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Around 2000 B.C., a baker in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes captured yeast from the air and kneaded it into a triangle of dough. Once baked, the bread was buried in a dedication ceremony beneath the temple of Pharaoh Mentuhotep II on the west bank of the Nile. There the yeast slept like a microbial mummy for four millennia, until 2019. That’s when Seamus Blackley—a physicist and game designer best known for creating the Xbox—suctioned it up with a syringe and revived it in a sourdough starter. Blackley, an amateur Egyptologist, often thinks about this ancient baker as he...

The researchers found a Philistine cemetery in Israel – home to 145 human remains dating back to between the 11th and the 8th centuries BC. The discovery, made in 2013 and finally revealed in 2016, may yield answers to an enduring mystery surrounding the origins of the Philistines. It came at the end of a 30-year excavation by the Leon Levy Expedition. The Philistines were an ancient people who lived from the 12th century BC until 604 BC. They are known for their biblical conflict with the Israelites.

JERUSALEM — Goliath the Greek? Human remains from an ancient cemetery in southern Israel have yielded precious bits of DNA that a new study says help prove the European origin of the Philistines — the enigmatic nemeses of the biblical Israelites. The Philistines mostly resided in five cities along the southern coast of what is today Israel and the Gaza Strip during the early Iron Age, around 3,000 years ago. In the Bible, David fought the Philistine giant Goliath in a duel, and Samson slew a thousand of their warriors with the jawbone of an ass. Many archaeologists have proposed...

WW2 hero passed yesterday, age 95 I’ve posted before about Raymond T. Matheny, my second cousin. He authored the book, “Rite of Passage” describing his experience as a B17 flight engineer, shot down in January 1944, then spent 16 months as POW in Stalag 17. After the war, he eventually became a professor of archeology at BYU. Last summer at age 94, he presented his last paper at an archeology meeting before his retirement. Some links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Matheny Interview: https://www.pbsutah.org/sites/default/files/mathenyray_0.pdf Book: https://www.bookdepository.com/Rite-Passage-Ray-T-Matheny/9780981848914 Article with photos: https://magazine.byu.edu/article/in-the-mayan-jungle/ Article: https://www.deseret.com/1999/7/3/19453785/a-festive-reunion-for-2-vets-br-each-thought-the-other-had-died-in-wwii photo: https://jazzroc.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/raymatheny.jpg?w=225&h=307 Raymond lived a magnificent and grand life. Part of the greatest...

In the dusty highlands of northern Ethiopia, a team of archaeologists recently uncovered the oldest known Christian church in sub-Saharan Africa, a find that sheds new light on one of the Old World’s most enigmatic kingdoms—and its surprisingly early conversion to Christianity. An international assemblage of scientists discovered the church 30 miles northeast of Aksum, the capital of the Aksumite kingdom, a trading empire that emerged in the first century A.D. and would go on to dominate much of eastern Africa and western Arabia. Through radiocarbon dating artifacts uncovered at the church, the researchers concluded that the structure was built...

Archaeologists of the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Verona are bringing to light the magnificent floor mosaics and foundations of a Roman villa dating back to the third century AD. The villa, which was first discovered in the 1920s at Negrar di Valpolicella, near Verona, had remained buried since then and was all but forgotten. In summer 2019 the technicians of the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Verona returned to the site after almost a century, under the direction of the archaeologist Gianni de Zuccato. The investigations continued in October 2019 and in February...

Recent research highlights the power of the canine nose to uncover buried remains from ancient human history. On a sunny summer day in Croatia several years ago, an archaeologist and two dog handlers watched as two dogs, one after another, slowly worked their way across the rocky top of a wind-scoured ridge overlooking the Adriatic Sea. Bodies had lain in beehive-shape tombs on this necropolis, part of the prehistoric hill fort of Drvišica, since the Iron Age. The two dogs, trained to detect human remains, were searching for scents that were thousands of years old. Panda, a Belgian Malinois with...

ISIS fighters discovered an ancient Assyrian palace under the ruins of Mosul, but unfortunately, they looted and sold off the tantalising treasures they discovered.Professor Peter Miglus, the archaeologist who has led work at the site, said that gold kept by Sennacherib may have been discovered by ISIS. He said: “We can presume many very valuable objects must now be on the black market." The archaeologists found gold objects littered within the tunnels that were discarded by ISIS. Gold from ancient Egypt, such as a gold scarab ring and a small sceptre with the ankh, the pharaonic symbol that represents...

Archaeologists excavating the Roman Forum have discovered an underground shrine dedicated to Romulus, the founder of the ancient city.

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 ...

"The Sacred City presents compelling evidence that suggests the holy city of Mecca is in the wrong location and that the worlds 1.6 billion Muslims are praying in the direction of the wrong city. Compiling evidence from both historic sources and new technologies point to the correct location in this seismic, revelatory new film.

An overhead image of the monument photographed from a drone, and a detail overlay of the surface features in which the image is rotated 90 degrees clockwise. Photograph by I. LaBianca (Left) and Photograph by I. LaBianca; graphics by J. Blanzy (Right) ============================================================================================== Satellites and drones helped reveal huge ceremonial platform near the ancient city’s center. An enormous monument has been hiding in plain sight at the World Heritage site of Petra, according to a study recently published in the Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. Archaeologists Sarah Parcak, a National Geographic fellow, and Christopher Tuttle, executive director...

The newly revealed structure consists of a 184-by-161-foot (about 56-by-49-meter) platform that encloses a slightly smaller platform originally paved with flagstones. The east side of the interior platform had been lined with a row of columns that once crowned a monumental staircase. A small 28-by-28-foot (8.5-by-8.5-meter) building was centered north-south atop the interior platform and opened to the east, facing the staircase. This enormous open platform, topped with a relatively small building and approached by a monumental facade, has no known parallels to any other structure in Petra. It most likely had a public, ceremonial function, which may make it...

About 15 km to the east of the ancient city of Petra, archaeologists from the University of Leiden have discovered an impressive network of ancient water conservation measures and irrigated field systems... In Antiquity, an ingenious system of underground canals, hacked out of the limestone bedrock, in addition to specially built aqueducts and reservoirs with capacities of millions of litres of water, transformed this marginal region into a complex man-made landscape. This is a fantastic example of ancient water-management technology, constructed to irrigate the surrounding terraced field systems... It is possible that parts of this agricultural system -- which was...

Experts from London's Courtauld Institute of Art recently completed the conservation of a rare and exquisite Nabataean wall painting at the World Heritage site of Petra in Jordan, for the Petra National Trust. Conservators Stephen Rickerby and Lisa Shekede from the Courtauld's Conservation of Wall Painting Department worked on the project for three years. The remarkable painting, that can now be clearly seen for the first time in many years, was unveiled on Wednesday 18 August 2010 in a ceremony marking the conclusion of the fifth and final phase of conservation work... Dating from around the 1st century AD, the...

Spectacular 2,000-year-old Hellenistic-style wall paintings have been revealed at the world heritage site of Petra through the expertise of British conservation specialists. The paintings, in a cave complex, had been obscured by centuries of black soot, smoke and greasy substances, as well as graffiti. Experts from the Courtauld Institute in London have now removed the black grime, uncovering paintings whose "exceptional" artistic quality and sheer beauty are said to be superior even to some of the better Roman paintings at Herculaneum that were inspired by Hellenistic art. Virtually no Hellenistic paintings survive today, and fragments only hint at antiquity's lost...

Petra, "the rose-red city half as old as time" in southern Jordan, is best known for its spectacular Nabataean rock-cut temples and the narrow entry through the gorge of the Siq, featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. But the site has a much longer history, with an early neolithic village on the hill of Beidha near by, and it was a regional centre in the Roman and early Byzantine eras. During this latter period, a number of churches were built: one known as the Petra Church was probably built in the late 5th century and destroyed by fire...

French archeologists find Marcus Aurelius 'head' AMMAN, April 22 (AFP) - French archeologists have unearthed a perfectly preserved head of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in the ancient Nabatean city of Petra south of Jordan, the head of the mission told AFP Thursday. "A monumental white marble head, in excellent condition, belonging to a statue the emperor Marcus Aurelius was found in Petra by French archeologists," Christian Auge said. The head of the 2nd century AD Roman leader who was also known as the "good emperor" or the "philosopher-king" was found in the Qasr al-Bint area of Petra, a Nabatean...

The writing on the rocks The ancient Nabataeans are chiefly remembered for their breathtaking rock-carved capital of Petra in southern Jordan. Jane Taylor traces their fascinating story, from absurd theory to identification and decipherment of their inscriptions in Sinai In their heyday some 2000 years ago the Nabataeans were known throughout the Middle East and in parts of Europe -- in other words, wherever they travelled to trade. At Alexandria and Rhodes, at Puteoli near Naples and other places along the sea routes to Greece and Italy, Nabataean merchants established trading settlements and built temples in which to worship...

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius turned an ancient victim’s brain into glass, according to Italian anthropologists. The finding, dubbed as “sensational” and published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, marks the first time that scientists have verified such a phenomenon. […] The remains of a man found lying on a wooden bed were discovered in Herculaneum in the 1960s. He is believed to have been the custodian of the College of Augustales, a place of worship that was at the center of the cult of Roman Emperor Augustus. The glassy substance found inside of the victim’s skull...