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A dive to the undersea cliff where a famous Roman shipwreck rests has turned up either evidence that the wreck is enormous -- or a suggestion that, not one, but two sunken ships are resting off the Greek island of Antikythera... The Antikythera wreck is famed for the massive number of artifacts pulled from the site over the past century. First discovered in the early 1900s by local sponge divers, the wreck is most famous for the Antikythera mechanism, a complex bronze gear device used to calculate astronomical positions (and perhaps the timing of the Olympic games). Numerous bronze and...

During the summer the sites of six previously undocumented ancient shipwrecks were located by the Southern Euboean Gulf Survey (SEGS)... nautical archaeologist George Koutsouflakis of the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities (EUA)... noted that the collaborative SEGS project was launched in 2006... has discovered and recorded 24 ancient shipwrecks... This year's SEGS team... located four ancient wrecks... Makronissos proved to be a particularly rich hunting ground... three of the wreck sites discovered there appear extraordinarily well preserved and may contain the actual remains of the wooden ships... mounded, concreted cargoes of transport amphorae, the distinctive ceramic containers usually used for...

Depictions of ships abound on Minoan seals and frescoes. They are detailed enough to show that the vessels were impressive: generally, they had 15 oars on each side and square sails, and were probably about 50 feet long. But little more was known about actual Minoan seafaring--until Greek archaeologist Elpida Hadjidaki became the first to discover a Minoan shipwreck... For nearly a month, she and a team of three sponge and coral divers aboard a 20-foot-long wooden fishing boat trolled up and down the island's shores. Together with George Athanasakis of Athens Polytechnic University, they used side-scanning sonar and detected...

· British expedition uncovers a wealth of wonders dating from the year 300 BC in the eastern Mediterranean· 12 shipwrecks and their cargoes include a colossal 17th century ship that fits 'two normal ships' on its deck· The ships reveal a trade route from China to Persia, Red Sea and east Mediterranean for food and porcelain Archaeologists have found shipwrecks in the Mediterranean filled with hundreds of artefacts including Chinese porcelain, jugs, coffee pots, peppercorns and illicit tobacco pipes. A British-led expedition found a cluster of 12 ships on the sea bed, 1.2 miles below the surface of the Levantine...

In 2011, hikers in the snowy mountains of central Norway came across a 1700-year-old wool tunic, likely belonging to a Roman-era hypothermia victim. As ice in the region has continued to melt, researchers have made hundreds of additional finds. Now, archaeologists have made their biggest discovery yet: a lost Viking trade route that may have been used for hundreds of years to ferry everything from butter to reindeer antlers to far-flung European markets.

From approximately 3,000 to 1,000 years ago, between 700 and 3,400 people lived on the island of Samoa. Roughly 1,000 years ago, the island's population exploded from a few thousand to 10,000 individuals. By analyzing the genomes of 1,197 individuals living in Samoa, scientists were able to gain new insights into one of the last major migrations of humans into previously uninhabited territories. The results of the genomic analysis -- published this week in the journal PNAS -- could also help researchers explore links between early human history in Samoa and the modern health problems, including obesity, hypertension and Type...

It was a few years ago that a Greek-American archaeological team made a startling discovery – they found the oldest indications of seafaring and navigation in the world, in an area called Plakia on Crete Island in Greece. It is an incredibly important discovery that is given little attention, despite the fact that it reached the top ten discoveries of 2010. Their research is forcing scholars to rethink the maritime capabilities of early human and pre-human cultures. The team of archaeologists were carrying out excavations in a gorge on the island of Crete when they discovered a Palaeolithic site in...

Long before Fabergé, ornate ostrich eggs were highly prized by the elites of Mediterranean civilisations during the Bronze and Iron Ages, but to date little has been known about the complex supply chain behind these luxury goods. Examining ostrich eggs from the British Museum's collection, the team, led by Bristol's Dr. Tamar Hodos, were able to reveal secrets about their origin and how and where they were made. Using state-of-the-art scanning electron microscopy, Dr. Caroline Cartwright, Senior Scientist at the British Museum was able to investigate the eggs' chemical makeup to pinpoint their origins and study minute marks that reveal...

An underwater archaeological reconnaissance of the bed of the River Boyne near the Brú na Bóinne complex in Co Meath has revealed features that may represent log boats or man-made quays, a research conference was told on Saturday. The sonar study, carried out by Annalisa Christie of University College Dublin and Dr Kieran Westley of University of Ulster, surveyed 10km of the river from Oldbridge to a weir 1.8km east of Slane Bridge... Christie said 100 "anomalous features" were revealed in the study and these were assessed and classified according to how likely they were to have been created as...

In 2015, researchers reported that cod caught off the North American coast around 6,500 years ago by Stone Age hunter-gatherers contained more than 20 times the levels of mercury recommended for humans today... They analyzed the chemical composition of bones of animals, like Atlantic cod and harp seals, disposed of in ancient garbage pits, and so preserved to this day. Both species were among the main ingredients in the diet of the local people, even if the early hunter-gatherers, based on cut marks found on the bones, also successfully hunted for haddock, whale, dolphin, reindeer and beaver. The analyzed bones...

A University of Waikato archaeological scientist is helping rewrite the history of ancient human movement across the Pacific. Dr Fiona Petchey, working with archaeologists, has been using radiocarbon dating - technology that is now much more precise than when dating was first done 40 odd years ago. She has most recently worked with a researcher from Berkeley to date the ancient site of To'aga, on Ofu Island in American Samoa. The research showed the site had been settled nearly 500 years earlier, 2800 years ago, than had previously been thought. Dr Petchey told Don Wiseman there has been a lot...

Gene sequencing, from which scientists can gather hereditary data of organisms, has revealed that the Black Death, often referred to as The Plague, which reduced the world’s total population by about 100 million, originated from China over 2000 years ago, scientists from several countries wrote in the medical journal Nature Genetics. Genome sequencing has allowed the researchers to reconstruct plague pandemics from the Black Death to the late 1800s.Black Death and The Plague – the plague is an infectious disease caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. The Black Death is one huge plague event (pandemic) in history. The Black...

The replica of a wooden Phoenician ship, which visited Lyme Regis last year, has completed its 6,000 mile voyage across the Atlantic. The Phoenicia visited Lyme Regis last July before setting out on its voyage from the old port of Carthage, Tunisia, in September. It called in at Cadiz (Spain), Essaouira (Morocco), Tenerife (Canary Islands) and Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) before arriving in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at the Coral Ridge Yacht Club on Thursday, February 4... The ship's trans-Atlantic voyage was part of the Phoenicians Before Columbus Expedition, designed, with the help of the US-based Phoenician International Research Center, to...

A Bronze Age painting on a Greek island shows a monkey from thousands of kilometres away in Asia. The finding suggests that ancient cultures separated by great distances were trading and exchanging ideas. The artwork is one of several wall paintings in a building at Akrotiri on the Greek island of Thera (Santorini) in the Aegean Sea. Akrotiri was a settlement of the Minoan civilisation in Bronze Age Greece that was buried by ash from a volcanic eruption in around 1600 BC. Many of the paintings show monkeys, yet there were no monkeys in Greece at the time. Most of...

Conquering Romans relied on resources from near and far to sustain their forces against the native tribes in Wales, according to new research by Cardiff University archaeologists... Using strontium isotope analysis to analyse the bones of domestic animals from the fortress, the researchers identified a mix of sources. Significantly, the diverse pattern of results does not suggest a centralised supply chain from near or far ñ results that challenge existing theories. While the majority of livestock are consistent with origins in the local area, analysis found that at least one quarter of the pigs, cattle and caprines (sheep/goats) originated outside...

Full title: Four ancient skulls unearthed in Mexico suggest that North America was a melting pot of different peoples and cultures 10,000 years ago The first humans to settle in North America were more diverse than previously believed, according to a new study of skeletal fragments. US scientists analysed four skulls recovered from caves in Mexico that belonged to humans that lived sometime between 9,000 to 13,000 years ago. The researchers were surprised to find a high level of diversity, with the skulls ranging in similarity to that of Europeans, Asian and ...

A startling message on a 1,200-year-old granite slab created by the Vikings appears to predict climate change, experts say. The research, published in Futharc: International Journal of Runic Studies, looks at the message that was written after Viking warrior Varin’s son died in battle in the 9th century, foreseeing a new “climate crisis,” similar to the weather conditions that happened nearly 300 years prior. “This study proposes instead that the inscription deals with an anxiety triggered by a son’s death and the fear of a new climate crisis similar to the catastrophic one after 536 [AD],” researchers, led by Per...

Christopher Columbus' accounts of the Caribbean include harrowing descriptions of fierce raiders who abducted women and cannibalized men - stories long dismissed as myths. But a new study suggests Columbus may have been telling the truth. Using the equivalent of facial recognition technology, researchers analyzed the skulls of early Caribbean inhabitants, uncovering relationships between people groups and upending longstanding hypotheses about how the islands were first colonized. One surprising finding was that the Caribs, marauders from South America and rumored cannibals, invaded Jamaica, Hispaniola and the Bahamas, overturning half a century of assumptions that they never made it farther north...

An important question for our understanding of Roman history is how the Empire's economy was structured, and how long-distance trading within and between its provinces was organised and achieved. Moreover, it is still unclear whether large construction timbers, for use in Italy, came from the widespread temperate forests north of the Alps and were then transported to the sparsely-wooded Mediterranean region in the south. Here, we present dendrochronological results from the archaeological excavation of an expensively decorated portico in the centre of Rome. The oak trees (Quercus sp.), providing twenty-four well-preserved planks in waterlogged ground, had been felled between 40...

A case of misplaced blame. All those blaming Columbus for sailing west must turn one chapter back in the history books to find that it was actually Islamic jihad disrupting the land routes from Europe to India and China that resulted in Columbus looking for a sea route. Nearly two centuries before Columbus, the 17-years-old Marco Polo left Venice for India and China with his father, Niccolo Polo, and uncle, Matteo Polo, in 1271. Together they traveled 5,600 miles to the east to meet Kublai Khan, the grandson of Ghengis Khan. Kublai Khan was Emperor of China, Korea, North India,...