Archaeologists have unearthed 4,000-year-old defensive walls in Morocco that are the oldest structures of their kind in North Africa outside the Nile Valley.

The discovery expands what's known about the human development of this region of northwestern Mediterranean Africa, known as the Maghreb, particularly about the adoption of agriculture.

"For more than a century, the Maghreb was treated as a blank space in the story of Mediterranean later prehistory," Giulio Lucarini, an archaeologist at Italy's National Research Council, told Live Science in an email.

But the new research shows that the gap resulted from a lack of scientific knowledge about the region. ("Maghreb" is Arabic for "the West" and refers to Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya.) For instance, only recently did ancient DNA research reveal that hunter-gatherers from Europe may have voyaged across the Mediterranean to the Maghreb around 8,500 years ago.

"Four thousand years ago, communities here were reshaping their landscape and building defences on a scale never documented before in the region, at a time when societies across the Strait of Gibraltar were also changing," he said. "We are only beginning to understand how these developments on the two shores [the Maghreb and Europe] relate to each other.”

Lucarini is the first author of the new research, which describes the latest discoveries at Oued Beht in Morocco, in a river valley about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of the capital, Rabat.

Many of the same researchers were involved in last year's discovery of the remains of a prehistoric village at Kach Kouch, about 120 miles (190 km) north, in Morocco's Rif Mountains near the Strait of Gibraltar.

"A work like this is not improvised"

The study, published Sept. 7 in the journal Libyan Studies, describes the discovery of an ancient defensive system of ditches and ramparts at Oued Beht by archaeologists from Italy, Morocco and England.

Key to the system are several defensive walls ‪—‬ in particular, a heavily fortified wall on the southern side of the site. The archaeologists think the base of the wall was built between 3,500 and 4,000 years ago, from clay, ash, silt and stones, to defend a settlement there from attacks.

The defenses imply the settlement was worth defending, and the archaeologists suggested it was an early farming hub with livestock, cultivated crops and large storage facilities. Their discoveries at the site include dozens of bell-shaped pits that the team thinks were used to store grain.

"A work like this is not improvised," Lucarini said. "It requires planning, choosing the right spot in the topography, and mobilising and coordinating labour over time."

The number of pits indicate that the site's storage capacity was much larger than the needs of the people living there. "These facilities may have served a much wider community, perhaps drawing on a whole surrounding territory," he said.

But who might have attacked the site is unclear. "We don't know exactly what they were protecting themselves from," Lucarini said. "Rather than 'invaders,' it may reflect growing competition over land and resources, control of movement through the landscape, and perhaps more formalised leadership."

Links between North Africa and Europe

The discoveries at Oued Beht are important for the reconstruction of prehistory in this part of the world, representatives from Italy's National Research Council said in a statement.

They show that "the communities of the north-western Maghreb in the second millennium BC were … capable of conceiving and carrying out major construction works on a scale that had not previously been documented," Lucarini said in the statement.

The recent archaeological discoveries in Morocco reflect finds from prehistoric Iberia, on the northern side of the Strait of Gibraltar: "There, African ivory and ostrich eggshell have long pointed to contacts with North Africa, and now we are beginning to see the African side of that relationship," Lucarini told Live Science.

Yet there were differences. Contemporary sites in Iberia are large, fortified hilltop settlements with planned architecture, abundant bronze metalwork and rich burials that reveal marked social hierarchies. But the defensive system at Oued Beht seems to have been much smaller.

"What the discovery shows is not that the two shores looked alike," Lucarini said. "It shows that communities in the north-western Maghreb were also investing in large collective works and in the control of strategic places at a time when the western Mediterranean was changing."

The discoveries at Oued Beht are important because they demonstrate the complexities and capabilities of early North African peoples, said Iman Nagy, a northeast African landscape archaeologist at UCLA who was not involved in the study.

"Oued Beht is especially interesting because it challenges us to reconsider the Maghreb's place in Mediterranean prehistory," Nagy told Live Science in an email. "Discoveries like this challenge diffusionist models that assume substantial architecture or social complexity must have arrived from elsewhere."

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a 1,700-year-old limestone tomb with a rare poem inscribed on it in ancient Greek, likely from a son lamenting his father's death.

The tomb, which has a pyramid-shaped roof, dates to the fourth century, when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt. A team found it in the Dakhla Oasis, near ancient Mothis (modern-day Mut), a prominent city in the oasis.

Built for a husband and wife, the tomb has a stone plaque containing a 19-line poem written in ancient Greek, representatives of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a translated statement. The deceased man was named Pisechtes and may have been a judge. However, the statement didn't mention the discovery of any human remains at the site.

The tomb also has hieroglyphic inscriptions that record spells meant to protect the deceased. Some of the inscriptions mention parts of the "Amduat," a text that tells the story of the sun god's journey through the underworld.

Archaeologists also discovered an offering table, a purification basin, pottery and at least one coin that depicts the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, who ruled the Roman Empire from A.D. 306 to 337. Constantine famously legalized Christianity and converted to the religion shortly before his death. There do not seem to be any Christian decorations or texts inside the tomb.

Fourteen steps lead down to the tomb entrance, which is decorated with a variety of images, including a winged sun disk, an image of the god Osiris and two cobras, according to the statement.

"Listen, father!"

The inscribed stone plaque contains a lament for the deceased written in ancient Greek. Angelos Chaniotis, a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey who was not involved in the excavation, said this "is a highly literary and original epigram" with grammar similar to that of Homer's famous epics.

In the short poem, the deceased is praised for his kindness and wisdom and called an "advisor in life." In the last lines, Pisechtes' son Sarapion "addresses his father, 'Listen father!', and asks him to accept the funerary libations and offerings of lamenting children," Chaniotis told Live Science in an email.

"An interesting feature of the inscription is the use of diacritical marks" such as accents, Chaniotis said. "This is an indication of the high level of education of the author of the epigram."

The tomb may have been reused at a later time, according to the statement, since a mud-brick shrine above the tomb entrance was likely erected after Pisechtes and his wife were buried.

Live Science contacted the archaeological team but had not heard back by the time of publication.

Are you a fan of mummies and hieroglyphs? Find out with our ancient Egypt quiz!

A new analysis of a decades-old photo is revealing new details about a powerful woman who ruled Egypt 5,000 years ago, a new study finds.

The woman, named Meretneith (also spelled Merneith or Meret-Neith), reigned during the first dynasty, a time not long after Egypt was united under a single ruler, according to the new research. The study, published in the September issue of the journal Prague Egyptological Studies, enhanced an old photo of a now lost artifact revealing that Meretneith's name was written in a way reserved for a ruler for Egypt.

The finding was more than 70 years in the making. In the 1940s, archaeologist William B. Emery found 13 mud stoppers, or seals that identify an object's owner, around the mouth of a tomb shaft at Saqqara. Each contained a series of four serekhs ‪—‬ a series of signs that gave the name of a ruler of Egypt. He identified two of the serekhs as belonging to a king named Djer and suggested that the other two belonged to a woman named Meretneith.

The presence of Meretneith's name in the serekhs indicates that she was a ruler of Egypt, he said. In a 1954 journal article, he published a black-and-white photograph of one of the mud stoppers. However, the poor quality of the photo meant many scholars were unconvinced.

Further complicating the investigation, all 13 of the mud stoppers, as well as the photograph's original glass plate, have gone missing since the excavations. Their whereabouts are "unknown," Susan Kelly, an Egyptology researcher at Macquarie University in Australia and co-author of the new paper, told Live Science in an email.

This leaves only the black-and-white photograph. In the new study, Kelly and Crystal Miller, a technician at the same university who is now getting a master's degree in bioarchaeology, used a series of complex techniques to create digital enhancements of the photo that elucidated more details of the serekhs.

"Our technique has revealed that in the second and third serekhs, the signs in the name portion of the emblem are consistent with the main sign used to write Meretneith's name" Kelly wrote in an article for The Conversation.

The "king's mother"

Meretneith's role would not have been the same as her male counterparts'. Inscriptions of her found at different sites do not use the serekh, but they do accord her titles such as "king's mother" or name her as being in charge of important departments, such as the treasury, Kelly and Miller wrote in their paper.

"Meretneith may have had the advantage of stepping on and off the rulership platform as necessitated by the political environment," they added, unlike male rulers who succeeded, reigned, died, and were buried by their successors." When necessary she could become the ruler, and when a male family member was able to rule, she could be a powerful royal family member who assisted the ruler. Her son King Den might have been the one to bury her.

The evidence suggests that she was a joint ruler with a man named Djer. We don't know for sure who Djer was, but he may have been her father, Kelly told Live Science in an email. She also may have acted as a regent for her son Den when he was too young to rule alone.

After her death, she was given a tomb of a similar size and construction to that of a ruler, excavations from 2023 suggest.

However, Eva-Maria Engel, a historian at the Humboldt University of Berlin who was not involved in the new study, disputed some of the study's findings. She studied the photograph enhancements published in the paper but doesn't think Meretneith is among the names in the serekhs. From the enhancements, it appears that "the seal only mentions the name of King Djer and that Meretneith is not mentioned at all," Engel told Live Science in an email.

That doesn't mean Meretneith wasn't powerful, however. Engel noted that Meretneith "had a tomb among the earlier and later kings," with inscriptions found at other sites indicating that she acted on behalf of her son, King Den, when he was too young to effectively rule.

Are you a fan of mummies and hieroglyphs? Find out with our ancient Egypt quiz!

Bones from extinct elephant-like creatures discovered along the shore of Lake Tagua Tagua in central Chile bear human-made cut marks and were found alongside stone tools, revealing that some of the first humans to live there were killing and eating these animals 13,000 years ago, new research shows.

Archaeological excavations carried out over the past two years in the basin of the ancient lake revealed a large concentration of megafauna remains and stone tools, according to a Sept. 24 statement from the Catalan Institute for Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES-CERCA). Several bones from gomphotheres, an extinct group of tusked mammals related to modern elephants, displayed clear cut marks, suggesting that Indigenous people butchered the animals at the site.

The animal bones and artifacts date to around 12,000 to 13,000 years ago, according to the statement, which means they provide further evidence of early human occupation in southern South America as hunter-gatherers repeatedly visited the ancient lake shore.

The earliest confirmed archaeological site in South America is Monte Verde, which dates to about 14,500 years ago and is also located in Chile. Other early Indigenous sites on the continent include Huaca Prieta in Peru and Arroyo Seco in Argentina, both of which are around 14,000 years old.

Archaeologists had previously discovered the remains of other animals in the Lake Tagua Tagua basin, including now-extinct American horses and deer species, some of which also show evidence of cut marks and burning that suggest ancient humans were cooking and eating them.

The well-preserved assemblage of animal bones, plant remains and stone tools that archaeologists have unearthed constitute "a record with no known parallels currently in South America," IPHES-CERCA representatives said in the statement, providing key information about when people first arrived in the Americas and the earliest Americans' exploitation of the continents' megafauna before the animals went extinct.

Now that the research team has completed their fieldwork, they will study the samples of sediment and remains they've excavated over the past few years.

According to the statement, the analyses will help narrow down when humans first lived in the Lake Tagua Tagua basin and help figure out how humans were killing, butchering and eating the animals they encountered as some of the first people to reach the Southern Cone of South America.

How much do you know about the first people to reach the Americas? Find out with our First Americans quiz!

This masterpiece of ancient Celtic weaponry was discovered by a laborer who was working on a bridge over the River Thames in 1857. Named the Battersea Shield after the London neighborhood near where it was found, the bronze artifact shows no signs of use, leaving archaeologists wondering how it ended up at the bottom of the river.

According to the British Museum, which acquired the shield directly from the construction worker who found it nearly 170 years ago, the weapon is made of several pieces of sheet bronze fastened together with rivets. The shield is about 30.6 inches (77.7 centimeters) long and 14 inches (35.7 cm) wide, and it weighs roughly 7.5 pounds (3.4 kilograms). Originally, the thin bronze shield facing would have been affixed to a wooden or leather base to create a substantial shield, but no trace of the underlying material has survived.

Experts think the Battersea Shield dates to the Iron Age because of the Celtic-style decorations that have been hammered into the shield from the back. The circular shield boss in the middle — which served to protect the wearer's fist — is a specifically British form of decoration, according to the British Museum, suggesting the object was made in Britain and not imported from another Celtic culture.

Palmettes and interlocking S-shaped motifs adorn the shield, and there are 27 circular decorations filled with red glass enamel and bronze in the shape of swastikas, which were symbols of good luck in ancient Celtic culture. These ornaments could also represent eyes staring back at an enemy, archaeologist Sophia Adams, a curator at the British Museum, has suggested.

The shield likely predates the invasion of Rome; Julius Caesar and his forces invaded Britain in 55 and 54 B.C., but they left soon after. The Romans didn't return until the Roman emperor Claudius launched another invasion in A.D. 43, long after the shield was created sometime between 350 and 50 B.C.

Because there's no evidence of damage to the shield, it was probably never used in battle, according to Adams. Rather, the shield could have been thrown into the Thames as a ritual sacrifice to the river or to an important ancestor.

"There's something of a watery element to these shapes, the swirls and eddies," Adams said in a London Museum video. "So I wonder if there's almost an intention that this was meant to end up in the water."

The Battersea Shield is the "most famous object ever to be found in the Thames," archaeologist Kate Sumnall, a curator at the London Museum, said in the video. As such, it has become a potent symbol of ancient Britain and has been featured on items as diverse as postage stamps, cigarette boxes and CD cases.

Can you put together last week's Astonishing Artifact?

History is rife with lost treasures, from Aztec gold hidden during the Spanish conquest to the Ark of the Covenant, which vanished during the destruction of Jerusalem over 2,500 years ago. In his book, "The Museum of Lost Things: True Tales of Fabled Treasures, Legendary Cities, and Mythical Creatures That Vanished From History" (National Geographic Books, 2026), writer Sam Kean examines all things lost to time.

In this excerpt from the book, he looks at how the tomb of Genghis Khan, arguably the most successful ruler in history, has remained hidden for nearly 800 years and counting.

If archaeologists could vote on which lost grave they'd most like to find, Genghis Khan's would likely appear near the top of the list — in part to fact-check the gruesome legends surrounding his burial.

He was born in Mongolia around 1162, and supposedly emerged from the womb clutching a clot of blood in his fist. By all rights, the boy — whose original name was Temüjin — should have died young. His father, a nobleman in their tribe, was poisoned by a rival tribe when Temüjin was nine, and greedy schemers within his own clan banished the boy's family to the empty steppes, expecting them to starve. Historical accounts describe Temüjin as overly sensitive, terrified of dogs and prone to crying.

But he grew up fast. Even before adolescence, he'd already been enslaved (he engineered his own escape) and killed his older half brother. As a young man he discovered that soldiering suited him, and he ruthlessly eliminated all potential rivals among other nomadic tribes, until he was crowned Genghis Khan — universal ruler — in 1206. His other nickname was the Disturber of the Universe. His warriors were bold and battle-tested, and when they stopped murdering each other and turned their attention outward, they proved unstoppable.

They favored blitzkrieg tactics, sweeping in on horses and bombarding the enemy with arrows. But they could be surprisingly patient, too, and perfected the art of siege warfare. One notorious siege involved the city of Merv, in what's now Turkmenistan. Merv was the Alexandria of its day: a desert oasis teeming with gardens and libraries, famous for its silks and refreshing melons.

The Mongols couldn't resist it, and when the terrified artists and merchants inside surrendered after just six days of siege, a massacre ensued. "It was a memorable day for shrieking and weeping," lamented one chronicle. After burning Merv for good measure, Genghis Khan ordered his troops to count the corpses. There were 700,000. Yet however crazy it sounds, life under Genghis Khan had its benefits. He allowed the conquered to worship whatever gods they liked, a rare example of religious tolerance. He introduced the idea of diplomatic immunity to facilitate negotiations, and outlawed torture during interrogations. He promoted free trade, and founded history's first international mail system.

Over time, his empire also spread key technologies like the compass, abacus, printing press, and paper currency, as well as key social programs like universal education for children. No one was more ruthless when conquering (ask Merv). But if the vanquished people picked up the pieces and swore fealty afterward, life generally improved under Mongol rule. Genghis Khan's realm stretched from Korea to the Caspian Sea, an area twice the size of the Roman Empire. (Under his successors, it grew to the size of Africa.) And he accomplished all this with an army of just 100,000 warriors — fewer people than some modern stadiums hold.

Historian Jack Weatherford summed up his achievements thus: "[Imagine] if the United States ... had been founded by one of its illiterate slaves, who, by the sheer force of personality, charisma, and determination, liberated America from foreign rule, united the people, created an alphabet, wrote the constitution, established universal religious freedom, invented a new system of warfare, [and] marched an army from Canada to Brazil." Alexander, Julius Caesar, Napoleon — they weren't fit to carry Genghis Khan's saddle. If anyone in history deserved a grand mausoleum, it was him.

Genghis Khan wanted the opposite. Despite all the blood they shed, the Mongols were oddly squeamish about discussing d-e-a-t-h, so beyond the year 1227, contemporary sources say little about how Genghis Khan died. As a result, rumors multiplied. One story claims he died after tumbling off a horse. Others have him struck down by lightning or an arrow to the knee during battle (at age 65, no less). One source swears he was trying to ravish a conquered queen who, anticipating the crime, concealed a blade inside her vagina that sliced lil' Genghis wide open.

Regardless of the truth, his longtime wife Yesui dressed his body in a white robe, wrapped it in white felt with sticks of fragrant sandalwood, and clasped the shroud shut with golden straps. What happened next is impossible to say for certain. But according to lore, Genghis Khan received probably the most outrageous funeral in history.

After his wife bound him in white, a thousand soldiers took off on horseback to bury him atop a mountain. This cortege quickly turned into a rampage. To conceal their destination, the troops reportedly slaughtered every person they encountered on the 40-day journey, often with the cry "Go to the other world to serve our lord!" In some accounts, the soldiers killed every animal, too. Based on other Mongol burials, they likely interred him 20 yards deep, with the body oriented north-south and the head facing east. They probably tossed some treasures in — gilded saddles, gold rings, pearls wrapped in silk — along with slaves, concubines, and horses. (One tale has the soldiers burying a live baby camel with him, either so its bleating would serve as a funeral dirge, or so the grieving mother could lead them back to the site if necessary.)

After filling the grave, Genghis's soldiers either diverted a river to conceal it or trampled the ground with a thousand horses to obliterate all trace. Then they resumed the merry rampage on the return trip, butchering every unlucky hunter or merchant who wandered across their path. To their surprise, the thousand soldiers were themselves slaughtered when they reached home, as a further guarantee of secrecy — and then those slaughterers were also slaughtered, to make doubly sure.

Genghis Khan took privacy seriously. We have no idea how much of that is true. But it hasn't deterred the hunt for the grave. To the contrary: The elaborate concealment has made the pursuit all the more enticing. Four nations — Mongolia, China, Kazakhstan, and Russia — have claimed that Genghis Khan's bones lie within their borders. The strongest claim points to Burkhan Khaldun (God Mountain) in northeast Mongolia. Genghis Khan was born nearby, hunted there regularly, and worshipped the sky god Tengri there. He also once took refuge there while fleeing his enemies, and miraculously escaped. The mountain seemed charmed to him, and he'd mused during his life that it would make an ideal final resting place.

Strengthening the case for Burkhan Khaldun is the fact that later Mongol rulers proclaimed the land around the peak a forbidden zone and stationed a clan of ferocious guards there — the Darkhad, who murdered anyone who dared approach. (In exchange, the Darkhad paid no taxes and avoided compulsory military service.) Incredibly, the Darkhad kept this watch for 700 years, until the founding of the communist Mongolian People's Republic in 1924. The republic was a puppet state of the U.S.S.R., and Soviet leaders had a schizoid attitude toward the Disturber of the Universe. On the one hand, they admired his ruthlessness and gazed longingly at all the territory he'd gobbled up. On the other, they feared his memory would stir up nationalist sentiments in Mongolia and spur a revolt against the hated communists.

To forestall this, the Mongolian government banned the very mention of Genghis Khan's name. And to prevent Burkhan Khaldun from becoming a rallying point, officials fenced off a "highly restricted area" around the peak of 3,900 square miles (twice the size of Delaware), and parked a tank base at the site's entrance. The ban thawed somewhat after Joseph Stalin died in 1953, and one Mongolian official decided to celebrate the Disturber's 800th birthday in 1962 by putting him on a stamp. He overreached. Moscow ordered the man arrested, and he was chopped to bits with an axe. After the republic collapsed in 1992, the restricted area devolved into a nature reserve with some public access. But the land near Burkhan Khaldun remains daunting to explore. It's one of the most desolate places on Earth, with few roads and a population density down there with Greenland's.

Centuries of vegetation growth have choked off many areas, and the clear parts are prone to flash floods. Temperatures can swing from 100 degrees [Fahrenheit, or 38 degrees Celsius] in the summer to 50 below [minus 46 C] in the winter, so cold that even yaks drop dead. None of this has stopped Genghis Khan obsessives from searching out his grave. They've suffered snakebites and frostbite and been left stranded when their vehicles tumbled off cliffs. One man spent 40 years crossing and crisscrossing and re-crisscrossing the slopes and died without finding a thing.

In 2010, a few archaeologists tried a new approach. They posted satellite images of the Burkhan Khaldun region online and recruited volunteers to scour them for bumps, depressions, and other features that might indicate graves. Ten thousand people spent approximately 30,000 hours (3.4 collective years) poring over 2,300 square miles [5,950 square kilometers]. They flagged over a hundred spots worth checking out. While several proved inaccessible due to challenging terrain, 55 legitimate archaeological sites turned up among the rest, including megaliths, Bronze Age burial mounds, and an ancient city.

But there was zero trace of Genghis Khan. One archaeologist lamented that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, except you don't know what the needle looks like. Call it Genghis Khan's final victory. The diverted river and trampling horses and the slaughter of all potential witnesses have succeeded in hiding him for most of a millennium now. His victims lay scattered across Eurasia, their skeletons long since ground to dust. But the bones of history's greatest warrior remain at peace.

Excerpted from The Museum of Lost Things by Sam Kean, published by National Geographic Partners, LLC. Copyright © 2026. All rights reserved.

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Archaeologists have unearthed a monumental 2,700-year-old tomb at Vulci, an important ancient Etruscan town north of Rome. Despite repeated attempts by tomb robbers to loot this burial over the centuries, the tomb still contained a massive collection of grave goods, including weapons, gold and bronze plates, chariot parts, a rare pair of women's shoes, and a complete banquet set.

The burial, nicknamed the Tomb of the Stone Chamber, was excavated this summer, according to a translated statement from the Italian Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Province of Viterbo and Southern Etruria (SABAP-VT-EM). But the discovery builds on work that French archaeologists carried out in the late 19th century.

In 1889, archaeologist Stéphane Gsell identified the circular enclosure of the Etruscan burial mound in the cemetery at Vulci. But while Gsell delineated what he thought was the perimeter of the grave, he never found the tomb itself because he ran out of time and money to dig further.

Now, archaeologists with the Return to Vulci project think they've finally found the burial chamber inside the "Gsell tumulus" — and it's much larger than they, and Gsell, expected.

"This is the burial. We are absolutely certain of it," Christian Mazet, an archaeologist at the British Museum and co-director of the project, told Etruscan Times. The discovery of weapons, parts of a chariot, gold objects and high-quality ceramics means "there is no doubt that this is a tomb of the very highest rank," he said.

The new excavation revealed the Tomb of the Stone Chamber, which dates to the seventh century B.C. Archaeologists uncovered the walls of the tomb's three burial chambers and found numerous artifacts preserved beneath the chambers' collapsed roofs, including jewelry, clothing and shoes.

In the side chambers of the tomb, archaeologists recovered much rarer items, according to the SABAP-VT-EM statement, such as a bronze tripod made on what is today the Greek island of Rhodes, just off Turkey's southwest coast. They also found a nearly complete banquet set, and some of the vessels were still in their original positions after spending centuries underground.

The Etruscan cemetery at Vulci is well known for its wealthy tombs, thousands of which were discovered in the 19th century. But although the Indigenous Etruscans ruled over central Italy for several centuries, their society began to decline in the fourth century B.C., owing to the rise of Roman civilization. Their language is only partly understood today, meaning most information about the Etruscans comes from archaeological sites such as Vulci.

The Tomb of the Stone Chamber was built in Vulci's heyday. Gsell had estimated the size of the tumulus at around 102 feet (31 meters) in diameter, calling it a "new Cuccumella," referring to the largest Etruscan burial mound previously discovered at Vulci. (The giant Cuccumella tumulus had a diameter of roughly 230 feet, or 70 m.) According to Etruscan Times, the Return to Vulci project experts' initial calculations suggest that the Tomb of the Stone Chamber may have been similar in size to Cuccumella, ‪or perhaps even larger.

"Everything tells us that it is one of the most monumental at Vulci," Mazet told Etruscan Times.

The tomb and burial mound have been covered to preserve them, according to the SABAP-VT-EM statement, but research will continue in 2027.

Archaeologists excavating a Paris hospital's courtyard, a stone's throw from Notre-Dame, have discovered the first evidence of a Celtic fort that Julius Caesar tried to conquer in 52 B.C. The ancient walls show evidence of a violent fire, seemingly confirming the claim that the Celtic group who lived there, known as the Gauls, burned down their own town so that it wouldn't fall into Caesar's hands.

"The wall's architecture, with its large blocks and interlocking beam system, immediately led us to believe it was a wall of Gallic tradition," Dorothée Chaoui-Derieux, chief curator of heritage at the Île-de-France Regional Archaeology Service, said in a translated statement. Traces of fire and first century B.C. artifacts further suggested the archaeologists had finally found material evidence of Lutetia, a Celtic settlement mentioned in Caesar's Gallic Wars.

In the first century B.C., Lutetia was a Celtic pre-Roman settlement, known as an "oppidum", in what is now Paris. Lutetia was the capital city of the Parisii tribe, who lived along the River Seine. As part of the Gallic Wars, which ran from 58 to 50 B.C., Julius Caesar and his troops fought the Battle of Lutetia in 52 B.C. The Romans won a decisive victory, but the Gauls burned Lutetia and cut the bridges so that Caesar could not take the town. As a result, the ancient fort had never been found.

But in February, a team of archaeologists began excavating in the courtyard of the Hôtel-Dieu, which is Paris's oldest working hospital. On the small Île-de-la-Cité island in the middle of the Seine, close to Notre-Dame, the archaeologists discovered a 65-foot (20-meters) stone and timber wall typical of Celtic fortifications. Charred facing, burnt seeds and a burned wooden building discovered nearby suggested the site had been destroyed by a fire.

"The initial results of carbon-14 dating of the wooden elements suggest a date range between 200 and 10 B.C. Furthermore, a Gallic spearhead was found at the foot of the wall," Chaoui-Derieux said.

These new discoveries provide solid archaeological evidence that Lutetia was indeed centered on the island in the Seine and that its occupants burned it down, as Caesar noted in his Gallic Wars more than two millennia ago.

"This discovery fills an archaeological gap. For centuries, the location of Lutetia has been debated," Stéphane Deschamps, regional curator of archaeology at Île-de-France Regional Archaeology Service, said in the statement. "Today, with this wall and its context, we may hold the key to the mystery."

But the remains of the wall and other artifacts are extremely fragile because of their exposure to fire, according to the statement. The wall cannot be fully preserved, so archaeologists will create a replica using 3D photogrammetry to ensure the discovery is accessible to everyone.

See how much you know about the Celts with our Celtic quiz!

Archaeologists have unearthed a 3,000-year-old burial of a horse, likely used for military purposes, inside an ancient fort on the western Nile Delta in Egypt.

The horse was a young male of medium size that may have pulled a chariot or worked in other military activities. Archaeologists also found remains of the chariot horse's harness fittings nearby. Given these discoveries, it's likely that this was a ceremonial burial, according to a translated statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

The fort, which was found at the archaeological site of Abqaa' in Egypt's Lake District, dates to the New Kingdom period (circa 1550 to 1070 B.C.) and was used to guard against hostile Libyan tribes to the west. Among the finds from the fort excavation was a tablet depicting a Libyan prisoner whose clothing signifies his membership in the Meshwesh tribe, a group that Egypt was often in conflict with.

The prisoner is shown with his hands bound behind his bent body, a posture that signifies his submission, the statement noted.

A hieroglyphic tablet with the name of pharaoh Ramesses II was also found; he reigned from about 1279 to 1213 B.C. A second tablet included the name of the pharaoh Merneptah, who reigned from about 1213 to 1203 B.C., and compared his strength to that of Seth, an ancient Egyptian god associated with the desert and storms.

"An amazing find"

The horse burial is a unique discovery, scholars not associated with the excavation told Live Science.

"It is an amazing find, simply because we have so few horse remains from Pharaonic Egypt," especially complete skeletons, Lonneke Delpeut, a researcher at the University of Vienna who has conducted extensive research into ancient Egyptian horses, told Live Science in an email.

Archaeologists have found the remains of horse stables, such as those at the ancient Egyptian capital of Pi-Ramesses, but horse remains have been scarce, Delpeut said. "This horse will therefore surely contribute to what we know about the use of horses in military forts, of which there are many in the region."

But Delpeut cautioned against definitively calling it a war horse, "mainly because we do not have a definition of what a war horse is in ancient Egypt," she said. "It was certainly a chariot horse. Horses revolutionised mobility and warfare in ancient Egypt, so this horse was without a doubt a valuable animal, reflected by its careful burial."

Carolyn Willekes, an expert on ancient horses at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada, told Live Science in an email that the discovery is exciting. "Well-preserved horse remains have the potential to provide important information about the life of that individual horse," she said. The "fact that this appears to be an intentional horse burial also gives tantalizing hints about the equine-human relationship in ancient Egypt and the cultural importance of the horse," Willekes said.

An archaeological team from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities made the discovery. Live Science contacted the team for comment but had not heard back at time of publication.

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A metal detectorist in the west of Germany has discovered one of the largest hoards of Roman silver coins ever found in that country from the reign of the Emperor Hadrian.

The pile includes more than 900 silver denarii — the denarius was the standard coin of the early Roman Empire — and weighs almost 7 pounds (3.1 kilograms).

The stash was discovered about a year ago in a field near the small city of Wesseling, a few miles south of Cologne, according to a translated statement from Germany's Rhineland regional government. It's now on display at the Rhineland Regional Museum in Bonn (LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn).

Archaeologists think the hoard was buried at the time of the Emperor Hadrian, who ruled from A.D. 117 to 138, because the most recent coin was minted in 124 or 125.

But the coins span more than three centuries: the oldest was minted in 148 B.C., during the time of the Roman Republic; while most of them are from the time of the Flavian emperors — Vespasian and his sons, Titus and Domitian — from A.D. 69 to 96.

Silver signal

The statement praised the metal detectorist, Oliver Riedl, who found the hoard and stopped digging after unearthing 15 of the coins. At that point, his metal detector signaled that something much larger was hiding underground.

"It was clear to me that there was something bigger in the ground here," Riedl said in the statement. "I therefore immediately informed the office."

Riedl is licensed by the state to use his metal detector and has been trained by regional archaeological authorities, the statement said. (Illegal metal detectorists also operate in Germany, but are known to often disrupt the archaeological value of their finds).

Archaeologists from the Rhineland regional government soon investigated the find and excavated the entire hoard of 934 Roman silver coins. The block of earth that contained the coin hoard was removed whole and X-rayed before it was opened, the statement noted.

Erich Claßen, the head of archaeology for the Rhineland regional government, said it seemed that the original owner collected most of the coins in about A.D. 100, but didn't actually bury them until Hadrian's time.

"We can only speculate about the motives, but very likely someone wanted to keep this money safe," he said in the statement. "Banks did not exist at that time."

But whoever buried it never came back. "It is possible that the owner died beforehand without being able to pass on the knowledge of the coins," Claßen said.

Buried treasure

Marjanko Pilekić, a numismatist, or coin expert, at the German Historical Museum in Berlin who wasn't involved in the find, said it was significant that the hoard was unearthed just inside the northern frontier of the Roman Empire demarcated by the Roman limes, which ran along the Rhine nearby.

He told Live Science in an email that the location suggested when the hoard had been purposefully buried: "In this case, we can cautiously assume that the hoard was buried not long after the most recent coin was minted," Pilekić said.

Outside the Roman Empire, however, in the Barbaricum – the "barbarian" regions beyond, according to the Romans — such hoards of coins were often buried much later, he said.

While its historical value is priceless, the worth of such a hoard during the second century A.D. would have been considerable: 300 denarii was the yearly pay of a Roman legionary at the time of Hadrian, of which around half was deducted for food and equipment, regional archaeologist Rahel Otte, who led the excavation, said in the statement.

This means that a legionary "would have had to save all his available money for about six years to accumulate the Wesseling treasure find," she said.

She added that it was unclear who had buried the hoard, but it may have been someone who lived on one of the Roman estates in the area.

From Augustus to Nero, see how much you know about ancient Rome's famous leaders with our Roman emperor quiz!

Archaeologists have discovered a 3,400-year-old fragment of the world's oldest known peace treaty, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism has announced.

The agreement, known as the Treaty of Kadesh, was signed around 1269 B.C. by Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II and Hittite king Hattusili III. Other parts of the treaty have already been found, but the new fragment was unearthed during an excavation at Hattusha, in north-central Turkey.

"We have found traces of peace, thousands of years old, in the soil of Anatolia," Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkey's minister of culture and tourism, said in a Sept. 21 translated statement. The newly discovered cuneiform tablet fragment contains text from a section of the treaty related to the treatment of refugees, according to the statement. "It reminds us of our responsibility to protect human life and dignity," Ersoy said.

Archaeologists unearthed the fragment from a building in the ancient Hittite capital of Hattusha. The Hittite Empire controlled central Anatolia from about 1650 to 1200 B.C. during the Bronze Age. Archaeologists have discovered numerous examples of diplomatic documents at Hattusha that were written in Akkadian, the earliest documented Semitic language, including other fragments of the Treaty of Kadesh.

The royal leaders signed the treaty around 1269 B.C. to mark the end of a lengthy war between the ancient Egyptians and the Hittite Empire, and it is regarded as the world's oldest known peace treaty. Although known as the Treaty of Kadesh, the document does not actually mention the Battle of Kadesh, which occurred several years earlier, so it is also called the Egyptian-Hittite peace treaty, the Eternal Treaty or the Silver Treaty.

The treaty was preserved by inscriptions in two ancient cities. In the early 19th century, archaeologists first discovered the treaty inscribed in hieroglyphics on the walls of a temple dedicated to Ramesses II in Thebes (modern Luxor). Fragments of the Akkadian cuneiform text of the treaty were first identified at Hattusha in the early 20th century.

Marking the end of a two-century-long war over lands in the eastern Mediterranean, the Treaty of Kadesh marks a military détente between Ramesses II and Hattusili III. According to a translation of the treaty provided by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, it includes lines like, "He is a brother to me and he is at peace with me; and I am a brother to him and I am forever at peace with him," referring to the two leaders. "The country of Egypt and the country of Hatti [Hittite Empire] will be forever in a state of peace and of fraternity as it is with us."

The treaty has further provisions for coming to a country's aid if it was invaded and on how to treat refugees. The text mentions that any refugee from Egypt to Hattusha will be returned to Egypt, and any Hattusha refugee to Egypt will be returned to Hattusha, as fleeing was considered a crime.

However, the treaty specifically forbids punishing refugees: "Their tongue and their eyes are not to be pulled out; their ears and their feet are not to be cut off; their houses with their wives and their children are not to be destroyed." Part of this text appears on the newly discovered cuneiform fragment. Ongoing excavations may help uncover the remaining parts of the treaty, according to the statement.

A copper replica of the Treaty of Kadesh is displayed prominently today in the United Nations Conference Building in New York City. According to the U.N., "the treaty pledges eternal friendship, lasting peace, territorial integrity, nonaggression, extradition, and mutual help. The pledges in this treaty are similar to the United Nations ideals."

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The school where Alexander the Great was educated by Aristotle more than 2,300 years ago has been uncovered in the ancient Macedonian city of Mieza, now in northern Greece, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture said in a translated statement.

Archaeologists unearthed a building complex containing two banquet halls, a sporting arena, a stadium, a roofed porch and a lecture hall with stone desks, according to the statement. Mosaic floors and columns decorated the complex. The banquet halls had raised pedestals where nearly a dozen couches would originally have been placed.

The decoration and architecture of the school is similar to that of the Macedonian royal palace at Aigai (modern Vergina in northern Greece), where Philip II and his son Alexander the Great lived, the statement noted.

Among the building ruins, which date to the fourth century B.C., archaeologists discovered coins, ceramics and four styluses that ancient pupils used for writing, providing clues to who might have been educated there.

Alexander the Great and Aristotle

Alexander the Great was educated at a school in Mieza where Aristotle taught, the ancient writer Plutarch (who lived circa A.D. 50 to 120) wrote in his biography "Life of Alexander." Because of this, Angeliki Kottaridi, an archaeologist and director emerita of antiquities with the Hellenic Ministry of Culture who is leading excavations at the site, believes that the building complex is the very school where Alexander the Great studied.

According to Plutarch, Philip II, had this school built "for the education of his son Alexander and the children of the noble Macedonians," Kottaridi told Live Science in an email. Schools in the ancient Greek world, called "gymnasia," taught students a variety of subjects and also trained them physically.

The discovery of the school was a bit indirect, Kottaridi said. "A few years ago, I identified the ancient remains next to the ancient theater of Mieza," she said, and her team began excavating the building complex in 2024. But some excavation of the complex had been done more than 20 years earlier, she explained, when a monument dedicated to the nymphs was found nearby.

Scholars supportive

Live Science reached out to scholars not involved with the excavation, and they were supportive of the idea that Alexander the Great studied at this school.

"I agree that all the evidence suggests this is the school Philip provided for Aristotle to tutor the young Alexander and his fellow students," Jeanne Reames, the director of the Ancient Mediterranean Studies program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, told Live Science in an email. Reames hopes that more information will be released and that the discovery will "shed more light on elite education in Macedonia in the second half of the 4th century" B.C.

Graham Wrightson, a history professor at South Dakota State University, told Live Science in an email that "Alexander studied there under Aristotle so it is exciting to excavate the very school rooms where his teacher shaped his formative years." The discovery of "four stylus writing implements allows us to dream that one belonged to Alexander," Wrightston said, even if none of them truly did. "Still, it allows us to put ourselves in the shoes of the young Alexander and understand more how he became the famous king."

It's unsurprising that the school was so opulent given Philip II's great wealth, Elizabeth Baynham, a senior lecturer at the University of Newcastle in Australia, told Live Science in an email.

Political assassinations weren't unheard of in those days — for instance, during the Roman Empire, which arose after Alexander's death, about 20% of Rome's 82 emperors were assassinated while in office. So safety may have played a role in the school's location. The distance from the school to Macedonia's ancient capital at Pella — about 27 miles (43 kilometers) away — was "far enough away to potentially give Alexander a chance for escape if his father was assassinated," Baynham said.

The education that Alexander and his school mates received from Aristotle would have been excellent, Baynham said. "Alexander — who by all accounts was highly intelligent — was taught by one of the finest minds of the ancient world in terms of range and insight. Aristotle would have only been in his early 40s."

But more archaeological information on the site is needed, historian Miltiades Hatzopoulos told Live Science in an email. While this is likely the school where Alexander was taught, "the excavator has given interviews, but has not yet published a paper with the relevant testimonies," Hatzopoulos said.

See how much you know about Alexander the Great with our Alexander the Great quiz!

A 700-year-old female skull found in a Chinese cemetery is the world's first archaeological example of punitive nose amputation, according to a new study. The middle-aged woman survived the ruthless punishment, which may have been administered for stealing or for adultery.

"We believe this woman was a kind of cast-off after death. She was buried face-down, suggesting a discriminatory attitude," study co-author Qian Wang, a biological anthropologist at Texas A&M University, told Live Science in an email. "Her burial, alone, in a place without her family or community, could be a decision of disapproval."

The woman's skeleton was discovered among 300 others in 2019 during an excavation of the Sanzhiyuan cemetery in China's eastern Henan province, according to Wang and colleagues' study, which was published in the November issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. She had been buried face down in a wooden coffin on the southern edge of the cemetery, with only a copper hairpin. Radiocarbon dating revealed she lived between 1298 and 1404, which corresponds to either the Yuan dynasty or the early Ming dynasty.

But because the original excavation was a rapid salvage dig ahead of construction, the unique skull was not recognized as a possible case of nasal amputation until study first author Yawei Zhou, an archaeologist at Zhengzhou University, analyzed the skeletons from the cemetery in 2024.

The most obvious indication that the skull was unique was its enlarged piriform aperture, the anatomical term for the nose opening, the researchers wrote in the study. They noticed that the woman's two nasal bones had been partially amputated, leaving only about half of the bridge of her nose. Upon closer examination, they noted that several bones inside the woman's nose had been broken, with signs of healing at the edges. These injuries would have given the middle of the woman's face a "hollow appearance," the researchers wrote.

Although they could not completely rule out the possibility that this woman's facial disfigurement was the result of a disease or a birth defect, the researchers concluded that the most likely explanation, particularly in light of her unusual face-down burial position, was a case of nasal amputation as punishment for a crime.

"In ancient China's agriculture-based economy, theft of livestock such as cattle and donkey was not uncommon, yet there could be other reasons, such as adultery," Wang said. "At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, such a felony was punished by nasal amputation."

Archaeologists know about punitive nasal amputation because it was first recorded in ancient Chinese oracle bone inscriptions. In the Shang dynasty (1600 to 1046 B.C.), the punishment was depicted in Chinese characters as a knife on the left or right side of the nose, the researchers wrote in the study.

"I was surprised by this discovery," Wang said, "because so far no scientific report or description of any cases of penal nasal amputation" in archaeological skeletons has been published. But since nasal amputation without anesthesia was one of the "Five Punishments" in early dynastic China — along with tattooing, foot amputation, castration, and death — "there could be many cases in history," Wang said. "People of any walk could be driven to livestock stealing for reasons such as poverty or making quick money."

Elizabeth Berger, a bioarchaeologist at the University of California, Riverside who was not involved in the research, told Live Science in an email that the study makes a convincing case for punitive nasal amputation as the cause of the woman's disfigurement.

Given this case study, Berger said, "researchers can look for other cases, and hopefully more evidence can be found of who was subjected to this punishment, how it was carried out, and how it was medically managed afterwards, including the use of prosthetics."

The unusual skull from the Sanzhiyuan cemetery was assessed within the framework of the Global History of Health Project's Asia Module, which Wang leads. "Many more skeletons will be screened in the future for diseases and trauma," Wang said. "Hopefully there will be similar cases to be found in the future in a clearer archaeological context."

This gold mask was made on the Indonesian island of Java around two millennia ago and was likely used to cover the face of a corpse, possibly with the aim of "confusing" the deceased's spirit so that it did not torment the living.

According to the Yale University Art Gallery, which has the prehistoric artifact in its collection, the mask measures roughly 8.9 by 6.7 inches (22.6 by 17 centimeters) and weighs about 2.1 ounces (60.9 grams). The mask has openings at the mouth, eyes and nostrils, along with slits and slashes representing eyebrows, eyelashes and teeth. A series of holes punched around the edge of the mask suggests that it was once attached to a corpse or funeral statue, archaeologist John Miksic wrote in a book titled "Old Javanese Gold" (Yale University Press, 2011).

To create the mask, an ancient artisan would have procured high-purity gold from the nearby islands of Sumatra or Borneo, hammered the metal into a thin sheet roughly the size and shape of a human face, and then cut the incisions with a chisel, Miksic wrote. Because of the simple technique used to create the mask, Miksic dated the artifact to Java's Preclassic period (500 B.C. to A.D. 200). During this era, prehistoric Javanese people inhumed their dead, before they switched to cremation in the following period. Gold face coverings were therefore most likely part of a prehistoric burial tradition, Miksic noted.

The custom of using gold to cover part or all of the deceased's face has been found in prehistoric India, China and other parts of Southeast Asia, according to Miksic, coinciding with inhumation burials made just before the advent of cremation. But it is unclear whether one culture learned the practice from another or if it was invented independently. Other gold death masks predate the Asian examples, including the famous 3,500-year-old Mask of Agamemnon from Bronze Age Greece.

Scholars have argued about whether Javanese gold death masks were meant to be realistic or idealized versions of the deceased. In a 1990 book on Indonesian traditional masks, archaeologist Wahyono Martowikrido noted that the Javanese mask was unusually naturalistic and was likely created to resemble the deceased.

It is unclear why the ancient Javanese created and used death masks, Miksic wrote, but experts have three main ideas. The ancient Javanese had high regard for the spirits of their ancestors, so they may have used precious gold as the most suitable material for honoring those departed ancestors. Another possibility is that only high-status people merited gold masks, which would have separated the elite from the commoners in the next world.

Miksic also learned from ethnographic accounts of people who lived on eastern Indonesian islands that spirits of the dead could be hostile. To prevent these malevolent spirits from attacking the living, people would turn the corpse around during the funeral procession and even place the corpse's head in a pot to confuse the spirit and make it unable to find its way back. This sort of belief may have led to the use of gold face covers, Miksic wrote.

The gold burial mask is one of the oldest artifacts in a collection of nearly 500 gold objects from Java donated to the Yale University Art Gallery by collectors Hunter and Valerie Thompson in 2007.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

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More than two millennia ago, a ship carrying a wealth of iron sank in the Danube River in what is now Austria. Archaeologists have identified the "rusty treasure" as a collection of 500 iron bars — the largest cache of ancient iron ever discovered in Europe and enough metal to equip an army.

The assortment was discovered in 2019, when workers who were extracting gravel from the river near the village of Deinham spotted a few unusual double-pointed iron objects and reported them to the Austrian monument authority.

"It is nothing short of a minor miracle that the largest mass find of prehistoric iron bars in Europe did not end up at scrap dealers," Peter Trebsche, an archaeologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, said in a statement.

In a study published Monday (Sept. 21) in the journal Antiquity, Trebsche and co-author Marion Berranger, an archaeologist at the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard in France, detailed their analysis of the extraordinary collection of ancient iron, which dates to the third to second centuries B.C.

From the hundreds of iron fragments recovered from the gravel heaps, Trebsche and Berranger identified 193 complete iron bars and 307 partial bars, for a total of at least 500 bars that were lost centuries ago in the waters of the Danube. On average, the complete bars were 11.2 inches (28.5 centimeters) long and around 4.5 pounds (2 kilograms). Combined, the collection weighed around 2,200 pounds (1 metric ton).

But the Deinham iron bars did not represent finished products. Rather, the double-pointed, semifinished bars ‪—‬ sometimes called ingots ‪—‬ were rough-shaped, intermediate goods that a blacksmith eventually would have forged into other objects.

The semifinished iron bars would have been enough to forge approximately 500 swords, Trebsche said in the statement. "The iron from Deinham would have been sufficient to equip a large group of warriors with weapons," he said, or to produce up to 8,000 iron nails.

Because the iron was found during gravel extraction with a large bucket excavator, the original context of the archaeological find was destroyed. This erased archaeologists' opportunity to figure out how the metal ended up in the Danube.

"The possibility of ritual deposition cannot be excluded," the researchers wrote in the study, but "most studies on river finds have concluded that iron bars are losses incurred during transport." Before the invention of trains, most ancient cultures transported heavy goods via waterways.

If the iron bars were indeed lost in a shipwreck, they were probably produced somewhere upstream of the archaeological site, the researchers noted. Similar iron bars have been found in Manching, Germany, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) away, so it is plausible that the Deinham bars were forged in Bavaria, the team wrote in the study. Researchers are currently analyzing traces of elements in the bars, which may help to clarify their geographical origin.

"It is incredible that such a large quantity of iron was transported at once and was available in a single exchange transaction in the Late Iron Age," Trebsche said. "This finding demonstrates the increased capacities of iron production that were reached in the 3^rd/2^nd century BC in the Danube region."

Editor's note: This story was updated at 10:15 a.m. ET on Sept. 21 to adjust the date in the headline from 2,000 to 2,200 years ago, the most probable date according to radiocarbon dating and archaeological analysis.

Can you identify these historical objects of war? Test your smarts with our weapons of the world quiz!

In movies and TV shows, it's a popular motif: A dead Viking is placed on a boat, and it drifts slowly out to sea; from land, an archer shoots a fiery arrow that falls onto the boat and engulfs it in flames.

It's been seen in the 1958 movie "The Vikings," the History Channel show "Vikings" and fantasy series such as "Game of Thrones." But did the Vikings actually do this?

To find out, we asked experts whether there is any archaeological or historical evidence to support the idea.

Archaeological evidence

Our sources noted that a burial like this would leave little archaeological evidence. Such "practices would leave little trace, and they are unverified by archaeological sources," Howard Williams, an archaeology professor at the University of Chester in the U.K., said in an email.

Erin McGuire, an anthropology professor at the University of Victoria in Canada, also noted this limitation. From "an archaeological standpoint, we have no evidence for this very common motif," McGuire told Live Science in an email, adding that it would be hard to differentiate a fire set by a fire arrow from a regular fire. Additionally, shipwrecks "with human remains are very, very rare globally," McGuire added. "It takes particular kinds of environmental conditions for them to be preserved and I know of none from the Viking Age."

However, the Vikings were master seafarers and frequently cremated their dead. And there is evidence that Vikings burned ships, McGuire noted. We "do have archaeological examples of ships and parts of ships that were burnt during funerary practices while still on land and were buried after being burned," McGuire said. These include the ninth-century Myklebust ship, a burnt Viking ship that was found in a burial mound in Norway and was built for a rich person, possibly a king.

Historical evidence and legends

Perhaps the closest historical evidence for the fire-arrow ritual comes from Ahmad ibn Fadlan, a 10th-century Arab traveler who went to the Volga River in what is now Russia and spent time with Viking groups there. In ibn Fadlan's written account, a Viking chieftain is placed on a boat, which is set ablaze.

However, there are some key differences between this account and the scene depicted in popular culture. First, there's no flaming arrow; rather, the boat was lit on fire by a person described as a chief mourner. Additionally, the boat and its dead chieftain were on land, not on the water.

Although not strictly historical, there are some legendary and mythical accounts of burials at sea that were possibly inspired by real events. "From medieval literature we have rare references to boats/ships involved in funerals over water," Williams said.

In the epic poem "Beowulf," the funeral of the Danish king Scyld Scefing sees the dead king placed on a ship that drifts off to sea. In the 13th-century Scandinavian book "Heimskringla," by Snorri Sturluson of Iceland, the "sea-king Haki [was] set adrift and set alight so that his body burned with those of his slain retinue," Williams said, and in another story by Sturluson, "the god Baldr is set adrift and his ship set alight by his brother Thor."

The funeral of Baldr has been particularly notable, McGuire said, noting that it inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to include a similar scene in his "Lord of the Rings" books.

Practical problems

Experts noted that this kind of fire-arrow burial might not have even been possible.

"Personally, I consider cremation at sea using a ship set alight from the shore with flaming arrows to be rather unrealistic," Matthias Toplak, head of the archaeology department at the Viking Museum Haithabu in Germany, told Live Science in an email. "My own experiments show that it is not at all easy to set something alight with flaming arrows."

He noted that fire must burn at a high temperature for several hours for cremation to be effective. "At sea, the ship would probably sink before the body had been sufficiently cremated," Toplak said. "Apart from that, there is of course also the danger that a ship ablaze and adrift would be driven by currents or the wind into other ships or harbour facilities."

McGuire also noted that there are practical problems with the idea. "if you send a burning boat out onto the water, how do you stop it from drifting ashore with rather grisly contents?"

Overall, the scholars we spoke with doubted that the Vikings used fire arrows to burn funeral boats set adrift at sea. "However romantic the idea of such a funeral scene may be, I unfortunately consider it highly unlikely," Toplak said.

Instead, Williams suspects 20th-century Hollywood movies played a major role in the creation of this idea. "I strongly suspect this specific trope owes its origin to the 1958 film The Vikings and the concluding scene of Einar's funeral," Williams said.

It "says little about how 'Vikings' treated their dead," Williams added, "but tells us a lot about our valorised ideals of fate, honour and death linked to both fantasy and historical 'Vikings.'"

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Archaeologists excavating a medieval settlement in northwestern Russia have unearthed an unusual 11th-century pendant that combines Christian and pagan imagery. It is the oldest amulet of its kind discovered in the region.

The double-sided copper-alloy pendant was found during a summer excavation in Staraya Russa, a historic town between Moscow and St. Petersburg, according to a translated statement from Novgorod State University. One side depicts a Christian saint, while the other side has a Medusa-like figure.

The artifact is known in Russian as a "snake amulet" or "serpentine pendant." Four other examples of this jewelry type are known from Christian sites in the area, but those have been dated between the 12th to 14th centuries. The newly discovered pendant was found in layers dated to the 11th century, suggesting an early Christian community lived in the area earlier than thought.

"The main characteristic of the serpentine pendant is its combination of images that are incompatible, from a strictly dogmatic standpoint," Sergey Toropov, director of the Novgorod State University Center for Archaeological Research, said in the statement. One side always features a Christian image, such as Jesus, the Virgin Mary, or a saint, while the other side prominently features snakes.

In this case, the front of the pendant depicts a warrior-saint with a spear and shield, which Toropov linked to St. Theodore Stratelates. According to ecclesiastical texts, he was also known as Theodore of Heraclea and was famous for bravely killing a giant serpent terrorizing his home town in Asia Minor. On the back of the pendant is the image of a woman's head with snake-like hair, but it is unclear if it is specifically a depiction of the gorgon Medusa from Greek mythology.

"The 'incompatible' images in this case could symbolize the victory of the forces of light over the forces of darkness," Toropov said.

The tradition of serpentine pendants likely came to Russia from the Byzantine Empire. Because the piece of jewelry is made from copper and not more valuable silver or gold, it likely belonged to a member of the middle class living on the medieval estate at Staraya Russa, Toropov said.

The pendant's combination of a Christian saint and a pagan mythological figure shows that Russia had a complicated religious landscape a millennium ago, according to the statement. Christianity had taken hold in the region, but some people clearly preserved their pagan traditions and symbols.

A researcher was perusing a collection of old Egyptian texts in a Dutch library when he stumbled upon a torn piece of parchment containing a pivotal story: a section from Homer's "Odyssey." The fragment appears to be from a pocket edition of the epic produced in Egypt around A.D. 300.

The researcher, Mark de Kreij, a Greek literature expert and professor at Radboud University in the Netherlands, found the parchment while studying early Christian manuscripts that the Utrecht University library purchased in the mid-20th century, according to a Sept. 14 statement from Utrecht University. Among a collection of Egyptian and Greek texts, de Kreij found a tiny piece of parchment with words he recognized from Homer's epic.

"There are so many boring parts in the Odyssey," de Kreij told RTV Utrecht. "This happens to be a really fun passage."

The newfound "Odyssey" fragment, which is only about 2.6 by 3 inches (6.6 by 7.7 centimeters), includes verses from Book 12 of the epic. Specifically, the verses describe what happened when the sun god Helios discovered that Odysseus' men had killed and eaten his "immortal" cattle.

Odysseus had been warned by the goddess Circe to avoid Thrinacia, the island of Helios. But he and his men arrive at the island after surviving Scylla and Charybdis — a six-headed monster and a monstrous whirlpool. When Eurylochus, Odysseus' right-hand man, begs him to let them land and find food, Odysseus agrees, as long as they don't harm any cattle. But after a month of storms, with food supplies running low, Eurylochus and the men kill and eat Helios' sacred cattle. Helios asks the gods to take vengeance on the crew, and Zeus destroys their ship, killing everyone but Odysseus.

The find marks the second time this year that a fragment from a Homeric epic has been found unexpectedly. This past spring, archaeologists in Egypt discovered papyrus fragments of the "Iliad," which details the legendary Trojan War, inside a Roman-era mummy.

Both the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" were composed in the late eighth or early seventh century B.C. and detail the 10-year Trojan War and the Greek hero Odysseus' 10-year journey from Troy back to Ithaca, respectively.

The newfound fragment likely originated as part of a parchment codex dating to the third or fourth century A.D. from the Fayum (also spelled Faiyum or Fayoum) oasis in Egypt. According to the statement, only about 30 similar fragments have ever been discovered. In an interview with Dutch News, de Kreij said the fragment may have survived because it came from the middle of the pocket-size "Odyssey" and was protected by other pages.

It's unknown how the fragment ended up in the larger collection of old Egyptian texts.

Although de Kreij first discovered the fragment in 2024, his full study of the university library's collection of Greco-Roman texts from Egypt will be published soon as a book titled "Hieratic, Demotic, Greek, and Coptic Texts in the Utrecht University Collection."

Editor's note: This story's headline was updated at 9:35 a.m. ET on Sept. 17 to clarify that the parchment was found among other texts in a collection of ancient manuscript fragments rather than in the middle of a book.

The long-lost words of ancient philosophers may finally be revealed nearly 2,000 years after the violent eruption of Mount Vesuvius scorched and buried them, thanks to a heavy metal that was used in the ink that penned them, a new study finds.

The new research investigates the lead-enriched ink within some of the nearly 2,000 papyrus scrolls, which were found at a villa in the ancient town of Herculaneum in the 1750s. In a new paper, a team created modern scrolls with leaded ink, scorched them and found that they could read the text after using several techniques, including X-ray technologies and artificial intelligence (AI).

"It's amazing what you can get electrons to do," Douglas Seiler, a research affiliate of the University of California, Berkeley and a co-author of the study, said in a statement about the new method.

Over the past few years, other researchers have digitally opened and decoded some of the scrolls from the Herculaneum villa, which was likely owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law. These results have helped reveal the writings of ancient philosophers, largely Epicureans and Stoics, with one section even describing Plato's final burial place.

But scientists still wrestled with using X-rays to read the scrolls, since, in many cases, both the papyri and the ink written on them are carbon-based. However, some of these papyri, scientists have learned, contained leaded ink. The new study, published Wednesday (Sept. 16) in the journal PLOS One, suggests that researchers should first scan the scrolls for leaded ink and then use their new technique to read more of these long-lost texts.

This method could help improve text-detection algorithms to identify writing on ancient papyrus pages, they noted. And, in the long run, it may help to protect the scrolls.

"This provides a low-risk method to develop algorithms without endangering the priceless artifacts," the team wrote in the study.

Virtually unrolling a scroll

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, it buried Herculaneum under 70 feet (20 meters) of volcanic rock and ash.

Along with the 2,000 people who died at Pompeii and Herculaneum from this natural disaster, many of the scrolls housed at the Herculaneum villa were carbonized, or essentially turned into charcoal, trapping their writings in brittle rolls of papyrus that are nearly impossible to read without destroying the scroll itself.

But, given that some of the ink used in the scrolls contained lead, Seiler and his colleagues decided to do a little experiment. They created a fake papyrus scroll with lead-based ink and "carbonized" it to try matching the conditions of the scrolls found at Herculaneum.

Next, the researchers used X-ray fluorescence, which determines the elements in a material by how they interact with X-rays, to determine that these scrolls did, in fact, contain ink with varying levels of lead. Following that, they used X-ray tomography, a way to make a 3D image using X-rays, with custom-made software to re-read some of the text they had produced on their scroll.

Thanks to their technique, the researchers found that they could read the lead-based ink writings in the scrolls, even with minuscule levels of lead. While not all the writings could be deciphered, the method was able to detect differences between the text and the papyrus it was written on.

This technique, if used on other Herculaneum scrolls, could give these ancient writings a "higher probability of being successfully read," they wrote in the study.

How much do you know about the Roman town destroyed by Mount Vesuvius? Find out by taking our Pompeii quiz.

The saying that "all roads lead to Rome" may be famous, but a new study finds it's far from true. Extensive new research of the Roman Empire's road system reveals that several other Roman cities were better connected than the Eternal City was during antiquity.

Major cities like Antioch, Ancyra (modern-day Ankara) and Byzantium in what is now Turkey, as well as Corinth in Greece, were "better located than Rome" for those traveling by land, the team wrote in a paper published Tuesday (Sept. 15) in the journal Nature Communications.

At its height in A.D. 117, the Roman Empire covered almost 2.1 million square miles (5.5 million square kilometers) around the Mediterranean Sea, occupying much of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, the team noted in the study.

For years, the scientists have been creating a vast digital atlas called "Itiner-e" of nearly 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) of Roman roads. For the new study, they calculated how well Roman cities were connected to the road system.

In fact, the empire's "most important intermediary route" by land identified in the study didn't even run through Rome.

"It follows the North African and Levantine coast past Antioch and near Ankara, crosses over to Europe at Constantinople, and moves through the Po Valley and Milan into France," study co-author Tom Brughmans, a professor of classical archaeology at Aarhus University in Denmark, told Live Science in an email.

The other well-connected cities had a bevy of reasons for their numerous roads. For instance, Corinth was better connected to the road network because the roads that ran through it linked the Greek Peloponnesian Peninsula to the rest of Greece, and Ancyra was better connected because it was a vital transportation hub for Anatolia.

Rome's unique location is likely the biggest reason why it wasn’t as well connected to the road system as these other cities.

Brughmans noted that the "Italian Peninsula is an appendix to the empire's road network, and Rome is halfway down this appendix." And when "we consider all movement within the entire Italian Peninsula, we were shocked to discover that the most central road actually follows the opposite Adriatic coastline, bypassing Rome altogether," Brughmans added.

The study also found that when the shape of the land allowed it, Roman roads tended to be straight, but they were not as straight as modern-day roads.

Today, "modern road building avoids sharp turns and aims to build as straight roads as possible by strongly modifying the terrain to facilitate faster travel by car, which is made possible by modern surveying and construction methods," the team wrote in their paper.

Sea and river connections

Although the new research sheds light on road connections, it's important to remember that road travel wasn't the only means of transport in the Roman Empire. In fact, the researchers noted that Rome may have had a more significant position for sea and river transportation than it had for road transportation.

Although the study didn't look at waterways, Rome's central location in the empire meant that it would have been an important hub of water transport, the team wrote in the study.

"Rome's central location is not due to its roads, but its physical location in the centre of the Mediterranean, on the nexus of major shipping lanes," Brughmans explained.

The team said future studies should examine sea and river transport and integrate their findings with the team's Roman roads study. When considered together, road and waterway routes may help researchers better understand Roman transportation networks.

Pažout, A. et al. (2026). Network science reveals the structure and lasting impact of the Roman road system. Nature Communications, 17(9551). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-75453-3

From Augustus to Nero, see how much you know about ancient Rome's famous leaders with our Roman emperor quiz!

In the Kingdom of Benin, one of the oldest monarchies in West Africa, a traditional ruler known as an oba would commission a brass or bronze bust of their predecessor upon taking the throne. The bust of the past oba would then be set on an ancestral altar in the palace. But when the British Empire annexed the Kingdom of Benin into colonial Nigeria in 1897, the British looted thousands of African artifacts spanning the kingdom's seven-century history, and the country of Nigeria has asked that they be returned.

This particular bust is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), which acquired it from prominent French art dealer Louis Carré, who sold many of the artifacts looted from Benin to Western museums in the 1930s. This head of an oba ancestor, also known as "uhunmwun-elao" in the Edo language spoken in the historic Kingdom of Benin, is roughly 1 foot (30 centimeters) tall and was made from a copper alloy, using a lost-wax casting process that would produce one unique bust, then-CMA curator William Milliken wrote in a 1937 study.

Initially, CMA experts thought the ancestral head represented a princess, due to the layers of coral necklaces around the oba's neck and the thin braids hanging from the individual's temples. But the coral necklaces and the lattice-pattern beaded caps were actually potent representations of a ruler's power. The top of the bust is partly open, and it would have supported an intricately carved elephant tusk that recorded the oba's accomplishments and major life events.

Many of the surviving ancestral commemorative heads were created in the 15th and 16th centuries by the Igun Eronmwon, a hereditary guild of brass and bronze artisans that made objects for royalty in the Kingdom of Benin. According to the CMA, Benin royalty prized brass because it does not corrode. Much of the African brass was imported from as far away as Germany.

When British forces invaded the Benin royal palace in 1897, they looted thousands of metal plaques, sculptures of humans and animal figures, and royal and personal ornaments that have come to be known as the Benin Bronzes, even though most of the objects are technically brass, an alloy of copper and zinc. The British Museum holds the world's largest collection of Benin brass artifacts — over 900 objects — which Nigeria formally requested be returned in 2021.

Some institutions have begun repatriating this historic royal art back to its homeland. A group of German museums that collectively held over 1,100 of these objects transferred ownership of them to Nigeria in 2022. That same year, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art transferred ownership of 29 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. And, in 2025, the Netherlands returned 119 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. To date, however, the British Museum has not officially returned any of the Benin Bronzes in its collection.

There is also controversy about who should have ownership of these artifacts. In 2025, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston returned two Benin Bronzes to Oba Ewuare II, the great-great-grandson of the last oba before the 1897 British invasion. Oba Ewuare II is the Oba of Benin and custodian of Benin culture.

A full catalog of royal artifacts looted from Benin in the late 19th century can be found on the Digital Benin project website.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

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The largest hoard of Viking Age silver ever found in Finland — which contains almost 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) of coins and jewelry — has been unearthed by a metal detectorist about 95 miles (150 kilometers) north of Helsinki.

The hoard had been divided into two deposits and buried in birch-bark containers. Although the coins and jewelry likely date to between A.D. 1000 and 1050, it's unknown exactly when they were buried, Esko Tikkala, an archaeologist at the Lahti Historical Museum who excavated the hoard, told Live Science in an email.

The hoard has not yet been fully cleaned, separated and counted yet, but there are thousands of pieces, Tikkala said. "There are quite a lot of coins in this hoard," he said. "I have not had time to go through them."

Metal detectorist Kalle Lappinen found the two deposits Sept. 3 and immediately contacted the museum. Archaeologists inspected and properly excavated the finds the next day, according to a translated statement.

Tikkala described the hoard site as beside a rock outcrop in a forest near the town of Sysmä. Several other buried hoards had been found in the same region of Finland over the past 10 years, Tikkala said.

Although it's challenging to determine why specific hoards were buried, a recent study of more than 15,000 Roman-era (the eighth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D.) hoards found that they were hidden for multiple reasons, including for tax evasion, votive offerings, and safe storage in times of uncertainty.

Tikkala said the two deposits of the silver hoard were buried between two stones about 18 inches (45 centimeters) below ground and about 39 feet (12 meters) apart. There were no signs of any burials nearby, but the surrounding area had not been properly studied, he said.

Tikkala added that the coins came from areas that corresponded to present-day Germany, Sweden and Great Britain. There were also some dirhams —‬ silver coins made in the Islamic world. Dirhams previously found in Finland generally date to between about 800 and 1050, he said.

The hoard also contains several pieces of jewelry, including a silver bracelet, and "payment silver" in the form of hack silver (also called hacksilber) — pieces of silver that could be cut into smaller pieces for payments according to their weight.

The weight of the precious metal alone would make the hoard worth almost $10,000 today.

From the Viking Age, but not from Vikings

Although the hoard is from the Viking Age (traditionally, from the 793 attack on Lindisfarne until the 1066 defeat of a Viking army at Stamford Bridge in England), that doesn't mean it was buried by Vikings, Tikkala said.

"The term Viking Age does not imply that there were Vikings in Finland," he said. "We have no sources suggesting that Finland was 'Viking' in the same sense as regions of present-day Sweden, Norway, and Denmark."

Instead, Finnish historians and archaeologists had adopted the term to designate the period, he said. But the area now known as Finland was not culturally or politically part of Viking Scandinavia.

The next stage of the archaeological investigation will be to properly study the site where the two deposits were found, as well as their surroundings, Tikkala said; after that, specialists in Viking Age coins will try to identify the coins and prepare a detailed report.

"There will definitely be scientific articles published on the hoard as a whole, as well as more detailed studies of the coins themselves," he said.

Until now, Finland's largest Viking Age hoard was found in 1895. Buried at Nousiainen, about 130 miles (210 km) southwest of Sysmä, it contained more than 1,700 silver coins but weighed only about half as much as the newfound hoard.

Other Nordic countries have also recently reported their largest Viking Age hoards. A cache of more than 4,700 coins was found in Norway this past spring, and a homeowner in Denmark unexpectedly discovered a hoard of more than 700 silver objects weighing more than 40 pounds (18.5 kg) in their backyard, also in the spring.

See how much you know about ancient norsemen with our Viking quiz!

The world's oldest known habitual drug use can be traced to an island in Indonesia, where ice age hunter-gatherers sucked on betel nuts — palm seeds that contain a neuroactive substance, a new study finds.

Scientists made the discovery after studying strange grooves in the teeth of two prehistoric hunter-gatherers. The deep grooves were caused by regularly sucking on betel nuts (Areca catechu), likely for relief from the pain of toothache, according to the study, which was published Wednesday (Sept. 9) in the journal Science Advances.

The partial skeletons of the two people were found on the island of Sulawesi, but their lives were separated in time by thousands of years. One of them, a man who died between about the ages of 40 and 50, lived between 25,000 and 16,000 years ago. This period roughly corresponds to the Last Glacial Maximum, the coldest part of the last ice age — although Sulawesi was not covered with ice at that time. The second person, who was around the same age when they died, lived on Sulawesi between 7,600 and 6,300 years ago, according to the study. The sex of this individual could not be determined.

Betel nuts contain a neuroactive compound called arecoline, which has a powerful stimulant effect when chewed with slaked lime, or calcium hydroxide. This early method of directly sucking betel nuts, however, would have only made the mouth numb.

These hunter-gatherers had so much dental damage, the new analysis found that they must have sucked on betel nuts almost continuously throughout their lives. But it seems these numbing nuts didn't have the desired effect in the long run. Instead, it may have made their dental conditions worse by eventually exacerbating any painful holes in their teeth.

"The more they sucked on the nut to relieve toothache, the worse that the damage to their teeth became," study first author Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia, told Live Science. The grooves progressively became deeper, and in one individual they exposed the tooth's inner pulp cavity. "It would have been excruciatingly painful," Brumm said.

Although a 2017 study showed that Neanderthals used the bark of plants like poplar (genus Populus) for its pain-killing properties (poplars contain salicylic acid, a form of the active ingredient in aspirin), this is the earliest evidence of a drug from plants being used habitually, Brumm said.

Plant-based drugs have been used in many other prehistoric societies: 10,000-year-old traces of the pollen of a psychedelic cactus have been found in Peru, and 13,000-year-old residues of alcoholic beer have been found in Israel.

Addictive nut

After determining the likely cause of the grooves, the researchers tested whether sucking on betel nuts — a behavior not seen before — resulted in a neuroactive effect. Their test subjects, genetically-engineered frog eggs with human neuroreceptors, revealed there was a neuroactive effect. Then, they examined samples from the teeth, which revealed traces of betel nut use.

Betel nut, also known as areca nut, is still widely used today in parts of South Asia and Oceania. Today, however, betel nut users mix it with slaked lime to make a chewable wad that has a stimulant effect. This chewable wad, also called a quid, is strongly addictive, and is used by an estimated 600 million people worldwide. But arecoline is also carcinogenic, and betel nut quids are often mixed with tobacco, so users are often diagnosed with mouth cancer.

The researchers speculate that the use of slaked lime with betel nuts originated much later, during the Neolithic, or "New Stone" Age, about 4,000 years ago on Sulawesi, when slaked lime was added to pottery to prevent it from shrinking and cracking during firing.

"It now seems probable that betel chewing as we know it evolved from a much simpler, older practice of just sucking on the intact nut," the researchers wrote in the new study.

It's likely that people of all ages used this remedy for toothache in prehistoric times, but the grooves only became apparent in mature people who had become addicted to the practice, Brumm said.

Drug use started before farming

The earlier betel-sucking man predated the Neolithic period not only in Sulawesi but also in the Fertile Crescent, where people began practicing agriculture around 12,500 years ago, Brumm said. Archaeologists have long debated whether people began using neuroactive plants as drugs before or after the introduction of farming, but the new finding shows that psychoactive drug use happened thousands of years earlier, Brumm said.

The new study is a "fantastic piece of research," Elisa Guerra Doce, a prehistoric archaeologist at the University of Valladolid in Spain who was not involved, told Live Science in an email.

The new study gives "particularly compelling and direct evidence for the antiquity of drug use," she said.

Guerra Doce is an expert on the prehistoric use of plants as neuroactive drugs. "In the specific case of betel nuts, the findings are especially significant because they also reveal the prehistoric roots of a deeply established cultural practice in Southeast Asia and the Pacific," she said.

The study also highlights how the prehistoric people of Sulawesi explored their natural world and figured out that it not only provided subsistence and medicinal resources but also had "substances that became integrated into social and cultural traditions over thousands of years," Guerra Doce said.

Archaeologists excavating in southwestern China have discovered a cave that was used by Denisovans for more than 100,000 years. Five human fossils, scores of stone tools, and hundreds of animal bones recovered from the cave reveal for the first time that the enigmatic Denisovans thrived in a forested environment where they hunted and ate large game animals.

Denisovans were a lineage of humans who lived in Asia and went extinct around 30,000 years ago. Ancient DNA has shown that Denisovans, Neanderthals and modern humans (Homo sapiens) are distantly related and that all three groups interbred in the past. But while archaeologists have found numerous Neanderthal and modern-human skeletons, Denisovans are known from only a handful of fragmentary fossils scattered from Siberia to Laos. This lack of evidence has severely limited experts' understanding of Denisovans' bodies and their culture.

In two studies published Wednesday (Sept. 9) in the journal Nature, researchers detailed their excavation of Bianfu Cave in southwestern China. Animal bones and ancient tools revealed that the cave was used from 190,000 to 70,000 years ago, and five human fossils dating to between 134,000 and 167,000 years ago confirmed that the people who used the cave were Denisovans.

Bianfu Cave is in the Yunnan province of southwestern China. In 2019, archaeologists excavated several stratigraphic layers of the cave and discovered nearly 1,400 stone artifacts, more than 64,000 mammal bones, and four teeth from an unknown human lineage. The Yunnan area is where Denisovans and modern humans are known to have met and mated, so researchers were unsure which group had used tools to butcher animals inside Bianfu Cave.

In one study, a research team used a technique called zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) to quickly and efficiently screen the bone fragments from Bianfu Cave. ZooMS is a form of protein analysis that involves extracting collagen from the bones of an unknown species and comparing the protein pattern to the unique "fingerprint" of reference animals.

When the researchers applied the ZooMS technique to the Bianfu Cave bones, they discovered that three of the fragments had a collagen pattern found in members of the Homo genus. Then, using proteomic analysis, the researchers found that two teeth and three bones from Bianfu Cave had a particular amino acid variation linking the fossil remains with Denisovans.

Denisovans are still poorly understood, in part because no complete skeleton has ever been found. Most of the Denisovan fossils that experts have studied are pieces of the skull and teeth. A tiny finger bone and a rib fragment were all that had been found of Denisovans' bodies before the Bianfu Cave excavation. But one of the three bones identified as Denisovan through ZooMS was a fragment of a radius, one of the paired bones in the forearm. It is the only Denisovan radius found to date.

The newly discovered radius has a large head (where it connects to the humerus at the elbow) that is more similar to those seen in Neanderthals than in modern humans, but its overall shape is more similar to modern-human radii, the researchers wrote in one of the new studies. The fact that the Denisovan radius was shaped more similarly to the radius in humans "likely provided functional advantages for lightweight, precise manipulation," study co-author Qiaomei Fu, director of the Ancient DNA Laboratory at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, told Live Science in an email.

The unique features of the Denisovan radius also suggests that the Denisovans living near Bianfu Cave had different biomechanical demands on their bodies and different behavioral adaptations, the researchers noted.

Denisovan stone and bone tools

In a related study, researchers looked at the entire cultural sequence from Bianfu Cave to work out what Denisovans were doing there.

Of the nearly 1,400 stone artifacts recovered from the cave, there were about 200 flake tools, many of which were made from a sedimentary rock called sandy mudstone. These tools left marks on a number of animal bones discovered in the cave, suggesting that Denisovans regularly hunted, butchered and extracted marrow from cow- and deer-like animals, the researchers wrote in the study.

But the stone tools found at Bianfu Cave are different from the more sophisticated ones that Neanderthals made around the same time. The Denisovan stone tools appear to have been crafted quickly and efficiently from locally available materials, according to the study. The researchers, however, discovered that Denisovans at Bianfu Cave were also making bone tools, which Neanderthals did as well. This suggests that bone tool use may have been more widespread among Pleistocene human groups than experts previously thought, the researchers wrote, and it highlights the need to better understand the human evolutionary record of eastern Asia.

Although the studies have contributed new information to archaeologists' understanding of the enigmatic Denisovans, more work needs to be done, according to the researchers.

"We hope that similar proteomic analyses will aid in the identification of further Denisovan long bones in the future," Huiyun Rao, an associate professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and colleagues wrote, "to further understand the adaptive behavior of Denisovans in response to climate change or competitive pressure from contemporary hominins."

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When archaeologists with the National Museum of Denmark excavated a burial mound called Guldhøj (Gold Hill) in southern Jutland in 1891, they were surprised to find a well-preserved wooden folding chair similar to those known from ancient Egypt and Greece. But the Guldhøj folding chair was made in Denmark around 3,400 years ago and is the only completely preserved chair from the Bronze Age in Europe, according to the National Museum of Denmark.

The chair was discovered in the grave of a chieftain, who was buried in a hollowed-out oak tree trunk and wrapped in a cowhide. The man had been dressed in a wool cloak secured with a bronze brooch, two wool hats, woolen mittens and leather shoes. Among the offerings his loved ones left in the grave were a bronze ax and a bronze dagger, along with two ornate wooden bowls and a wooden box. But the folding chair was an unusual addition to the grave and was likely a marker of the man's extremely high status.

The frame of the Guldhøj folding chair was crafted from ash wood, while the seat was made from otter skin, only a fragment of which was preserved over the millennia. Patterns incised into the top of the wooden frame were inlaid with a black, tar-like substance to create a band of geometric decoration.

In a 1999 study led by archaeologist Kirsten Prangsgaard, researchers who examined the chair determined that it was made from two frames of wood, each about 13 inches (33 centimeters) tall. When the frames were put together at a 45-degree angle, the low chair or stool would have been around 9.5 inches (24 cm) off the ground. Originally, the chair frame was likely held together with bronze nails, which may have been removed before the seat was placed in the grave, according to the researchers.

Folding chairs may seem simple, but they were important pieces of furniture that signified the seated person was of high rank, and they were likely used in rituals or ceremonies, according to the National Museum of Denmark.

Archaeologists have found ancient folding chairs in this style in Bronze Age Egypt and Greece, where weather conditions are better for preserving organic material such as wood. The Guldhøj folding chair is not unique in Nordic countries; pieces of chairs have been found in other chieftain graves in Denmark and northern Germany, and a rare metal folding chair was even found in an early medieval woman's grave in Germany. However, it is the only completely preserved wooden folding chair from Bronze Age Europe, Prangsgaard and colleagues noted in the study. "The folding chairs thus seem to belong to the warrior graves of the Early Bronze Age," they wrote.

The similarity of the Guldhøj chair, which was made in Denmark, to chairs found in far-flung civilizations means that Bronze Age people were exchanging ideas through trade and gift giving, the researchers wrote. The chairs show a clear artistic connection between Bronze Age Nordic and Mediterranean groups. Another connection is the four-spoked wheel on the famous Sun Chariot from Trundholm, which mimics designs seen in the Aegean region.

Both the unusual folding chair and the wooden bowls buried with the Bronze Age chieftain in the Guldhøj mound "can only be described as rare objects of high prestige," according to the National Museum of Denmark.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

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Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered an ancient tomb belonging to the "keeper of the secrets of royal decrees," they announced following an excavation at Saqqara.

The decorated burial belongs to an official named Sekhentio-Ptah, who lived during the Old Kingdom (2649 to 2150 B.C.), a period that's famous for the building of the pyramids, including those at Giza.

While the title "keeper of the secrets of royal decrees" may sound mysterious, it was likely a more bureaucratic position, said Ann Macy Roth, a clinical professor of Egyptology at New York University who was not involved with the excavation.

It "probably merely means that as someone in charge of royal documents and the people who write them, he has access to confidential information," Roth told Live Science in an email. "It's a common title among royal scribes."

The official Sekhentio-Ptah had a number of other titles, according to his tomb, including "Overseer of all the King's Works" and "Overseer of Royal Documents," representatives of Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities wrote in a translated statement.

Within the tomb, archaeologists found an offering table, a purification basin and two false doors. The false door is a symbolic door, commonly found in ancient Egyptian tombs, that was believed to allow the soul to exit and enter the tomb at will. The design of the false doors places them in the late fifth or early sixth dynasty, around 4,350 years ago, Roth said.

More than 100 shabtis (also spelled ushabtis) were found in the tomb. Ancient Egyptians believed these figurines would act as servants for the deceased in the afterlife. The team also discovered a wooden statue of a falcon (possibly related to the falcon-headed god Horus) and the remains of cartonnage, a plastered material used on mummies. The mummy of Sekhentio-Ptah was not identified.

Looking at the photos and information the ministry released, Roth said it's likely this tomb was reused for later burials ‪—‬ something that was commonly done in ancient Egypt. She said the shabtis found in the tomb likely belong to later burials and the cartonnage is likely from mummies that were buried in the tomb at a later date.

The team discovered the tomb in the Bubasteion (also spelled Bubasteum) area of Saqqara, a place that was commonly used for cat burials in later times such as the late period (circa 664 to 332 B.C). The site was associated with Bastet, a cat-shaped goddess associated with fertility and protection. However, the statement didn't mention any cat burials found in this particular tomb.

Live Science reached out to the excavation team but did not hear back by the time of publication.

See how much you know about mummies with our mummy quiz.

Nearly two millennia ago, a wealthy Roman commissioned an intricate, multicolored floor mosaic that depicted two beloved household animals: a cat named Emerald and a dog named Ocean. The mosaic was a key feature of a villa, which archaeologists recently unearthed from beneath the ancient city of Adramytteion on Turkey's Aegean coast.

Within the Roman villa, which has been dated to the late second to third centuries A.D., archaeologists discovered three halls surrounding a central atrium. In one room, which likely functioned as the villa's main reception hall, archaeologists found a colorful mosaic with 15 separate panels depicting living and mythological creatures.

In a study forthcoming in the Journal of Mosaic Research, archaeologist Hüseyin Özgen, head of the Adramytteion research team at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, wrote that the 15 panels are centered around what appears to be a depiction of Medusa, while the named cat and dog may preserve the memory of household creatures.

Özgen began excavating at Adramytteion in 2012, but he and his team discovered the Roman villa only recently and excavated it in 2025 and early 2026. In the Roman period, Adramytteion was a provincial capital within Asia Minor and a prime trading spot due to its location at the head of a gulf on the Aegean Sea. The impressive villa included three mosaic-paved halls, a number of secondary rooms, and a network of pipes and drains that may have connected to a latrine.

Visitors approaching from the courtyard of the villa would have been greeted by the largest, most elaborate mosaic in the residence, according to Özgen. Located in the middle of the room, the mosaic measures about 16.4 by 11.8 feet (5 by 3.6 meters) and contains 15 panels arranged in three rows. Most of the panels depict birds, fish and felines, but two mythologically inspired panels include a gorgon (possibly Medusa) and a winged horse (possibly Pegasus). Ancient artists used white, black, red, orange, yellow, pink, burgundy, blue, turquoise and green tiles to create the intricate design.

Only two of the animals depicted in the mosaic are named. As someone entered the room, the first mosaic panel they would have seen to their left was a pale cat seated on a blue-green cushion, Özgen wrote in the study. Above the cat are the Greek letters ΖΜΑΡΑΓΔΙΝ (Zmaragdin), meaning emerald. The relaxed cat sitting on a cushion suggests that Emerald may have been a pet rather than a stray.

One possible explanation for Emerald's name may be a link to the desert of Roman Egypt, where emeralds were mined in antiquity; the villa owner may have been a merchant with North African connections.

On the right side as someone entered the room was a mosaic panel depicting a running or leaping dog. This animal is labeled with the Greek letters ΩΚΕΑΝΟΣ (Okeanos), meaning ocean. Adramytteion was a harbor city, so Ocean's name may have been bestowed due to his surroundings, according to Özgen.

Emerald and Ocean were likely familiar to the villa's residents, even if they weren't specifically pets, Özgen wrote, and their depictions in the mosaic may have functioned as familiar signs of ownership and household identity.

Research at Adramytteion by Özgen and the project team is ongoing.

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Archaeologists were excavating in a Roman-period cemetery in Poland when they came across something extremely unusual: the grave of a man who was buried with two decapitated human heads, a necklace made from 42 mammal teeth, and a battle ax. That ax provided an important clue: He was actually from the Stone Age, three millennia older than the Roman cemetery.

"We were practically packing up, and then we discovered a circular shape in the ground and began digging," Paweł Dąbrowski, a biological anthropologist at Wrocław Medical University, said in a Sept. 2 translated statement. "We found fairly well-preserved animal teeth arranged in a necklace."

The grave, which was found near Wrocław in southwest Poland, included the nearly complete skeleton of an adult male who was buried with amber beads, a flint blade and a battle ax made of serpentinite, a greenish metamorphic rock. The style of the stone ax suggests the burial was made around 2900 B.C., during the Middle Neolithic period (New Stone Age), according to the statement.

But a handful of teeth and bones that were also deposited in the grave as funeral offerings made the burial stand out as particularly unusual.

"The arrangement of the 42 teeth was precise," Dąbrowski said, "and upon further inspection, it turned out that all of them had holes drilled through their roots. They must have formed a kind of necklace."

The teeth that made up the necklace were incisors and canines that belonged to large mammals, such as wolves, deer, bears and potentially humans, Dąbrowski said in a Sept. 4 translated statement.

"It's possible we've discovered the grave of a warrior or hunter, but because of this necklace, we can assume it was someone important, for example, the leader of a family clan," Dąbrowski said.

The burial also contained the remains of two human skulls, which the archaeologists think may be from decapitated heads that were buried with the man as gifts or funeral offerings. However, further analysis of the skulls is needed to confirm or rule out decapitation, according to the first statement.

A similar elite person's burial filled with axes, flint tools and amber beads was previously discovered nearby, the researchers noted in the statements. In that case, the bones of a calf suggested that the animal had been sacrificed at the grave. But to date, these are the only two burials of their kind in the area. According to the statements, they might be from members of the Corded Ware culture, which likely spread Indo-European languages around Europe and Asia.

According to Dąbrowski, the next step is to analyze the remains from both Stone Age burials to figure out if the people were related and what their lives were like nearly 5,000 years ago. He expects the first results of the analyses to be available later this year.

What do you know about the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic eras? Find out with our Stone Age quiz.

The Romans are well known for their aqueducts, which brought water to their cities and settlements.

These aqueducts sometimes ran for very long distances. For instance, the aqueduct of Valens, which brought water to the city of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), was 250 miles (400 kilometers) long, according to a statement from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

The aqueducts also lasted a long time; their remains are some of the most prominent Roman architectural finds visible today. All of this demonstrates the Romans' engineering prowess. So how did the Romans build such large and long-lasting aqueducts?

Preparing the route

First, the Romans would select a source of water for the aqueduct, with springs being a popular choice. The aqueducts had to be designed so water would flow toward the city or settlement. The successful building of the aqueducts "was accomplished by an ever slight incline downwards from the spring to its end source," such as Rome, Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow, a classics professor and chair emerita at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, told Live Science in an email.

Roman surveyors had to design a route carefully. "To choose a route with the necessary gradient, Roman surveyors would have either used the libra or the dioptra," Joseph Lewis, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, told Live Science in an email.

The dioptra was shaped like a disc with a sighting bar in the middle. It could be suspended from a stand, and the surveyor could look through the sighting bar at rods in the ground to help determine their elevations. "Surveyors would sight through the sighting bar toward surveying staves to measure differences to elevation," Lewis said.

The exact design of the libra is unclear, but we know that it had a plumb bob that was suspended in the air and the surveyor could compare it to rods in the ground to help determine differences in ground height. "Surveyors would set the libra up along proposed routes for the aqueduct and look forward and backward against calibrated staves," Lewis explained, noting that this allowed them to determine differences in ground height.

Building a long-lasting aqueduct

The Romans used a form of concrete that tended to last much longer than modern-day concrete. Roman concrete used pozzolan, an ashy substance, that was combined with lime and water to form a durable concrete that hardened when exposed to water.

"Roman concrete certainly played an important role, especially in bridges, arcades, and other structural elements," Giovanni De Feo, a professor of industrial engineering at the University of Salerno in Italy, said in an email.

But this wasn't the only factor that allowed Roman aqueducts to last such a long time.

"I believe their remarkable preservation results from a combination of factors," De Feo said. For example, the Romans were careful to select routes that followed stable geological formations.

Regular maintenance that, in many cases, continued into the Middle Ages also helped Roman aqueducts survive the test of time, De Feo noted. This means that they tried to avoid volcanoes and other landscapes that were unstable.

Aqueducts did not always run aboveground; sometimes, they had lengthy underground portions in areas where the landscapes made it difficult to place it aboveground. Some "aqueducts had hardly any stretches above ground outside the city, while others ran on arches for a considerable distance," Gerda de Kleijn, a researcher at Radboud University in the Netherlands, wrote in her book "The Water Supply of Ancient Rome" (J.C. Gieben, 2001).

As the water neared the city, it would sometimes go into pools that helped remove dirt and other visible pollutants. "Water would pool into the basin, sediment would sink to the bottom, then the water would continue from there on its course to the distribution tank," Harry Evans, a professor emeritus of classics at Fordham University, said in an email.

The number of workers required to build an aqueduct depended on its size and timeline for completion. The Hadrianic aqueduct at Athens, which runs for about 12.4 miles (20 km), could have been completed in 15 years by a team of around 500 workers, researchers estimated in a 2022 paper.

Maintaining the aqueduct

After an aqueduct was built, regular maintenance kept it in good shape. Cees Passchier, head of tectonophysics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany, has studied a Roman aqueduct at Divona in France. In a 2023 study, Passchier and colleagues found that carbonate would have built up on the aqueduct over time. Maintenance workers "partly scraped away" the carbonate before replastering the aqueduct, Passchier told Live Science in an email. At some other aqueducts, they wouldn't bother scraping but would "simply plaster over the carbonate without ever cleaning anything," he said.

A sizable number of workers would have been needed to keep aqueducts functional, but it varied based on the aqueduct's size. For "a small place like Divona, a workforce of a dozen people would probably have been enough," Passchier said. "We know that in Rome, there was a staff of a few hundred people to keep the aqueducts working."

Even after the Roman Empire collapsed, many of its aqueducts survived, as some were used and maintained into the Middle Ages and even into modern times. One of the aqueducts, the Aqua Virgo, built in 19 B.C., is still bringing water to Rome today.

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A 3,200-year-old Egyptian inscription found near an ancient military road may indicate the location of a long-lost city, archaeologists have announced.

Found at the site of Tell Abu Seifi (also spelled Seify), the inscription mentions Ramesses II, who reigned from about 1279 to 1213 B.C. It says that Horus, a falcon-headed ancient Egyptian god associated with the sky and war, is the "Lord of the City of Mesn," representatives of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a translated statement.

The team also found the remains of a temple dedicated to Horus at the archaeological site, they said in the statement. Unfortunately, "the temple was almost completely destroyed," making it difficult to get much information from it, Hesham Hussein, the director general of Delta and Sinai Archaeology at Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and a leader of the research team, told Live Science in an email.

Tell Abu Seifi is located by the Suez Canal, near the north Sinai Desert and the eastern Nile Delta. The presence of both the inscription that mentions Mesn and a temple of Horus at the site means there is a strong possibility that Tell Abu Seifi is, in fact, Mesn (also spelled Mesen), according to the statement. However, Hussein cautioned that more research is needed for archaeologists to be certain.

The ministry’s statement called Mesn a "lost city," and it is difficult to determine precisely when the city was founded or how large it was. "Because its archaeological identification has remained uncertain, we cannot currently provide a reliable estimate of its total extent or population," Hussein said.

If Tell Abu Seifi is Mesn, it seems to have existed for a long time. A bronze seal that was previously found at Tell Abu Seifi and dates to the Ptolemaic period (circa 304 to 30 B.C.) also has an inscription that says, "Horus, Lord of Mesen," Hussein noted, and coffins dating to the Ptolemaic period previously found at the site have similar inscriptions.

Horus also seems to have been extremely important to the people of Mesn. "The title "Horus, Lord of Mesen" directly connects the deity with the place, and the archaeological evidence from Tell Abu Seify supports the importance of this cult," Hussein said.

Way of Horus

Tell Abu Seifi is located near what the ancient Egyptians called the "Way of Horus" (or "Ways of Horus"), a road that connected the eastern Nile Delta with the southern Levant and was dotted with fortresses.

Peter Brand, a professor of history at the University of Memphis in Tennessee who was not involved in the excavation, said the evidence indicates that Tell Abu Seifi, which is near the modern-day city of Qantara, is Mesn. "Several fortifications were built along the 'Ways of Horus' and Mesen, near modern Qantara, was likely one of the 'jumping off' points for Egyptian armies departing for Canaan, Lebanon, and Syria," he told Live Science in an email.

A road leading out of Africa and into the Middle East was key, as the Egyptians went on several military campaigns to expand their empire around that time.

"The Egyptian empire dominated this part of the Middle East," Brand said. "Ramesses II's father had built a series of the forts along the Ways and Ramesses himself marched his armies across Sinai during his military campaign." This included his famous Battle of Kadesh, in what is now Syria, against the Hittite Empire, a kingdom based in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey).

The site's temple also hints at its importance.

The "temple of the god Horus of Mesen was the most important religious center in the area," Brand said. He noted that the newfound inscription mentions "how Ramesses II restored a statue of Horus of Mesen." Remarkably, the pedestal of a statue just like this was previously found at the site.

These two clues indicate that Tell Abu Seifi is Mesn, Brand said.

Waiting for more evidence

Other scholars were not ready to identify Tell Abu Seifi as Mesn. James Hoffmeier, an archaeologist and professor at Trinity International University who has conducted extensive work in the region, said that while the case is strong, he wants to see more evidence, such as ceramics from the site, to be sure.

One problem is that similar inscriptions mentioning Mesn have been found at other sites in the region, raising the question of whether those sites could be Mesn, Gregory Mumford, an anthropology professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who was not involved in the excavations, told Live Science in an email. These sites include a fortress at Kom el-Qolzoum on the Suez and a fort at Tjaru in the northwest Sinai Desert. Mumford proposed that Mesn could be a broad area that encompasses multiple sites in the region.

Other scholars also said more information on the discoveries was needed.

Oren Siegel, an Egyptology professor at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the excavation, said this is a "really exciting find" but he wants to wait for more information before commenting in detail. Shirly Ben Dor Evian, an Egyptology professor at the University of Haifa in Israel who wasn't involved in the excavation, also said more information, particularly on the hieroglyphic inscriptions, was needed.

Research into the site is ongoing. Hussein noted that, interestingly, historical records show there was a second settlement named Mesn located in southern Egypt.

Are you a fan of mummies and hieroglyphs? Find out with our ancient Egypt quiz!

Archaeologists excavating in eastern Serbia have discovered the remains of a lavish and uniquely constructed Roman bath that once belonged to an emperor. The suite of rooms ‪—‬ which included heated floors, three bathing pools and a sauna ‪—‬ was uncovered at the bottom of a tower within an imperial palace, a design archaeologists had never seen before in the Roman Empire.

The bath complex, known in Latin as a balneum, was found at the archaeological site of Vrelo-Šarkamen, a monumental fortified residential complex that was built in the early fourth century and was occupied by Maximinus Daza (or Daia), who was Roman emperor from 310 to 313. Archaeologists have been excavating at Vrelo-Šarkamen on and off for decades, and the latest discovery was made by a research team from the Institute of Archaeology, an independent research institution in Serbia, according to a Sept. 3 statement.

Galerius Valerius Maximinus, born in what is now Serbia and originally named Daza, was one of the four Roman "tetrarchs." In A.D. 293, Emperor Diocletian essentially split the Roman Empire into two halves — Eastern and Western — and each was administered by a senior emperor and a junior ruler. By 305, the rulers of the Roman Empire were Constantius and Galerius as senior emperors and Severus and Maximinus Daza as junior rulers, but the tetrarchy had begun to fall apart. Maximinus claimed the title of senior emperor in 301 but lasted only three years. He died in 313 after losing a civil war against his rival, Licinius.

The new excavations at Maximinus Daza's imperial residence have revealed that the palace was even more complex and luxurious than previously thought, according to the statement.

Maximinus' palace had a monumental tower in the southwest corner. But archaeologists were surprised to find a circular bath complex on the lowest level of the tower, as most ancient balnea were oriented linearly, with rooms in a row. This bath area had a domed ceiling with six windows, which shows a high level of engineering knowledge, according to the statement.

The balneum was split into two sections: one for equipment needed to run the baths and one for bathing and relaxing. Within the equipment room, archaeologists found the furnace that heated the bath's floors. They also discovered the base for a copper boiler that would have been used to heat up bath water. However, the copper boiler itself is now missing.

Within the suite of rooms that the emperor used, archaeologists found three bathing pools or tubs, along with a sudatorium, the Latin word for a steam bath or sauna.

According to the statement, "the complex was not simply a space intended for personal hygiene, but a carefully designed private bath intended for high-status residents of the palace, in which architecture, technical infrastructure and comfort formed a single functional whole."

Researchers will continue to explore the bath complex to better understand how the rooms were structured and how Emperor Maximinus and his family accessed it.

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Archaeologists in Bulgaria have discovered a human skeleton inside a giant Roman jar. It's likely that the individual sought shelter in the vessel during an enemy attack over 1,600 years ago but died as a fire swept through the area.

The team unearthed the gigantic jar in a Late Roman turret, or small tower, in the Roman colony of Deultum on Aug. 10. It's unclear which battle led to the individual's death, but Deultum faced many attacks from East Germanic tribes and Huns in the fourth and fifth centuries, lead excavator Lyudmil Vagalinski, an archaeologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, told Live Science in an email.

The individual's remains were found with two iron knives and a belt inside the container, a type of jar known as a dolium. These huge vessels were the largest type of pottery in antiquity (from roughly the eighth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D.) and were used to store goods such as olive oil and wine. The largest dolia could hold more than 260 gallons (1,000 liters), although the surviving lower part of the newfound dolium was smaller, measuring approximately 3 feet (1 meter) in diameter, Vagalinski said.

Even though Vagalinski and his colleagues had been excavating the turret, which is the northern turret of Deultum's western Roman gate, they weren't expecting to find human remains there, according to Standart News, the Bulgarian outlet that first covered the finding.

"We were surprised," Vagalinski said in an email. It's very rare for archaeologists to discover human remains inside the cities of antiquity except in the case of "extraordinary circumstances" ‪—‬ like earthquakes, enemy attacks or volcanic eruptions, he said. Even in these cases, survivors would search for their dead to bury them beyond the city walls, but they often didn't know that there were dead bodies under the ruins.

The recent discovery seems to represent one of those "extraordinary circumstances," Vagalinski said. The team found a significant amount of burned materials around the dolium, including ashes and coals; broken bricks, tiles and shards; blackened walls; melted glass fragments; and bones from domestic animals. The likely scenario is that, upon hearing of an imminent attack, people brought their livestock into the fortress. The archaeologists also found many bronze coins that were probably lost in the chaos.

The individual, presumably a young man, was likely part of this tumult and climbed into the dolium to hide or seek shelter, Vagalinski said. And while it's unknown how the fire started, the presence of ashes under the skeleton in the dolium indicates that the individual went inside after the fire had already begun, Vagalinski said.

The team's preliminary analysis dates the event to approximately A.D. 400, though they'll have a more precise date after they process the rest of their field data, according to Vagalinski.

The young man was likely hiding from the raging fire in the empty dolium and held an iron knife between his legs to defend himself in case the attackers found him, Vagalinski explained. He had a second knife in his belt.

"In any case, he made no attempt to get out of the ceramic vessel," Vagalinski said. The team determined this based on the individual’s position, similar to that of a sleeping man. "After the attack, the inhabitants of the city leveled the ruins of the tower and covered them with a new, higher floor." They did not know that a fellow citizen was lying at the bottom of the dolium.

The skeletal remains have been moved to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, where they will be analyzed by a physical anthropologist, according to Vagalinski. Next summer, the team will head back to Deultum to try to unearth the entire western Late Roman gate, which dates to approximately A.D. 300. The researchers are "eager to reveal its whole plan and proper chronology," Vagalinski said. They also aim to complete the investigation of the gate's northern turret, where they found the dolium.

Earlier this year, the team discovered an older latrina, the Latin word for toilet, dating to between the second and third centuries, near the gate.

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While building a terrace in their backyard, a homeowner in Denmark discovered the treasure of a lifetime: more than 40 pounds (18.5 kilograms) of thousand-year-old silver buried in the ground. An analysis revealed that the finding is the country's largest Viking Age (793 to 1066) silver hoard known to researchers.

The hoard has approximately 700 silver objects, including silver bars, jewelry, 47 whole coins and coin fragments, and a small Thor's hammer, an object that was often interpreted as a sign of protection and a clue that its owner believed in the Norse pantheon of gods. About 320 of those objects were contained in a clay vessel, while the rest lay in the soil nearby. The treasure is nearly three times larger than the previous largest silver hoard from Denmark's Viking Age, according to a translated statement.

One of the silver bars is engraved with runes, a writing system used by people in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. The inscription might say "hutu," which may represent a person's name or an owner's mark, according to the statement.

The anonymous individual found the roughly 1,100-year-old hoard while building a terrace in the municipality of Rebild this past spring. Unexpectedly, they hit something that emitted a strange sound. "It should have just been a few hours of hard gardening work removing stubborn grass, stones and gravel for a new tiled terrace, but it turned out to be the biggest surprise of my life," they said in the statement.

The coins include two Anglo-Saxon silver pennies minted during the reign of King Edward the Elder (ruled from 899 to 924), according to the statement. This suggests that the hoard dates to sometime in the 10th century.

There are also Islamic coins in the hoard, and together with the Anglo-Saxon coins, they offer evidence that Viking Age Denmark had strong connections with vast regions of Europe as well as with distant eastern regions, according to Torben Sarauw, cultural heritage manager at the North Jutland Museums. There is already ample evidence of the Islamic world's connections with Scandinavians during the Viking Age, including a recent discovery that Viking pennies in a hoard found in Denmark were made from melted Islamic money.

The newfound hoard sheds light on how people in Viking Age Denmark could store, organize and hide their wealth. "When we analyze the weight of the silver objects, the treasure reveals information about the economic practices of the Viking Age," Sarauw said. "The treasure does not only consist of beautiful objects. Most of them are part of a structured value system by weight."

In fact, all the silver bars and some of the bracelets and silver fragments can be organized into specific weight groups. This indicates that the collection represented an important storage of wealth and not a random assortment.

"The treasure so clearly shows how silver functioned as wealth and a means of payment in the Viking Age," Sarauw added in the statement. "It's like finding a safe from the Viking Age."

It's unclear why the hoard was buried. It may have been hidden close to a Viking settlement, along a now-bygone road, or placed in a more remote, secret location, according to the statement. Answering that question would require major archaeological investigations, which are impossible in the developed area where the hoard was discovered.

The hoard is now being submitted for assessment at the National Museum of Denmark.

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A man searching for spare auto parts at a junkyard in Poland discovered an entirely different kind of treasure: part of a 1,800-year-old shield that was filled with bones.

The shield's age and location suggest that it belonged to a Vandal warrior, according to the archaeologists who excavated the find. The Vandals were Germanic people who lived in Poland at that time. After the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire, the Vandals, whose name became synonymous with destruction, moved south and eventually settled in North Africa in A.D. 429, long after this shield was buried.

The bones seem to have been part of a cremation, which was also a Vandal tradition. However, the archaeologists lamented in an Aug. 20 Facebook post that the original grave has been lost to time.

The newfound artifact consists of the shield's central iron "boss," or "umbo," which protected the hand while supporting the wood and leather of the full shield built around it. The wood and leather have now rotted away.

The shields of Roman legionaries also had a central boss. But the Romans never got that far north, and the pointed style of the boss indicates it is of second-century Vandal origin.

Junkyard find

According to the Facebook post, the shield boss was discovered earlier this month at a junkyard in the town of Hrubieszów, near Poland's southeastern border with Ukraine.

The man who found it immediately knew the artifact was very old, and he sent a photograph of it to the Father Stanisław Staszic Museum at Hrubieszów. Archaeologists there verified its likely origin, and the cremated bones were found during later examinations of a plug of dried earth inside the boss.

"The state of preservation of the umbo, especially its characteristic surface, indicates that it was exposed to high temperatures," museum representatives stated in the post. "This fact, combined with the burnt bones inside, clearly indicates the cremation burial of a warrior from the Vandal community." The Vandals are associated with the Przeworsk culture in Poland, after the town where evidence of them was first found.

"Unfortunately, we will probably never know what else was found in this destroyed burial ‪—‬ perhaps a sword, spearheads, javelins, a belt buckle, or a cloak clasp," the museum team noted.

See if you know what these mysterious artifacts are with our archaeological fragments quiz!

At the beginning of the 20th century, a German art collector acquired dozens of artifacts from a Russian-led excavation of an ancient Hun settlement in Crimea. The most spectacular piece of the collection was the Crown of Kerch ‪—‬ a garnet-studded, gold diadem featuring stylized birds of prey.

The artifact, which is now on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin, is made up of three gold-covered, bronze plaques and more than 250 gem-studded cells. According to the museum, the crown was discovered in the grave of a high-status woman buried in the ancient city of Pantikapaion on what is now the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea.

The band of the rare gold diadem is roughly 1.7 inches (4.4 centimeters) tall and is associated with the fearsome nomadic warriors known as the Huns, who moved west from the Don River in what is now Russia in the late fourth century A.D.

Pantikapaion was founded as a Greek colony in the sixth century B.C. but was conquered by the Huns in the late fourth century A.D. A large necropolis with as many as 2,000 burials was excavated at Pantikapaion in the early 20th century, but only a handful of artifacts and skulls were saved from the excavation. Pantikapaion was incorporated into the Byzantine Empire in the sixth century by Emperor Justinian I.

The Crown of Kerch features two stylized heads of birds of prey, likely eagles, flanking a central floral motif. Round, green gems mark the birds' eyes. These birds likely represented power and authority among the Huns and other groups, according to the museum, and they were a popular symbol on jewelry and accessories of the time. Similar birds of prey have been found on Visigoth women's jewelry in Spain from the sixth century, for example.

German archaeologist Joachim Werner wrote in a 1956 study that the Crown of Kerch was found in a burial chamber near the skeleton of a woman with an artificially modified skull. Although the woman was buried with the diadem, Werner believed that these items were not just used for grave goods, and that high-status Hun women regularly wore the accessory during life, possibly with a cloth cap or veil attached.

Around two dozen examples of similar gold diadems have been discovered to date. This suggests that the Crown of Kerch is not technically the royal insignia of a queen but rather a diadem worn 1,600 years ago by a member of the ruling Hun elite.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

Can you put together last week's Astonishing Artifact?

Archaeologists in Russia have unearthed a medieval hoard of 2,600 silver coins, including more than 350 coins of a type never seen before. The hoard may have been buried by a nobleman who later fell victim to a plague.

The coins were found in an elegant ceramic jug, according to an Aug. 26 translated statement from the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The jug was buried in a pit in what is now the historic center of Kolomna, a city about 71 miles (114 kilometers) southeast of the city of Moscow. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Kolomna was the second-most-important city in the region.

Most of the silver coins are a type called a denga. Dengi were first minted in the late 14th century by the Grand Principality of Moscow, a late medieval Russian monarchy. Each denga was worth half a kopek, and there were 100 kopeks to a ruble. The coin hoard is dominated by coins minted in Kolomna under Vasily I (who reigned from 1389 to 1425) and Vasily II (who reigned from 1425 to 1462), according to the statement. These rulers were both grand princes of Moscow, as the city and its wider region were part of an independent principality at the time.

One of the most interesting coin types is an extremely rare denga that features a bird in flight, which was produced during the final years of the reign of Vasily I, according to the statement. Additionally, more than 350 of the coins are previously unknown varieties minted in Kolomna, which experts are now studying.

The person who buried the Kolomna hoard was likely a wealthy, high-status person, such as a high-ranking government official or an extremely successful merchant, according to the statement.

While it is unclear why the hoard was buried, experts think the date of the coins provides an important clue. The most recent coins were minted in the second half of the 1420s, according to the statement. This suggests that the hoard's owner could have fallen victim to a plague epidemic that swept through Russian principalities from 1424 to 1427.

See if you know what these mysterious artifacts are with our archaeological fragments quiz!

The tiny, now-extinct human relative known as a hobbit had an even more human-like body than previously thought, and probably walked upright somewhat slowly, anthropologists have discovered by studying their hip bones.

But with a more primitive walking style than modern humans and lack of hunting and cooking, the species still differs significantly from Homo sapiens — so with the new findings, the mystery of the hobbits' origins has only deepened.

"Based on just the hip bones, Homo floresiensis looks generally like humans and other genus Homo species and probably could have moved a lot like humans," Kristi Lewton, a biological anthropologist at the University of Southern California, told Live Science. But H. floresiensis "was not a particularly fast biped and was not traveling long distances," she said.

Lewton and colleagues closely studied the pelvic bones of LB 1, an adult female hobbit who was about 3.5 feet (1 meter) tall when she died between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores. They looked for clues as to whether members of H. floresiensis were more similar to other Pleistocene human species or to earlier australopithecine species, such as the iconic "Lucy". Their study was published Aug. 25 in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology.

Ever since H. floresiensis was discovered in 2003, researchers have tried to figure out why members of this species were so small and which species they evolved from. The hobbits' skeletons have a unique mixture of human-like and australopithecine-like traits, making assessment of their evolutionary ancestry challenging. For instance, the hobbits' hand bones are more similar to those found in australopithecines, but their shoulders and upper arms are more human-like.

One physical characteristic that experts have identified in H. floresiensis is known as iliac flare, or the degree to which the hip bones are flared out from the center of the trunk. A large degree of iliac flare has been linked to australopithecine anatomy and, functionally, to less efficient bipedal walking than is seen in humans. But a problem that Lewton and colleagues encountered was that different methods used to quantify the "iliac flare" of humans' relatives often produced contradictory results.

In their new study, the researchers compared hip bones from chimpanzees, gorillas, australopithecines, and both living and extinct human species. By creating a quantifiable measure of iliac flare and adding other measurements of the pelvises of these species, the researchers found that the pelvis of LB 1 was statistically similar to other Pleistocene human species, such as Homo erectus, and different from australopithecines and apes.

"These results suggest that H. floresiensis likely used a form of bipedal walking that would have been markedly similar to those of humans," the researchers wrote in the study.

But the similarity of the hobbit pelvis to other human groups does not mean that their form of bipedalism was exactly the same as ours. Rather, their bones suggest the hobbits were a species "that was not traveling long distances or at fast speeds and that may have incorporated some arboreal behaviors," the researchers wrote in the study.

Caley Orr, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Colorado Denver who was not involved in the study, said "their results are consistent with a more limited quantitative comparison among fossil pelvises that my team published last year." In that work, the LB 1 pelvis also popped out as being mostly human-like, Orr told Live Science.

The new results suggest that there is considerable variability in the size and shape of the skeletons of early human groups, he added, but "what this means for the origins of the 'hobbits' remains ambiguous."

Although Lewton and colleagues focused closely on just one part of the hobbit skeleton, they noted that their results support the two main theories of how these mysterious humans evolved.

"Most evidence points to one of the two following hypotheses," Lewton said. "Either H. floresiensis evolved from a population of H. erectus that arrived on the island of Flores and experienced insular dwarfism, or H. floresiensis derived from a small-bodied, earlier radiation of a different species of Pleistocene Homo." In other words, they may have been H. erectus that shrank over time because they lived on an island, or may have evolved from a smaller, unknown Homo species.

Genetic analyses, including studies of ancient proteins, could potentially help experts resolve the question of where hobbits came from, Lewton said. "But this question is probably not going to be resolved any time soon."

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Archaeologists working at a Stone Age site in Turkey have discovered a unique depiction of a person sitting on the back of a leopard. The 11,000-year-old statue may reflect the culture's fascination with virility and masculinity, experts say.

The statue was unearthed this summer at Karahan Tepe (also written as Karahantepe), a Neolithic site in southern Turkey, according to an Aug. 25 translated statement from the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The unique statue, which measures about 28 inches (70 centimeters) tall, was made in "a style unlike anything seen before," Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkey's minister of culture and tourism, said in the statement.

Excavators found the statue on a platform that ran along the wall of a round structure about 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter, according to the statement.

Karahan Tepe is one of the oldest known villages in the world. It was built around 9750 B.C. in Turkey's Urfa province (also known as Şanlıurfa), where other early settlements, including Göbekli Tepe, were established. Several of these early settlements produced enigmatic artwork depicting men and wild beasts.

In 2023, archaeologists at Karahan Tepe unearthed an enormous 11,000-year-old statue of a man clutching his penis, which possibly represents an important ancestor. Another life-size sculpture of a man holding his penis, known as Urfa Man, was found near Göbekli Tepe in 1993. And in 2022, archaeologists working at the site of Sayburç in the Urfa region found a carved scene depicting two leopards, a bull and a man grasping his penis.

The newly discovered sculpture "seems to be a mirrored version of the known type of 'animal mounting on top of a human,'" Jens Notroff, a Neolithic archaeologist at the German Archaeological Institute who was not involved in the project, told Live Science in an email. A statue of a human with a leopard on their back was previously discovered at Karahan Tepe and is now in the collection of the Şanlıurfa Museum.

Notroff thinks the Sayburç leopard scene and the new statue of a person on a leopard may be linked.

"Leopards were common feline predators in the region," he said. "They are vigorous, dangerous animals, so probably challenging game for skilled hunters. That might have added to their symbolic meaning."

Although the exact meaning of the human-and-leopard motif is unknown, Notroff suggested it could relate to courage or strength.

"An individual fearlessly shown among these animals, as in Sayburç, or even apparently mastering one, as in this new sculpture from Karahan Tepe, could be read as maybe a symbol of power, of control over this vigor and danger," Notroff said.

The statue may also yield important new information about the earliest human settlements in the region, according to the statement.

"I believe this discovery, which opens the door to new questions about the earliest periods of human history, will have a wide impact on the scientific community," Ersoy said.

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Archaeologists in the Czech Republic have discovered a prehistoric structure they believe was a ritual center linked to the movements of the sun and moon. The center is around 6,500 years old — about 1,000 years older than Stonehenge.

The structure was discovered at Chleby in the Central Bohemian Region. Archaeologists found a circular enclosure consisting of a ditch that was about 750 feet (230 meters) in diameter and 8 feet (2.5 m) deep. Twelve entrances that led to the center of the enclosure were located in different spots around the ditch, the team said in an Aug. 18 statement.

Archaeologists suspect that wooden posts likely created the walls of the enclosure. Based on animal bones found in the ditch, experts think that the entryways were decorated with bull skulls and horns.

"The cult of the bull was an important religious symbol among the first farming communities and is known from many parts of prehistoric Europe," Jan Turek, an archaeologist at Charles University in Prague who is involved in the research, said in the statement. Bulls in these Neolithic cultures were likely symbols of strength and fertility.

Sun and moon

The shape and orientation of the mysterious structure are unusual for a Stone Age site, the archaeologists noted.

"Circular enclosures are completely unknown in our region for this period, which already makes the site exceptional," Petr Krištuf, an archaeology professor at the University of West Bohemia in the Czech Republic who is leading the research team, said in the statement. "But when we began to analyze the positioning of the entrances in detail, it became clear that their arrangement was not random. Their geometry creates a system that made it possible to observe the most significant moments of the solar and lunar cycles."

Specifically, the 12 entrances were oriented so that people inside the enclosure could observe important astronomical events, such as the moon's most extreme position on the horizon during its 18.6-year cycle. People could also observe sunrise on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and sunset on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, through the structure's entrances.

"For prehistoric farming communities, the connection between sunrise and the summer solstice symbolized a beginning, while sunset and the winter solstice represented an ending," Krištuf said. "The same principle can be seen along Stonehenge's main axis. We can now see that [this site] was designed similarly."

In later times, the ritual purpose of the Chleby structure seems to have changed or been lost entirely. Previous excavations at the site found burials of 18 people from the Bronze Age Únětice culture (circa 2300 to 1600 B.C.), a culture which had unique burials and artifacts, including the Nebra Sky Disc. The site may have still maintained a ritual purpose at this time. But in the Iron Age (circa 800 B.C. to 1 B.C.), a settlement was built over the Chleby site.

"By the Iron Age, the monument appears to have definitively lost its original significance. The ditch was gradually filled in, and an ordinary settlement was established on the site of the former sanctuary," Krištuf said.

Research is ongoing, and archaeologists plan to analyze the site's soil to learn more about the people who once lived there.

"In addition to artifacts and the remains of the dead, people leave chemical traces in the soil. These can help us understand how this exceptional site was used during different periods of prehistory," Jan Fišer, an archaeologist at the University of Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic who is involved in the research, said in the statement.

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This massive limestone carving depicts a Maya queen known as Lady K'abel (meaning Water Lily Hand) and Na Kan Ajaw (meaning Divine Woman of the Snake Polity). The stela, or carved stone slab, was likely erected in A.D. 692 to mark the end of a k'atun, a 20-year period in the Maya calendar.

The stela is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA). It has been reconstructed from more than 40 fragments of carved limestone but is only the front part of the original freestanding monument. The enormous carving is roughly 9 feet (2.74 meters) tall and weighs about 2,500 pounds (1,134 kilograms). It was found in a provincial Maya town called El Perú-Waka' in the Petén region of northern Guatemala.

In Petén, this carved portrait of Lady K'abel stood next to a similar one of her husband, K'inich Bahlam II, a man of lower rank. As a member of the powerful Kaanul or Snake dynasty, Lady K'abel ruled El Perú-Waka' as the military governor, according to the CMA. The stela also describes her as Ix Kaloomte', meaning Lady Supreme Warlord, and experts think Lady K'abel may have led an army from the city of Calakmul against the city of Tikal.

On the stela, Lady K'abel is "smothered in finery," Susan E. Bergh, then curator of Pre-Columbian and Native North American art at the CMA, wrote in 2014, which "allies her with a Maya supernatural being, either the maize god or the moon goddess." Her headdress is a fan of green quetzal (Pharomachrus mocinno) feathers, and she wears a netted garment and necklace, both made of jade beads. The net dress is belted with the head of a fish-like creature, and Lady K'abel carries a scepter and a circular shield, alluding to her role as Lady Supreme Warlord. In the lower-left corner is a person with dwarfism, likely an attendant or courtier.

The stela was created to celebrate 20 years of Lady K'abel's rule. Portraying her as the maize god conveys themes of creation and renewal, archaeologist Phil Wanyerka wrote in a 1996 study. "By wearing the attire of a god, a mortal being becomes divine, and here a woman is transfigured into the maize god to summon the associated powers of renewal and rebirth for the passage of the old k'atun and the inauguration of the new," Wanyerka wrote.

Although Lady K'abel's stela was acquired in 1967, her tomb was not discovered until 2012, when archaeologists excavating at El Perú-Waka' stumbled across it when digging at the bottom of a previously unknown staircase near where the stela was found.

According to archaeologist Olivia Navarro-Farr, who led the excavation, the royal tomb was full of artifacts made from jade, obsidian and shells, including a bivalve shell placed on the skeleton's pelvis. The shell exactly matches one depicted on Lady K'abel's pelvis on the stela. In the tomb, the archaeologists also found a small alabaster carving with hieroglyphs that named Lady K'abel as its owner, almost certainly linking the occupant of the tomb with the imposing limestone stela that was discovered outside.

"It's not rare to find royal tombs," Navarro-Farr said. "But it is rare to have the perfect confluence of evidence that leads one to be able to make that kind of historical identification."

Editor's Note: This story was updated on Aug. 25 at 9:35 EDT to correct the headline. The stela is 1 ton, not 2 tons.

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Archaeologists in Russia have unearthed a rare wooden tomb containing the remains of an elite man who was buried with a horse and a dog. The remarkably preserved burial, which dates to the 10th century, suggests that medieval Russian and Northern European nobility shared funeral customs a millennium ago.

The horseman's burial was discovered unexpectedly this summer during excavations in the medieval cemetery at Gnezdilovo, an archaeological site in Suzdal, Russia, about 137 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Moscow, according to an Aug. 15 translated statement from the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In the late ninth century, what is now western Russia was ruled by the Kievan Rus' (also spelled Kyvian Rus'), a conglomeration of settlements and territories that included Baltic, eastern Slavic and Norse peoples. By the 10th century, the custom of burying medieval Rus' nobility in underground wooden crypts with a multitude of grave goods was imported from Scandinavia.

But the newfound and remarkably well preserved chamber tomb at Suzdal is a rare and early example of the burial type. Only 80 other medieval chamber burials have been found across western Russia, according to the statement.

The wooden burial chamber was found about 3.3 feet (1 meter) underground and measured 10.2 by 8.9 feet (3.1 by 2.7 m). The wooden roof of the chamber had decayed and collapsed onto the deceased in the tomb. Archaeologists found the skeleton of a man who was about 25 to 35 years old when he died, along with the remains of a horse and a dog.

Also included in the burial were an iron knife, stirrups and other riding gear, as well as a comb made of bone and a battle ax. The man was buried wearing a garment secured by a silver, horseshoe-shaped brooch near his neck. The assemblage of the grave goods signifies that the man held high status in his community, according to the statement.

All of the previously excavated chamber tombs were found in urban centers of the Kievan Rus' territory, suggesting that the nobility formed relationships of power across the land. The newly discovered chamber tomb at Suzdal therefore points to the site being an important center of the Rus' polity, which was previously unknown.

In total, archaeologists unearthed 15 burials at Suzdal this summer. Most were simple burials in earthen pits, while others had been covered with barrow mounds of dirt. Female burials included silver rings and necklaces with rock-crystal beads, while male burials included weapons and horse-riding equipment.

The unique chamber tomb discovered at Suzdal shows that "as early as the 10th century, it was already a magnet for the Old Rus' nobility (bearers of a new identity) and served as a center of military-administrative control over the northeastern territories of Rus'," according to the statement.

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A cave in eastern Spain is revealing new clues about the ritual lives of Roman women, after archaeologists documented more than 120 Latin inscriptions — the highest number known anywhere in the Roman Empire — at an underground sanctuary. Five of the inscriptions mention a previously unknown goddess referred to simply as "the Lady."

Researchers unearthed the inscriptions during a 2026 excavation at Cova de les Dones (Cave of the Women), near Valencia on Spain's east coast. The discovery significantly expands the number of known writings from the site from 15 initially documented in 2024. The inscriptions mostly date to the first and second centuries A.D. and were found on the walls and ceilings of a deep cave chamber, which the researchers call the "Roman Sanctuary."

"The fact that the texts are concentrated in a specific and delimited area of ​​the cave, away from the entrance, confirms that it is an organized cult," Sergio García-Dils, an archaeologist and speleologist at the Seville National University of Distance Education in Spain, said in a translated statement.

The researchers think the cave hosted a dedicated cult centered on a mysterious goddess whom worshippers called Domina, meaning "the Lady."

Who is "the Lady"?

The new inscriptions shed some light on the identity of the mysterious goddess. Five of the 120 inscriptions refer to Domina, while three of those include the name "Malaci," which may be an epithet for the goddess.

"This goddess had a specific aspect, perhaps related to water, the definitive interpretation of which we are currently working on," Silvia Alfayé, a professor of ancient history at the University of Zaragoza in Spain, said in the statement.

The Roman Sanctuary chamber of the cave features small natural pools, called gours, which collect groundwater. Visitors appear to have deposited offerings in these pools, but whether these were intended for "the Lady" or for other deities remains a mystery.

Evidence of a goddess-worshipping cult

The researchers also found chalice-shaped vessels, two rings, a bracelet, ceramic fragments, plant remains and other archaeological materials in the cave that point to women playing an active role in the cult's rituals.

Several inscriptions contain female names, while archaeologists found numerous spindle whorls associated with textile-making that were often connected with ancient women. The combination of the inscriptions and artifacts suggests women may have participated directly in ceremonies or offerings at the cave, according to the statement.

More inscriptions remain to be deciphered and may reveal additional information about the mysterious goddess and her worshippers.

The new finds add clues to ancient activity inside Cova de les Dones, which has a much older archaeological history. Archaeologists previously identified more than 100 Paleolithic paintings and engravings in the cave, some dating back more than 24,000 years.

"Each new discovery suggests that Cova Dones has been a landmark for the human groups that inhabited this territory for millennia, perhaps due to the permanent presence of water, the characteristics of the underground landscape, or its easy access," the project coordinators said in the statement.

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Archaeologists have discovered a possible human sacrifice near the pyramid of Huaca Pucllana in the center of Lima, Peru. The skeleton may represent an offering connected to a ceremonial well that was closed up nearly 1,400 years ago.

Bones of an adult male were excavated from an underground water channel at the archaeological site earlier this year, according to an Aug. 18 translated statement from Peru's Ministry of Culture. The man was found resting on his left side, with his skull facing the ocean and the Huaca Pucllana pyramid, hinting he was intentionally placed that way.

The settlement at Huaca Pucllana was established around A.D. 400 in what is now Lima, Peru, and was occupied by different pre-Hispanic cultures until around 1440. The site is well known for its large platform pyramid, which was built by the Lima culture as the focal point of a ceremonial center.

The Lima people performed three main rituals at Huaca Pucllana, according to a 2023 study: the ritual destruction of massive pots, ritual banquets and human sacrifice.

The ritual sacrifices at Huaca Pucllana over four centuries varied in the number of people killed. For example, in 2007 and 2009, archaeologists discovered burials of an adult male and an adult female in the foundations of the pyramid. They believe these individuals were sacrificed to satisfy rituals associated with construction and architectural modifications of the pyramid.

The newly discovered burial, which has been dated to around A.D. 650, was found in a water channel near the pyramid that leads to a ceremonial well. Although the Lima people used small mud bricks to erect the pyramid, they created the well and water channel with river stones, which was an unusual building technique for the Lima people, according to the statement.

The archeologists determined the newfound skeleton likely belonged to an adult male based on the shape of the pelvis and skull. That said, additional studies will officially confirm the sex, as well as the age at death and any trauma on the skeleton that could suggest the person was sacrificed.

Further analyses of the skeleton and the underground water infrastructure may also reveal new clues to the "closing ceremonies" at the ritual well, according to the statement.

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Over the past decade, there's been a revolution in archaeology as we integrate the science of ancient genomics into the study of humanity ‪—‬ and it is upending our traditional views of the role of women in the past.

When archaeologists first excavated a 4,000-year-old grave near Stonehenge in 1801, they identified the well-furnished remains inside as that of a man. This misidentification persisted for over two centuries, until ancient-DNA analysis revealed unequivocally that this skilled goldsmith was a woman. The discovery, announced in July, is just one example of many in recent years where DNA science is revealing a more complex pattern of gender roles in our prehistoric past.

But traditional views are hard to shed. In 2017, when analyses revealed that the classic Viking warrior leader whose remains were found in Birka, Sweden, was a woman, some challenged the science, while others questioned the interpretation of the findings, leading researchers to respond in a rebuttal. It was hard for researchers to believe that women could have been powerful.

The assumption that past societies were typically male-dominated only really emerged in the late 19th century. Ancient historians of the 1860s, recognizing numerous accounts of political and war-waging women in classical texts, had proposed instead that patriarchal societies became more typical around the time of the ancient Greeks and that, prior to Rome, female-led communities were more common. But this notion was rejected by U.K. researchers by the 1880s. For the next century, the social role of past women was largely minimized.

This bias shaped archeologists' understanding of their findings. In 1972, David Clarke, Britain's leading archaeological thinker at the time, described hillforts as "territorial centers for the exchange of lower order goods, stock and women." In other words, women were essentially traded like animals. In 1986, Peter Hinton, who helmed the U.K.'s Chartered Institute for Archaeology for 20 years, said grave goods buried with women do not reveal high status as they do with men, as a matriarchal society had never existed. Instead, he argued that "the woman is being used to display her husband's wealth," and that "a richly ornamented woman is a status symbol for a man."

By the 1970s, however, German archaeologists had begun to recognize that the archaeology of Early Iron Age Europe bears evidence of very-high-status women ‪—‬ most notably, the apex high-status women of The Heuneburg hillfort in Germany and also in what was then eastern Gaul in the generations after 600 B.C. By the 2000s, archaeological analyses of later Iron Age cemeteries in the Paris Basin and East Yorkshire revealed relative gender parity in how men and women were treated at death. At the same time, skeletal analysis was showing that some women actually fought Rome — the backdrop to the Roman historian Tacitus' writings on Boudica.

Now, as the science of ancient genetics further challenges traditional perspectives, the variability in women's social roles throughout history is becoming clearer.

In 2025, a team of nearly 50 scientists revealed evidence for female lineages at Neolithic Çatalhöyük (7000 to 6000 B.C.), a site known as one of the first crop-producing communities. Put another way, burial traditions prioritized female offspring and descendants, suggesting that inheritance worked through the female line. This discovery was a surprise — but perhaps it shouldn't have been.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Marija Gimbutas, a scholar of Neolithic society and professor at Harvard and UCLA, argued that the archaeological evidence from sites like Çatalhöyük was pointing to a prehistoric ‘matriarchal’ society. Yet, my generation of U.K. archaeologists learned from Cambridge professors that Gimbutas was fundamentally wrong.

Late 20th century archaeological theory suggested instead that Neolithic crop production signified the onset of a "domestication" of both women and animals. Viewed from that lens, Neolithic figurines found at Çatalhöyük and other sites were interpreted as representing pregnancy, with female fertility as women's primary role. Women scholars soon pointed out that it was in fact the menopausal body that was often represented, or women as elders.

Only recently, in the face of genetic evidence, is the academic reputation of Gimbutas being restored. The evidence for female lineages at Çatalhöyük opens up the possibility that the Neolithic agricultural revolution, which required the successful marshaling of communal labor in production, may have instead been linked to female land rights.

But women-led societies were not universal. Further west, where agriculture was still relatively small-scale, we find different social norms. For instance, in 2022, analysis of the Hazleton North long barrow in Gloucestershire, England (3700 to 3600 B.C.) revealed evidence for Neolithic polygyny — DNA from offspring reveals four women buried with their shared male sexual partner. That same year, Bronze Age sites on Orkney revealed descent as traced through the male line and it was women who moved outside their natal communities. The past is proving a more complex picture than originally thought.

The evidence for a matrilineal Iron Age keeps piling up. In 2024, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany revealed the first scientific evidence for Early Iron Age matrilineal dynastic succession, in which both lineage and land go through the female line. In 2025, researchers found matrilocality and matrilineal descent in Late Iron Age Dorset. We now have 13 generations of matrilineal descent evidenced in third-century-B.C. Yorkshire, and five more sites with matrilineal descent in Late Iron Age Britain, and others without.

Our task is to remember that, as author L.P. Hartley once said: "the past is foreign country; they do things differently there." As the picture of different male-focused and female-focused societies builds through time, we will likely find a patchwork of different social forms.

Prehistoric societies are smaller than traditionally assumed ‪—‬ valleys, coasts and peninsulas with shared values on a regional scale, at most. While some cemeteries reveal matrilineal descent, others do not. While some hillforts show women in combat, others show only men.

The challenge is to remain as objective as we can, and to expect the unexpected.

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Archaeologists in the Scottish Highlands have discovered the 2,000-year-old burial of an adult in a possible ritual well. The burial may have been made during a closing ceremony when the well was abandoned.

Archaeologists discovered the enigmatic grave during expansion of a quarry in northern Scotland, according to a statement from Highland Archaeology Services that was emailed to Live Science.

The base of the well, which is about 10 feet (3 meters) long and 3 feet (1 m) deep, "is lined with stone slabs and clay pushed between the gaps in the stonework, possibly to help the structure hold water," the archaeologists wrote in the statement.

Based on artifacts found near the well, the archaeologists believe the burial was made during the Iron Age (800 B.C. to A.D. 400). Animal bones were placed on top of the burial, but no other grave goods were found.

"Iron Age burials from the north of Scotland are fairly rare finds in general," Lachlan McKeggie, co-director of Highland Archaeology Services, told Live Science in an email.

The archaeologists are not yet certain of the sex of the skeleton, what age they were or how they died. Further analysis will be taking place over the next few months, which should give us a date for both the feature and the human remains, as well as confirm the sex, age range and pathologies, McKeggie said.

The burial is located not far from an Iron Age settlement at Camore Wood, McKeggie said, where archaeologists have previously found the remains of at least 20 hut circles. The remains of possible roundhouses were also found near the well burial, the team said in an Aug. 7 field report. But it’s not clear if this burial is related to the Camore Wood settlement, which is located about 1 mile (1.6 km) away.

One possible explanation for the unusual burial is that it may have been part of a ritual performed when the well was closed.

"There are other examples of burials as 'closing' rituals in significant places, such as at High Pasture Cave on Skye," McKeggie said, where archaeologists found the burial of a woman and two babies at the entrance to a cave that was ceremonially closed during the Iron Age.

Analysis of the remains is ongoing, and the team hopes to have more information on the burial in the next few months. Additionally, 3D scans of some of the finds have been done, a few of which can be seen on the team's website.

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Neanderthals may have trekked deep into the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula around 55,000 years ago, a new study of stone tools suggests.

The research, published online Aug. 12 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, hints that Neanderthals may have lived farther south than scientists thought, though more evidence is needed to confirm that conclusion.

"Our findings extend the Neanderthal range much further south than had been known, and into the much more open environments of Arabia," study co-lead author Huw Groucutt, an archaeologist at the University of Malta, told Live Science in an email.

The study focused on stone tools discovered at Jebel Katefeh-1 (JKF-1), an archaeological site beside an ancient lake near the city of Jubbah, in Saudi Arabia's Nefud Desert (also spelled Nafud or An Nafūd). No Neanderthal bones have ever been found in Arabia, so researchers wondered who was making tools there.

The new study found that tools discovered at JKF-1 more closely matched those made by Neanderthals than those crafted by Homo sapiens.

Neanderthals have traditionally been viewed as a cold-adapted, primarily European species. But that picture has been changing for years, as evidence has placed them thousands of miles east in Siberia as well as in the Middle East.

Lacking bones or DNA, Groucutt and his colleagues identified the Neanderthal tools based on the unique shape of their stone flakes. The team measured hundreds of sharp pieces of tools struck from a carefully prepared stone core from JKF-1 and other sites across Arabia, the Levant and northeast Africa.

Using statistical techniques, the researchers compared the flakes' shapes across time and space. Based on the differences between stone tools from other sites where the toolmakers' identities were well established, the researchers created a statistical model to help them identify whether a group of stone tools was made by Neanderthals or H. sapiens.

When they applied the model to the stone tools from JKF-1 and tools from a smaller nearby site called ALM-3, the results showed that it was far more likely that Neanderthals, not H. sapiens, had made the tools.

To pin down when those tools were made, the team dug a new trench at JFK-1 and dated grains of sand from the soil using a method called optically stimulated luminescence, which reveals how long ago those grains were last exposed to sunlight.

Previous work had dated the tools to somewhere between 90,000 and 50,000 years ago. But the new work narrowed down that range. The tools were discovered in a layer where older desert sand gave way to younger lake sediment, showing that people were at JKF-1 around 55,000 years ago, just as the desert was turning wetter.

Neanderthals were the only group living in southwest Asia 55,000 years ago. This date, together with the tools’ shape, is why the researchers think Neanderthals made them, even though no Neanderthal bones have yet been found in Arabia.

Knut Bretzke, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany who wasn't involved in the research, said the study's evidence for a Neanderthal presence in northern Arabia was compelling.

The new dates suggest the Neanderthal foray into Arabia may be linked to a shift in climate. JKF-1’s stone tools sit right at the transition from a dry spell to a humid phase, when a nearby lake was refilling and the surrounding desert would have begun turning green. Drawing on his own fieldwork in southern Arabia, Bretzke said that the wet spell may have drawn grazing animals into the desert interior, and Neanderthals would likely have followed them.

Still, Bretzke said the underlying assumptions deserve scrutiny. Several comparison sites used in the computer model are surface sites, where artifacts can accumulate over vast stretches of time, rather than a single occupation where artifacts are discarded over a short period, he told Live Science, but he finds the paper's conclusion plausible.

For now, though, the evidence that Neanderthals lived farther south than previously known remains circumstantial.

"Do I believe there were any Neanderthals in northern Saudi Arabia? Yes," Bretzke said. "Do I think we have solid evidence to prove that belief? No."

Groucutt agreed that a fossil would help settle the question. But he noted that bones and ancient DNA preserve poorly in Arabia's heat, so stone tools currently provide archaeologists' best window into the region's deep past.

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Archaeologists in Italy have discovered stunning bronze statuettes and a unique plate at the bottom of a ritual well associated with an ancient Etruscan goddess. It's possible that the artifacts were placed in the well in a ceremony to celebrate the "birth" of an ancient city.

The additional discovery of ancient human remains in the well suggests that these individuals' burials may have been part of a "ritual closing," of the well, Elisabetta Govi, an archaeologist at the University of Bologna who led the excavation, told Live Science.

The team discovered the well in the outskirts of modern-day Bologna. During the early fifth century B.C., the Etruscans established a town called Kainua in this area, and the well was found near the religious sanctuary of the mother-goddess Uni, the Etruscan version of ancient Rome's Juno.

Found in the depths of the well were a unique bronze plate and the fragmented remains of two bronze female statuettes, which help date the well to the end of the sixth or the beginning of the fifth century B.C. The artifacts still possess their original bronze luster because they were preserved in a low-oxygen environment underwater, Govi said.

The goddess Uni was associated with women, marriage, birth and growth. Archaeological evidence from the nearby sanctuary indicates that this female cult was important for the entire city, Govi said.

"Everything comes together to tell this story of rituals centered on the female component. Why? Because for this city, which sits in the Apennine mountain range, agricultural fertility was fundamental," Govi explained.

The Etruscans also had a strong cult related to water, and the construction of every well was accompanied by a ritual. But given this particular well's proximity to the sanctuary of Uni, it was likely also part of a sacred or at least public area, Govi said. This idea is further bolstered by the objects placed in the well.

"Certainly, what was found in the well makes us think that this is a ritual well," Govi said, who wrote a book "Kainua (Marzabotto)" (University of Texas Press, 2023) about the Etruscan archaeological site. "That is, it had a special function, not just for the collection of water, but evidently for the collection of water in relation to ceremonies, rites, to religious life that took place nearby in the sanctuary of the goddess Uni."

Other excavations have revealed similar female statuettes associated with the Etruscan water cult, although this is the first time archaeologists have found them in a well, Govi noted. Young women would have placed such statuettes in Uni's sanctuary as an offering to the goddess. The newly discovered statuettes depict richly dressed girls or women with finely decorated dresses, likely either high-class individuals or goddesses. They were probably intentionally broken as part of a ritual.

The bronze plate is the first of its kind ever discovered, Govi said. While the shape of the plate is consistent with common Etruscan ceramics, it's the only known example of the design in bronze that Etruscans made.

Bronze was a precious metal for the Etruscans, and these objects would have been very expensive to produce. The metal alloy also had a symbolic importance. The Etruscans considered the production of bronze from copper and tin to be regenerative and "alive," a strong reference to the notion of birth and thus Uni's domain, Govi explained.

Broadly speaking, it's not the first time archaeologists have found bronze votive objects at the bottom of an Etruscan well. But the new excavation stands out because its many elements fit perfectly within the known context of this Etruscan female cult, Govi said.

The team also found the skeletons of a man and a woman within the well. While the statuettes and plate likely represent an opening ritual for the well, the bodies probably played a role in its ritual closing.

Preliminary investigations suggest the people were not victims of human sacrifice, but a team will begin studying them further in September, Govi said. DNA analysis and carbon-14 dating may shed light on the individuals' identities and the well's chronological history.

See if you know what these mysterious artifacts are with our archaeological fragments quiz!

Archaeologists say they have discovered the site where the First Council of Nicaea was held, an important gathering of Christian bishops in A.D. 325, according to the archaeologist who's leading the excavations. However, some experts who were not involved in the excavations have questioned this interpretation.

Nicaea was an ancient Greek city located in what is now Turkey, by the shore of Lake İznik (also known as Lake Nicaea).

The First Council of Nicaea, held in A.D. 325, brought together Christian bishops who aimed to settle theological differences and adopted what is now known as the Nicene Creed, a core statement of Christian beliefs. At that time, Constantine I (who lived circa A.D. 272 to 337) was emperor of the Roman Empire. He had legalized Christianity, and historical sources suggest he played a leading role in organizing the council.

Archaeologists discovered a larger church beneath Lake İznik in 2014. Since 2015, excavations have gradually revealed the remains of a smaller church beneath the larger one. The team found a pavement floor from the smaller church that it is about a foot (30 centimeters) below the basilica, suggesting that the smaller church is older, said Mustafa Şahin, an archaeology professor at Bursa Uludağ University in Turkey who is leading excavations at the site.

One of the council attendees, named Eusebius of Caesarea, "explicitly states that the meeting took place in a 'house of prayer' or a small church," and this newly discovered church fits that description better than the basilica, Şahin said. His team hasn't determined the dimensions of the smaller church. However, based on historical records, he thinks it might be the "Church of Neophytos," while the larger church built on top might be the "Church of Holy Fathers." Neophytos was a Christian who lived in Nicaea and was killed in 303. The "Church of Holy Fathers" got its name to commemorate the Nicaea council.

It appears from historical records and archaeological remains that the smaller church was destroyed by an earthquake in A.D. 368, while the larger church was built on the site in A.D. 380.

No walls or decoration from the smaller church has been found so far. It's not clear what materials it was made from, as only the stone foundation pavement survives, Şahin said, but much of it may have been made of wood.

Imperial palace

However, experts who were not involved with the excavations cautioned that it's not certain that the bishops met in this church and that, even if they did, the most important meetings would have been held in Constantine's imperial palace rather than in the church. But the imperial palace has not been found and may also lie under Lake İznik.

Young Richard Kim, a classics professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, noted that the smaller church has not been securely dated. In addition, Eusebius of Caesarea mentioned that the opening session of the council occurred in the "imperial palace" and that the council went on for three months. Therefore, we can't be sure that the church was one of the meeting places, he told Live Science in an email.

Charles Odahl, a professor emeritus of history at Boise State University, also expressed caution about identifying the church as the meeting place. "The Council of Nicaea was held in an imperial palace beside Lake Nicaea," Odahl told Live Science in an email. "This underwater church was nearby, but not the site of the council's meetings under the emperor."

David Gwynn, a historian at Royal Holloway, University of London, told Live Science in an email that "the evidence that the earlier church may go back to the early 4th century and therefore have a potential connection to the Council of Nicaea looks promising." He cautioned however that he "would not exaggerate the importance of the physical church beyond adding a slightly greater glimpse of the world in which the council met."

Many people attended the Council of Nicaea. "The council itself lasted for more than a month and involved hundreds of bishops and perhaps 2,000 supporting clergy and staff," Gwynn said. "Nevertheless, these excavations do shed a further interesting light as well as attracting renewed attention to an event of huge importance to the development of Christianity."

Excavation and analysis of the site is ongoing.

What do you know about Jesus Christ, the man? Test your knowledge of biblical archaeology with our Jesus Christ quiz!

BERLIN — A 14th-century skeleton riddled with fractures may be the oldest known evidence of a death by trebuchet, or "siege engine," new research finds. The individual, a medieval man whose remains were found inside Stirling Castle in Scotland, may have even been the victim of a famous trebuchet called the "War Wolf" built on the orders of the king of England.

The young man's remains, which researchers call Skeleton 150, were discovered in the Stirling Castle chapel alongside seven other medieval burials in 1997. In medieval times, the vast majority of people were buried in their parish church cemetery, so finding eight skeletons underneath the royal chapel was a surprise, Jo Buckberry, a biological anthropologist at Bradford University in the U.K., said in a research presentation Aug. 5 at the 25th European Paleopathology Association meeting.

Stirling Castle had an important role in the Wars of Scottish Independence between 1296 and 1357. Surrounded by steep cliffs, Stirling Castle had a strong defensive position for the Scots to defend themselves as the Kingdom of England was trying to control the Kingdom of Scotland.

All eight medieval skeletons buried in the castle had evidence of trauma inflicted on them around the time of death, including wounds from blunt objects, projectiles and a sharp blade, likely from a sword or knife. But only Skeleton 150 had a massive number of fractures.

"This is not what I'm used to seeing," Buckberry said in the presentation. "Could this be a weird form of medieval torture? Did he fall off Stirling Castle and bounce on the way down?"

Buckberry and colleagues meticulously studied all 167 fractures in the bones of Skeleton 150. They discovered that he had sustained 61 separate fractures to his skull and 57 rib fractures, in addition to breaks in his vertebrae, arms and right shoulder. But most of the damage was to the upper half of the man's body, and the fractures had an unusual zigzag pattern not usually seen in archaeological skeletons.

"I started looking at the forensic literature and the forensic collections," Buckberry said. "And there it was, the holy grail — a zigzag fracture to the rib" seen in someone who died in a road traffic accident. "That's great, but I'm in medieval Scotland," she said, "and a traffic accident is not likely to be the case."

A carbon-14 analysis of the mysterious burials in the castle showed that Skeleton 150 dated to about 1300, in the middle of the First War of Independence and around the time that King Edward I of England was testing the use of siege engines in war, Buckberry said. Getting hit by a high-velocity projectile shot from a siege engine could possibly explain Skeleton 150's copious fractures.

When Edward I started to lay siege to Stirling Castle in 1304, he had up to a dozen siege engines, according to historical records. Edward even commissioned his military engineers to devise the largest trebuchet ever built at the time, called the "War Wolf," that reportedly sent a missile straight through two walls of Stirling Castle with ease.

"It's difficult to say whether or not the War Wolf was the weapon that caused the death of the individual, but it is likely that it was a siege engine similar to that that caused his demise," Buckberry said. "The trebuchet is the most likely."

The fractures also revealed that the young man was likely standing when he was hit by the high-velocity impact. "He certainly had his back to whatever was going on," Buckberry told Live Science. "He went from standing to the floor extremely rapidly," she said, suggesting it was likely an instantaneous death.

"I don't think that he moved very far afterwards; it's not quite Wile E. Coyote," Patrick Randolph-Quinney, a biological anthropologist at Uppsala University in Sweden and a collaborator on the research, told Live Science.

When Skeleton 150 was excavated from Stirling Castle in the late 1990s, researchers assumed that all of his bony fractures were postmortem, perhaps caused by accidental trampling of the remains. But by using novel techniques developed over the past 30 years — including micro-CT scanning and 3D scanning, Buckberry was able to figure out that the fractures occurred around the time of death rather than after. And this allowed her to determine exactly how this Scotsman, who died in his 20s, perished over 700 years ago.

"If there's something there that's intriguing you, you keep following that question," Buckberry said, "because there's almost certainly a bigger story that you haven't quite tapped into yet."

Can you identify these historical objects of war? Test your smarts with our weapons of the world quiz!

This ceramic vessel was made in prehistoric times on Honshu, the largest island in Japan. This type of pot is known as a fire-flame vessel ("ka'en doki" in Japanese), due to the stylized flames on the rim. Although other examples of these pots exist, the one in the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is the largest and best preserved of its kind. But no one's quite sure what its purpose was.

According to the CMA, this vessel measures 24 inches (61 centimeters) tall and about 22 inches (56 cm) in diameter. However, part of the bottom of this pot is from another vessel that was added to the piece somewhere along the line, meaning the vessel may have originally been shorter.

Fire-flame vessels were made in the Niigata area of Honshu during Japan's prehistoric Jōmon period (circa 10500 to 300 B.C.). Because they had no written language, the Jōmon people are known from their archaeological remains. They were hunter-gatherers who settled in villages of around 100 people, according to Seema Rao, former director of intergenerational learning at the CMA, and they had sufficient spare time to create complex ceramics such as these. The vessel was built up coil by coil and then decorated with additional clay and cuts into the surface. The flame-shaped projections on the rim were added last.

The Jōmon likely used ceramics in a variety of ways, but this form suggests it may not have been functional. The vessel was too heavy to be picked up by the flame-shaped handles, which couldn't support the weight of the pot. Rather, with a wide mouth and a narrow base, the vessel may have been sunk into the ground for cooking, Rao said in a CMA video. Some other examples of fire-flame vessels have soot marks in them.

But this particular vessel, with its remarkably preserved delicate decoration and pointy flames, was likely not an everyday ceramic, James Ulak, former senior curator of Japanese art at the Smithsonian Institution, said in a CMA video. "Many people think this was somehow used as part of a religious ceremony and contained ritual offerings," Ulak said, but "this dramatically rendered vessel is a bit of a mystery."

Fire-flame vessels show that the Jōmon people had sophisticated pottery technology long before many other civilizations did and that this hunter-gatherer people enjoyed aesthetically pleasing ‪—‬ rather than purely functional ‪—‬ earthenware, according to Rao. But archaeologists are still not sure why the Jōmon crafted exquisite, flame-like pots or what the flames represented in their culture.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

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