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There are no written accounts describing the battle, so as teams of archaeologists have unearthed more finds from the valley, they have used the well-preserved remains and weapons to try to piece together the story behind the ancient battle scene.Now, a team of researchers studying arrowheads used in the battle has discovered evidence that it included local groups as well as an army from the south. These findings, published Sunday in the journal Antiquity, suggest the clash was the earliest example of interregional conflict in Europe — and raise questions about the state of organized, armed violence thousands of years...

In April 2011, excavators working on a natural gas pipeline in northern Germany unearthed one of the largest gold hoards from prehistoric Europe. Dated to about 1300 B.C., the Gessel gold hoard consists of 117 artifacts that together weigh over 3.7 pounds (1.7 kilograms).The hoard was discovered in the village of Gessel near the town of Syke and is now the centerpiece of the Forum Gesseler Goldhort museum. Around 3,300 years ago, someone placed the gold objects in a linen bag, secured the bag with six bronze pins, and buried it in the dirt...The Gessel gold hoard includes 82 spiral...

Just off the southern coast of mainland Greece lies the oldest submerged city in the world. It thrived for 2,000 years during the time that saw the birth of western civilisation. In this documentary, an international team of experts use cutting-edge technology to prise age-old secrets from the complex of streets and stone buildings that lie less than five metres below the surface of the ocean. State-of-the-art CGI helps to raise the city from the seabed, revealing for the first time in 3,500 years how Pavlopetri would once have looked and operated. Archeologists Discover The Oldest Sunken City In The...

Semi-detached houses with gardens, clothes drying in the courtyards, walls and well-made streets - Pavlopetri epitomises the suburban way of life. Except that it's a Bronze Age port, submerged for millennia off the south-east coast of Greece.This summer it became the first underwater city to be fully digitally mapped and recorded in three dimensions, and then brought back to life with computer graphics. The result shows how much it has in common with port cities of today - Liverpool, London, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo or Shanghai - despite the fact that its heyday was 4,000 years ago. Covering an...

The ancient town of Pavlopetri lies in three to four metres of water just off the coast of southern Laconia in Greece. The ruins date from at least 2800 BC through to intact buildings, courtyards, streets, chamber tombs and some thirty-seven cist graves which are thought to belong to the Mycenaean period (c.1680-1180 BC). This Bronze Age phase of Greece provides the historical setting for much Ancient Greek literature and myth, including Homer's Age of Heroes... Although Mycenaean power was largely based on their control of the sea, little is known about the workings of the harbour towns of the...

In Norway’s highest mountains, experts are scouring perilous terrain for pieces of the past, long stored in mint condition in ice patches. As temperatures rise across the world, glacial archaeologists must find the emerging artifacts before they degrade forever This arrow with a pressure-flaked arrowhead made from gray quartzite dates to the Late Stone Age or Bronze Age and was found on Norway’s ice. The pitch and the animal sinew used to fasten the arrowhead are still preserved, which is exceptionally rare. Espen Finstad, Innlandet County Municipality ============================================================================================ A brown leather loafer came into view on a patch of ice...

Examples of podomorphs interacting with the microtopography of the rock. Credit: Oxford Journal of Archaeology (2026). DOI: 10.1111/ojoa.7002 Etched into the ancient rocky outcrops of southern Scandinavia and large boulders left behind by retreating glaciers are footprints, also called podomorphic petroglyphs. Some are barefoot with every toe visible, while others carry the imprint of strapped sandals. A recent study argues that these human footprints created during the Scandinavian Bronze Age, roughly 3,700 to 2,500 years ago, were not mere art or decorative symbols because the petroglyphs weren't placed at random. They were deliberately arranged around water sources and shallow depressions...

According to a Greek Reporter article, a collection of Bronze Age jewelry was discovered in northern Germany during the construction of a wind farm. The cache was lifted with surrounding soil from the site for excavation under laboratory conditions by researchers from the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation. The 3,000-year-old neck collars, arm spirals, sheet metal ornaments, and disc pins are thought to have belonged to at least three women. One necklace was made with more than 150 amber beads. The valuable deposit, which is known as the Ahlum Hoard, is thought to have been buried by local...

Stanford researchers and their European colleagues drew on ancient DNA to construct the first genetic history of Rome...Those genetic data reveal at least two major migrations into Rome, as well as several smaller but significant population shifts over just the last few thousand years...Notably, DNA analysis revealed that as the Roman Empire expanded around the Mediterranean Sea, immigrants from the Near East, Europe and North Africa pulled up their roots and moved to Rome...An analysis of some of the earliest samples more or less comports with what has been found around Europe -- they represent an influx of farmers primarily...

According to a Phys.org report, Haichao Li of Sichuan University led a team of researchers in the analysis of fragments of iron discovered in southwestern China at the Sanxingdui site, a city occupied between 2800 and 600 B.C. So far, eight sacrificial pits containing metal objects such as bronze masks, trees, and figurines have been excavated at the site. The three iron fragments, which appear to have been parts of an ax-like weapon, were discovered in Pit 7. Because this object was found in the sacrificial area, the researchers suggest that it had ritual significance. Metallographic and scanning electron microscopy-energy...

According to a Phys.org report, a team of researchers led by Jean-Luc Houle of Western Kentucky University explored two Late Bronze Age mounds in Mongolia known as khirigsuurs for evidence of feasting. Khirigsuurs, found in Mongolia and parts of southern Siberia, usually contain human burials and are surrounded by deposits of horse skulls. These are sometimes accompanied by horse neck vertebrae and hooves, and the burned bones of sheep or goats. Houle and his colleagues looked for the rest of these horses and evidence of butchering at khirigsuur ZK-956, which has been dated to between 1054 and 906 B.C. A...

In 2001, in southeastern Iran, the Halil Roud river shifted its course, revealing traces of an unknown civilization long buried beneath the sands of the Iranian plateau. The inhabitants of the Jiroft region were the first to clandestinely extract a vast number of ancient artifacts dated to the 3rd millennium BC: carved vases, symbolic figures, and ritual objects. This priceless treasure fueled international smuggling circuits before Iranian authorities launched a rescue operation. This documentary follows archaeologists in their investigation of this forgotten civilization and explores the fascinating hypothesis: could this city be Aratta, the mythical metropolis mentioned in the oldest...

According to a statement released by the University of Gdansk, evaluation of the remains of people who lived in what is now north-central Poland between 4100 and 1230 B.C. has revealed how their diets changed from the Neolithic period to the Bronze Age. Using radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis, and stable isotope measurements of carbon and nitrogen, a team led by Łukasz Pospieszny of the University of Gdansk suggests that Corded Ware communities of the late Neolithic period herded their animals in forests and wet river valleys. After several hundred years, however, their diet began to resemble that of nearby farmers,...

According to a statement released by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), the Romans extracted gold from alluvial deposits in the Eastern Pyrenees. Using optically stimulated luminescence dating techniques, Oriol Olesti Vila of the UAB and Jorge Sanjurjo-Sánchez of the University of A Coruña dated two samples of fill from the remains of an ancient hydraulic structure on the Segre River to the third and fourth centuries A.D. The researchers explained that Roman miners would have eroded gold deposits from the riverbanks with water, and then washed them, either by channeling water through the sediments or flooding the sediments with...

An international team of researchers has found the DNA of Y. pestis in a 4,000-year-old domesticated sheep from the fortified Bronze Age settlement of Arkaim, in the southern Ural Mountains in present-day Russia, which marks the first confirmed case of a Bronze Age plague infection in a non-human host. It proves that livestock played a role in prehistoric plague dynamics.The sheep was associated with the Sintashta-Petrovka cultural complex, which was known for its sophisticated metallurgy, horse riding, and large, mobile herds. Genetic studies indicate that the bacterium found in the sheep belongs to the Late Neolithic–Bronze Age plague lineage that...

Brusselstown Ring lies within the Baltinglass hillfort cluster, a landscape of up to 13 large hilltop enclosures that shows nearly continuous activity from the Early Neolithic through the Bronze Age. What is singular about Brusselstown, however, is its extraordinary scale and layout. Two widely spaced ramparts surround the site, with the outer boundary encompassing not only the main hillfort but also the nearby Neolithic enclosure at Spinas Hill 1. Enclosures extending across more than one hill are rare in Ireland and Britain and are very uncommon even in later Iron Age Europe.Airborne and topographical surveys identified more than 600 subtle...

More than 7,000 artifacts, including clay seal impressions, clay tokens, figurines, and cylinder seals, have been uncovered at Tapeh Tyalineh, a 5,000-year-old site on the Mereg River in western Iran, according to The Greek Reporter. The objects were found in the remnants of mudbrick structures and in trash pits. Shokouh Khosravi of the University of Kurdistan said that the artifacts would have been used to mark jars, seal doors, and keep track of goods such as grain, oil, and possibly wine. The more than 200 designs on the artifacts are similar to those seen on seal impressions from other Early...

According to a statement released by the University of Vienna, a team of scientists from the University of Vienna, the University of Tartu, Cambridge University, and University College London have reconstructed the genomes of human betaherpesvirus 6A and 6B (HHV-6A/B) from samples taken from human remains recovered from archaeological sites in Europe. Today, HHV-6B infects about 90 percent of children by age two, causing roseola infantum, also known as "sixth disease, " an illness characterized by a rash and a fever. In addition to causing illness, these viruses are capable of integrating into human chromosomes and remaining dormant. Such inherited...

A study of the genomes of Italians who have reached the age of 100 has found that they carry a higher proportion of genetic material from the ancestral group known as Western Hunter-Gatherers than the rest of the population, according to a Phys.org report. Researchers led by Stefania Sarno and Vincenzo Iannuzzi of the University of Bologna analyzed the genes of 333 Italian centenarians and 690 healthy adults around the age of 50. These genomes were then compared to more than 100 ancient genomes from four ancestral groups: Western Hunter-Gatherers, Neolithic Anatolian farmers, Bronze Age nomads, and ancient groups from...

From the island of Kekova, off the southern coast of Turkey, renowned underwater archaeologist Hakan Öniz takes viewers on a journey through the underwater wonders of Turkey. Turkey's Island of 400 Ancient Shipwrecks The SpeciaList | BBC | 4:04 BBC Global | 717K subscribers | 32,063 views | November 24, 2024