Around the year 688 B.C. settlers from the islands of Rhodes and Crete founded the city of Gela on the southern coast of Sicily. It flourished and developed so rapidly that, in less than a century, it was able to found other colonies on its own. So in the year 581 B.C. a group of Geloi they headed
Examining colored fabrics from the Timna Valley - a former copper-producing district in southern Israel - in a study that has lasted several years, researchers were surprised to find remnants of fabric, a tassel and wool fibers dyed with royal purple. Direct radiocarbon dating confirms that the fin
Thousands of years ago, the Sahara was surprisingly green, with rich vegetation, trees, and lakes covering almost all of what is now sandy desert. There were vast open grasslands, forests, rivers, lakes and wetlands, which allowed the survival of a wide variety of animal species. Antelopes, gazelles
In 1872 workers digging a hole for a fence post in the town of Meredith, New Hampshire, near the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee, found a curious and strange buried stone. It was given to his patron, businessman Seneca Ladd, and upon his death it became the property of one of his daughters, who finally
Although scientists and historians have long conjectured that stone and bone carvings have been used as a form of symbolism since the Middle Paleolithic (250,000-45,000 BC), the findings supporting this theory are very scarce. A recent discovery by archaeologists from the Hebrew University and the
Although the traditional date of foundation of the city of Rome is 753 BC, in reality the area was inhabited since the Iron Age, with some remains dating back to 900 BC. One of them is known as tugurium Romuli o House of Romulus, the supposed abode of the legendary founder of Rome. It was found du
Ponza Island is the largest of the Pontine Islands, located about 33 kilometers south of Cape Circeo on the coast between Rome and Naples. One of its many attractions are the many caves and tunnels excavated since ancient times, among which the system of 5 caves called Grotte di Pilato stands out.
The island of Aegina, located in the Saronic Gulf just 20 kilometers from Piraeus, is today a popular tourist destination that can be reached in less than an hour by ferry from Athens. But during practically all of Antiquity, the Aeginetans were staunch enemies of the Athenians, who were so close to
In a cave adjacent to an ancient cemetery near Beit Shearim, an ancient Jewish city in northern Israel, lies a huge slab of glass approximately 2 meters wide, 3 and a half meters long and 45 centimeters thick. It weighs 9 tons. Although chemical analyzes confirm that it is glass, the slab bears no
Based on a recently discovered manual in a 3,500-year-old medical papyrus, Copenhagen University Egyptologist Sofie Schiødt has been able to help reconstruct the embalming process used to prepare ancient Egyptians for the afterlife. It is the oldest mummification manual ever discovered. In ancient
Researchers from the University of Bonn together with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities deciphered the worlds oldest place-name sign, an inscription from the time of the emergence of the Egyptian state at the end of the fourth millennium BC, found in the Wadi el Malik to the east from Aswan, an a
The Nuragic culture of the island of Sardinia developed on the island (and also in neighboring Corsica) from the Bronze Age (around 1700 BC) and lasted until the Roman conquest in 238 BC. It takes its name precisely from the nuragas , the main megalithic structures erected by that culture, since we
In May of the year 260 AD. the Roman legions commanded by the emperor Valerian were facing the army of the Sassanid empire of Sapur I, who had already captured Antioch and were advancing with little opposition through Mesopotamia towards the interior of Anatolia. The legions had approximately 70,00
In the steep rock walls of the Kali Gandaki river valley in Nepal, archaeologists have found an impressive number of some 10,000 man-made caves, carved into the slopes and into the mountains, sometimes at considerable altitude. They are called Caves of Heaven , but also Mustang Caves , because they
The mythical country of Punt was an important trading partner of the Egyptians for at least 1,100 years. It was a prominent source of luxury goods, including frankincense, gold, leopard skins, and live baboons. Located somewhere in the southern Red Sea region of Africa or Arabia, its geographic loca
About 12 kilometers north of the city of Arles, in the Provence region of southern France, is the small town of Fontvieille. It is a commune of just 3,500 inhabitants that lives from agriculture and tourism, but until the 5th century AD. It was also the place where the greatest concentration of mech
A new study published by paleoanthropologists Antonis Bartsiokas and Juan-Luis Arsuaga investigates whether early humans had the capacity or ability to hibernate, just as many other animals such as bears or hedgehogs do. The results, surprisingly, suggest that they did. Evidence found in bones from
The archaeological site of Carahunge, also called Zorats Karer, Karahunj or Carenish, is located in the Armenian province of Syunik, in the southwest of the country, and on a rocky promontory in the middle of a mountainous plateau at an altitude of 1,770 meters near the city of Sisian . The differe
The Department of Antiquities of the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Public Works of Cyprus announced the completion of an archaeological and geophysical study in the area of Pera Oreinis in October 2020 under the direction of Dr. Matthias Recke (University of Frankfurt); Philipp Kobusch
To this day no one can say with absolute certainty whether the Hisarlik site on the north coast of Anatolia is the Homeric Troy or on the contrary it is another city, perhaps the Wilusa Hittite (the only written document found at the site is a cylinder with a Luwian inscription). In any case, when H
As part of the Silk Road and situated at the geographic intersection of Eastern and Western cultures, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has long been an important crossroads for trans-European exchanges of people, cultures, agriculture, and languages. Since the late 1990s, the discovery of hund
The kingdom of Rheged was a post-Roman fall Celtic kingdom whose status researchers based on speculation only, until early 2017. He appears abundantly in early British poetry, where both Nennius and the bard Taliesin associate him with a king named Urien in the second half of the sixth century. Als
The famous terracotta warriors are just a part of the gigantic mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of unified China, who reigned between 221 and 210 BC. In fact, the complex, located 30 kilometers east of Xian in the northwest of the country, houses more than 400 tombs covering an impress
The tomb of the official responsible for the secret documents of the royal chancery during the reign of Userkara, the second pharaoh of the 6th dynasty, was discovered by Polish archaeologists in Saqqara, next to the oldest pyramid in the world. It dates back to 4,300 years ago. So far, researchers