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Research shows that the skeleton found in Cambridgeshire is of a man from a nomadic group known as Sarmatians.It is the first biological proof that these people came to Britain from the furthest reaches of the Roman empire and that some lived in the countryside.The remains were discovered during excavations to improve the A14 road between Cambridge and Huntingdon...Archaeologists discovered a complete, well-preserved skeleton of a man, they named Offord Cluny 203645 - a combination of the Cambridgeshire village he was found in and his specimen number. He was buried by himself without any personal possessions in a ditch, so...

The ten tribes of Israel essentially vanished from their former Kingdom of Israel by circa 721 BC. They had been a powerful kingdom in the Eastern Mediterranean region for centuries prior to that time. They had been allied to the city-states of Tyre, Sidon, etc. in what historians now call the Phoenician Empire. Their alliance dominated the ancient world’s maritime trade routes and, from the time of King David onward, became a powerful military power on land as well. They were exceedingly blessed by God during the time of Kings David and Solomon, but a long succession of sinful kings...

Scythian-era people lived across Eurasia from about 700 BCE to 200 BCE, and have long been considered highly mobile warriors who ranged widely across the steppe grasslands. Herodotus describes Scythian populations as living in wagons and engaging in raiding and warfare, and this view has persisted throughout history--supported by archeologists' observations of similar styles of horse harnesses, weapons, burial mounds and animal style motifs throughout what is now Ukraine.Because of this, history has lumped the diverse cultures and periods of people in this region as a single "Scythian" identity, even calling it an "empire." But a study including University of...

Full title: 2,000-year-old remains of nomadic 'royal' unearthed by Russian farmer includes 'laughing man,' haul of jewels and weapons A farmer digging on his land in Russia discovered something unexpected: a 2,000-year-old burial mound containing the remains and artifacts of a nomadic royal — including a strange "laughing" man skull. The trove of amazing jewelry, weapons and other artifacts was found by farmer Rustam Mudayev in a grave near the Caspian Sea, according to The Daily Mail. Mudayev consulted with the Astrakhan History Museum, which eventually organized an expedition to the village where the remains were found. "After inspecting the burial site we understood...

Archaeologists have been carrying out research into a huge late fist century AD defence system, which stretches 120 miles across Scotland. A total of 14 forts and several fortlets, which formed part of a defensive network built in the AD 70s, have so far been investigated over the past decade by the team, led by Dr Birgitta Hoffmann and Dr David Wolliscroft, both of the University of Liverpool. The network, which is thought to have run from Montrose or Stonehaven, south of Aberdeen, on the North Sea coast to the Firth or Clyde, was built some 50 years before Hadrian's...

In AD 303 on February 23, the Christian church of Nicomedia in Roman Bithynia was utterly destroyed. In this case, by “church” I am referring to the physical building as opposed to the human beings of Nicomedia who professed the Christian faith. Their destruction would come later. The pulling down of the church of Nicomedia marked the beginning of a violent, Roman Empire-wide repression of Christianity known to future generations as the Great Persecution. This state-sponsored attack would be the most violent, wide-ranging, and longest-lasting effort of the Roman government to wipe out the hated Christian sect. It would also...

The genetic variation within the Scythian nomad group is so broad that it must be explained with the group assimilating people it came in contact with. This is shown in a new study on Bronze and Iron Age genetics of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, situated in the Black Sea region... This is likely the strategy needed for the group to have been able to grow as fast, expand as vast and to remain established for as long as they did. The findings emphasize the importance of assimilation to maintain Scythian dominance around the Black Sea region... The vast area of the...

...As he and his team began to slice into the mound, located 30 miles east of Stavropol... It took nearly a month of digging to reach the bottom. There, Belinski ran into a layer of thick clay that, at first glance, looked like a natural feature of the landscape, not the result of human activity. He uncovered a stone box, a foot or so deep, containing a few finger and rib bones from a teenager... Nested one inside the other in the box were two gold vessels of unsurpassed workmanship. Beneath these lay three gold armbands, a heavy ring, and...

One of the most iconic living quarters in the history of mankind, the yurt is most closely associated with the nomadic peoples of central Asia. Herodotus, the father of history himself, was the first to describe yurts in the written word. According to him, yurts were the primary domiciles of the Scythians, who rode horses and lived in a nomadic fashion near the Black Sea from 600BC-300AD. The Ger Nomadic Mongolian families called their homes “gers.” Their dwellings were made up of same-sized orange mesh-like walls that curved around the center of the tent. Each yurt had 3-5 walls and...

Siberian scientists make discovery of 2,500 year old Saka settlement in up to 23 metres of water in Kyrgyzstan. The new find at the lake is separate from the discovery in 2007 of the ruins of an ancient metropolis of roughly the same age and Scythian burial mounds under its waters... A piece of a large ceramic pot found in the lake has a stamp on it written in Armenian and Syrian scripts, which, if confirmed, gives credence to the theory that an Armenian monastery was on this site in Medieval times, it is claimed. An intriguing version is that...

Archaeology shows that these fierce women also smoked pot, got tattoos, killed—and loved—men. The Amazons got a bum rap in antiquity. They wore trousers. They smoked pot, covered their skin with tattoos, rode horses, and fought as hard as the guys. Legends sprang up like weeds. They cut off their breasts to fire their bows better! They mutilated or killed their boy children! Modern (mostly male) scholars continued the confabulations. The Amazons were hard-core feminists. Man haters. Delinquent mothers. Lesbians. Drawing on a wealth of textual, artistic, and archaeological evidence, Adrienne Mayor, author of The Amazons, dispels these myths and...

While the history of civilization is being demolished by war and religious zealots in the rest of Iraq, in the Kurdistan Region archeologists are marveling at a stunning discovery: the remains of a long-lost temple from the biblical kingdom of Urartu, dating back to the 9th century BC. Kurdish archaeologist Dlshad Marf Zamua, who has studied the columns and other artifacts at the find, told Rudaw these were unearthed piecemeal over the past four decades by villagers going about their lives, digging for cultivation or construction. But only recently, after the discovery of life-size human statues and the unearthed columns,...

Vast stretches of Central Asia feel eerily uninhabited. Fly at 30,000 feet over... Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan -- and there are long moments when no town or road or field is visible from your window. Wandering bands and tribes roamed this immense area for 5,000 years, herding goat, sheep, cattle, and horses across immense steppes, through narrow valleys, and over high snowy passes. They left occasional tombs that survived the ages, and on rare occasions settled down and built towns or even cities. But for the most part, these peoples left behind few physical traces of their origins, beliefs, or ways...

Ancient Greeks had a word for the people who lived on the wild, arid Eurasian steppes stretching from the Black Sea to the border of China. They were nomads, which meant “roaming about for pasture.” They were wanderers and, not infrequently, fierce mounted warriors. Essentially, they were “the other” to the agricultural and increasingly urban civilizations that emerged in the first millennium B.C. As the nomads left no writing, no one knows what they called themselves. To their literate neighbors, they were the ubiquitous and mysterious Scythians or the Saka, perhaps one and the same people. In any case, these...

“The Catastrophe” - Part 1: What the End of Bronze-Age Civilization Means for Modern TimesFrom the desk of Thomas F. Bertonneau on Tue, 2009-09-15 09:20 Introduction to Part I: Modern people assume the immunity of their situation to major disturbance or – even more unthinkable – to terminal wreckage. The continuance of a society or culture depends, in part, on that very assumption because without it no one would complete his daily round. A man cannot enthusiastically arise from bed as the sun comes up and set about the day’s errands believing that all undertakings will issue vainly because the...

Frozen Siberian Mummies Reveal a Lost CivilizationGlobal warming may finally do in the bodies of the ancient Scythians. by Andrew Curry That the warrior survived the arrow’s strike for even a short time was remarkable. The triple-barbed arrowhead, probably launched by an opponent on horseback, shattered bone below his right eye and lodged firmly in his flesh. The injury wasn’t the man’s first brush with death. In his youth he had survived a glancing sword blow that fractured the back of his skull. This injury was different. The man was probably begging for death, says Michael Schultz, a paleopathologist at...

Ancient mummy opened: Scythian cavalier had bone disease Posted : Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:15:04 GMT Goettingen, Germany - An autopsy on the body of an ancient Scythian cavalier found in the Altai Mountains shows he had a degenerative bone disease for several years before he died, German scientists said Friday. The 2006 find of the preserved body and the man's rich possessions on the Mongolian side of the mountains was a scientific sensation. The Scythians were a nation of horsemen in central Asia. The man, who died about 2,300 years ago at the age of 50 or 60, would...

Sick Rams Used as Ancient Bioweapons Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News Once, a Weapon Nov. 28, 2007 -- Infected rams and donkeys were the earliest bioweapons, according to a new study which dates the use of biological warfare back more than 3,300 years. According to a review published in the Journal of Medical Hypotheses, two ancient populations, the Arzawans and the Hittites, engaged "in mutual use of contaminated animals" during the 1320-1318 B.C. Anatolian war. "The animals were carriers of Francisella tularensis, the causative agent of tularemia," author Siro Trevisanato, a molecular biologist based in Oakville, Ontario, Canada told Discovery News....

Archaeologists find 2,500-year-old mummy in Mongolia, tattoos and all Thu Aug 24, 2:18 PM ETAFP/DDP/GAI-HO Photo: This undated picture released by the German Archaeological Institute (GAI) shows a mummified body from... BERLIN (AFP) - An international group of archaeologists has unearthed a well-preserved, 2,500-year-old mummy frozen in the snowcapped mountains of Mongolia complete with blond hair, tattoos and a felt hat. The president of the German Archaeological Institute, Hermann Parzinger, hailed the "fabulous find" at a press conference to present the 28-member team's discovery in Berlin. The Scythian warrior was found in June at a height of 2,600 meters (8,500...

GORNO-ALTAISK, September 23. KAZINFORM. - Big ancient Scythian drawings were found for the first time in the mountains of the Russian Republic of Altai. Three drawings or petroglyphs of a size of 1.5 meters were reported by Yevgeny Matochkin from the National Museum of Altai to regional authorities. He said he found them on a cliff that is 30-meter high and 10-meter wide near the village of Inegen at the Katun and Chuya Rivers thanks to local residents, Kazinform quotes Itar-Tass. Matochkin said one drawing is that of a deer and others need to be cleaned to see what they...