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Rising as high as 20 feet, ancient stone monoliths in southern Ethiopia are 1,000 years older than scientists previously thought, according to a new study in the Journal of African Archaeology. A Washington State University research team used advanced radiocarbon dating to determine the often phallic-shaped monoliths, or stelae, at the Sakaro Sodo archeological site in Ethiopia’s Gedeo zone were likely created sometime during the first century A.D. The only other attempt to determine the age of the more than 10,000 stele monoliths located at various sites in the Gedeo zone was conducted by French scientists in the 1990s. It...

A Viking sword found at a burial site in Orkney is a rare, exciting and complex artefact, say archaeologists.The find, made in 2015 on the northeast coast of Papa Westray, is being carefully examined as part of post-excavation work.Archaeologists have now identified it as a type of heavy sword associated with the 9th Century.The relic is heavily corroded, but x-rays have revealed the sword's guards to be highly decorated.Contrasting metals are thought to have been used to create a honey comb-like pattern.The remains of a scabbard, a sheath for the blade, was also found...The excavations at Mayback revealed a number...

This video estimates the amount of gold in the Roman Empire - and the approximate chances of that gold ending up in your smartphone.How much Gold did the Romans have - and where is it now? | December 7, 2022 | toldinstone

One particularly important find is a cylinder-shaped seal made from the mineral hematite, with a cuneiform inscription from Mesopotamia (present day Iraq), which the archaeologists were able to decipher.“The text consists of three lines and mentions three names. One is Amurru, a god worshiped in Mesopotamia. The other two are historical kings, father and son, who we recently succeeded in tracking down in other texts on clay tablets from the same period, i.e., the 18th century BC. We are currently trying to determine why the seal ended up in Cyprus more than 1000 kilometres from where it was made.”Among the...

[A]rchaeologists have found a total of some 900 rock carvings, or "petroglyphs," at Al Jassasiya. They are mostly enigmatic cup marks arranged in various patterns, including rows and rosettes, but also eye-catching representations of sailing ships, usually seen from above but also depicted in linear profile, among other symbols and signs. Of all the documented single figures and compositions, more than a third consist of cup marks in various configurations, shapes and sizes. The most prominent pattern involves two parallel rows of seven holes, leading some to believe that these were used to play mancala, a board game popular in...

We all know that history is not the left’s favorite subject. Many times, it’s just too inconvenient for their political narratives. Often, history has to be erased or submerged in order to achieve the “greater good” of creating a just and moral society. In truth, it’s not much better on the right, although generally, the conservative take on American history is more nuanced. Christopher Columbus was an ass — a greedy, cruel, ambitious man who didn’t let anyone stand in his way to achieving riches and power, especially native people. But he was courageous enough to cross an unknown ocean...

The first inscription was discovered in 2003 at ancient Hegra in Hedjaz, an oasis city on the Incense Road. Today it is known as Al-Hijr (Mada'in Salih)...Hegra was the major center in the south of the Nabataean kingdom that in the 1st century CE also controlled other oasis towns, such as nearby Taima or Dumatha. The kingdom was one of Rome's client states along its eastern border. When the last Nabataean king died in 106 CE, Trajan had already prepared the orders for imperial troops in neighboring provinces to swiftly move in and occupy his territory before any resistance could...

Kit Hamley holds a large male sea lion skull from a bone pile at New Island. Dozens of individual sea lions were present throughout the bone pile assemblages excavated at New Island.Credit: Kit Hamley

Researchers have discovered evidence to support the idea that Vikings settled on the Azores several hundred years before the Portuguese arrived in 1427. Evidence from animal remains has led ecologist Pedro Raposeiro and his team, of the University of the Azores, to believe the Vikings were there first.... ...Evolutionary biologist Dr Jeremy Searle of Cornell University has supported the conclusions by Mr Raposeiro. He has also argued that Vikings made it to the Azores - but his work is based on the mouse as his biological source....

A river winds its way through Ljubljana and the surrounding villages. A river that hides Slovenia’s most threatened cultural heritage. Now thousand-year-old jewelry, swords, pitchers and boats are being laboriously hauled out of the river mud, restored and exhibited.An earring from the first century, a five-thousand-year-old wheel, a sword from Roman times. For thousands of years, different artifacts have mysteriously ended up in the Ljubljanica River...The green Ljubljanica River is a wonder of the world. But it is an endangered wonder; the riverbank is collapsing and cultural treasures are in danger of disappearing forever...The fragile wooden structure is barely visible...

It was a fabled kingdom known in ancient times as the Island of Gold, a civilisation with untold wealth that explorers tried in vain to find long after its unexplained disappearance from history around the 14th century. The site of Srivijaya may finally have been found – by local fishing crews carrying out night-time dives on the Musi River near Palembang on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. Their extraordinary catches are treasures ranging from a lifesize eighth-century Buddhist statue studded with precious gems – worth millions of pounds – to jewels worthy of kings....

By studying tree rings and using a dash of astrophysics, researchers have pinned down a precise year that settlers from Europe were on land that would come to be known as Newfoundland. Six decades ago, a husband-and-wife team of archaeologists discovered the remains of a settlement on the windswept northern tip of Newfoundland. The site’s eight timber-framed structures resemble Viking buildings in Greenland, and archaeological artifacts found there — including a bronze cloak pin — are decidedly Norse in style.Scientists now believe that this site, known as L’Anse aux Meadows, was inhabited by Vikings who came from Greenland. To this...

Beirut's Minet al-Hosn construction site does not contain the remains of a Phoenician port as maintained by the Directorate General of Antiquities and the former Culture Minister, according to an archaeological report obtained by The Daily Star. The Archaeological Assessment Report on the Venus Towers Site states: "While the site ... is intriguing, it does not fit the known parameters for a port, shipyard, or shipshed facility." The report, written by Dr. Ralph Pederson of Marburg University following an extensive investigation, maintains that there is nothing to connect the site to ships or shipbuilding. "The trenches could not have functioned...

Artifacts from hundreds of archeological sites from southern Chad to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean in Cameroon... research was conducted between 1999 and 2004 as construction was underway on the underground petroleum pipeline... which is more than 1000 kilometers long.... 472 archeological sites along the area in both Cameroon and Chad were found .some dating back to as long ago as 100,000 years. He says, "we found sites where people had lived, where people had stored food, where people had made tools of iron. Before people in this area used iron, they made a whole variety of different...

Thanks to archaeological research undertaken in the 1950s, a great deal is already known about the ancient occupation of the island. Phoenician merchants established a trading counter there in the 7th or 6th century BC, followed later by more temporary stays on the island during the reign of the Mauretanian King Juba II. According to a statement made to the press by Abdeslem Mikdad, co-director of the current research programme, the Romans were also present on the island towards the end of the 3rd century AD. The programme also envisages prospections in the Essaouira region, in order to discover the...

UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS |PH: (403) 220-3500 | FAX: (403) 282-8413 Greg Harris, Media Relations (403) 220-3506 (403) 540-7306 (cell)August 15, 2002Centuries-old African structures have never been excavated U of C-led team hopes to unlock mysteries of Cameroon’s granite strongholdsA University of Calgary archaeologist is leading the first expedition to excavate the so-called Strongholds of Cameroon, which are some of the most remarkable stone-built structures anywhere in Africa.Located in the Mandara Mountains of northern Cameroon, the strongholds range in size from small standalone structures, to complex, castle-sized fortresses with  platforms, terraces and covered passageways. The curving walls on some of the...

The discovery of the Americas has for centuries been credited to the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, but ancient markings carved into rocks around the US could require history to be rewritten. Researchers have discovered ancient scripts that suggest Chinese explorers may have discovered America long before Europeans arrived there. They have found pictograms etched into the rocks around the country that appear to belong of an ancient Chinese script. John Ruskamp, a retired chemist and amateur epigraph researcher from Illinois, discovered the unusual markings while walking in the Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque, He claims they indicate ancient people from...

BEIJING — Archaeologists say they have discovered some of the world’s oldest known primitive writing, dating back about 5,000 years, in eastern China, and some of the markings etched on broken axes resemble a modern Chinese character. The inscriptions on artifacts found at a relic site south of Shanghai are about 1,400 years older than the oldest written Chinese language. Chinese scholars are divided over whether the markings are words or something simpler, but they say the finding will shed light on the origins of Chinese language and culture. The oldest writing in the world is believed to be from...

Science magazine this week details the discovery of a stone block in Veracruz, Mexico, that contains a previously unknown system of writing; believed by archeologists to be the earliest in the Americas. The slab - named the Cascajal block - dates to the early first millennium BCE and has features that indicate it comes from the Olmec civilization of Mesoamerica. One of the archaeologists behind the discovery, Brown University's Stephen D. Houston, said that the block and its ancient script "link the Olmec civilization to literacy, document an unsuspected writing system, and reveal a new complexity to this civilization." "It's...

Chinese archaeologists studying ancient rock carvings say they have evidence that modern Chinese script is thousands of years older than previously thought.State media say researchers identified more than 2,000 pictorial symbols dating back 8,000 years, on cliff faces in the north-west of the country. They say many of these symbols bear a strong resemblance to later forms of ancient Chinese characters. Scholars had thought Chinese symbols came into use about 4,500 years ago. The Damaidi carvings, first discovered in the 1980s, cover 15 sq km (5.8 square miles) and feature more than 8,000 individual figures including the sun, moon,...