not only resulted in interbreeding between homo sapiens and other types of archaic humans -- they may have helped some of the earliest arrivals in North America survive...The earliest arrival of anatomically modern humans in North America has been a subject of intense debate for several decades. Increasingly with time, discoveries by archaeologists have continued to push back the time scales on when those arrivals began, with initial estimates of early human dispersals into North America...

When the Bedale hoard was first discovered by metal detectorists in 2012, it was immediately recognized as one of the most significant assemblages of Viking-era silver objects and jewelry that had ever been found in England. Dating to the late ninth or early tenth century, the collection consists of 29 silver ingots and several elaborate neck rings, among other items. According to a statement released by the University of Oxford, a recent study of the origins of the Bedale silver is shedding new light on the international scope and far-reaching extent of Viking trade. Researchers led by Oxford archaeologist Jane...

Rome's love for pepper and incense fueled a global trade network. This episode follows their journey -- from Arabian deserts and Indian coasts, through Petra and Red Sea ports, to Mediterranean hubs -- ending in the spice markets of the Eternal City, including the Horrea Piperataria. From Desert to Rome: the Spice Roads of the Ancient World | 8:35 Ancient Rome Live | 80K subscribers | 475 views | August 11, 2025

The dispersal of archaic hominins beyond mainland Southeast Asia (Sunda) represents the earliest evidence for humans crossing ocean barriers to reach isolated landmasses. Previously, the oldest indication of hominins in Wallacea, the oceanic island zone east of Sunda, comprised flaked stone artifacts deposited at least 1.02 million years ago at the site of Wolo Sege on the island of Flores. On Sulawesi, the largest Wallacean island, previous excavations revealed stone artifacts with a minimum age of 194,000 years at the open site of Talepu. Now, archaeologists from Griffith University show that stone artifacts also occur at the nearby site of...

Scylax of Caryanda, a Greek in the service of the Persian Great King, is best known for his early exploration of India and for shaping what the ancient Greeks knew about the East. Born in the late 6th century BC in a Carian town of Asia Minor (Anatolia), he lived at the cultural crossroads of Greek and Persian influence. Scylax became both an explorer and a writer—an essential figure in the transmission of geographical knowledge between civilizations. Unfortunately, Scylax’s original writings have not survived. What we know of his life and work comes from fragments preserved by later historians like...

...archaeological evidence at one site called Madjedbebe in the far north of Australia's Northern Territory suggests the area may have been occupied much earlier -- at least 65,000 years ago.Archaeologists recovered human-made artifacts, including stone tools and ocher "crayons," from the Madjedbebe rock shelter and published their findings in a 2017 study. One difficulty in dating the artifacts, however, was the copious amount of sand on the floor of the rock shelter, which can move easily and cause artifacts to fall farther down, making them look older than they are.Although the research team took steps to counteract this issue and...

The Ancient Greeks were active travelers, despite the dangers of land travel and the fear of highwaymen. Sea travel required ample supplies and means. A fascinating archaeological find exhibited in the Agora Museum in Athens is rectangular clay tablets with inscribed names and occupations that purportedly served as travel documents in antiquity. Most travelers were aristocrats and well-to-do citizens who traveled to witness and experience the wonders of the ancient world, and other famous places and sights. Others traveled for pilgrimage; healing in sanctuaries such as the Sanctuary of Asclepius in Olympia, the Sanctuary of Apollo on Delos Island, or...

WITH A PUEFACE BY THE BISHOP OF OXFORD. ' And the august abode from whence they came.' Speculations as to an Eastern emigration are scarcely more than glanced at here; and it may appear almost superfluous to refer to two groundless hypotheses which have been formed—the first, that Greek remains have been discovered in South America, and that faint vestiges of Greece are also traceable in the islands of Hawaii. The other supposition is that of the Hawaiian race being of Hebrew origin, and that these islanders represent the lost tribes of the house of Israel.

AP News reports that ocean swells and shifting coastal sands exposed ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs on a beach in Oahu. The carvings were first seen almost a decade ago near a U.S. Army base in Waianae, an hour outside Honolulu, but were quickly swallowed back up again by the sand. Although sections of the artwork have occasionally become visible, said U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii archaeologist Laura Gilda, this is the first time the entire panel has been exposed. The scene consists of 26 petroglyphs -- 18 of which depict anthropomorphic stick figures -- carved across a 115-foot stretch of sandstone. Experts...

An ancient Egyptian rock engraving may have been carved at the dawn of the first dynasty, up to 5,100 years ago, a new study suggests...The engraving is stylistically similar to ancient Egyptian rock panels from the protodynastic period and early first dynasty -- periods that aren't well known to archaeologists. These similarities hint that the newfound carving may hold clues about the formation of the Egyptian state, according to the study...The "intriguing new" rock engraving was found on the west bank of the Nile River near Aswan in November 2022, during a survey that was documenting rock art in the...

The Irish Times reports that archaeologists from the University of Galway have uncovered a fortress belonging to a noble Medieval family near the shores of Galway Bay. Since preliminary investigation the 1940s, Rathgurreen Ringfort in Maree was suspected of being a high-status settlement during the Middle Ages, which recent archaeological work confirmed, but the team also found evidence that the site may be 1,000 older than previously expected. The 330-foot diameter fort may have been founded as early as the Iron Age in fifth century a.d., before it grew into a major medieval site centuries later and was the seat...

A newly discovered 2,000-year-old shipwreck off the coast of Adrasan in southern Turkey is offering a rare glimpse into ancient sea trade, with remarkably well-preserved ceramics still in their original arrangement. Experts date the vessel to the Late Hellenistic to Early Roman period, a time when Greek cultural and economic influence remained strong across the eastern Mediterranean.The ship was found between 120 and 150 feet below the surface. What makes the discovery especially significant is the state of the cargo. Archaeologists recovered dozens of ceramic items -- bowls, plates, trays, and pots -- still stacked as they were when the...

A fragment of marble column dating to the fifth century b.c. unearthed at the site of Casas del Turuñuelo in southwestern Spain is believed to be part of the oldest Greek altar ever found in the western Mediterranean, according to the Greek Reporter. First discovered a decade ago, Turuñuelo was founded by the enigmatic Iron Age Tartessian culture, which flourished in southern Iberia between the eighth and fifth centuries b.c. Analysis of the marble stone indicated that it was quarried from the island of Maramara, in present-day Turkey. Lead archaeologists Esther Rodríguez González and Sebastián Celestino Pérez said that while...