Throughout Europe there are thousands of tunnels whose origin and function are unknown, being especially abundant in Austria and the German region of Bavaria, where more than 700 have been counted. But there are also in France, the United Kingdom, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary or Spa
One of the most attractive corners of Turkey is usually left out of the tourist circuits -at least the usual ones among Spanish tourists-, probably because it is too far inland, far from the routes of the tour operators, who focus on Istanbul, the coasts Aegean and Mediterranean, and the Marmara and
In the Iranian province of Fars, about five kilometers northwest of Persepolis, the ancient capital of the Persian empire, there is a rocky mountain in which tombs and reliefs from the Achaemenid and Sassanian eras are excavated. Of all of them, four stand out for their size, cruciform in appearanc
In the summer of 2015, archaeologists working around the Mycenaean palace of Nestor in Pylos, Greece, found a tomb with the remains of a warrior from 1500 BC. Next to it is a surprising treasure made up of weapons, gold jewelery and other objects, most of them in the Minoan style. A reconstruction o
About 3,000 years ago, those who inhabited the Andean area to the northwest of what is now Argentina created a unique object. An 18 by 15 centimeter copper metal plate that was given the appearance of an anthropomorphic mask of a human face, with eyes, nose and mouth in the form of holes. It was di
In 1996 a Belgian tourist enjoying his vacation on the coast of Croatia made a surprising discovery. His name was René Wouters (he passed away in 2012) and he was scuba diving near the islet of Vele Orjule, southeast of the island of Lussino (Lošinj) and north of the Adriatic coast. At a depth of a
Although relatively little known, the city of Iklaina was a great center of Mycenaean culture. But perhaps the most interesting thing is that recent discoveries indicate that it was the first city-state in Greece, and also in all of Europe. Iklaina would be the missing link between a world without
Between the 9th and 11th centuries, a type of sword with a factory mark that gave it a symbol of quality, both for the steel with which it was made and its origin, became popular in northern Europe and Scandinavia. They are called Ulfberht swords because they all bear the inscription +VLFBERHT+ or
In the southwestern United States, mainly in the state of Utah, there is a large concentration of places where pictographs and petroglyphs appear on rocks and walls in the open air. They represent life-size human figures, elongated and stylized, ending in a point, in a style that researcher Polly S
If there is something that characterizes archeology, it is the care, the almost exquisite touch that is given to the sites and that makes a tool as simple and limited as a brush the protagonist of the excavations, making the archaeologist have to spend hours and hours under the sun separating just a
In 1841 the town of Groß-Weckow (today Wiejkowo), located in the northwest of present-day Poland, demolished what remained of an old medieval chapel in ruins, to build a new one. During the foundation works, an underground crypt was found and, within it, several and numerous objects appeared:a good
In the town of Slaughterbridge (Cornwall, UK), just off the road from Camelford to Tintagel, there is a garden created in the 18th century by Charlotte Boscawen, Lady Falmouth. In it there is an ancient stone almost 3 meters long, which bears inscriptions in Latin and Ogam. This is not at all unusu
The brooch Located on the small island of Mousa, in the Scottish archipelago of Shetland, it is one of the best preserved prehistoric buildings in Europe. Not only that, of the more than 500 brochs that can be found in Scotland, this is the tallest of all, and can also be visited thanks to the repa
At this point it seems impossible that ancient buildings as large as the dragon houses on the Greek island of Euboea could not have been dated, and that practically nothing is known about them. The dragon houses (in Greek Drakospita ) are 20 large buildings spread across the south of the island of
After three years of restoration and the installation of a lighting system, the Eupalino aqueduct tunnel, one of the jewels of ancient engineering, reopens to the public on the Greek island of Samos. Samos was, in the middle of the sixth century B.C. a prosperous city that had built a high reputati
The cave paintings of the European caves of Lascaux and Altamira are among the most impressive in the world. But they are not the oldest, nor are they the most prolific. If we stick to antiquity, we must consider those discovered three years ago on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, which would dat
A common feature of petrospheres, prehistoric balls of carved stone that have been found in different shapes and sizes in many parts of the world, is the unknown about their function. Of all of them, those discovered mainly in Scotland, with a few examples found in the rest of Great Britain and in
The story begins with a fortuitous meeting aboard a train from Surrey to London, possibly in the year 1854, without either of its two protagonists ever revealing the exact date. Both Joseph Prestwich and John Evans were businessmen, the former in the wine trade and the latter in papermaking. But th
Amarna (Tell el-Amarna) was the city that the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten ordered to be built to make it his new capital, center of the cult of the new and heretical god Aton, in the middle of the 14th century BC. It was located halfway between the other two great cities of the time, Thebes and Memp
Between the towns of Melba and Marsing, in the US state of Idaho, there is a huge rock inscribed with a curious prehistoric map. The basalt rock, about the size of a small car, contains a petroglyph that at first glance appears to be a chaotic array of meaningless strokes and circles. But in reali
Disturbing discoveries have multiplied in recent years in Asia. Public baths inspired by Roman baths, statuette of a warrior, fabrics, blown glass objects... Did the Romans go to the Middle Kingdom? Roman Antiquity (Republic):a group of Roman legionaries - Illustration by Giuseppe Rava. This arti
You can become a Neanderthal, a Roman or a pirate for an instant… what better way to learn? This “art ” of research and dissemination has been developed mainly by the universities, and from them it has become part of the workshops common in some museums. Among many other institutions, in Burgos th
What follows sounds like the plot of a classic adventure movie. but it is a real fact. A fact involved, in addition, in a controversy still to be fully clarified. But it has all the elements to be interesting :an exotic place, the discovery of a lost city, a war context, the controversy over the v
After the break in archaeological excavations caused by the outbreak of the pandemic the previous year, this 2021 saw the return of researchers to the field, with more enthusiasm than ever and resulting in one of the most prolific seasons in finds and discoveries. We talk about many of them in thes