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The Viking Ship Museum in Denmark recently announced an unprecedented discovery in the Øresund Strait: the world’s largest and most advanced medieval cargo ship ever found. Hailed as “a milestone in maritime archaeology,” the discovery occurred while divers were investigating the seabed in the Sound, in anticipation of Copenhagen’s new Lynetteholm district, and stumbled upon a record-breaking cog buried beneath centuries of sand and silt. Found approximately 43 feet deep, the precious wreckage escaped destructive forces, resulting in an extraordinary state of preservation that provided archaeologists with a rare, close-up look at never-before-seen details. “It is extraordinary to have so...

In this documentary, we dive into the true story of Vlad III Dracula, better known as Vlad the Impaler – the 15th‑century prince who turned a small, fragile principality into a nightmare for the Ottoman Empire. From his childhood as an Ottoman hostage to the infamous Forest of the Impaled that made Sultan Mehmed II turn back in fear, this is the brutal, human story behind the legend. This video covers: Vlad’s birth and early life in Transylvania and Wallachia His years as a political hostage in the Ottoman Empire The murders of his father and brother and his burning...

Tony Robinson and the rest of the Time Team embark on an expedition to Fetlar, a remote Shetland Island. The Time Team are hoping to unravel the ancient local legend surrounding the enigmatic 'Giant's Grave'. As they delve into its secrets, investigating the connection to Viking pottery discovered nearby, the team uncovers a potentially legendary discovery that could redefine the island's history. Welcome to Unearthed History -- the home for all things archeological! From ancient Roman ruins to buried medieval mysteries, we'll be bringing you award-winning documentaries that explore the remnants of long lost civilizations. The Hunt For Ancient Viking...

According to a statement released by the Public Library of Science, a new study of the 2,400-year-old Hjortspring boat, discovered with a cache of weapons in the early twentieth century on Denmark's island of Als, suggests that it may have been constructed in the Baltic Sea region. First, Mikael Fauvelle of Lund University and his colleagues radiocarbon dated cording and caulk found with the boat to the fourth or third century B.C. Then, they used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry to determine that the caulk had likely been made of animal fat and pine pitch. At the time, there were...

The infamous Black Death -- a pandemic that killed as many as one third to one half of Europeans within just a few years -- may have been aided in its devastation by an unknown volcanic eruption.That's the hypothesis presented in research published December 4 in Communications Earth & Environment, which argues that the eruption triggered several seasons of climate instability and crop failures. That instability, in turn, forced several Italian states to import grain stores from new sources -- specifically, from regions surrounding the Black Sea. Riding along on those grain stores, the researchers posit, were fleas infected with...

The cave is located by a volcano that erupted almost 1,100 years ago...Archaeological work shows that after the lava cooled, the Vikings entered the cave and constructed a boat-shaped structure made out of rocks. Within this structure, the Vikings would have burned animal bones, including those of sheep, goat, cattle, horses and pigs, at high temperatures as a sacrifice...Near the structure, archaeologists discovered 63 beads, three of which came from Iraq, said Kevin Smith, deputy director and chief curator of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University, who leads the team excavating the cave. The team also found remains...

Located in northern Newfoundland, the site of L'Anse aux Meadows was founded by Vikings around A.D. 1000. Until now, archaeologists believed that the site was occupied for only a brief period... In August 2018, an archaeological team excavated a peat bog located nearly 100 feet (30 meters) east of the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows. They found a layer of "ecofacts" -- environmental remains that may have been brought to the site by humans -- that were radiocarbon dated to the 12th or 13th century. These ecofacts include remains of two beetles not native to Newfoundland -- Simplocaria metallica,...

n the first large-scale study of ancient feline DNA, the results reveal how our inscrutable friends were domesticated in the Near East and Egypt some 15,000 years ago, before spreading across the globe and into our hearts. The study was presented at the International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology in Oxford, UK back in 2016, and sequenced DNA from 209 cats that lived between 15,000 and 3,700 years ago - so from just before the advent of agriculture right up to the 18th century. Found in more than 30 archaeological sites in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, these ancient feline...

New research and technologies may end up changing the way we think about early Arctic history, upending the assumption that the ancient ancestors of today's Inuit people learned how to spin yarn from Viking settlers. It has long been assumed that the ancient Dorset and Thule people learned how to spin yarn from Norse settlers who arrived in Newfoundland some 1,000 years ago, according to the Canadian press. “There’s a lot we don’t know,” said Michele Hayeur Smith of Brown University in Rhode Island and lead author of a recent paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science. Hayeur Smith and...

Thousands of 'Vikings' took to the streets brandishing burning torches and axes as the ancient Up Helly Aa festival got under way on the Shetland Islands. The event, a celebration of the Scottish island's Norse heritage, drew massive crowds with many 'warriors' wearing winged helmets and sheepskins.

Climate records back to Viking times show the 20th century was unexceptional for rainfall and droughts despite assumptions that global warming would trigger more wet and dry extremes, a study showed on Wednesday. Stretching back 1,200 years, written accounts of climate indicated that variations in the extremes in the 20th century were less than in some past centuries. "Several other centuries show stronger and more widespread extremes," lead author Fredrik Ljungqvist of Stockholm University told Reuters. "We can't say it's more extreme now." Ljungqvist said many existing scientific models of climate change over-estimated assumptions that rising temperatures would make dry...

New clues suggest slaves were vital to the Viking way of life -- and argue against attempts to soften the raiders' brutish reputation... Archaeologists are using recent finds and analyses of previous discoveries -- from iron collars in Ireland to possible plantation houses in Sweden -- to illuminate the role of slavery in creating and maintaining the Viking way of life. "This was a slave economy," said Neil Price, an archaeologist at Sweden's Uppsala University who spoke at a recent meeting that brought together archaeologists who study slavery and colonization. "Slavery has received hardly any attention in the past 30...

Archaeologists have found the figure of a goddess that dates back to the early Hittite period as well as a Viking amber necklace during an ongoing excavation in the ancient city of Bathonea by Lake Kucukcekmece in Istanbul. An archaeological excavation was launched in 2009 near Lake Kucukcekmece in the Avcilar district of Istanbul to uncover the ancient city of Bathonea, which is estimated to be 1,600 years old. The excavation is being conducted under the supervision of Associate Professor Fengul Aydingun from Kocaeli University. in an earlier interview with the press, she had said the first two years of...

A Norwegian further education college is starting a programme for want-to-be Vikings where students will learn essential Viking crafts, such as sword forging, jewellery making, and roof thatching. During the course at Seljord Folkehøgskule 150km west of Oslo, students -- many inspired by TV series such as ‘Game of Thrones’ -- will celebrate even celebrate the Norse rituals of the year, going so far as to make animal sacrifices during the winter feast. “We see a large number of applicants who have applied for different reasons," the school's principal, Arve Husby, told Norwegian broadcaster NRK. "Some have become interested through...

A new examination of ninth-century A.D. burial sites in the central Norwegian region of Trondelag has revealed they contain many more artifacts from Britain, such as brooches, drinking horns, and swords, than had been previously believed. "These graves are some of the earliest proof that we have of contact between Norway and the British Isles," archaeologist Aina Margrethe Heen Pettersen told Science Nordic. She argues that Vikings from Trondelag were among the first to voyage across the North Sea, and emphasizes that they were not simply bent on raiding. "Contact with the Anglo-Saxons means more than just violent pillaging. Drinking...

Dr Garcia Losquino, who is from the region, was compelled to visit Galicia in Northern Spain unexpectedly when a number of Viking anchors were washed ashore in a storm in March 2014... "On the beach where the anchors were found there was a big mound which locals thought might have been a motte-and-bailey construction, which was used by the later Vikings in France. But with the help of a geographer using tomography we now think this was a longphort -- a Viking construction only found in Ireland during the early Viking age, and very similar to English Viking camps, where...

Built to rival the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the great mosque in Damascus has always been claimed by rival faiths Sometime in the mid 1990s, I was standing in the marble courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus when two nuns asked me where they could find the head of John the Baptist. I pointed them towards the grand transept facade, gleaming with green and gold mosaics evoking a fertile paradise. Beyond lay the shrine to John or Yahya ibn Zakariyya, as he is known in Arabic, one of the few shared sites of Muslim-Christian pilgrimage. In 2001,...

When metal detectorists searching a field on northern Norway's Senja Island discovered two ancient metal brooches and human rib bones, they notified the authorities. Science Norway reports that an archaeological team from the Arctic University Museum of Norway was sent to investigate the site and learned that the two small pieces of jewelry belonged to an elaborate Viking Age burial dating to between a.d. 900 and 950. Given the presence of the oval brooches and other items such as spindle whorls and weaving tools that are typically only associated with women, experts believe the grave belongs to a high-ranking Viking...

Some of the most ordinary words in English have origins that no one can explain. Among them: "dog", "big", "bird", "donkey", "boy", "girl" and "puzzle". In this episode, let's trace their earliest appearances, explore the theories behind them, and unravel why these everyday words became some of our language's greatest mysteries. The English words nobody can explain | 23:24 RobWords | 887K subscribers | 478,352 views | December 6, 2025 YouTube transcript (below) reformatted at textformatter.ai

On Saturday, October 30, 2010, the Opera Company of Philadelphia brought together over 650 choristers from 28 participating organizations to perform one of the Knight Foundation's "Random Acts of Culture" at Macy's in Center City Philadelphia. Accompanied by the Wanamaker Organ - the world's largest pipe organ - the OCP Chorus and throngs of singers from the community infiltrated the store as shoppers, and burst into a pop-up rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's "Messiah" at 12 noon, to the delight of surprised shoppers. This event is one of 1,000 "Random Acts of Culture" to be funded by the...