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The real prehistoric religion of Malta by NOEL GRIMA Forget the goddess theory, which you hear every tourist guide trying to explain the huge statues at the National Museum of Archaeology or while touring Hagar Qim. That may not have been the original religion of Malta. This was the startling starting point in a lecture “Ritual, Space and Structure in Prehistoric Malta and Gozo: New Observations on Old Matters”, given by Dr Caroline Malone, co-director, Xaghra Stone Circle excavation during the recent Heritage Malta international conference held at the Grand Hotel in Gozo. Dr Malone is senior tutor at Hughes...

A 3,300-year-old treasure trove of gold found in northern Germany has stumped German archeologists. One theory suggests that traders transported it thousands of miles from a mine in Central Asia, but other experts are skeptical. Archeologists in Germany have an unlikely new hero: former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. They have nothing but praise for the cigar-smoking veteran Social Democratic politician. Why? Because it was Schröder who, together with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, pushed through a plan to pump Russian natural gas to Western Europe. For that purpose, an embankment 440 kilometers (275 miles) long and up to 30 meters (100 feet)...

Affinities of the Paleoindians by Mikey Brass I would like to make it clear from the start that my knowledge of the early occupation of the Americas is very limited. It is a peripheral interest of mine. I don't feel competent enough to make many pronouncements on the late Pleistocene timing of the migration(s) from north-east Asia into the Americas. Instead I focus primarily here on showing, contrary to reports eminating from both pseudoscientific and unfortunately some portions of mainstream archaeology, that the origins of the Paleoindians lay in mainland Asia. Christy Turner has identified what he terms the "Mongoloid...

Underwater arrowheads, tools dazzle Maritime historians Last Updated Thu, 17 Feb 2005 15:28:09 EST CBC News HALIFAX - Archaeologists are showing off a treasure trove they call one of the most significant discoveries of Mi'kmaq artifacts in Nova Scotia. Hundreds of arrowheads and tools, some 8,000 years old, were discovered last summer along the Mersey River, near Kejimkujik National Park in the southwest region of the province. Workers from Nova Scotia Power were doing repairs to generating stations on the river. As water levels dropped in some areas, the riverbed was exposed for the first time since dams were built...

A Phoenician Fortress in Oklahoma? The following pages of this website are the photographic documentation of various unusual phenomena my wife, Sue, and I have found in southern Oklahoma and north Texas. What you see is what we saw and with the exception of some graphic arrows in one of the photos, no manipulation of the visual facts has been done. The original seven pages of photos began back on September 10, 2000. My wife publishes a community newspaper called TGIF, the weekend bandit. Most simply refer to it as the Bandit. It is distributed in six counties in Oklahoma...

Some Reservations about the Newport Tower C-14 Dates</h1><p> </p><h2>J. Huston McCulloch</h2><p> August, 2001 </p><p> This paper was published in the <i> Midwestern Epigraphic Journal</i>, Vol. 15, 2001, pp. 79-92.</p><p> </p></center> In a widely cited 1997 paper, Johannes Hertz raises a number of arguments against a pre-Colonial origin for the famous <a href="http://www.redwood1747.org/tower/millmenu.htm">Newport, Rhode Island Stone Tower</a>. Hertz insists that it was modeled after the 17th century Chesterton Mill in Warwickshire, England, and points out that a 1948-9 survey by Hugh Hencken and William S. Godfrey found indisputably colonial artifacts at the bottom of a trench that surrounds the foundations. He...

Who are the first Americans? In the 1920s and 30s, discoveries made near Clovis, NM suggested a prehistoric Paleo-Indian culture that dates back nearly 13,200 years ago. But new evidence may actually point to Texas as a possible origin. Archaeologist Wilson W. "Dub" Crook has found that may just change the way we see history.

A team of marine archaeologists has uncovered a 3,600-year-old shipwreck in the Mediterranean, just off the coast of Antalya, Turkey. The ship, believed to have been a merchant vessel sailing from Cyprus, may be the oldest ever discovered, according to Haaretz... Based on its position and the large cargo of copper ingots found inside and around the wreck, it is likely to have been a trading ship, ferrying goods from Cyprus to the Aegean region. Although the ship is in very poor condition, and the hull has been almost completely destroyed, the bulk of the ship, together with its precious...

Archaeologist Jinu Koshy has found thousands of rock drawings in Andhra Pradesh – including some of marsupials. How did it land there? And why? An upright standing creature that archaeologist Jinu Koshy believes to be a marsupial. | Anupama Chandrasekaran The landscape was a geological crumb cake – a ruddy tableland bristling with boulders, rocks and pebbles. Every step that archaeologist Jinu Koshy took was like a shuffle dance.A short while into the trek, echoes of bleating goats boomeranged, signalling an approaching ravine. Koshy stood at the nibbled edge of the chasm, looking for rock shelters.It was the 42-year-old archaeologist’s...

The earliest human footprint on record in the Americas wasn't found in Canada, the United States or even Mexico; it was found much farther south, in Chile, and it dates to an astonishing 15,600 years ago, a new study finds. The finding sheds light on when humans first reached the Americas, likely by traveling across the Bering Strait land bridge in the midst of the last ice age. This 10.2-inch-long (26 centimeters) print might even be evidence of pre-Clovis people in South America, the group that came before the Clovis, which are known for their distinctive spearheads, the researchers said.

An iron working hearthstone was discovered on Newfoundland, hundreds of miles from the only noted Viking location to date. Another thousand-year-old Viking colony might have been found on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. The finding of the old Viking location on the Canadian coast could drastically change the story of the exploration of North America by the Europeans prior to Christopher Columbus.

The Italian peninsula seems to shimmer and shine with history and art, from graceful, full bodied nymphs set against make-believe cypresses and oaks, to crumbling mounds of marble on which lie the almost breathable, almost visible words of lives, songs, and politics past. But before all the art, before the reawakening, before the soldiers cloaked in scarlet and gold, and the senators in their Senate hall...before the reign of emperors and tyrants was a race of peoples whose culture lived on in the greatest empire the world has ever known. They were the Etruscans, a mysterious tribe that scattered throughout...

In two previous studies, researchers analyzed isotopes (an element that has a different number of neutrons than normal in its nucleus) in the women's remains, so they could piece together where the women had lived. But now, new research finds that these analyses were likely contaminated by modern agricultural lime... However, the researchers of the original studies are standing by their work... Both Bronze Age women are well known by archaeologists; the remains of Egtved Girl (the possible priestess) and Skrydstrup Woman were found in Denmark in 1921 and 1935, respectively. More recently, the Freis and their colleagues found that...

Such evidence is tough to interpret at this point, paleoanthropologist María Martinón-Torres of University College London said at the meeting. Interbreeding of closely related populations, such as Denisovans, Neandertals and H. sapiens, generates novel skeletal features that can obscure what started out as, say, a distinctive Denisovan look, she suggested. Whatever evolutionary niche these mysterious hominids occupied, at least three separate Denisovan populations interbred with ancient humans, population geneticist Murray Cox of Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand, also reported at the meeting. Genetic remnants of two of those populations appear in modern aboriginal groups in Papua New Guinea,...

A more than 300-year-old Spanish shipwreck carrying treasure that might be worth up to $17 billion was discovered with the help of an underwater robot. It's called the Remus 6000 and it can dive nearly four miles and is loaded with sensors and cameras. Bronze cannons confirmed "the holy grail of shipwrecks" had been found at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. They are engraved with dolphins — a telltale sign they belong to the Spanish galleon San Jose, lost more than 300 years ago. "I just sat there for about 10 minutes and smiled," said Jeff Kaeli, a research...

Colombia on Friday opens bidding for investors willing to retrieve billions of dollars in gold and silver from an 18th century ship wreck off the country's Caribbean coast. The Spanish galleon "San Jose" was the main ship in a fleet carrying gold and silver -- likely extracted from Spanish colonial mines in Peru and Bolivia -- and other valuables back to King Philip V. It sank in June 1708 during combat with British warships attempting to take its cargo, as part of the War of Spanish Succession. Only a handful of the ship's crew of 600 survived. President Juan Manuel...

Spanish galleon San Jose sank more than 300 years ago in battle with British, while carrying vast cargo of gold and precious stones Colombia’s discovery of the 300-year-old, shipwrecked galleon San Jose, thought to be loaded with some $10 billion in gold and precious stones, could shed light on an important period in Spanish colonial history but also spawn legal battles over the valuable cargo. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said his country spent two years studying historical maps, meteorology and used the latest sea-searching technology to locate the Spanish vessel, which sank during a battle in 1708 in the...

A few hundred years ago, when much of the world was mysterious and unknown, two European humanists came together to produce an extraordinary map of the world.

The Oldest Map With The Word 'America' On It Was Just Found Between Two Geometry Books The Daily Telegraph Jul. 3, 2012, 7:44 PM A version of a 500-year-old world map that was the first to mention the name "America" has been discovered in a German university library. Experts did not even know about the existence of a fifth copy of the map by German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller until it showed up a few days ago, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich said. The discovery is much smaller and thought to have been made after the 1507 original version, which Germany...

Australians have started a campaign calling for Britain to hand over the first map ever to refer to the nation by the word "Australia", claiming that the document is country's "birth certificate". Captain Matthew Flinders Matthew Flinders, a British explorer and cartographer, drew the map in 1804 after becoming the first European to circumnavigate Australia. It was the first time a navigator used the name "Australia" to describe the continent, which had previously been referred to as New Holland or Terra Australis. Flinders, who hailed from Lincolnshire and spent several years charting the coast of Australia, wrote a book about...