Humans 80,000 Years Older Than Previously Thought?

Modern humans may have evolved more than 80,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a new study of sophisticated stone tools found in Ethiopia.

The tools were uncovered in the 1970s at the archaeological site of Gademotta, in the Ethiopian Rift Valley. But it was not until this year that new dating techniques revealed the tools to be far older than the oldest known Homo sapien bones, which are around 195,000 years old.

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Ancient Roman Oil Lamp 'Factory Town' Found

Italian researchers have discovered the pottery center where the oil lamps that lighted the ancient Roman empire were made.

Evidence of the pottery workshops emerged in Modena, in central-northern Italy, during construction work to build a residential complex near the ancient walls of the city.

"We found a large ancient Roman dumping filled with pottery scraps. There were vases, bottles, bricks, but most of all, hundreds of oil lamps, each bearing their maker's name," Donato Labate, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, told Discovery News.

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Shipwreck clues could clear Blackbeard of sinking his ship to swindle his crew

He was history's most feared pirate, striking terror into seafarers as he cut a bloodthirsty swathe through the Caribbean and North Atlantic.

But new research has found that Blackbeard may be innocent of one of the most notorious charges against him.

For almost 300 years, the British pirate captain has stood accused of deliberately sinking his flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, so he could swindle his crew out of their share of loot they had plundered

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Three thousand-year-old spearhead found

A 3,500 year old Bronze Age spearhead has been discovered in a stream in Dumfriesshire.

The ancient weapon-tip was found in the waters of the Mennock Pass, close to Wanlockhead.

It was found wedged in a rock crevice beneath the waters surface.

It is believed to date back to between the 15th and 12th century BC.

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Decline Of Roman And Byzantine Empires 1,400 Years Ago May Have Been Driven By Climate Change

The decline of the Roman and Byzantine Empires in the Eastern Mediterranean more than 1,400 years ago may have been driven by unfavorable climate changes.

Based on chemical signatures in a piece of calcite from a cave near Jerusalem, a team of American and Israeli geologists pieced together a detailed record of the area's climate from roughly 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D. Their analysis, to be reported in an upcoming issue of the journal Quaternary Research, reveals increasingly dry weather from 100 A.D. to 700 A.D. that coincided with the fall of both Roman and Byzantine rule in the region.

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Neanderthal goes High-Tech

Am 27.11.2008 unterzeichnete der Direktor des Neanderthal Museums, Prof. Dr. Gerd-Christian Weniger in Dortmund einen Kooperationsvertrag mit der Firma CTM-DO, einem Spezialunternehmen für industrielle Computertomographie.

CTM-DO forscht mit Unterstützung der EU im Bereich digitaler Messverfahren. Durch die Forschungskooperation werden den Wissenschaftlern des Neanderthal Museums in Zukunft hoch auflösende CT-Scans und exakte digitale Kopien wichtiger Humanfossilien zur Verfügung stehen.

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The world’s first Illyrian trading post found

A unique archaeological discovery in the Balkans: Archaeologists from the University of Oslo have just found the first Illyrian trading post of all time. So Balkan history must now be rewritten!

There is jubilation at the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo i Norway. Marina Prusac, Associate Professor in the department of archaeology, has just returned home after conducting excavations in the border area between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the course of several weeks of intense digging this autumn, her archaeological team found the very first traces of an Illyrian trading post that is more han two thousand years old.

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Oetzi's last supper

What we eat can say a lot about us –where we live, how we live and eventually even when we lived. From the analysis of the intestinal contents of the 5,200-year-old Iceman from the Eastern Alps, Professor James Dickson from the University of Glasgow in the UK and his team have shed some light on the mummy's lifestyle and some of the events leading up to his death. By identifying six different mosses in his alimentary tract, they suggest that the Iceman may have travelled, injured himself and dressed his wounds. Their findings (1) are published in the December issue of Springer's journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, which is specially dedicated to Oetzi the Iceman.

The Iceman is the first glacier mummy to have fragments of mosses in his intestine. This is surprising as mosses are neither palatable nor nutritious and there are few reports of mosses used for internal medical treatments. Rather, mosses recovered from archaeological sites tend to have been used for stuffing, wiping and wrapping.

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Thera volcano in 1613 BC

Two olive branches buried by a Minoan-era eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera (modern-day Santorini) have enabled precise radiocarbon dating of the catastrophe to 1613 BC, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 years, according to two researchers who presented conclusions of their previously published research during an event on Tuesday at the Danish Archaeological Institute of Athens.

Speaking at an event entitled "The Enigma of Dating the Minoan Eruption - Data from Santorini and Egypt", the study's authors, Dr. Walter Friedrich of the Danish University of Aarhus and Dr. Walter Kutschera of the Austrian University of Vienna, said data left by the branch of an olive tree with 72 annular growth rings was used for dating via the radiocarbon method, while a second olive branch -- found just nine metres away from the first -- was unearthed in July 2007 and has not yet been analysed.

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Dig unearths Stone Age sculptures

Rare artefacts from the late Stone Age have been uncovered in Russia.

The site at Zaraysk, 150km south-east of Moscow, has yielded figurines and carvings on mammoth tusks.

The finds also included a cone-shaped object whose function, the authors report in the journal Antiquity, "remains a puzzle".

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Archaeologists discover rare Bronze Age amber necklace in Greater Manchester

A team of archaeologists has uncovered a rare amber necklace believed to be about 4,000 years old in Greater Manchester, in the UK, dating back to the Bronze Age.

According to a report by BBC News, archaeologists made the find while excavating a cist, a type of stone-lined grave, in Mellor, Stockport.

The necklace consists of dozens of pierced amber beads of various sizes, linked together on a length of fibre.

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Rare Bronze Age necklace is found

A rare amber necklace believed to be about 4,000 years old has been uncovered in Greater Manchester.

Archaeologists made the find while excavating a cist - a type of stone-lined grave - in Mellor, Stockport.

It is the first time a necklace of this kind from the early Bronze Age has been found in north-west England.

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Medieval Bishop's palace discovered in Ross

A CENTURIES-old search for a lost palace has ended at one of Herefordshire’s best-known beauty spots, where a time team unearthed its second stunning find in nearly as many months.

The remains of what was the medieval Bishop’s Palace that once dominated Ross-on-Wye were revealed by archaeologists digging at the site of a Roman temple uncovered there earlier this year.

An exact location for the palace has eluded local historians for some 300 years. It’s a find that not only has a big part to play in the future for Ross, but also further boosts the reputation of the town’s biggest benefactor.

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First credit crunch traced back to Roman republic

Politicians searching for historical precedents for the current financial turmoil should start looking a bit further back after an Oxford University historian discovered what he believes is the world's first credit crunch in 88BC.

The good news is that Philip Kay knows how the Romans got themselves into financial bother. The bad news is no one knows how they got themselves out of it.

"The essential similarity between what happened 21 centuries ago and what is happening in today's UK economy is that a massive increase in monetary liquidity culminated with problems in another country causing a credit crisis at home. In both cases distance and over-optimism obscured the risk," said Kay, a supernumerary fellow at Wolfson College.

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A temple discovered below Romuliana

ZAJECAR – German experts from the Archeological Institute of Frankfurt in collaboration with our experts have come to an incredible discovery- they have found monumental buildings below Romuliana covering 300 square meters. A temple and 25 objects have been hidden under the surface.

“It was generally believed that Romuliana, the place where Roman emperor Caius Valerius Galerius Maximianus (297-311) was born, was a village. This discovery casts a completely new light on historical data about Romuliana, proving that it was a Roman settlement with all characteristics of Roman cities of the time,” says Bora Dimitrijevic, the director from the museum in Zajecar.

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Fishermen find ancient boat in Black Sea

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — A well-preserved ancient wooden dugout canoe has been discovered at the bottom of the Black Sea, scientists said Saturday.

The vessel was discovered by fishermen trailing nets along the sea bottom some 15 miles off the coast, said Dimitar Nedkov, head of the Archaeological Museum in the port city of Sozopol.

"The dugout is 2.6 meters (8.5 feet) long and 70 centimeters (27.5 inches) wide, and it is made most probably of oak," Nedkov told The Associated Press.

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Fokus Fortifikation: Antike Befestigungen im östlichen Mittelmeerraum

Unter dem Motto "Fokus Fortifikation: Antike Befestigungen im östlichen Mittelmeerraum" fördert die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) über einen Zeitraum von drei Jahren bis Oktober 2011 den Austausch und die gemeinsame Arbeit von mehr als 15 Nachwuchswissenschaftlern an verschiedenen europäischen universitären und außeruniversitären Forschungseinrichtungen, die sich aus bauforscherischer, archäologischer oder althistorischer Perspektive mit antiken Befestigungen in Griechenland, Kleinasien und dem Vorderen Orient befassen.

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Quo vadis - die römische Villa von Blankenheim

Internationales Symposium diskutierte Wege zur Konservierung und Präsentation eines der größten römischen Landgüter im Rheinland
Seit Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts beschäftigten sich Archäologen bereits mehrfach mit der Villa Rustica in Blankenheim.

Archäologen aus dem In- und Ausland waren auf Einladung der LVR-Bodendenkmalpflege im Rheinland sowie der Gemeinde Blankenheim (Kreis Euskirchen) zusammen gekommen, um über Möglichkeiten der Erhaltung und Präsentation der römischen Villa von Blankenheim zu diskutieren. Aufbauend auf den Erfahrungen der Spezialisten sollen Konzepte für den künftigen Umgang mit einem der größten römischen Gutshöfe im Rheinland entwickelt werden.

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Prähistorische Elfenbein-Objekte zeigen alte Handelswege

Untersuchungsergebnisse des Mainzer Elfenbein-Zentrums INCENTIVS werden bei einer internationalen Tagung in Alicante vorgestellt.

Das Internationale Zentrum für Elfenbeinforschung (INCENTIVS) an der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz wird die Untersuchungsergebnisse von 80 prähistorischen Elfenbeinobjekten aus Spanien, Portugal und Marokko diese Woche bei einer Tagung im spanischen Alicante vorstellen. Die Mainzer Wissenschaftler um INCENTIVS-Gründer Dr. Arun Banerjee haben die bis zu 5000 Jahre alten Artefakte mit zerstörungsfreien Methoden auf ihre Herkunft beziehungsweise das verwendete Material untersucht. "Wir konnten dabei zeigen, dass der nordafrikanische Raum und insbesondere Marokko ein Elfenbeinlieferant für die Iberische Halbinsel war und zwischen den Gebieten sehr alte Handelsbeziehungen bestanden haben", erläutert Banerjee.

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Young archaeologists unearth history

INDUSTRIOUS youngsters have helped reveal the rich and varied history of their Norfolk village after they dug up rare Roman pottery and prehistoric flints.

For the last two summers pupils from Acle have been getting their hands dirty as they took part in major excavations to unearth the community's past.

A report by the Norfolk Archaeological Unit has now revealed that the Acle High School's students' efforts this July have led to the discovery of 242 shards of Roman pottery from mainly 200 and 300AD and 46 Neolithic flint fragments.

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