During annual excavations at Vindolanda Roman Fort, near Hadrians Wall in Northumberland, a beautifully carved sandstone relief has been discovered depicting a nude male figure holding a spear in front of a horse/donkey. The entire stone, measuring 16 by 31.5 centimeters, would have originally bee
Scientists have reconstructed the silver trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, in a period that includes the traditional dates of the Trojan War, the founding of Rome and the destruction of Solomons Temple in Jerusalem. The team of French, Israeli and Australian scientists and numismatists found geoch
Scattered around various places in the city of Rome, fragments of a curious inscription from the end of the 1st century BC appeared over the decades. which was originally part of a tombstone or funerary stele dedicated by a man to his deceased wife. Today that inscription is important for several r
Since the discovery of the first fossil remains in the 19th century, the image of the Neanderthal has been that of a primitive hominid. It has long been known that Neanderthals were able to make tools and weapons efficiently. But could they also make ornaments, jewelry, or even art? A research team
About 35 kilometers southwest of Amman, the capital of Jordan, is the town of Madaba, famous for the large number of mosaics from the Byzantine and Umayyad eras that it houses in buildings from these times (it is actually known as the city of the mosaics ). One of these mosaics, popularly known as
In the year 1928 a boy named Traian Simion found, while working in the field near the village of Poiana Coțofenești (present-day Poiana Vărbilău), a unique golden helmet. After being analyzed by researchers from the University of Bucharest, it turned out to be a gold helmet from the Iron Age belongi
The year 911 B.C. it is considered that of the foundation of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. That year Adad-nirari II came to the throne of Assyria, who would continue the reconstruction work begun by his father after the collapse of the Bronze Age in the 12th century BC. that had plunged the entire Middle
While carrying out excavation work on his property on Stampstraat in the village of Simpelveld in the Netherlands, Andreas J. Wierts found three sandstone sarcophagi on December 11, 1930. Two of them had been looted, but the third was intact, although the lid was broken. Looking inside, archaeologi
Some time ago we talked here about a Chinese warlord named Cao Cao. Today we are going to see someone of the opposite sex and very different, both geographically and chronologically, although with a similar name:the Lady of Cao, the name by which an American mummy is known, from the Mochica culture,
New research, published in Quaternary Science Reviews , led by a team of geologists and archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Toronto, confirms the record date of this spectacular site. We can now safely say that our human ancestors were making simple stone too
In August 1955, the construction work on the A28 motorway between Utrecht and Groningen in the Netherlands, at the height of the town of Pesse (province of Drenthe), passed through a peat bog, an old lagoon where decomposing organic material had accumulated. for centuries. One of the workers who we
The current city of Velikiy Novgorod, located about 190 kilometers southeast of Saint Petersburg, was during the Middle Ages the capital of the principality and later the republic of Novgorod, and is considered the origin of present-day Russia. Between July 13 and 14, 1956, archaeologists found a un
The first civilizations that built monumental palaces and urban centers in Europe are more genetically homogeneous than expected, according to the first study to sequence complete genomes collected from ancient archaeological sites in the Aegean Sea. The study has been published in the journal Cell
How did Bronze Age people manage their finances before money became widespread? Researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Rome have discovered that bronze fragments found in archaeological deposits throughout Europe circulated as currency. These bits of scrap metal - which could include br
The aqueducts are very impressive examples of the art of construction in the Roman Empire. Even today, they continue to bring new insights into the aesthetic, practical and technical aspects of their construction and use. Scientists from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (JGU) investigated
Geochemical evidence reveals that Himeras battle armies were a mix of locals and outsiders, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Katherine Reinberger of the University of Georgia and colleagues at she. These data contradict certain claims made in the historical accou
In 1917 the British surveyor John Ball made an unusual discovery in the Libyan desert in Egypt. Some 180 kilometers southwest of the Dakhla Oasis he found two isolated sandstone cones jutting out of the desert sand. Both hills were covered with thousands of jars and other ceramic pieces, many of t
When thinking of buildings from the Roman imperial era, images of statues, columns or white marble slabs flash through the minds of many. In fact, many buildings and squares were decorated with marble at that time, but many were not decorated with white marble, but with colored marble, for example t
In the year 10 B.C. Emperor Augustus commissioned the mathematician and architect Novius Facundus to design and build a sundial in Rome, the Horologium Augusti , as a commemoration of the Roman domination of Egypt and Augustus himself born to bring peace to the world . Thus, its installation was pr
The oldest literary reference to a working saw comes from the Roman poet Ausonius who, in his poem Mosella (about landscapes traversed by the Moselle River in Germany) composed at the end of the 4th century AD, describes the screeching sound of a water saw cutting marble . However, the oldest repre
Archaeologists investigating the site of Vryokastraki, an islet in front of the ancient city of Vryokastro on the island of Kythnos in the Cyclades archipelago, for two years, found inscriptions that confirm the story told in previous finds in Athens, about a 4th century BC pirate The islet, on whi
Embedded in a grain of zircon, atoms of graphite indicate that life on Earth appeared at least 4.1 billion years ago, 300 million years earlier than the latest estimates. Mark Harrison examining rocks containing zircons. HELL . Until now most scientists assumed that the early Earth, which was form
What could be one of the largest prehistoric structures in the UK has been discovered near Stonehenge by a team of archaeologists led by the University of Bradford. A huge 2 km diameter ring made up of prehistoric “pits” up to 10 meters wide and 5 meters deep has been discovered around the super he
Since ancient times it grew –in a vague place in the east Andalusian– an olive tree that ripened olives in a single day. Its oil had powerful, almost miraculous, healing qualities. Pilgrims flocked to pluck them on harvest day. They said that it was planted on the tomb of a Christian Holy Man, next