Free Republic

European-crafted glass beads found at three different indigenous sites in northern Alaska date back to the pre-colonial period of North America, in what is an intriguing archaeological discovery. Somehow, these blueberry-sized beads made their way from what is now Venice, Italy, to the Brooks Range mountains of Alaska at some point during the mid-to-late 15th century, according to new research published in American Antiquity. The authors of the paper, archaeologists Michael Kunz from the University of Alaska Museum of the North and Robin Mills from the Bureau of Land Management, suspect the beads were trade goods that, after passing through...

New research published Wednesday revealed that abnormal bony growths in the ear canal, also called "surfer's ear" and often seen in people who take part in water sports in colder climates, occurred frequently in our ancient cousins who died out around 40,000 years ago. ...the findings may mean they fished far more frequently than the archaeological record suggests, the scientists behind the study published in journal PLOS One said. "It reinforces a number of arguments and sources of data to argue for a level of adaptability and flexibility and capability among the Neanderthals, which has been denied them by some...

Homo Neanderthaliensis did not become extinct because of changes in climate. At least, this did not happen to the several Neanderthals groups that lived in the western Mediterranean 42,000 years ago. A research group of the University of Bologna came to this conclusion after a detailed paleoclimatic reconstruction of the last ice age through the analysis of stalagmites sampled from some caves in Apulia, Italy. The researchers focused on the Murge karst plateau in Apulia, where Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens coexisted for at least 3,000 years, from approximately 45,000 to 42,000 years ago... Data extracted from the stalagmites showed that...

Ancient Neolithic villagers on the Carmel Coast in Israel built a seawall to protect their settlement against rising sea levels in the Mediterranean, revealing humanity's struggle against rising oceans and flooding stretches back thousands of years. An international team of researchers from the University of Haifa, Flinders University in Australia, the Israel Antiquities Authority and The Hebrew University uncovered and analysed the oldest known coastal defence system anywhere in the world, constructed by ancient settlers from boulders sourced in riverbeds from 1-2km near their village. In a study published today in PLOS ONE, Dr Ehud Galili from the Zinman Institute...

"Having studied the skull of one of the men who went down with the Mary Rose, we found the bone structure was consistent with someone who had North African features, and DNA evidence seems to back this up," he said. "Today, with a much more mobile world population, it would have been harder to isolate, but in the 16th Century it's easier to pinpoint facial characteristics to a specific location. "Henry, as we've named him, had a broad nose bridge and wide cheek bones which are far more similar to skeletons found in Morocco or Algeria than those of the...

Tension is running high between Greece and Turkey. The cause? Turkish Chief of the General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar paid a visit to Imia, a pair of two small, uninhabited Greek islets in the Aegean Sea, on January 29. He was accompanied by the commanders of the Turkish land, naval and air forces.Imia – which Turkey calls “Kardak” – was a subject of yet another crisis in 1996 that brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war. Although armed conflict was ultimately averted, Turkey still claims that the islands are Turkish, even though the islands in the Aegean are...

Opalescent pools full of carbon dioxide have been found at the site of the second biggest volcanic eruption recorded in human history. The eruption in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Santorini wiped out the Minoan civilisation living along the coast in 1600 BC. The newly discovered pools were found forming at a depth of 250m. They is a series of interconnected white pools that have high concentrations of CO2 and scientists say they could shed light on future volcanic eruptions and answer questions about deep sea carbon storage. An international team of scientists used sophisticated underwater exploration vehicles...

Underground, the morphology and the organization of the mining infrastructure allow to distinguish several phases of activity. The archaeological data gathered and observed during the latest phase of the 2015 campaign: pottery, stone hammers made of a volcano-sedimentary rock quarry, point towards a high dating for the earliest phase of mining activities in the area (Late Neolithic / Early Helladic: around 3200 BC). If future research confirms this hypothesis, the chronological framework of mining in the region of Attica and the Aegean world would be profoundly modified. The Classical phase is by far the most perceptible; omnipresent, it is remarkable...

A new study of ancient Caribbean skulls suggests Christopher Columbus' accounts of fierce raiders abducting women and cannibalizing men ‘might’ be true. In 1492, under orders from King Ferdinand of Spain, famed Italian explorer Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the New World of the Americas while trying to find a new route to India and has been both credited and blamed for having opened up the Americas for European colonization. Columbus' accounts of the Caribbean include gory descriptions of fierce cannibals abducting and abusing women and eating men, and while most historians have regarded these stories as figments of Columbus’ imagination, a...

Hong Kong's last authentic junk boat is struggling to stay afloat due to a lack of overseas tourists. The Dukling normally takes foreign visitors on scenic trips around its bays but these have dried up due to travel restrictions. Its owner says it is fighting to survive and having to focus on local citizens during the downturn. Junk boats have a long history in the former British colony dating back to the Han Dynasty. "The Dukling is the icon of Hong Kong, I am not only running a business on it, I am trying to maintain this treasurable piece of...

More than 1,000 years ago, the Norse explorer and Viking Leif Erikson made landfall in modern-day Newfoundland, likely becoming the first European to discover the New World. Today, Leif Erikson represents over a millennium of shared history between the Nordic countries and the Americas and symbolizes the many contributions of Nordic Americans to our great Nation. Accomplished in the face of daunting danger and carried out in service of Judeo-Christian values, Leif Erikson’s story reflects the fundamental truths about the American character. On a mission to evangelize Greenland, Leif Erikson and his crew were blown off course. They had to...

Was Christopher Columbus born in Genoa, Italy? Most definitely not, say an unlikely collection of experts from European royalty, DNA science, university scholars, even Columbus's own living family. This ground breaking documentary follows a trail of proof to show he might have been much more than we know.Who Was The Real Christopher Columbus? | Secrets and Lies of Christopher Columbus | Timeline

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of Romans transporting salt from the outskirts of Spalding... Two substantial ditches and holding tanks have been uncovered during the 16-week excavation... He said: "Nothing was expected from the site prior to evaluation. There was an aerial photograph which showed a crop mark but there was no indication of the quality of the archaeology... During the Roman period, Spalding and the surrounding area would have been creeks which would provide the ideal location for creating salt. Romans would use a hearth to evaporate tidal water intobrine to create salt. Mr McDaid said: "There are no signs...

A new study suggests the Mediterranean Sea was the warmest during the Roman Empire than any other time in the past 2,000 years The research, published in Scientific Reports, notes the Mediterranean was 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) warmer "than average values for the late centuries for the Sicily and Western Mediterranean regions.

Excavations at Tell el-Burak, about five miles south of the Lebanese coastal city of Sidon, have revealed the well-preserved remains of a wine press used from at least the seventh century B.C. It is the earliest wine press ever found in the Phoenician homelands, which roughly corresponded to modern Lebanon. The discovery is featured in a study published Monday in the journal Antiquity. Large numbers of seeds show grapes were brought there from nearby vineyards and crushed by treading feet in a large basin of durable plaster that could hold about 1,200 gallons of raw juice... The wine press was...

...the research team extracted and analysed DNA from the remains of 442 men, women and children... from archaeological sites in Scandinavia, the U.K., Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Estonia, Ukraine, Poland and Russia, and mostly date to the Viking Age (ca. 750-1050 AD). The team's analyses yielded a number of findings. One of the most noteworthy is that contrary to what has often been assumed, Viking identity was not limited to people of Scandinavian ancestry -- the team discovered that two skeletons from a Viking burial site in the Orkney Islands were of Scottish ancestry. They also found evidence that there was...

A SUNKEN ship has been found in almost perfect condition despite spending 400 years underwater. Divers made the mysterious discovery while exploring the Baltic Sea off the coast of Finland. The divers, from the non-profit Badewanne team, have come across shipwrecks before but never one as old and undamaged as the Dutch merchant vessel. The ship has been dated back to the 17th century. It dates back to a time when the Dutch Empire spanned five continents, becoming an economic superpower that was single-handedly responsible for half of Europe’s shipping by 1670. The ship is called a 'fluyt', a type...

On this date in 1459, the former Doge of Genoa Pietro di Campfregoso was stoned to death by his city’s enraged populace. This Pietro (English Wikipedia entry | Italian) succeeded his cousin to the merchant oligarchy’s head in 1450. Genoa resided in a crab-bucket of rival peninsular and Mediterranean powers, and Pietro was distinctly out-scuttled in the 1450s. Genoa unsuccessfully supported the Byzantine Empire when it was decisively conquered by the rising Ottomans in 1453, and the Genoans found themselves consequently rousted from a number of Aegean and Black Sea possessions. Meanwhile, fickle Italian fortune brought Neapolitan troops to the...

In 1972, in one of the early finds of marine archaeology, researchers discovered a trove of clay figurines on the seabed off the coast of Israel. The figurines -- hundreds of them, accompanied by ceramic jars -- were assumed to be the remains of a Phoenician shipwreck that had rested under the Mediterranean for 2,500 years. The artifacts were never fully analyzed in a scientific study, and were filed away and mostly forgotten for decades. But a new analysis by Meir Edrey, an archaeologist at the Leon Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel, and...

It is now generally accepted the Leif Eriksson sailed from Greenland across the Davis Strait and made landfalls on the North American continent almost a thousand years ago, but what happened in this vast area during the next five hundred years has long been a source of disagreement among scholars. Using new archeological, scientific, and documentary information (much of it in Scandinavian languages that are a bar to most Western historians), this book confronts many of the unanswered questions about early exploration and colonization along the shores of the Davis Strait. The author brings together two distinct but tangential fields...