Exploration of Bahamas seabed will be first time notorious New Providence hideout has been searched
The Pirates of the Caribbean is a $4.5bn swashbuckling film franchise and Blackbeard and Calico Jack Rackham are among marauding buccaneers who have captured imaginations over the centuries.
But almost nothing is known about the life and times of actual pirates.
Continue reading...Critics had claimed that plan announced in May exposed complex of desert etchings to impact of informal mining
Peru’s government has abandoned a plan that reduced the size of a protected area around the country’s ancient Nazca Lines, after criticism the change made them vulnerable to the impact of informal mining operations.
Peru’s culture ministry said on Sunday that it was reinstating with immediate effect the protected area covering 5,600 square kilometers (2,200 square miles), that in late May had been cut back to 3,200 sq km. The government said at the time the decision was based on studies that had more precisely demarcated areas with “real patrimonial value”.
Continue reading...Researchers enlisted help of AI along with radiocarbon dating to produce new insights into ancient texts
Many of the Dead Sea scrolls could be older than previously thought, with some biblical texts dating from the time of their original authors, researchers say.
The first of the ancient scrolls were discovered in the caves of Qumran in the Judean desert by Bedouin shepherds in the mid-20th century. The manuscripts range from legal documents to parts of the Hebrew Bible, and are thought to date from around the third century BCE to the second century CE.
Continue reading...A man 43,000 years ago dipped a finger in red pigment and made a nose on a face-like pebble in Spain, scientists say
One day around 43,000 years ago, a Neanderthal man in what is now central Spain came across a large granite pebble whose pleasing contours and indentations snagged his eye.
Something in the shape of that quartz-rich stone – perhaps its odd resemblance to an elongated face – may have compelled him to pick it up, study it and, eventually, to dip one of his fingers in red pigment and press it against the pebble’s edge, exactly where the nose on that face would have been.
Continue reading...Celebrity used trips to ancient Maya cities to advertise his own-brand snacks, drawing criticism from Mexico’s archaeology and history institute
Mexico is seeking compensation from YouTube celebrity MrBeast’s production company, accusing it of using images of the country’s ancient archaeological sites to advertise a chocolate brand.
A video of the social media star visiting Maya ruins has been viewed around 60m times since 10 May on YouTube, where he has 395 million subscribers.
Continue reading...British team says new study ‘radically transforms’ understanding of bronze age trade networks
In about 1300BC, the major civilisations of the eastern Mediterranean made a cultural and technological leap forward when they began using bronze much more widely for weapons, tools and jewellery. While a form of the metal had previously been used in smaller quantities by the Mycenaeans and Egyptians among others, bronze was now abundant – but how?
Most bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, but while the former was widely available in antiquity, tin is a rare element, with no large sources within thousands of kilometres. This left one big question, referred to by archaeologists as the “tin problem”. Where were the bronze age societies of the Mediterranean getting the tin for their bronze?
Continue reading...Experts hope vessel’s old timbers and nails will help shed light on how boats were built during medieval period
Archaeologists excavating the site of a former fish market in Barcelona have uncovered the remains of a large medieval boat that was swallowed by the waters off the Catalan capital 500 or 600 years ago.
The area, which is being dug up in order to build a new centre dedicated to biomedicine and biodiversity, has already yielded finds ranging from a Spanish civil war air-raid shelter to traces of the old market and of the city’s 18th-century history.
Continue reading...Study offers rare insight into human-animal combat during Roman empire
Bite marks from a lion on a man’s skeleton, excavated from a 1,800-year-old cemetery on the outskirts of York, provide the first physical evidence of human-animal combat in the Roman empire, new research claims.
While clashes between combatants, big cats and bears are described and depicted in ancient texts and mosaics, there had previously been no convincing proof from human remains to confirm that these skirmishes formed part of Roman entertainment.
Continue reading...Contact from the Observer prompts withdrawal as dealers urged to do more to stop illicit trade in antiquities
A London antiquities dealer has withdrawn an ancient Greek amphora from sale after evidence arose that links it to a notorious smuggler.
The Kallos Gallery in Mayfair, London, has removed a black-figure amphora – a jar with two handles and a narrow neck made around 550BC – from sale after the Observer contacted it about concerns raised by an expert in the illegal trade of antiquities.
Continue reading...The detailed relics were found in a necropolis and experts believe the woman depicted could have been an important priestess
Two almost lifesize sculptures of a man and woman, who was believed to have been a priestess, have been found during the excavations of a huge tomb in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.
The detailed funerary relics adorned the tomb containing several burial niches built into a wide wall in the necropolis of Porta Sarno, one of the main entrance gates into the ancient city. Pompeii was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.
Continue reading...Only a few statues remain, with thousands of priceless artefacts from Nubian and Kushite kingdoms missing
Videos of Sudan’s national museum showing empty rooms, piles of rubble and broken artefacts posted on social media after the Sudanese army recaptured the area from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in recent days show the extent of looting of the country’s antiquities.
Fears of looting in the museum were first raised in June 2023 and a year later satellite images emerged of trucks loaded with artefacts leaving the building, according to museum officials. But last week, as the RSF were driven out of Khartoum after two years of war, the full extent of the theft became apparent.
Continue reading...Ancient Mesopotamian stone tablets show extraordinary detail and reach of government in cradle of world civilisations
The red tape of government bureaucracy spans more than 4,000 years, according to new finds from the cradle of the world’s civilisations, Mesopotamia.
Hundreds of administrative tablets – the earliest physical evidence of the first empire in recorded history – have been discovered by archaeologists from the British Museum and Iraq. These texts detail the minutiae of government and reveal a complex bureaucracy – the red tape of an ancient civilisation.
Continue reading...Remains are of an adult member of an extinct species who lived up to 1.4m years ago, researchers say
Bone fragments unearthed at an ancient cave in Spain belong to the oldest known human face in western Europe, researchers say.
The fossilised remains make up the left cheek and upper jaw of an adult member of an extinct human species who lived and died on the Iberian peninsula between 1.1m and 1.4m years ago.
Continue reading...Archaeologist believes his ‘find of the century’ – of Pharaoh Thutmose II – could be surpassed by ongoing excavation
To uncover the location of one long-lost pharaoh’s tomb is a career-defining moment for an archaeologist. But to find a second is the stuff of dreams.
Last week British archaeologist Piers Litherland announced the find of the century – the first discovery of a rock-cut pharaoh’s tomb in Egypt since Tutankhamun’s in 1922.
Continue reading...Uncovering tomb of Thutmose II hailed as most significant discovery since Tutankhamun in 1922
It was when British archaeologist Dr Piers Litherland saw that the ceiling of the burial chamber was painted blue with yellow stars that he realised he had just discovered the first tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh to be found in more than a century.
Litherland had been exploring the Valley of the Kings in Egypt for more than a decade when he discovered a staircase that led to the tomb, now known to have belonged to Thutmose II, who reigned from 1493 to 1479BC.
Continue reading...A runic inscription on one of the Galloway hoard’s elaborately decorated arm rings has been deciphered
When the Galloway hoard was discovered in a ploughed field in western Scotland in 2014, it proved to be the richest collection of Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland. Now the long-standing mystery of who might have owned it when it was buried more than 1,000 years ago may have been solved.
The spectacular silver and gold treasure had in fact belonged to everybody – “the community” – just as it does today, having been acquired in 2017 by National Museums Scotland (NMS).
Continue reading...Archaeologists hail discovery of very rare hoard featuring 44 gold coins bearing name of Celtic king Cunobelinus
A hoard of British coins bearing the inscription of King Cunobelin and found in a Dutch field have been identified as very likely to be the spoils of war of a Roman soldier from the conquest of Britain.
The 44 gold coins, known as staters, were discovered alongside 360 Roman coins, by two amateur archaeologists with metal detectors in a field in Bunnik, near Utrecht. The coins are believed to have been given as military pay.
Continue reading...Thermal bath complex is latest discovery among ruins of Italian city destroyed by Vesuvius eruption in AD79
A large and sophisticated thermal bath complex that was believed to have been used by its owner to woo well-heeled guests has been discovered among the ruins of ancient Pompeii.
The baths were found during excavations of a home on Via di Nola in Regio IX, a wealthy district of the city before it was destroyed by the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
Continue reading...Genetic analysis of Roman soldier or gladiator buried in York reveals 25% of his ancestry came from Scandinavia
People with Scandinavian ancestry were in Britain long before the Anglo-Saxons or the Vikings turned up, researchers have found after studying the genetics of an ancient Roman buried in York.
The arrival of the Anglo-Saxons brought an influx of Scandinavians to ancient Britain in the fifth century, with the first major Viking raid – which targeted the monastery at Lindisfarne – occurring in AD793.
Continue reading...Delicate 650-year-old pages to be preserved are some of the island’s most important historical texts
Work has begun to conserve and digitise one of the oldest paper documents still in existence on the island of Ireland.
The ecclesiastical register, which dates back to the medieval period, is about 650 years old. It belonged to the former archbishop of Armagh Milo Sweteman.
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