Newsdesk Archive

Two unknown youths digging furtively at an excavation area in the middle of the Mycenae archaeological site on a summer Sunday afternoon. Greece is virtually an enormous archaeological site, with minor or major findings coming to light at every excavation. However, there are some people, and even the State itself on occasion, who appear to be unaware of the importance of these findings.

Egypt staked a fresh claim to the priceless ancient bust of Queen Nefertiti, which has spent the last century in Berlin after its discovery by a German archaeologist. The director of the Egyptian National Museum in Cairo, Wafaa Seddiq, told a German newspaper that the elegant limestone figure was removed from the country illegally and that it should at least be loaned back to its home country. "We know that we will not be able to bring Nefertiti back for ever but an exhibit for a few months would be possible," Seddiq told the Bild am Sonntag.

Hair and fur could be our window to the past, according to scientists who have just extracted and cloned DNA from a 64,800-year-old bison and hairs purportedly from famed physicist Sir Isaac Newton. The bison DNA retrieval marks the oldest-ever genetic data obtained from hair. The age of the bison is approximately equal to the oldest authentic DNA taken from bones and teeth.

A METAL detecting enthusiast has unearthed a 3,600-year-old dagger from the depths of a South Lakeland field. The finder, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear others will descend on the secret site, said he could not believe his luck when he stumbled across the Bronze Age relic. "I was going along a small footpath when I got a good signal from the detector. I dug down a few inches and saw a piece of green metal," he explained.

Fragments of two glass armlets, dating back to the Roman era, have been discovered during an archaeological dig at Knowes Farm near East Linton. The remains of several circular Iron Age houses with stone-flagged floors, apparently belonging to the latest period of occupation, have also been uncovered. A team of around 20 students and archaeologists have set up the dig in a field the size of a football pitch, as part of the Traprain Law Environs Project.

After years of controversy, one Lebanese archaeologist believes he has finally located the ancient city of Tunip, a town mentioned in various Egyptian texts, as the "sun city," Baalbek. Presenting the results of his latest discovery at the Lebanese Heritage Center at the Lebanese American University on Wednesday, Ibrahim Kawkabani explained exactly how he determined that Tunip was in fact Baalbek, located in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Kawkabani began excavations in the city in June 1986 in the great hall in front of the Temple of Jupiter.

Camp Alpha, a U.S. military base in Iraq, was built directly on top of the ancient temple area of Babylon. The base's location was chosen to protect the archeological site from looters. Instead, the base has resulted in damage that some antiquities experts characterize as "horrifying." Hear NPR's Renee Montagne and archeologist John Russell.

MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Pigeons fluttering through a hole in the ceiling of a Spanish cathedral led an art restoration team to discover a hidden Renaissance fresco of winged angels that had been covered by a false ceiling for more than 300 years.

Humans made their first tentative steps towards farming 23,000 years ago, much earlier than previously thought. Stone Age people in Israel collected the seeds of wild grasses some 10,000 years earlier than previously recognised, experts say.

NASA's vision to explore the moon and Mars moved forward Thursday with a restructuring effort to streamline the agency's bureaucracy and support an independent private space industry. Sean O'Keefe, NASA's chief, announced the plan to remake NASA into a "sustainable and affordable" organization that was once-again renowned for its innovation, courage and entrepreneurial spirit.

Bears and groundhogs escape the cold winter months by hibernating but scientists said Wednesday the trait was not limited to animals living in chilly climates. Researchers in Germany have found that lemurs in Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, where winter daytime temperatures rise above 86 degrees Fahrenheit, hibernate in tree holes for seven months of the year.

For more than 50 years, rancher Waldo Wilcox kept most outsiders off his land and the secret under wraps: a string of ancient Indian settlements so remarkably well-preserved that arrowheads and beads are still lying out in the open. Archeologists are calling it one of the most spectacular finds in the West. Hidden deep inside Utah's nearly inaccessible Book Cliffs region, 130 miles from Salt lake City, the prehistoric villages run for 12 miles and include hundreds of rock art panels, cliffside granaries, stone houses built halfway underground, rock shelters, and the mummified remains of long-ago inhabitants. The site was occupied for at least 3,000 years until it abandoned more than 1,000 years ago, when the Fremont people mysteriously vanished.

Environmentalists warn that unchecked vandalism and neglect is destroying thousands of ancient rock caves in Sri Lanka dating back to 30,500 BC, with scores of Buddha statues rendered headless, and paintings defaced.

A mummy more than 3,000 years old and other items have been stolen from a Pharaonic tomb near this southern Egyptian city, a senior antiquity official said Tuesday. The missing objects were taken from the tomb of a nobleman who lived in the time of Pharaoh Akhenaton, who ruled in 1379-1362 B.C., said Sabri Abdel Aziz of Egypt's antiquity department. The theft was reported on Sunday when an archaeological team from the University of Pennsylvania returned to the tomb after six months. "I expect the goods to be retrieved soon," Abdel Aziz said. He argued that as the theft was recent, the items were probably still in Egypt, which would make them easier to trace.

A centuries-old American Indian burial ground has been discovered at a construction site east of San Francisco, offering new clues about the people who inhabited the region long before the Spanish arrived. About 80 sets of human remains and artifacts have already been unearthed, and at least as many are believed to be hidden beneath Lafayette's Hidden Oaks housing development, where two dozen upscale homes are planned.

It has stood - in various incarnations - for some 5,000 years on the Salisbury Plain in southern England. It has drawn and inspired astronomers, druids and 'wannabe' druids, ancient and modern pilgrims, and even overenthusiastic heavy metal bands whose amplifiers go to eleven. Stonehenge is one of the world's most famous man-made creations, but there has never been a website which offered virtual visitors a thorough tour of the monument and its environs, until now. The Stonehenge World Heritage Site Interactive Map brings visitors into the center of the circles, and also introduces them to the archaeological context of the surrounding countryside.

Images snapped by NASA's Cassini spacecraft show that Saturn's moon, Phoebe, is not an asteroid but a 4.5-billion-year-old primordial body from the solar system's outer reaches, scientists said on Wednesday. The images of Phoebe's pitted surface gave scientists their first close look at a planetesimal, small bodies from an area at the fringe of the solar system known as the Kuiper Belt that may have provided the building blocks of the Milky Way.

Genghis Khan left a legacy shared by 16 million people alive today, according to a book by a Oxford geneticist who identified the Mongol emperor as the most successful alpha male in human history.

Remains found near Stonehenge are almost certainly of an ancient people who built the monument, excited archaeologists have revealed. Researchers investigating the origins of the seven 4,500 year-old skeletons found buried on Salisbury Plain last year have run chemical tests to trace their origins and age. They have concluded they are of people from south-west Wales - the same region from where bluestones forming the world-famous iconic monument originate.

Analysing DNA from ancient strands of hair is a new tool for learning about the past, molecular archaeologists say, including whether hair samples belonged to Sir Isaac Newton. Until now, scientists had thought analysing the hair shaft was of relatively little use as it contained so little DNA. Dr Tom Gilbert of the University of Arizona led an international team that reported its work in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology.

The mythical homeland of Mexico's Aztecs -- an island known as Aztlan -- has eluded historians for centuries, and the quest to find it has become shrouded in political spin and scholarly speculation. Like the lost Atlantis and Camelot, Aztlan may or may not have existed, but fervent believers have sought it from the desert of Utah to a mangrove swamp in western Mexico. Academics agree that the Aztecs, a warlike tribe with a passion for human sacrifice, wandered the badlands of central Mexico for years before founding what is now Mexico City around 1325 and then forging the greatest empire of the ancient Americas.

The earliest known Christian church in Jordan was discovered, if the preliminary dating of the remains as first to second century A.D. proves correct, the local newspaperJordan Times reported Tuesday. Director of Jordanian Department of Antiquities, Adnan Hadidi, told the newspaper that the church was found during the third season of excavations at Artemis Temple and its vicinity in Jerash,about 50 km south of Amman.

Heritage experts today condemned the destruction of part of a 3,000-year-old Celtic fort in Co Kerry. The 700 metres of earthen works that surrounded the ancient Dun Mor Fort on the Dingle Peninsula were levelled at the weekend by an excavating machine. An entrance and a standing stone with an ogham (Celtic writing) inscription were also removed.

Mysterious petroglyphs etched in hundreds of volcanic boulders east of Reno have survived the elements for centuries. Volunteers are now hoping the artifacts will survive the ravages of modern man. The American Indian artwork -- depicting bighorn sheep and stick-people figures -- is endangered by vandals and collectors as Nevada's sprawling growth and a soaring number of off-road vehicles have taken civilization to the doorstep of once remote backcountry sites.

CAIRO, June 20 (Reuters) - The recently laid white marble floor is almost blinding in the summer sun at the heart of Cairo's 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar mosque, a landmark in a city with Islamic architectural riches that few can rival. "The noble Al-Azhar mosque was restored to its original condition in the era of President Hosni Mubarak in 1998 AD," reads a plaque in the mosque, which dates back to about 970 AD in the era of the Fatimids who founded Egypt's capital. But not everyone agrees with the sentiments inscribed over the old portico that surrounds the main courtyard.

About 10 human skull fragments and teeth have been found in the Kitora tomb in Asukamura, Nara Prefecture, the Cultural Affairs Agency announced Friday. It is the first time that human bones have been recovered from the tomb, which is thought to have been constructed between the late seventh century and early eighth century. Archeologists hope the finds will help them identify who was buried there. The agency said they also found a metal fitting believed to be an ornament from a wooden coffin in the tomb. The items were buried under five centimeters of soil at the northern end of the tomb's stone chamber. The soil also contained fragments of lacquer that scientists believe covered the coffin.

VATICAN CITY The Vatican said Tuesday that fewer witches were burned at the stake and fewer heretics tortured into conversion during the dark centuries of the Inquisition than is generally believed, but it also sought renewed forgiveness for sins committed by Roman Catholics in the name of church doctrine.

A SWORD possibly dating back to the Siege of Derry could be about to go on public display, it was revealed this week. The weapon was discovered by local man, Charlie Coyle, while he was renovating his former home. A neighbour of Mr. Coyle, Frank O'Donnell, subsequently contacted local archaeologist, Ian Leitch, who, on examining the metre-long sword, confirmed that it dated back to the late 17th century.

The search for the settlement site of Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke colonies of the 1580's, including the mysterious "Lost Colony," will resume later this year if plans now being made by archaeologists and historians are realized. Feb. 7, First Colony Foundation, a non-profit incorporated in North Carolina in 2003, held an organizational meeting at the Sir Walter Raleigh Rooms at Wilson Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. An initial board of directors was formed and bylaws were adopted. The board discussed developing and securing funding for a multi-year archaeological and historical research program. The First Colony Foundation will hold its first annual meeting June 26, at the Elizabethan Gardens on Roanoke Island.

SHENYANG, June 19 (Xinhuanet) -- A recent study revealed prototypes of class and rituals already existed in north China in the Neolithic age, at least 5,500 years ago. Experts say these prototypes may have helped Confucianism, the orthodox school of thought that dominated in China for more than 2,000 years, to take form in the first place. The conclusion was based on research findings on primeval tombs,temples, altars and dainty jade ware unearthed at Niuheliang and Dongshanzui, sites of the Hongshan culture dating back 5,500 to 6,000 years, in the northeastern province of Liaoning, said Guo Dashun, a leading member of the Archaeology Society of China.

We know Cleopatra's story -- floating down the Nile and making sweet talk with Mark Antony -- but what did all those other Egyptians do, aside from fanning the queen and making mummies? The world has long been intrigued by that famous epoch when the sunset of the Greek empire met the dawn of the Roman over the pyramids of the ancient pharaohs. But much of the texture of that time has remained hidden. Now, new windows into that era are being opened at the University of California-Berkeley, where an international team of researchers is making some of those ancient mummies spill their long-held secrets.

Aerial photographs of the Iranian city of Bam, which was destroyed in an earthquake last year that killed more than 26,000 people, have revealed important new archaeological sites. One discovery dates from between 2,400BC and 2,600 BC, proving the city is centuries older than experts had thought. Another site, from medieval times, showed that the community then practised religious and cultural tolerance but was threatened by marauding Turkic tribes and the Mongol invasion. The history of the city rests on an astonishing network of qanats, huge underground irrigation channels, kilometres long.

Miami, FL, Jun. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. Customs officials have returned to Guatemala 26 pieces of Mayan artifacts that survived the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The ancient pottery was confiscated in Miami in 1998 from Judith Ganeles and Patrick McSween of New York, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Thursday. The couple was traveling from Guatemala to New York at the time. The artifacts were verified by art historian Carol Damian of Florida International University and sent to New York where they were stored in a vault at the World Trade Center.

Local authorities have found about 20,400 pieces of an ancient Afghan treasure known as the "Bactrian gold" preserved in an underground vault at the presidential palace in Kabul despite more than two decades of civil strife, government authorities said Tuesday. The flamboyant, intricately designed jewelry worn around the first century was first found in 1979 and temporarily housed in the Kabul Museum, but later disappeared. The pieces were worn by an ethnic group known for horseback riding, Kyodo (Japan) reports.

Divers at Dunbar have turned archaeologists in a bid to unlock the past surrounding mystery stone anchors found off the local shore. They are also hoping members of the public will help them in their quest to learn more about the maritime artefacts which they discovered six years ago while diving about a mile east of the town. Now owned by the East Lothian Museum Service, the anchors are currently at the Chambers Street Museum Conservation Unit in Edinburgh undergoing conservation work while others are on display in the Dunbar Town House Museum.

About 100 books - including two priceless colonial-era tomes about Spanish conquistadors and the colonisation of the Incas - are missing from a public library in the former Inca capital of Cuzco.

What happened to 40,000 people of the Hohokam culture who simply vanished from this region in less than a century in the 1400s? The Center for Desert Archaeology has received a $200,000 National Science Foundation grant to help find an answer to that question, one that has puzzled archaeologists for many years. William H. Doelle, president of the Tucson-based organization, said, "I don't there is one simple answer to the quetion, but this is going to be a really exciting project, and I think it will move us forward in dramatic new ways."

Archaeologists combing through a dig at historic Jamestown said they have unearthed a human skull fragment that shows markings that could bear evidence of the earliest known attempts at surgery in Colonial North America. Two marks from a saw run along the curved top edge of the 4-by-6 inch fragment, which appears to be from bone at the back and base of the skull. Three small circular markings also seem to suggest attempts were made to drill through the bone.

Domesticated donkeys, like Homo sapiens, came from Africa, according to a study published on Friday in the journal Science. An international team of scientists compared DNA signatures from 427 farm donkeys from 52 countries with that of wild donkey populations in Southwest Asia and East Africa.

MARINELAND -- Human remains discovered near the Marineland park are believed to be from an Indian burial site, and could halt a planned expansion of the attraction and other nearby developments. Flagler County sheriff's deputy Michael Lutz said the remains included "a couple of teeth and a piece of bone." He said a medical examiner determined the remains were not new, and were not the result of a crime.

The President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond handed its report to the White House on Wednesday, recommending that NASA change its basic structure to carry out the next generation of space travel. Edward Aldridge, chairman of the commission, said Vice President Dick Cheney accepted the report "positively."

A detailed analysis of the comet Wild 2, pronounced "Vilt 2," has left astronomers astounded at an object that has no known peers in the solar system. The comet, examined in a close flyby in January by NASA's Stardust spacecraft, has towering protrusions and steep-walled craters that seem to defy gravity. More than a dozen jets of material shoot out from its insides. Dust swirls around the comet in unexpectedly dense pockets.

MADISON- Maps are tools to show you where you are going, but they can also show you where you came from. That principle drives the work of Roberto Rodríguez and Patrisia Gonzales, who study ancient maps, oral traditions and the movement of domesticated crops to learn more about the origins of native people in the Americas. "How do you bring memory back to a people that were told not to remember?" asks Rodríguez. As longtime scholars and syndicated columnists, Gonzales and Rodríguez explore this issue and others related to native people in the Americas. They recently entered the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences as graduate students in the life sciences communication department, and are teaching a class this summer that shows how the stories of Wisconsin's native people fit into the larger history of the continent. European efforts to homogenize indigenous people in the Americas destroyed much knowledge of the origins, migrations and history of different peoples, explains Rodríguez. However, some migration stories persist in oral traditions, including a central story - told in Mexico and depicted on the Mexican flag - of native people moving south from a place called Aztlán. The location of that place and the paths of movement are unclear, says Rodríguez, because people were moving around in all directions for thousands of years.

A very ancient cemetery was unearthed in Gharieh town, some 40 KM from the southern Syria city of Sweida, dating back to the Nabatean Period. The cemetery is composed of four parallel pillars and arched tombs that bear a resemblance in appearance and architecture to those discovered in the central ancient city of Palmyra. A set of findings were discovered in the cemetery, including perfume bottles, glass house appliances of various sizes and forms as well as remains of clay oil lamps. All findings are now under study and restoration.

AN EARLY Christian burial site dating back more than 1,200 years has been discovered following a cliff fall. The site, overlooking Milford Haven waterway, was found by chance when part of the ground gave way to reveal bones gaping from the rock face. It was initially discovered two years ago, but a TV archaeological investigation has now revealed that they belonged to the Dark Ages.

Twenty previously unexcavated tombs, which are several hundred years older than the great pyramids of Giza, are shedding light on the first complex societies on Earth. Archaeologists have found ancient Egyptians up to 5000 years old curled up in the foetal position in what would have been ancient Egypt's first capital city, Memphis.

A plain in Tuscany destined to become a dump has turned out to be an archaeologist's dream, revealing the biggest Etruscan road ever found. Digging in Capannori, near Lucca, archaeologist Michelangelo Zecchini has uncovered startling evidence of an Etruscan "highway" which presumably linked Etruscan Pisa, on the Tyrrhenian coast, to the Adriatic port of Spina.

Scientists have performed successful teleportation on atoms for the first time, the journal Nature reports. The feat was achieved by two teams of researchers working independently on the problem in the US and Austria. The ability to transfer key properties of one particle to another without using any physical link has until now only been achieved with laser light.

An insect that normally inhabits warm countries has been found living and breeding in the UK, entomologists say. The green "shield" bug, which attacks a broad range of crops, is usually seen in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Australia, North America and Africa.

It could be one of the worst cases of mistaken identity ever known. A British historian is claiming that the venerated tomb of St Mark in Venice contains not the great evangelist but the body of the most famous warlord in history. The mummified remains buried beneath the altar of St Mark's Basilica in fact belong to Alexander the Great, according to Andrew Chugg, a respected authority on the Macedonian conqueror. His theory, a complex tale of medieval body-snatching, is already dividing the academic world. This week he will cause outrage among devout Catholics when, writing in the latest edition ofHistory Today, he says the saintly relics should be exhumed and subjected to genetic testing.

The collapse of the Tower of Babel is perhaps the central urban myth. It is certainly the most disquieting. In Babylon, the great city that fascinated and horrified the Biblical writers, people of different races and languages, drawn together in pursuit of wealth, tried for the first time to live together - and failed. The result was bleak incomprehension. Ambitious technology defying the natural order was punished as the tower that tried to reach the skies collapsed. Irreligion and promiscuity inevitably conjured the apocalypse.

It's a date with the past. The soil beneath Tughlaqabad Fort narrates a historic tale one that covers a span of over 500 years. If excavators, toiling in the scorching sun to collect remains of the " Third City " are to be believed, there is much more hidden in those ruins. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) excavating Tughlaqabad Fort area has come across a palace courtyard within the ramparts of the historic fort. Besides showing signs of the Tughlaqs' reign, it has remains dating back to the late Mughal period.

An archaeologist has helped solve a medieval mystery about a thieving monk. Gabor Thomas' work has finally laid to rest a centuries-old argument about where in Sussex the errant monk did his pilfering. The story began when a ship was forced to take shelter from a storm one Easter Sunday in the 11th Century and a monk among the passengers travelled to a nearby church to praise God. But he left with the remains of St Lewinna hidden in his luggage, which became a famed money-spinner for his monastery at Bergues, near Dunkirk.

A wearable camera full of sensors could help people with memory problems, according to Microsoft researchers. The prototype SenseCam takes an instant snap every time it spots changes in movement, temperature or light. Currently capable of storing 2,000 images on a 128MB memory card, the cam could help people record their days.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The internationally built Cassini spacecraft completed a flyby of Saturn's largest outer moon as it prepared to enter a four-year orbit to study the ringed planet, NASA officials said Saturday. The plutonium-powered spacecraft, which is carrying 12 science instruments and a probe, came within about 1,285 miles of the dark moon Phoebe on Friday, officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.

A TEAM of Australian archaeologists has unearthed a 5000-year-old necropolis with 20 well-preserved tombs in a poor neighbourhood of Helwan, just outside Cairo, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said today. The statement quoted Christian Kohler, head of the Australian mission, as saying a newly discovered limestone relief, which was found within the necropolis, was one of many in Helwan representing early uses of hieroglyphic text. "It is a duty to protect this magnificent archaeological site from the urban expansion which represents a major threat to (Helwan's) monuments," Mr Kohler was quoted as saying.

LINCOLN CITY, Ore. (AP) - There is something about a wrecked mystery ship that conjures spine-tingling images of high-seas drama, swashbucklers and pieces of eight. But there was little of that in the Blanco, a two-masted square-rigger built for the coastal trade, to help feed the voracious demand for lumber and other supplies in booming San Francisco and the California and Nevada mines. She left San Francisco Nov. 6, 1864, headed for Coos Bay, Ore. The next news came in the Oregon Statesman in Salem on Jan. 2, 1865.

Top US officials in Iraq have launched an investigation to find out whether coalition military operations have damaged the remains of ancient Babylon. Coalition administrator Paul Bremer and military commander Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez have said they will send a team of experts to assess the site.

The Cassini spacecraft, which is en route to Saturn, has made a close pass of the planet's mysterious moon Phoebe. The US-European spacecraft made its closest approach to the moon on Friday at 2156 BST at a distance of 2,078km. Images show a scarred moon pounded by massive impacts that tossed building-sized rocks out on to its surface.

The inventor of an "invisibility" cloak has said that his next project will be to develop the technology to allow people to see through walls. Susumu Tachi, who showed off the cloak at an exhibition in San Francisco earlier this month, said he was hopeful of providing a way to provide a view of the outside in windowless rooms.

Archaeologists have salvaged a medieval cargo vessel, with a large number of celadon artifacts inside dating back to the Koryo Kingdom (918-1392), discovered last year off Kunsan on the West Coast. The wreck, originally found by a fisherman last September, was pulled up by a crane and air bags from the 20-meter-deep seabed around Sibidongpado, a small archipelago about 30 kilometers off Kunsan, North Cholla Province during the second round of exploration between May 10 and June 3, an official at the Korean National Maritime Museum said on Thursday.

Mediaeval pots dating from the 14th to 16th centuries have been discovered in one of Aberdeen's most historic buildings. They were found by masons repointing the west wall of one of Aberdeen University's oldest buildings. The four broken pottery jugs were carefully placed behind stones which, in two cases, had been trimmed away at the rear to accommodate them. The pots were found in King's College Chapel. They had all had their rims and handles removed and were on their sides, with the bases facing the interior of the wall.

He was one of the most stately figures ever to sit upon the throne of Egypt. The son of an army officer, Seti I achieved more for his country politically and culturally than did his much more famous son Ramses II -- who even falls under suspicion of stealing one of Luxor's most famous monuments from him. According to K A Kitchen in Pharaoh Triumphant: The Life of Ramses II, when Seti took over leadership after the brief rule his father Ramses I, founder of the XIXth Dynasty, he indulged a twin ambition, "to be the new Tuthmosis III (greatest conqueror) and a new Amenophis (Amenhotep) III (finest builder) all in one".

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S.-led coalition leaders ordered an investigation Friday into whether the expansion of a military camp damaged archaeological sites around the ancient city of Babylon. L. Paul Bremer and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez dispatched a team of archaeologists to assess the site at Camp Alpha, which was set up to provide security in the area 50 miles south of Baghdad, a statement issued by the coalition said.

VITAL clues into how we lived thousands of years ago have been unearthed on a bypass site. Among the items uncovered along the A142 between Newmarket and Fordham include skeletons from the Bronze Age and Iron Age, along with a body from Roman times. Flints and pottery, buried since the Neolithic period around 4,500 years ago, have also been discovered, and will now be cleaned and carefully examined to help experts learn more about the history of East Anglia's ancestors.

LIMA, Peru - Peruvian customs agents opening suspicious packages found five ancient skulls from a pre-Inca culture that someone tried to mail to California, authorities said Friday. The mummified skulls, estimated to be as old as 2,700 years, turned up during inspections June 5 and 6. Customs agents put the five packages through an X-ray machine because they emitted a disagreeable odor.

Families who have lived in the English-Scottish Borders for generations could be descended from African soldiers who patrolled Hadrian's Wall nearly 2,000 years ago. Archaeologists say there is compelling evidence that a 500-strong unit of Moors manned a fort near Carlisle in the third century AD.

BERLIN - After a decade of painstaking cleaning, Berlin's Pergamon Museum has unveiled the restored marble frieze of the Pergamon Altar, the second century B.C. centerpiece of its collection. The 371 foot-long frieze decorated the outside walls of the altar, which was built between 197 and 156 B.C. in the present-day Turkish town of Bergama. A German engineer discovered fragments of the frieze, which had been taken apart and incorporated into the walls of a fortress, in 1864.

An archaeological expedition led by prominent Bulgarian Professor Nikolay Ovcharov unveiled the mystery of the excellently preserved Thracian temple in the region of Tatul village. Though most of the archaeologists in the expedition assume that the Thracian temple was dedicated to the mythical Orpheus, there are still some suggestions that that it might have been built in honour of a Thracian king.

Hong Kong - Archaeologists have dug up a thousand-year-old padded bra in Inner Mongolia, China, a news report said on Thursday. The gold-coloured bra was found in tomb in the province's Aohan region, according to the South China Morning Post.

LANZHOU, June 10 (Xinhuanet) -- Cultural heritage officials in the northwest China province of Gansu announced Wednesday that their recent discovery of a centuries-old earthenware pot containing more than 500 kilograms of copper coins. The coins were of more than 20 varieties and most of them were cast in the Northern Song Dynasty, between 960 and 1127, said ZhaoZuobin, an official with the Kongtong district museum of Pingliangcity, where the heritage was found.

Startled astronomers peered through an apparent crack in the expanding bubble from an exploded star to glimpse what may be the youngest black hole ever detected. It is the closest researchers have come to witnessing the birth of a black hole, from the explosion two decades ago to the recent emergence of a dense object amid the chaotic scene. The object may be a neutron star instead of a black hole, however. Scientists hope to figure that out with continuing observations, they said Thursday.

Craftsmen in ancient China were using complex machines to work jewellery long before such devices are traditionally thought to have been invented. Dr Peter Lu claims spiral grooves on 2,550-year-old jade rings must have been made by a precision "compound" machine.

JERUSALEM - A priceless 1,500-year-old Byzantine-era artifact was stolen early Wednesday from an archaeological park near Tel Aviv, police said. The thieves took a part of the floor of a glass kiln, one of only three still in existence in Israel, police said. They suspect the theft had been commissioned by a private antiques collector.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) -- Humanity's closest relative the chimpanzee could be extinct in around 50 years because it is hunted for meat and threatened by deforestation and disease, researchers said on Tuesday. Only 8,000 remain of the most vulnerable chimpanzee subspecies, the Pan troglodytes vellerosus, which is found predominantly in Nigeria, and it could be extinct in two decades, according to a study.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hoping to learn more about undersea volcanoes, scientists sent a camera-equipped submarine down to take a look. They got more than they bargained for, witnessing a deep-sea eruption. "At first we really didn't understand what was going on," said Bob Embley, chief scientist on the mission, which involved nearly three dozen researchers.

The archaeological excavation of an important Roman site begins in Swindon on Wednesday. The work is taking place at Groundwell Ridge in the north of the town. Previous digs have unearthed evidence of well-preserved Roman buildings, pottery and coins dating from the second to fourth Century AD.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have unearthed a 1,000-year-old timber roadway preserved in a peat bog in mid Wales. Tests on the wooden beams indicated that they date from between 900-1020. The digging team at the site in a farmer's field in Llancynfelyn, near Talybont, yesterday found even earlier remains believed to be Roman industrial workings.

A coffin with a corpse wrapped in top quality silk clothes and around 2,000 years old has been unearthed by archaeologists from a cluster of ancient tombs in China. The tombs, located in a village on the Ordos plateau in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, must have been built in the Western or Eastern Han dynasties (206 BC-220 AD), said Yin Chunlei, an official with Ordos City Museum. "The corpse was found in one of those tombs. It lay in a strongly-built coffin and was dressed in many layers of top quality silk clothes," Xinhua quoted Yin as having said.

The prehistoric city of Tiwanaku is located on the southern shore of the famous Lake Titicaca along the border between Bolivia and Peru. During the heyday of this city was between A.D. 500 and 950, religious artifacts from the city spread across the southern Andes, but when the conquering Inka arrived in the mid-fifteenth century, the site had been mysteriously abandoned for half a millennium. Even after its abandonment, Tiwanaku continued to be an important religious site for the local people. It later became incorporated into Inka mythology as the birthplace of mankind as the Inka built their own structures alongside the ruins. Tiwanaku remains an integral locale in the religious lives of Andean people in the turbulent present of modern Bolivia. Although dozens of national and international projects began to unlock Tiwanaku's secrets during the last century, we are only recently beginning to piece together the puzzle behind the origin of this architectural marvel and the people who built it.

The fabled lost city of Atlantis might lie in a salt marsh region off Spain's southern coast, according to research reported online by the archaeology journal Antiquity. The study, not yet peer-reviewed by archaeologists, is based on satellite images showing ancient ruins that appear to match descriptions made by the Greek scholar Plato.

The best preserved example in Wales of a medieval track, which dates back 1,000 years, has been unearthed by archaeologists in Ceredigion. The small team claims the structure, made up of thick wooden beams, has been protected by a peat bog which has covered it for centuries.

A team from the Alexandrian Studies Centre has recently found pieces of rose granite that represent the lower part of the famous statue of Isis found four years ago underwater in the vicinity of the Qaitbay Citadel in Alexandria. The pieces provide the statue's legs, and ankles. The team has also found part of a large granite stele that bears the tax law enforced in the reign of Ptolemy I The bulk of the panel had been lifted from the sea bed a few years ago.

Scientists have used DNA from rats to trace migration patterns of the ancestors of today's Polynesians. People are thought to have arrived in Polynesia, comprising the Pacific islands of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, by boat some 3,000 years ago.

The planet Venus has completed a very rare passage across the face of the Sun - an event not witnessed since 1882. The so-called transit of Venus began at about 0620 BST (0520 GMT) with the planet's tiny black disc edging over the bright limb of our star.

Egypt is about to begin the painstaking five-year task of cataloguing and restoring some 90,000 pharaonic and other artifacts which have lain almost forgotten for decades since they were dug from ancient ruins. Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities, said Sunday that work started about three weeks ago to move the artifacts, now in the basement of the country's main museum, into storage elsewhere.

The recent discovery of the Western Zhou (1046-771 BC) cemetery has made a stir in Chinese archaeological circles, and is being heralded by top archaeological experts as a find of great significance. Over the weekend, a group of high-ranking archaeologists and experts from Beijing led by Shan Jixiang, director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, inspected the cemetery excavation located in Qishan County of Shaanxi Province in Northwest China.

Crop circles could finally have found their niche with news that leaving fallow patches in cereal fields could help reverse a decline in birdlife. Skylark breeding rose nearly 50% when small patches of cereal fields were left unsown, a two-year study found.

NASA's Mars rover Opportunity will be sent into a large crater that could offer clues to the planet's history of water, despite the risk that the craft may not be able to get out, the space agency said Friday.

The ill-fated luxury liner R.M.S. Titanic never made it to New York. But on Thursday the largest ever selection of the ship's artifacts and memorabilia will go on the auction block the city's South Street Seaport Museum, just steps from the New York Titanic memorial. The event, hosted by New York auction house Guernsey's, will sell items from other famous ocean, such as the Normandie, the Olympic, the Andrea Doria, and the Lusitania. But there can be no doubt of the main attraction.

Preliminary research shows a natural compound in some snake venoms may prevent the growth of cancerous tumors, potentially transforming one of nature's deadliest toxins into a curative agent. "Snakes use venom to alter biological functions, and that's what medicine does too," explained John Perez, director of the Natural Toxins Research Center at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. "This is why venoms have always been of interest to medical researchers."

MYSTIC, Conn. - The undersea explorer who found the wreck of the Titanic 19 years ago has returned to the North Atlantic site to find out why the luxury liner is decaying more quickly than expected. Robert Ballard and other researchers hope their two weeks of surveying and researching will lead to efforts to preserve the Titanic and other wrecks and protect them from looters and thrill-seekers. In live broadcasts from the federal vessel Ronald H. Brown, researchers said Friday they have noticed that many of the Titanic's structures have collapsed and many items seen years ago are now gone.

A unique stone sculpture dating back to the third century has been unearthed from the banks of Chambal river in Rajasthan's Kota district on Friday. This will throw light on the cultural history of the state, a research scholar said. The stone sculpture depicting "Shalbhanjika", an icon of 'Yakshini' or a beautiful woman, has been found for the first time in the state, Ambika Dhaka, a research scholar of Indian Council of Historic Research said. The idol was discovered on the right bank of river Chambal in vicinity of Keshoraipatan and opposite to historic Rangpur, about 10 kilometers from Kota.

Tucked into desert canyons in southwestern Jordan, carved stone facades cover red sandstone walls, tens of meters high. Just inside the rock faces, benches line cavernous rooms hewn there thousands of years ago. The red rock walls ring the ancient city of Petra, where expert stonemasons made the monuments for gods, kings and wealthy citizens. The Al Khazneh, also known as the Treasury, is the largest monument in Petra. It sits at the entrance to the city, greeting thousands of visitors to this cultural icon every year. All photographs by and courtesy of Tom Paradise. The carved rocks remain as a seemingly timeless testimony of human ingenuity and survival in a desert that gets 15 centimeters of rain a year. Well-established by the third century B.C., by which time a formerly nomadic people called the Nabataeans had moved into the region, Petra became a major center of commerce by the first century B.C. By the time the Romans took over the desert metropolis around A.D. 100, a complex integrated system of hand-carved stone flumes (some lined with ceramic pipes), reservoirs and 200 cisterns was capable of supplying as much as 12 million gallons of water a day to the settled valley.

URUMQI, June 6 (Xinhuanet) -- Archaeologists claim that as early as 2,500 years ago people living in the current northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region had begun to use blast blowers, as they discovered a bronze blowpipe in the Yanghai Tombs in Turpan. "The function of the blowpipe is much like that of the blast blowers which people are using now," said Lu Enguo, a research member with the Xinjiang archaeological research institute. "Although we discovered bronze blowpipes several years ago in Kuqa County and the northern part of Xinjiang, they were all made in the Han (206 B.C.-220) and the Tang (618-907) dynasties," said Lu.

Cairo - A collection of 38 pieces of ancient Roman jewellery unearthed in 1905 are missing from the National Egyptian Museum, the secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawwas announced on Sunday. Hawwas said the 36 bracelets and two rings, all made of gold and dating back to the Roman period, were unearthed in 1905 in an area known as Apollo's Hill in the Beheira governorate, 160km north of Cairo.

It is known as a catalogue of 'marvel for the eyes' and tomorrow the public will be able to judge for themselves at last. A previously unknown medieval Arabic map with the earliest representation of an identified 'England' - a tiny, egg-shaped lump - is to go on public display in Oxford. The unique and, until now, unseen map is part of a manuscript called the Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels, which was originally put together, probably in the Nile Delta region, at some point before AD1050 and was then copied around 150 years later in Egypt. It reflects the achievements of the classical age of Islamic civilisation and gives an unrivalled picture of the relationship between east and west in that period.

Over the past 10 years, reconstruction efforts in the city of Beirut have swung, pendulum-like, between the ultra-modern and the ancient. Every time a developer breaks new ground for a corporate-style, high-rise office building or towering luxury residential complex, there is an inevitable moment of tension - will construction proceed without incident or will archaeological remains be discovered down in the deeper layers of earth, stone, and soil? That tension gets weirder still when what's found are burial sites, funeral buildings and a score of perfectly preserved, but nonetheless ancient, skeletons.

A scientist says he may have found remains of the lost city of Atlantis. Satellite photos of southern Spain reveal features on the ground appearing to match descriptions made by Greek scholar Plato of the fabled utopia. Dr Rainer Kuehne thinks the "island" of Atlantis simply referred to a region of the southern Spanish coast destroyed by a flood between 800 BC and 500 BC.

The planet Venus is set to make a very rare passage across the face of the Sun Tuesday's six-hour transit has not been witnessed for 122 years and observers will position themselves in Europe, Asia and Africa to get the best view. Scientists will use the event to test technologies they will soon deploy to detect similar sized worlds orbiting stars tens of light-years away.