In April 2011, excavators working on a natural gas pipeline in northern Germany unearthed one of the largest gold hoards from prehistoric Europe. Dated to about 1300 B.C., the Gessel gold hoard consists of 117 artifacts that together weigh over 3.7 pounds (1.7 kilograms).

The hoard was discovered in the village of Gessel near the town of Syke and is now the centerpiece of the Forum Gesseler Goldhort museum. Around 3,300 years ago, someone placed the gold objects in a linen bag, secured the bag with six bronze pins, and buried it in the dirt — but archaeologists aren't sure why.

The Gessel gold hoard includes 82 spiral rings linked into eight chains of 10 rings and one chain of two rings. An additional 32 spirals of various sizes were also in the hoard. Rather than jewelry, these spirals were likely a form of currency in the Middle Bronze Age and were crafted from recycled gold, according to prehistoric archaeologist Babette Ludowici.

Only three items in the hoard were personal accessories: a large, gold bracelet; a twisted armband; and a brooch. While the two armbands appear to have been unfinished, the brooch was elaborately decorated.

Originally, the brooch was about 6.3 inches (16 centimeters) long, but it was bent and the pin was removed prior to burial in the hoard. An artisan created a ladder-band pattern around the top and bottom of the clasp. The main part of the clasp features five raised sun symbols and six sets of concentric rings stamped into the metal. According to a 2012 study, it is the only ancient brooch made of solid gold to have been found in Central Europe.

Although the Gessel gold hoard is the first scientifically excavated hoard from prehistoric Germany, its burial is still a mystery. The fact that the objects were tightly compacted and that some were bent before burial led archaeologist Stefan Winghart to suggest they were deliberately collected into a hoard rather than hastily thrown together.

Excavations near the hoard's discovery did not reveal any evidence of a contemporaneous settlement or grave, but experts think the hoard may represent a collection of personal wealth or be part of a metalsmith's collection.

A new research project announced in spring 2026 will attempt to determine where the gold came from, as an initial analysis suggested a possible Central Asia origin. Experts will also try to figure out who owned the Gessel gold hoard and why they buried it over three millennia ago.

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

Archaeologists in Saudi Arabia have unearthed a clay pot full of gold, silver and gemstone-encrusted jewelry that may have been buried by an Islamic pilgrim en route to Mecca more than a millennium ago.

The team nicknamed the hoard the "Dhariyah Treasure" after the archaeological site where it was discovered. Located in the Al-Qassim region, Dhariyah was a key station on the Hajj route for Islamic pilgrims between Basra, Iraq, and Mecca, Saudi Arabia. According to archaeologists with the Saudi Heritage Commission who have been excavating Dhariyah for six years, radiocarbon analysis of organic remains puts the main settlement in the period of 743 to 753.

During the recent excavation season, archaeologists discovered gypsum water basins and the walls of several residential buildings. Inside the structures, they found fragments of pottery and glass — but the buried ceramic jar containing over 100 pieces of jewelry was a surprise.

"One of the most important discoveries of this sixth season was the uncovering of the 'Dhariyah Treasure,' which consists of a collection of gold pieces, gemstones and oxidized copper fragments," a laboratory expert with the Saudi Heritage Commission said in a translated video.

The treasure hoard was likely buried during the early years of the Abbasid caliphate, which came to power in 750 and was destroyed by the Mongols in 1258. Named after one of Muhammad's uncles, the Abbasid caliphs helped usher in the Islamic Golden Age in which cultural and scientific activity flourished. Geographically, the Abbasid Empire stretched from North Africa to Iran but was concentrated primarily in the Arabian Peninsula and present-day Iraq, with its capital at Baghdad.

According to Islamic tradition, every adult who can afford it and is physically able to make it is supposed to make a pilgrimage — called the Hajj — to the holiest Islamic city, Mecca, at least once. During the Abbasid period, Dhariyah was an important stop on the pilgrimage route between Basra, a port city in southern Iraq near the Arabian Gulf, and Mecca on the west coast of Saudi Arabia.

Experts do not yet know why the jewelry decorated with floral patterns and geometric motifs was buried at Dhariyah or whether it belonged to a pilgrim. But it is clear that skilled metalworkers crafted the pieces, Gulf News reported, by shaping sheets of gold, embossing them, and inlaying semiprecious gems.

Additional archaeological excavation at Dhariyah is planned for the future.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:55 a.m. ET on June 1 to note that the discovery was made at the Dhariyah archaeological site in the Al-Qassim region rather than Diriyah located on the outskirts of Riyadh, as previously stated.

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In 1987, the Cleveland Museum of Art acquired an unusual pendant depicting a lion's head carved out of amethyst on a gold base decorated with baboons. But one part was much older than the other and was originally carved as a game piece.

The lion's head pendant was crafted out of an ancient Egyptian gemstone as far back as 3,500 years ago. Then, around 2,700 years ago, an artisan in Sudan set the much-older Egyptian gemstone into a new metal mount made of eight seated baboons to create a magical religious object.

According to the Cleveland Museum of Art, the pendant measures about 1.4 inches (3.5 centimeters) tall. A hole just under the lion's chin pierces the pendant, which would have been suspended on a string.

The purple amethyst and gold frame are a unique combination. The lion is similar to pieces found in the ancient Egyptian game senet, in which players would move their pawns across a board with 30 squares. The amethyst likely dates to the New Kingdom period (circa 1550 to 1070 B.C.), according to a 1996 study of the artifact. But the gold mount was added considerably later, likely in the Napatan period (circa 750 to 300 B.C.), named for the town that was used as the religious center of Nubia.

Recycling of old stone carvings was common among the ancient Nubians, who lived in what is now southern Egypt and northern Sudan. In the early first millennium B.C., Nubian rulers viewed themselves as descendants of Ramesses II (who reigned from 1279 to 1213 B.C.) and repurposed and retrofitted semiprecious gems into new gold mounts to show their Egyptian connections. Under the later Kushite kings (circa 712 to 664 B.C.), this practice continued in Napata as the rulers incorporated Egyptian customs into their own culture.

Both the lion and the baboon were sacred in Kushite religion. The lion was associated with the god Amun, who was tasked with protecting the state and who merged with the sun god, Ra, and became known as the powerful creator deity Amun-Ra. The baboons were connected to the sun and the moon and were often depicted with their arms raised. In this pendant, the baboons lift the representation of Amun.

The lion's head pendant was meant to be worn in life, rather than as a funeral gift, and it demonstrates the ancient Nubians' clever use of Egyptian heirlooms to create new and religiously charged jewelry.

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

A man's lower jaw recovered from a medieval church in Aberdeen reveals the oldest known use of a dental bridge in Scotland, a new study finds. The gold wire, called a ligature, was installed around two teeth about 500 years ago to span the gap created by a lost tooth.

"The application of the ligature would likely have caused some discomfort during the procedure," Rebecca Crozier, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Aberdeen and co-author of the new study on the jawbone, told Live Science in an email. But the man, who was middle-aged when he died between 1460 and 1670, "would have most likely gotten used to the presence of the wire over time and probably stopped noticing it," she said.

In a study published April 24 in the British Dental Journal, Crozier and colleagues described a lower jawbone discovered as part of an excavation at the St. Nicholas East Kirk in Aberdeen, Scotland. The church, which was likely built in the 11th century and used until the Protestant Reformation in the late 16th century, contained over 900 burials and thousands of individual human bones. Although the wired jawbone was not found as part of a complete burial, the researchers could tell from the bone's shape and the wear on the individual's teeth that it was likely from a middle-aged man.

The lower jaw preserved nine teeth, as well as evidence that one of the man's incisors — the lower right central one — had been lost during life. The man had hardened plaque on all of his teeth, cavities on three teeth, and periodontal disease from receding gums, demonstrating poor oral health. Although bad teeth were not unusual in the late medieval period, the gold wire installed around two tooth roots was noteworthy, the researchers wrote.

A 20-karat-gold wire encircled the lower right lateral incisor and the lower left central incisor, spanning the gap caused by the loss of the lower right central incisor. The wire was looped around one tooth root and was secured by a twisted knot around the other tooth root.

"The wire had been rubbing against the root of one of the anchoring teeth for some time," Crozier said. "The wire was either holding in place the actual lost tooth or a prosthetic (fake) tooth."

Dentistry was not organized as a profession until the 19th century, the researchers wrote in the study, but barbers, healers and even jewelers practiced semiskilled dental procedures long before then, as dental fillings date back at least 13,000 years.

In medieval Europe, securing loose teeth using wire was a well-known treatment described in several medical treatises. A recent discovery in France showed later evidence of this: An aristocratic 17th-century woman had gold ligatures around multiple teeth in her upper jaw.

"The underlying reasons for undergoing this procedure were likely multifaceted," the researchers wrote. While the ligature may have helped the man regain some chewing functionality, he probably underwent treatment for the sake of his appearance.

In this time period, a person's appearance and perceived health were linked to their moral character, so people who could afford it sought out dental treatments. In the case of the Scotsman, it is likely that the jeweler who made the gold wire also installed it, the researchers wrote.

"It is very difficult to talk about individual experiences of pain or discomfort in someone that died hundreds of years ago," Crozier said, but "the unstable ligatured tooth would have made actions such as biting into something hard or firm like an apple quite problematic."

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A man went out on a morning walk in southwest Norway and stumbled upon a surprise: an elite warrior's sword scabbard that was purposefully buried 1,500 years ago. The rare gold object, which was richly decorated with serpentine animals, was probably an offering to the gods at a time of famine and societal turmoil, researchers say.

"I saw a mound in the ground under a tree and poked at it with a stick," the hiker said in a translated statement from the University of Stavanger in Norway. "Suddenly, I saw something that glittered. I didn't quite understand what I had found."

The sixth-century gold artifact, which is about 2.4 inches (6 centimeters) long and weighs 1.2 ounces (33 grams), once adorned the scabbard of an elite warrior's sword. Only 17 others have been discovered to date in Northern Europe, and most were found in hoards with other objects.

"The odds of finding something like this are minimal," Håkon Reiersen, an archaeologist at the University of Stavanger Archaeological Museum, said in the statement. The scabbard fitting is worn, suggesting its owner used it a lot before disposing of it.

"Whoever wore the sword it was on was probably the leader in this area in the first half of the 6th century and had a warrior retinue of loyal men attached to him," Reiersen said.

During the sixth century, southern Norway experienced a significant population decline due to volcanic eruptions, a lengthy cold snap and bubonic plague pandemics. One of the power centers at the time was located at Hove, where a large farm complex and numerous gold artifacts have been discovered, suggesting the people who lived there were elite.

"By sacrificing such magnificent objects to the gods, the leaders at Hove confirmed their status and power," Reiersen said.

The newly discovered gold scabbard ornament, which was found northeast of Hove, is very rare and displays hallmarks of a skilled artisan, Siv Kristoffersen, a professor emerita at the University of Stavanger Archaeological Museum, said in a separate translated statement.

Although the scabbard decoration appears at first glance to be a series of curving lines, Kristoffersen noted that the middle of the design includes two animal figures in profile facing each other, but "it is possible that this should be interpreted as a human head with an animal body — a mixed motif that occurs often in this design style." These ribbon-shaped creatures were commonly used in the first half of the sixth century in Norway.

"The filigree ornamentation places the object among the finest works from the period," Kristoffersen said, referring to the triple, beaded gold threads. "This must have been a magnificent sword."

The scabbard ornament is part of a rare and mysterious group of objects sometimes found in Scandinavia that include spiral rings; gold, disc-shaped pendants; and these harmonica-shaped weapon ornaments. Experts think the groups of artifacts were deposited on purpose as "sacrificial" or "killed" objects that were offered to the gods to ask for protection from natural disasters.

Given the gold scabbard ornament's proximity to Hove, its location may have been a ritual center that Hove's leaders could access. "The new find is therefore another piece of the puzzle that shows that there was a center of power around Hove from 200 to 550 A.D.," Reiersen wrote in another translated statement.

The object will go on display at the University of Stavanger Archaeological Museum, the museum's director, Kristin Armstrong-Oma, said, as soon as experts have finished studying it. "This allows us to further research the find itself and the ornamentation and find new answers about the power elite that ruled here at this time," she said.

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

In 1868, soldiers from an Imperial Prussian Army regiment discovered a hoard of dozens of ancient silver artifacts while constructing a new shooting range near the city of Hildesheim in central Germany. The Hildesheim treasure included elaborate and expensive tableware, including the Athena bowl, that may have belonged to Publius Quinctilius Varus or another Roman military commander who fought against Germanic tribes in the first century.

The Athena bowl, also called the Minerva bowl after the goddess's Roman name, is one of four bowls in the hoard with an ornate central emblem. According to the Altes Museum in Berlin, which has the Hildesheim treasure in its collection, the silver Athena bowl is roughly 10 inches (25.3 centimeters) in diameter and weighs a hefty 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) ‪—‬ about as much as a 9-inch (23 centimeters) cast-iron skillet.

Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and youth, is seated on a rock with a shield under her arm and a plumed helmet on her head. Her famous aegis (shield) hangs like a sash to protect her while she gazes behind. In front of Athena is a rock encircled by an olive wreath, with her sacred owl perched atop. While most of the bowl is silver, there are gold accents on her dress, aegis and owl, as well as on the two rock formations, according to archaeologist Gertrud Platz-Horster.

The Athena emblem was likely crafted in the second century B.C., according to the Altes Museum, and a new bowl was created for the emblem in the first century A.D. Many of the Hildesheim treasure vessels had traces of wear and repair, according to Platz-Horster, which suggests that the tableware was collected over time.

Given the first-century date for the hoard and its discovery in central Germany, some experts think the tableware once belonged to an important Roman military commander, who may have hidden it from the enemy. (Or the hoard may represent booty that the Germanic tribes stashed after stealing it.)

Perhaps the most famous Roman general fighting Germanic tribes under Emperor Augustus was Publius Quinctilius Varus, who lost three entire Roman legions at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in A.D. 9. The Roman historian Suetonius reported that Augustus was so upset about the loss that he yelled, "Quintili Vare, legiones redde!" — meaning "Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!" After the loss, Varus died by suicide rather than facing his ruined political career, and Augustus ended his campaign of expansion into Germany.

Regardless of whether the Athena bowl belonged to Varus, the Hildesheim treasure is renowned for being the largest collection of Roman silver found outside the imperial frontier.

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

This figurine of a small male camelid was made by the Inca as a "huaca" — a sacred being, site or object revered by their society. The quadruped was probably intended to be a llama (Lama glama), but it may represent the other camelid species domesticated by Andean people: the alpaca (Lama pacos or Vicugna pacos).

According to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has the statue in its collection, the llama stands about 2 inches (5.1 centimeters) tall and was crafted from an alloy of silver, gold and copper. After casting, an Inca artist added the creature's features, including eyes, nostrils, toes and a wry smile.

The Inca raised llamas and alpacas for a wide variety of purposes. They were used to carry goods long distances, and people ate the animals' meat, wove clothes from their wool, turned their bones into musical instruments, sewed hides to make shoes, collected their droppings for fuel and fertilizer, and consumed their fat for medicinal purposes. Llamas were also key to some ancient rituals.

This figurine may have been created for the Inca ritual called "capac hucha," a Quechua term meaning "royal obligation," according to The Met. This annual celebration in Cuzco, which was founded around the 12th century as the capital of the Inca Empire, involved sacrifices of llamas, maize and children to mark important events such as a drought, the death of a ruler, or the expansion of the empire.

Among the artifacts that archaeologists have discovered at capac hucha sites are metal and shell figurines, some of which had been "dressed" with textiles and feathers and were thought to have been imbued with sacred power. And one of the three "Children of Llullaillaco" — Inca child mummies discovered in 1999 — was buried with 11 camelid figurines made from silver, gold and shell, revealing the importance of llama effigies in death.

The close association between llamas and the Inca can even be seen in contemporary cinema. In Disney's "The Emperor's New Groove" (2000), a ruler named Kuzco is transformed into a llama that looks more than a bit like the 600-year-old miniature camelid effigy.

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

Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered a Roman-era mummy with a copy of Homer's epic poem the "Iliad" inside its abdomen ‪—‬ a unique find that archaeologists are calling "exceptional."

Written on papyrus in Greek, the text records part of Book 2 of the "Iliad," which details the legendary Trojan War. The text found in the mummy lists the ships used against the city of Troy, according to a statement from the University of Barcelona. It would have been placed within the abdomen during the embalming ritual.

The mummy, which dates to a time when the Romans controlled Egypt, was found at a tomb within a cemetery in the modern-day town of Al-Bahnasa in Egypt, which was known as Oxyrhynchus in ancient times. The Romans controlled Egypt starting in 30 B.C., after Cleopatra died by suicide, until A.D. 641, when the Rashidun Caliphate took control of Egypt.

The site of Oxyrhynchus has been excavated off and on for well over a century. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, archaeologists found around 500,000 fragments of papyri at the site.

The newly discovered "papyrus was placed on the abdomen to protect [the] deceased in the afterlife," Esther Pons Mellado, co-director of the archaeological mission in Oxyrhynchus, told Live Science in an email.

Pons Mellado and Maite Mascort, who is also a co-director of the mission, explained that during the time the Romans controlled Egypt, it was common for papyri to be put inside mummies, in the chest or abdomen. However, it's unclear why ancient Egyptians thought papyri would help protect the deceased, Pons and Mascort said.

Remarkably, this is the first time a copy of Homer's "Iliad" has been found inside a mummy.

"The discovery is exceptional: it is the first time in the history of archaeology that a Greek literary text has been found deliberately incorporated into the mummification process," the University of Barcelona statement noted.

Although other Greek literary texts have been unearthed at Oxyrhynchus, "the real novelty" of the newfound literary papyrus is its "funerary context," Ignasi-Xavier Adiego, a linguistics professor at the University of Barcelona who analyzed the papyrus, said in the statement. He explained that papyri found inside mummies are often magical texts.

So far, archaeologists don't know much about the mummy with the "Iliad" papyrus. "We know that [it] was a male mummified individual but it's still under investigation," Pons and Mascort wrote in the email. They noted that the person was an adult.

The "papyrus is very important and relevant, but of course the study is not finished yet," Mascort and Pons wrote.

Gold and copper tongues

The "Iliad" mummy was found during a November-December 2025 excavation of a cemetery at Oxyrhynchus. The team's previous excavations at the cemetery revealed more than a dozen mummies with gold tongues, which ancient Egyptians thought would help the mummies communicate in the afterlife.

The team found three additional gold tongues and one copper tongue during the November-December 2025 excavation, a translated statement from Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said. For the ancient Egyptians, gold symbolized the flesh of the gods and it was thought that having a tongue made of gold would help you communicate with them. It's not clear why copper was used for one of the tongues.

It's also unknown if the mummy with the "Iliad" text had a gold or copper tongue; study of the mummy is ongoing.

Half a millennium after a solid-gold Renaissance necklace was forged, a metal detectorist spotted it poking out of a dried-up pond in central England. The necklace's heart-shaped pendant — which features the red-enameled initials H and K, as well as a rose and a pomegranate — is one of only a few Tudor-period jewels to survive the bitter divorce of King Henry VIII and his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. (The queen's name is often spelled "Catherine," but she usually signed it "Katherine" while at court in England.)

The Tudor Heart necklace is made up of three parts. The 24-karat gold chain, which consists of 75 links, is 17.1 inches (43.4 centimeters) long and weighs 9.4 ounces (267 grams). A clasp in the shape of a hand coming out of a cloud serves to close the necklace and suspend a heart-shaped pendant. The pendant is 2.3 inches (5.9 cm) long and weighs 1.8 ounces (50 grams). But it's the decoration on the pendant, rather than the necklace itself, that makes the artifact historically significant.

On the front of the Tudor Heart, a white-and-red rose is entwined with a pomegranate tree, which represent the House of Tudor dynasty, headed by Henry VIII, and the Spanish homeland of Queen Katherine of Aragon, respectively. The back of the heart pendant is decorated with their initials joined by a tasseled cord. Katherine had originally married England's Prince Arthur, but she was widowed after just five months of marriage. Later, she became the first wife of Henry VIII (who ruled from 1509 to 1547), and their marriage lasted from 1509 until they were divorced in 1533.

Both sides of the Tudor Heart carry the motto "toujours," French for "always." But the motto may actually be a bilingual pun, according to the British Museum, since the spacing of the word makes it sound like "tous" ( French for "all") "yours" when read aloud.

Experts at the British Museum have confirmed that the composition of the gold and the style of the jewelry are consistent with an early-16th-century manufacture date, meaning the accessory was likely crafted during Henry VIII's marriage to Katherine. But because the necklace is not listed in inventories of royal jewels from the early 16th century, it's unlikely that either monarch owned it. This raises the question of why or for whom the necklace was made.

One possibility is that the heart was created to celebrate the betrothal of Princess Mary (later Queen Mary I) in 1518. Mary was the only child of Henry and Katherine to survive infancy and was initially promised to Francis III, the Dauphin of France, when she was just 2 years old. The betrothal plan fell through a few years later.

Another possibility is that the necklace was made for someone of high standing, who would have worn it to show allegiance to the monarchs. Elements of the necklace suggest that, although it was made of high-quality gold, the workmanship was not of the same caliber, according to the U.K. Portable Antiquities scheme. If the object was made to be viewed from afar, it may have been given as a prize for winning a royal joust or other equestrian event.

The Tudor Heart pendant is a rare example of early Tudor dynasty jewelry and is on display at the British Museum, which raised 3.5 million British pounds ($4.7 million) in early 2026 to buy the artifact.

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

Archaeologists have discovered a century-old hoard of gold ruble coins underneath a house in northwestern Russia. The 409 coins were minted during the waning days of the Russian Empire and may be worth more than half a million dollars today.

In 2025, researchers with the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the All-Russian Historical and Ethnographic Museum excavated the foundations of a historic house ahead of new construction in the city of Torzhok, about 260 miles (420 kilometers) southeast of St. Petersburg, according to a March 5 statement.

During this excavation, archaeologists noticed a pit in the foundation that contained the broken remains of a glazed earthenware mug, known as a candyushka, filled with 409 coins minted between 1848 and 1911. The hoard consisted of 387 gold 10-ruble coins, 10 coins each worth 5 rubles, 10 coins each worth 15 rubles and two 7.5-ruble coins.

While two coins were minted during the reigns of earlier czars (Nicholas I and Alexander III), the rest come from the reign of Czar Nicholas II, the last Russian emperor before the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas and the rest of the royal Romanov family were executed in 1918. While rumors persisted for decades that his daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, escaped execution, researchers now think that she was killed alongside her family.

Experts believe that the Torzhok hoard was hidden away during or after the start of the revolution and that the owner of the hoard intended to come back for it. Archival documents suggest that 24 families lived in this area in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but experts aren't sure which family hid their savings because the historic and modern house numbers don't line up.

In total, the coins in the hoard add up to 4,085 rubles. Historic currency tables reveal that, in 1916, the exchange rate was 6.7 rubles per U.S. dollar. Given inflation, $610 in 1916 is the equivalent of over $18,000 today, suggesting the hoard was a substantial chunk of someone's savings. But the melt value of one 10-ruble coin — which is 90% gold — is nearly $1,300, which means the entire hoard may be valued at well over $500,000.

The hoard will now be transferred to the All-Russian Historical and Ethnographic Museum, according to the statement.

The Asante Empire (also known as the Ashanti Empire) ruled the Gold Coast of West Africa in what is now Ghana for two centuries (1701 to 1901). One of the most powerful symbols of the Asante rulers was the ceremonial sword, which was decorated with a cast gold ornament often shaped like an animal. This one-of-a-kind spider ornament belonged to one of the last Asante kings, Kwaku Dua II.

The Asante spider ornament was made from a gold-copper-silver alloy, according to the Dallas Museum of Art, which purchased the item from a Texas family in 2014. The spider measures 4 by 2.9 inches (10.2 by 7.3 centimeters) and may have once been affixed to an Asante ceremonial sword. It was likely taken out of Ghana in the late 19th century, along with hundreds of other royal gold objects, during one of the Anglo-Ashanti wars as Britain expanded its control over the Gold Coast.

In 1884, Sir Samuel Rowe, the British governor of the Gold Coast, was visited by Bosommuru, the chief spokesman of the Asante royal court in Kumasi, the imperial capital. During the state visit, Bosommuru gave Rowe the gold spider as a mark of friendship from Kwaku Dua II. According to Roslyn Walker, a curator at the Dallas Museum of Art who researched the history of the spider, Bosommuru said the spider was a symbol of wisdom and only the king was allowed to wear the spider emblem on his sword.

But Rowe decided to return the gold spider to the king, as it was illegal for British officials to accept gifts ‪—‬ so he sent it back to Kumasi with a British envoy, Robert Low Brandon-Kirby. It is unclear how Brandon-Kirby ended up owning the gold spider, but he brought it with him to the U.S., where he partnered with a Scot named James Cree to buy land in the Southwest — and incensed the locals, who found Brandon-Kirby to be incredibly pompous and rude.

Walker noted that, according to a family story told by Charles Cree, "B.K. made himself unpopular among the local population. Word reached him that a lynching party was on the way to kill him, so he quickly sold out at a bargain price to my grandfather [James], and allowed himself to be smuggled out of the country in a pickle barrel." The gold spider was handed down over generations of Cree family members before being purchased by the Dallas Museum of Art.

The well-traveled royal Asante spider ornament is one of a kind, according to Walker, and "no other cast gold spiders have surfaced in [Asante] collections to date."

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

A gold coin minted more than 1,000 years ago as an imitation of a more famous coin may be a relic of the "Great Heathen Army" that invaded England in 865 — an invasion that led to the Viking kingdom there known as the Danelaw.

According to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which is run by the British Museum and Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales, a metal detectorist discovered the coin in 2024 in a field near Elsing, a village in Norfolk on England's east coast, which was among the areas first invaded by the Viking army.

The coin had been converted into a pendant or medallion so that it could be worn on a cord around the neck, and independent numismatist Simon Coupland told BBC News that it had probably belonged to one of the invaders.

Importantly, the coin was a solid-gold imitation of earlier "solidus" coins minted by the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious — the son of Charlemagne — about 50 years earlier.

The original solidi were awarded to high-ranking Carolingian nobles, but the later copies — probably made in Frisia, an area now covered by the northern Netherlands and the western edge of Germany — were used as "portable wealth" throughout Scandinavia, he said.

It is likely this one was worn as an amulet by one of the Viking invaders. "The Norfolk find is a particularly fine specimen compared with most," Coupland said.

Gold pendant

The object is now going through an official inquiry to determine if it is "treasure" that must be given or sold to a museum, and Norfolk's Norwich Castle Museum has expressed interest.

According to its entry on the Portable Antiquities Scheme's website, the gold coin is pierced through twice above the head of the emperor Louis it portrays, which suggests the "head" side was meant to be facing forward when it was worn as a medallion.

The other side of the coin features a Christian cross, which probably wasn't favored by the Viking invader who wore it. (The Vikings and other Norse, beginning in the central Danish kingdom, didn't start converting to Christianity until the late 10th century.)

The Viking force, which the Christian English dubbed the "Great Heathen Army," began their invasion in 865 under the Danish chieftains Ivar the Boneless (it is unclear what his name means), Halfdan and Ubba. All three chieftains claimed to be sons of the legendary Viking hero and king Ragnar Lothbrok, who appeared in Norse sagas.

Experts debate whether the army comprised as few as 1,000 Viking warriors or more than 5,000, but as the fighting continued, they were reinforced from Scandinavia in 871, and in 878, Viking leaders negotiated the Danelaw with the English king Alfred the Great.

The deal kept the invaders out of Alfred's lands and established a Viking kingdom — with unique laws — over much of eastern and northern England for more than 50 years. In the following decades, Alfred's successors once again amalgamated the Viking territories into the English kingdom, which fell to the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

An archaeologist excavating a medieval town in southern Norway had an "out-of-body experience" when she stumbled upon a dream find: a delicate gold ring with a dazzling blue gemstone.

"I was completely shaken and had to ask the construction guys if they were messing with me," Linda Åsheim, an archaeologist with the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), said in a translated statement.

Last summer, Åsheim was working in the center of Tønsberg, Norway's oldest city. Over the course of two seasons, archaeologists had begun to uncover houses, streets and other remnants of medieval Tønsberg, which was originally founded in the ninth century. The medieval town was located just below a royal castle complex erected by the Yngling dynasty of Scandinavian kings.

The gold ring holds an oval stone — possibly a sapphire, based on its deep-blue color. Thin, gold threads twisted into an intricate pattern flank the stone, and small, gold balls have been soldered on as additional decorations.

The combination of spirals and gold balls suggests the ring was made sometime in the ninth to 11th centuries, Marianne Vedeler, an archaeologist at the University of Oslo, said in the statement. This style of goldwork came to Norway from the Byzantine Empire in the early Middle Ages.

Based on its size, the Tønsberg ring likely belonged to a high-status woman, the team said. They estimated the ring would fit someone with a finger circumference between 50 and 55 millimeters, which is equivalent to a U.S. women's ring size of 5 1/2 to 7 1/2.

Ring wearing may have been a symbol of the woman's wealth and status, but the gemstone could have held additional meaning. Although it is not yet clear if the gem is a real sapphire or an imitation made from cobalt-colored glass, blue sapphires were known in the Middle Ages to symbolize divine power, to help the wearer maintain their chastity, and to cure boils, among other things, according to the NIKU.

"It has been 15 years since we last found a gold ring in Tønsberg, and this one is a fantastically beautiful and rare specimen," NIKU archaeologist and project manager Hanne Ekstrøm Jordahl said.

Gold and gems quiz: What do you know about sparkly treasures made by nature?

In the fall of 1972, workers in the coastal Bulgarian city of Varna accidentally stumbled upon an ancient cemetery filled with treasure. The burial ground contained more than 3,000 gold artifacts that date to between 4600 and 4300 B.C., making them the oldest gold artifacts in the world.

Over a 20-year period of excavations, archaeologists recovered gold objects from 62 of the around 300 graves in the Varna cemetery. But one-third of all the gold finds came from one burial, Grave 43, which also contained the skeleton of a man who was over 60 years old when he died nearly six millennia ago.

The man in Grave 43, who may have been a metalsmith, was buried with a variety of gold artifacts, including beaded gold necklaces, bangles, earrings and pendants; small, gold discs that were once attached to his clothes; an ax with a gold-wrapped handle; as well as a gold penis sheath.

In total, archaeologists found more than 13.2 pounds (6 kilograms) of gold in the Varna cemetery. At up to 6,600 years old, this treasure trove boasts the oldest evidence of humans crafting gold anywhere in the world. (A tiny gold bead discovered in 2016 at Tell Yunatsite, another site in southern Bulgaria, may be a century older, but that date has not been confirmed.)

Archaeologists are still unsure why gold-working was invented in the Balkans more than six millennia ago during the Copper Age (roughly 4500 to 3000 B.C.), although it might be related to a number of innovations in mining, metallurgy and long-distance trade that occurred during this era, according to the Varna Museum of Archaeology, which houses the collection of gold.

"The Varna cemetery illustrates the early stage of the emergence of a class-segregated society, a proto-type of social and political structure," Museum of Archaeology representatives wrote. "As attributes designating the social status of their owners, gold objects were sacred and symbolic rather than indicators of wealth."

The handful of people buried in the Varna cemetery with extraordinary amounts of gold, such as the man in Grave 43, were likely the society's leaders, according to the museum, making Varna possibly one of the world's earliest civilizations.

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

The Nebra Sky Disc was discovered in an artifact hoard in 1999, when metal detectorists illegally excavated it from an ancient religious site on a hill near Nebra, a town in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. After police recovered the disc in 2002, archaeologists studied the unique object, revealing it's up to 3,800 years old and the world's oldest depiction of astronomical phenomena. (The next oldest is a star map on the ceiling of an ancient Egyptian tomb from about 3,500 years ago.)

The Sky Disc was crafted from about 8.8 pounds (4 kilograms) of bronze, according to the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle, Germany, where the object is on display. The bronze was flattened into a disc 12.6 inches (32 centimeters) in diameter and then decorated with 1.8 ounces (50 grams) of gold inlay representing a boat, a crescent moon, a full moon or a sun, and a series of stars.

Based on the style of the axes and the carbon dating of wood in the hilts of swords recovered along with the disc in the metal hoard, experts think the Sky Disc was buried around 1600 B.C., during the Early Bronze Age, but it may have been created two centuries earlier.

Some research has questioned the disc's authenticity, saying that it probably didn't come from Nebra and was about 1,000 years more recent, based on a soil and chemical analysis of the artifact. A subsequent study countered those claims and found that the disc was authentic and from Nebra but that it was made in several stages.

Close examination of the disc revealed that it was made in at least five phases. Initially, the bronze disc included the full moon or sun, the crescent moon and 32 stars. Then, two arcs were placed on each side of the disc. A third arc, perhaps representing a boat, was then added to the bottom. In the fourth phase, the rim of the disc was perforated, suggesting it may have been attached to a support, like a pole for ceremonial use. Finally, the left arc was removed before the disc was buried with the metal hoard. But experts don't know exactly when the disc was made or how much time passed between the phases of decoration.

The Nebra Sky Disc appears to represent the night sky, with several stars forming the Pleiades, or "Seven Sisters," star cluster. The golden arcs on each side of the disc may represent the horizons, marking the summer and winter solstices, and the boat may be a mythical one that brought the sun across the sky from east to west in the daytime and back at night.

By aligning the Sky Disc with the plateau on Mittelberg Hill, where it was found, the western horizon arc aligns with the Brocken, a high mountain that the sun disappears behind on the summer solstice. This suggests the Sky Disc may have been used to keep track of important astronomical dates in prehistory.

But who used the Sky Disc and who buried it are still mysteries, partly because it was recovered by treasure hunters and not in a scientific excavation. The treasure hunters damaged the gold sun or full moon, scratched the surface, and cleaned it improperly. Given the numerous well-furnished burial mounds of important people that dotted the landscape of central Germany as early as 2000 B.C., however, perhaps the Sky Disc once belonged to a Bronze Age chieftain.

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

Archaeologists in Hungary have discovered the 1,100-year-old burials of three elite male warriors, and a DNA analysis has revealed that the men were related.

The warriors' burials hold weapons, including a saber and a bow with a quiver of arrows, as well as dozens of coins. A DNA analysis indicates that one of the warriors might be the father or brother of a teenage warrior in one of the other burials and that all three warriors were related along their paternal lines.

Located near the village of Akasztó, about 57 miles (92 kilometers) southeast of Budapest, the burials were discovered by volunteers from the Katona József Museum's community archaeology program and were excavated by a team of volunteers and professionals led by Wilhelm Gábor, the head of the museum's archaeology department.

All three men were buried in the 920s or 930s, the archaeological team told Live Science in an email. In total, the three burials yielded 81 coins. Most are from northern Italy and date to the reign of Berengar (888 to 924), a king who ruled parts of Italy and was a great-grandson of Charlemagne. At that time, the Hungarians had formed a kingdom in Hungary, and warriors from the kingdom were involved in military campaigns in northern Italy. It's possible that the warriors in the burials obtained the coins during those campaigns, the archaeologists said.

One of the warriors was 17 to 18 years old when he died and had a belt that was partly decorated with gilded silver. On his right side was a leather pouch, known as a sabretache, that was decorated with a silver plate.

"On his left hand he wore a gold ring with blue glass stones," and his "legs were adorned with ornate silver bracelets and anklets," the archaeologists wrote. Several small, gold plates were found on his body — possibly the remains of clothing or his death shroud, the team suggested. He was also buried with a horse harness that had straps decorated with gilded silver.

Another burial contained a warrior who died at the slightly younger age of 15 to 16. He was buried with a quiver that contained seven arrows and a bow. The "stiff arched ends and handle of his bow were covered with decorative antler plates," the archaeological team wrote.

The third burial held a warrior who died between the ages of 30 and 35. It contained a saber, archery equipment, a horse harness, a silver bracelet, and a belt decorated with coins, the archaeologists said. A DNA analysis revealed that this individual was likely the father or brother of the youngest warrior and that all three warriors were related.

The team also looked at the ratios of isotopes, or elements with varying numbers of neutrons in their nuclei, in the warriors' remains. This analysis showed that the three warriors had diets rich in animal protein.

From the archaeological finds, "it can be stated that an elite warrior group, presumably members of a military leadership, were buried here," the archaeologists wrote. Research is underway to learn more about the warriors' identities. It's not clear how they died.

In 1693, a farmer ploughing his field in North Petherton in southwest England found an intriguing medieval jewel made from gold, enamel and rock crystal. But it is the remarkable inscription around the edge that sets the piece apart from others. The jewel reads "AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN," an Old English sentence that means "Alfred ordered me to be made."

The Alfred Jewel, which is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, is assumed to have been made between 871 and 899, during the reign of King Alfred the Great. Alfred initially ruled as king of the West Saxons (Wessex), one of seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at the time. In 886, he expanded his power to the entirety of England and has thus been considered the first English king.

The jewel measures 2.4 by 1.2 inches (6.2 by 3.1 centimeters). Its design consists of dozens of small cells filled with colorful enamel paste and accented by thin strips of gold. It depicts a person from the mid-thighs up. The Old English inscription in capital letters around the edge of the jewel's bezel connects it to Alfred the Great.

King Alfred had a reputation as a savvy military leader since he helped fight off Viking invasions in the ninth century. He was also a highly educated man who had numerous religious texts translated from Latin into Old English. According to the Ashmolean Museum, Alfred distributed these religious manuscripts to bishops in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom along with an aestel, which was a kind of bookmark or pointer to help keep one's place while reading. The Alfred Jewel is likely the end of an aestel.

At the base of the jewel, in what looks like the mouth of a dragon or snake, experts have noticed a cylindrical socket. This was likely where the pointer itself was once connected.

The Alfred Jewel was found near Athelney Abbey, originally a tiny fortification. Alfred reportedly hid from Danish Vikings for several months at Athelney before launching a successful counter-attack in 878 that helped him expand his influence across southern England. Alfred then returned to establish a monastery at Athelney and to appoint its first abbot.

Because of its ties to England's first king, the Ashmolean Museum has called the Alfred Jewel "among the most significant of royal relics."

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

While surveying a Swiss bog, two volunteer archaeologists discovered what may be two of the oldest Celtic coins ever found in the country, and they may have been offerings to ancient gods.

The two gold coins were minted almost 2,300 years ago, around the mid-third century B.C. "This makes them part of a very small group of just over 20 known examples of the oldest Celtic coins from Switzerland," Swiss archaeologists said in a translated statement released Dec. 18.

One coin is a stater that weighs 0.28 ounces (7.8 grams), and the other is a one-fourth stater with a weight of 0.06 ounces (1.86 grams). The term "stater" derives from ancient Greek coins. As mercenaries, the Celts of mainland Europe were increasingly given Greek coins as payment at the end of the fourth century B.C. These coins later served as inspiration for Celtic coinage at the beginning of the third century B.C., when the imitation started, as noted in the statement.

In this case, gold staters minted during the reign of Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, were imitated. Both coins showcase the profile of the Greek god Apollo on the "heads" side (obverse) and a two-horse chariot on the "tails" side (reverse).

However, the two newfound coins were modified slightly from their Greek originals. For example, on the smaller one's reverse, a triple spiral can be seen beneath the horses. This symbol, known as a triskele (also called a triskelion), appears frequently in Celtic art.

The rare coins were unearthed largely on a hunch. Between 2022 and 2023, volunteer archaeologists with Archaeology Baselland, the local archaeological department, discovered 34 Celtic silver coins found in the same area — the Bärenfels bog near the municipality of Arisdorf. This prompted Wolfgang Niederberger and Daniel Mona, also volunteer archaeologists with Archaeology Baselland, to do follow-up investigations there in spring 2025, when they discovered the two gold coins, according to the statement.

Offerings for the gods?

It's possible these two coins were deposited as an offering to the gods, according to the statement.

"Experts assume that Celtic gold coins were not used for everyday transactions. They were too valuable for that," the statement noted. Including salary payments, they may also have been used as diplomatic gifts, gifts to followers, to achieve political goals, or as dowries.

Celtic coins are frequently found near moors and bodies of water. This pattern is also evident in Arisdorf, where water-filled sinkholes form the Bärenfels bog. The Celts considered such places to be sacred and dedicated to gods, so it seems reasonable to assume that the coins were deliberately placed there as offerings, the statement noted.

Both coins will go on display together, along with the silver coins from the same site, in a special showcase in Basel starting in March 2026.

Celtic quiz: Test your knowledge about these fierce tribes once described by Julius Caesar

Metal detectorists in England have unearthed a spectacular collection of Anglo-Saxon gold-and-garnet pendants that may have ended up in the ground after being ritually "killed" 1,400 years ago.

Two detectorists found the collection of four gold pendants and one piece of a gold brooch on the slope of a hill in the village of Donington on Bain, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) north of London, in the spring of 2023. The detectorists reported their find under the U.K.'s Portable Antiquities Scheme, and archaeologist Lisa Brundle, the finds liaison officer for Lincolnshire county, studied the extraordinary jewels.

Brundle revealed her findings in a study published Nov. 24 in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology and wrote that "the pendants, as a cohesive necklace set, are unusual."

While gold-and-garnet pendants were quite common accessories for high-status women in seventh-century England, Brundle wrote, archaeologists typically find them in graves, not in a group on the side of a hill. The pendants also showed signs of wear, damage and modifications, meaning they may have been antiques — at least 60 years old — by the time they were buried.

No other artifacts or human bones were found with the Donington pendants, which suggests that someone may have purposefully collected the accessories and then buried them for safekeeping or in a ritual act, Brundle wrote.

The heaviest artifact in the collection is a D-shaped pendant weighing around 0.2 ounces (6.7 grams). The large garnet is inset into a scallop-shaped gold cell at the bottom of the pendant. "The scallop shape itself is symbolically important," Brundle wrote, "often associated with fertility and potentially bearing Christian connotations."

The other four accessories were all circular with star and beaded motifs. Three of them were pendants, but one was the dome-shaped portion of a brooch that had been extracted for reuse. Reusing the central dome from a brooch is particularly noteworthy, Brundle wrote, because only a dozen or so examples of this exist.

The Donington group of jewels is unlikely to have been a necklace set from an Anglo-Saxon woman's grave, Brundle noted, because no beads or spacers were found to suggest they had all been strung together. To try and unravel the mystery, Brundle instead sought alternate explanations for why these five items were found in a group.

"One possibility is that the assemblage derives from a smith's hoard," Brundle wrote.

During the seventh century, garnet supplies were dwindling, and an itinerant goldsmith may have collected some antique jewels to modify into new accessories. How the smith collected them is up for debate, though, as grave-robbers are known to have targeted high-status women's graves to remove their prized jewels, Brundle wrote in the study.

Removing the pendants from circulation can also be seen as a kind of "ritual killing," which transformed powerful, antique symbols of elite status into new items no longer connected to those individuals, Brundle noted.

But it is also possible that one or more women simply gathered their own jewelry and hid it away.

"One interpretation is that the assemblage represents the treasured possessions of kin or social groups, deliberately concealed during periods of instability or transition," Brundle wrote.

In the late sixth and seventh centuries, the adoption of Christianity changed the social and political context of England, which was split into kingdoms. Lincolnshire was divided into three regions, and the jewelry hoard was found in one of them: Lindsey. While Lindsey was an independent kingdom, it came under the rule of the kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia at different times during this period, which may have led to instability.

Further archaeological work in the Donington area "may clarify the nature of the site and its potential significance," Brundle wrote, potentially revealing more about the shifting social and political landscape in seventh-century England.

The collection was purchased by the Lincoln Museum in 2025.

Gold and gems quiz: What do you know about sparkly treasures made by nature?

Archaeologists need to have excellent attention to detail. They'll examine the curve of a potsherd, measure the precise angle of a carved block of stone, or perceive a barely visible hole in a bone to identify important details about our collective human history.

Think you've got what it takes to be an archaeologist? Let's see how well you can identify some of the world's most famous artifacts from just a sliver of the image. No whip or fedora needed — but keep an eye out for snakes!

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Archaeologists in France have discovered a Roman-period cremation tomb richly furnished with silver coins, gold jewelry, and a ring inscribed with what is likely the last name of the deceased.

The grave was found unexpectedly during excavations at a medieval settlement in Lamonzie-Saint-Martin, a small town in southwestern France. As the archaeologists excavated underneath the medieval silos, they noticed an unusual burial, according to a Nov. 24 translated statement from the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP).

Excavation of the burial revealed it to be a "bustum," a type of Roman-era funeral practice in which the deceased was cremated directly over the grave and then immediately buried. The rectangular bustum measured 7.2 by 3.4 feet (2.2 by 1.05 meters) and was filled with grave goods for the deceased.

In one corner of the burial, archaeologists found a ceramic beaker and a clear glass vial. In another cluster of offerings, archaeologists recovered 10 silver and bronze coins, alongside small gold sheets that may have decorated a purse or case that held the coins. A series of lozenge-shaped crystals was also discovered, likely the remains of a bejeweled leather accessory that has since decomposed, as well as a long, corroded iron object that may have been part of a horse bit, which would have attached to a bridle.

The burial style, pottery and coins suggest that the bustum dates to sometime between the first and third centuries.

Also recovered from the burial were nearly two dozen gold objects, two of which may hold clues to the occupant of the grave.

Archaeologists unearthed a probable "bulla" — a special amulet that was given to male children in ancient Rome nine days after they were born and that they wore until they came of age as Roman citizens at around 16 years old. And the remains of a gold ring, deformed by the heat of the cremation, appear to match up with a small piece of inscribed rock crystal called an intaglio. The Greek inscription on the intaglio reads ΑΛΛΑΛΛΗ (Allallé), which may be the surname of the deceased.

The rich and well-preserved cremation tomb has raised a number of questions that archaeologists will try to answer through further analysis. They will study the surviving human bones to try to determine the deceased's sex and age at death. They will also excavate in the area to look for other graves or dwellings that could help them understand why this tomb full of artifacts, including one that suggests Greek heritage, was placed in this part of France.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

In the early centuries of the Byzantine Empire, it was fashionable to make necklaces, bracelets, belts and rings out of gold coins to showcase one's wealth, power and association with the emperor. This pectoral, or neck ring, which was found in Egypt but was likely made in Constantinople, is "one of the most intricate pieces of gold jewelry to survive from the mid-sixth century," according to Stephanie Caruso, an assistant curator at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The gold pectoral is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. A total of 14 gold coins and two gold discs have been set into a gold, lattice-like framework and attached to a bent gold tube to create the piece of jewelry. The pectoral weighs three-quarters of a pound (about 340 grams) and measures roughly 9.5 inches (24 centimeters) in diameter. Originally, a medallion, which is now in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, was attached to the bottom.

On each side of the large central disc are seven gold coins called "solidi" and one gold "tremissis," which was worth one-third of a solidus. These pure-gold coins were introduced in the waning days of the Roman Empire, and they were struck in a mint in Constantinople. Each solidus — from which we get the French "sou" and the Italian "soldi" — was made of 0.16 ounces (4.45 grams) of gold, which is equivalent to roughly $580 today.

Byzantine citizens who could afford to lose a solidus might turn one into a pendant with a simple loop attachment or a hole poked through it. But many coins were inset into much more complicated settings, which allowed the wearer to visually represent their connection to the emperor and to protect themselves from misfortune, as historical records suggest that coins were often used as talismans.

All of the gold coins in The Met's pectoral are relatively rare, Caruso wrote; bronze and silver coins were more common in everyday transactions. All were struck between the fourth and sixth centuries, which means someone used a collection of coins spanning more than 200 years to create the pectoral. The large, gold disc in the middle is not an official coin, but it was created to look like one, complete with an emperor figure and a fake inscription. On the back of the disc is a personification of a city, perhaps Constantinople, along with a Christian cross.

The dangling medallion part of the pectoral that's now in the Smithsonian included an official commemorative coin issued by Theodosius I, the last emperor of the Roman Empire before it split into Eastern and Western sections.

"The inclusion of an officially struck medallion attachment on The Met's pectoral suggests that this pectoral belonged to not just a wealthy individual but to someone with imperial ties," Caruso wrote. Byzantine iconography suggests that pectorals were worn by military men, so this jewelry may have belonged to a socially connected individual, such as the emperor's bodyguard.

The main point of this elaborate gold necklace, according to Caruso, was "asserting the wearer's elite status and direct connection to the imperial court while simultaneously protecting against misfortune."

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

About 200 years ago, while digging in a boggy field in Wales, a worker struck a rare, ancient bowl shaped like a ship. The Caergwrle Bowl, named after a nearby castle, showcases the importance of nautical travel in Great Britain's Middle Bronze Age (roughly 1500 to 1000 B.C.).

According to Museum Wales, which has the artifact in its collection, the Caergwrle Bowl was made from shale and tin from counties in southwest England; and gold from Ireland or Wales. About half the original artifact remains today, but when complete, the oval bowl was about 7.2 inches (18.2 centimeters) long and 3.1 inches (7.8 cm) deep.

The inside of the bowl is not decorated, but the exterior and the rim have been ornamented with gold-foil-covered tin in a variety of shapes.

"We think the zig-zags around the base are waves and the long triangles are oars," Museum Wales representatives wrote. "The eye symbol protected sailors. The circles are the shields of its heroic voyagers."

But a slightly different interpretation was put forward by nautical archaeologists in a 1980 study of the bowl.

Rather than seeing the concentric circles on the gold rim as shields, researchers argued that the closest parallel can be found in Bronze Age sun symbolism, such as the Nebra Sky Disc — which may also depict a boat — and the Nordic "Sun Chariot." And instead of the zigzag lines representing waves, the lines could depict the boat's wooden frame showing through the skins that were stretched over it.

Regardless of the exact meaning of the designs on the Caergwrle Bowl, its discovery in a boggy field near the River Alun, which flows toward the Irish Sea, strongly suggests it was created as a representation of a boat, according to Museum Wales. And considering many Bronze Age sun artifacts have been found in bogs as offerings to the gods, the Caergwrle Bowl was likely meant to be an ancient votive offering, perhaps by sailors seeking a safe sea journey.

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

Television and internet ads regularly extol the classic beauty of gold jewelry and dazzling shine of cut gemstones. While we're all familiar with the precious gems — diamonds, sapphires, rubies and emeralds — there are hundreds more semiprecious gemstones, according to the International Gem Society. And sometimes even organic materials that are made into jewelry (like pearls) are considered gemstones.

Many gemstones are crafted into jewelry using gold, a soft, malleable element. Although gold is a relatively rare metal, scientists aren't sure exactly how much of it exists in the world — or how much is left to mine.

Think you're as brilliant as a multifaceted diamond? Start the quiz below, my ever-lovely jewels, to find out if you're stuck in an onyx night or if your sky is opalite.

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A certified metal detectorist who was scanning in a field near Leipzig, Germany, discovered the oldest coin ever found in the state of Saxony. The 2,200-year-old gold coin, known as a "rainbow cup," is a rare example of imported Celtic currency.

"The gold coin is a tangible piece of our history and provides new insights into trade with the Celts," Saxony's state minister, Barbara Klepsch, said in a translated statement Oct. 27.

While numerous Celtic coins have been found in Bohemia in the northwest Czech Republic, Saxony is considered outside the Celtic settlement area. Only two Celtic coins had previously been discovered in Saxony. The newly discovered coin has been dubbed the Gundorf Rainbow Cup for its findspot in a neighborhood outside Leipzig.

Celtic rainbow cups — named after the German term "regenbogenschüsselchen," which translates to "tiny rainbow finger bowl" — were named for their curved shape and for the superstition that treasure could be found where a rainbow touched the ground, according to the statement. They were created by the ancient Celts, fierce warrior tribes who lived in mainland Europe and later sacked Rome.

The front of the Gundorf Rainbow Cup depicts the stylized head of a stag or similar animal, while the back shows an open neck ring with thickened ends (possibly a Celtic torc or torque), a star with rounded corners, and a sphere.

Saxony state archaeologist Regina Smolnik said in the statement that the 2-gram (0.07 ounce) coin — about the weight of a U.S. dime — was in "almost mint condition" and unlikely to have been in circulation as currency. "Rather, it was likely a status symbol or a store of value belonging to an upper class person with trade relations with the Celts," Smolnik said.

Several rainbow cups have been recovered recently in Germany, painting a picture of trade relations between the Celts and Germanic-speaking people prior to the Roman invasion.

In 2021, archaeologists discovered a stash of 41 plain rainbow cups in the northeastern German state of Brandenburg. These coins, which were minted in the first century B.C., were also assumed to have been procured through trade, as the Celts didn't live in Brandenburg. And in 2023, archaeologists in the German state of Bavaria announced the discovery of a single rainbow cup with a rare four-pointed star decoration on the inside, possibly lost by someone traveling along an ancient road nearby.

Although the Gundorf Rainbow Cup is only a single coin, its discovery in Saxony, along with other examples of the coin elsewhere in Germany, has provided "further evidence of regular contact and connections" between the Celts and the people living in Saxony more than two millennia ago, according to Smolnik.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 11:55 a.m. ET on Nov. 6 to fix a mathematical conversion error in the weight of the coin.

Celtic quiz: Test your knowledge about these fierce tribes once described by Julius Caesar

This gilt-copper nose ornament, discovered at the archaeological site of Loma Negra in northern Peru, depicts the important Moche deity Ai Apaec, also known as the Decapitator. The ornament is inlaid with accents of turquoise and black stones for his pupils.

In Moche mythology, Ai Apaec was the supreme creator, a deity who had the power to subdue and restore order. In art from the time, he is commonly depicted with a human face, jaguar fangs, and a spider-like body, along with a ceremonial knife called a tumi in one hand and a decapitated human head in the other to represent his power to subdue.

The Moche, also known as the Mochicas, lived on the coast of northern Peru from A.D. 200 to 900, prior to the rise of the Inca Empire. This piece of jewelry was found at Loma Negra, a rich Moche site near the Ecuadorian border. Hundreds of gold, silver and copper artifacts were looted from tombs at Loma Negra in the late 1960s, but many of them, including this ornament, were eventually donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The Decapitator ornament measures 2.8 by 3.9 inches (7 by 10 centimeters) and was made out of a sheet of gilded copper. Semiprecious stones accentuate the Decapitator's eyes, earrings and belt. Ai Apaec also wears a large, silver nose ornament. The tiny figurine was likely attached to a piece of silver so that someone could wear it as a nose ornament. But because most of the Loma Negra artifacts were looted from graves, it is unclear whether this ornament was associated with a specific person.

Archaeologists have found that the Moche practiced human sacrifice to honor their gods. This ritual was performed for political reasons, such as the killing of captured enemies, but recent research has shown that family members were also sometimes sacrificed to their high-status relatives.

The Decapitator is closely associated with spiders in Moche iconography, but experts are unsure exactly why. According to The Met, "perhaps the manner in which spiders trap their prey in a web and liquefy their internal organs was considered analogous to the Moche practice of prisoner capture and sacrifice by bloodletting."

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

A man in Germany has discovered a Roman-era hoard with hundreds of silver coins, a gold ring, one gold coin and several silver bars — but he didn't do it legally.

The man initially found the 2,000-year-old hoard with a metal detector in 2017 near the village of Borsum in the Hildesheim district of Lower Saxony, northwest Germany. However, he didn't have a permit to unearth artifacts, and he didn't report the finding at the time. Instead, he waited until April this year to tell the police and the city of Hildesheim's monument protection authorities, according to a translated statement.

Upon learning of the hoard, officials from the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation went to the spot where the man unearthed the treasure, to see if he had missed any artifacts and determine if they could learn anything about how the hoard had been buried around two millennia ago.

In early October, government officials did a more comprehensive archaeological investigation of the area and found several more coins, bringing the silver coin total to 450 — making it one of the largest hoards of Roman coins ever found in Lower Saxony, the statement reported.

"The discovery is of enormous scientific importance," Sebastian Messal, the archaeologist and regional department head overseeing the case at the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation, said in German to the German Press Agency (DPA).

The coins date to the early Roman Imperial period, after the Roman Republic had collapsed and emperors began ruling the empire. The Imperial period witnessed coexistence but also opposition between the Romans and Germanic tribes beyond the frontier, according to the statement. An upcoming analysis will enable researchers to give a more definitive date for when the hoard was likely buried.

"Only then can we assess where the artifacts came from and why they were buried here," the statement said. "Were they Romans or Germanic tribes?"

Since turning in the treasure, the now 31-year-old man who found the hoard has participated in a government-run metal detector course. The Hildesheim public prosecutor's office also dropped an investigation into his case because the statute of limitations had expired. In Lower Saxony, metal detectorists looking for artifacts need a permit to ensure they properly find and report discoveries in a way that won't disturb archaeological deposits or sites.

Roman emperor quiz: Test your knowledge on the rulers of the ancient empire

Archaeologists in the Czech Republic have revealed a trove of coins, gold jewelry and other artifacts that date to about 2,500 years ago, during the region's Celtic period.

According to a translated statement from the local government, the ancient objects were discovered during excavations at an undisclosed archaeological site in the Pilsen region in the west of the Czech Republic over the past five years.

"The main goal of the project was primarily to save movable archaeological finds that are immediately threatened by illegal prospectors, ploughing and natural influences," Jan Mařík, director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, said in the statement.

The site's exact location, in the rural north of the Pilsen region, is being kept secret to deter illegal searching by metal detectorists, the statement said.

Photographs of the site show archaeologists unearthing several small, detailed gold and silver coins that sport animal-like depictions, as well as pieces of gold jewelry.

Several other metal objects — including fragments of gold and silver ingots, as well as bronze buckles, pins, bracelets, pendants and a horse figurine — were also found at the site, the team reported in the statement.

Some of the artifacts are now on display at a museum in the nearby Czech village of Mariánská Týnice, which was a place of Christian pilgrimage from medieval times until the 18th century because of a prominent Cistercian monastery there.

Unknown mints

Many of the newfound gold and silver coins are from previously unknown mints. This discovery challenges current knowledge of Celtic coinage in the region, museum archaeologist Daniel Stráník said in the statement.

There were no signs of a permanent Celtic settlement at the site, the statement said, which implied it might have been a seasonal market or fair. "It … could be a place with a distinctly seasonal character of activities, during which people randomly lost mainly small to very small objects, such as coins," David Daněček, an archaeologist with the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, said in the statement.

A market or fair could also explain the fragments of gold and silver ingots found at the site. "These could have played an independent role in the exchange, but they could also have been mined under the supervision (with the consent) of the regional ruler," he said

Only some of the finds have gone on display in the museum. "The greatest unique items are stored in a safe place and will be presented only after a complete expert evaluation of the entire research," museum director Pavel Kodera said in the statement.

The Celts are often thought of as occupying only the Western fringe of ancient Europe, such as Ireland; but excavations and historical records show that they spread at times across much of the continent, from the Iberian Peninsula to Anatolia and what is now the Czech Republic.

The first phase of this pan-European Celtic culture is known as the Hallstatt culture (between about 1200 and 450 B.C.), while its peak is recognized as the La Tène culture (between about 450 and 50 B.C.) across France, Germany and other regions.

This is far from the first Celtic treasure discovery in the Czech Republic. In July, archaeologists reported finding several hundred coins and over 1,000 pieces of jewelry from a 2,200-year-old Celtic settlement in the country's Bohemia region.

Celtic quiz: Test your knowledge about these fierce tribes once described by Julius Caesar

Divers have recovered over 1,000 coins from a shipwreck off the east coast of Florida. The coins were discovered this summer within the historical "Treasure Fleet" of Spanish ships that sank in July 1715, when hundreds of sailors and over $400 million worth of gold and silver disappeared into the ocean.

In a statement, representatives for 1715 Fleet - Queens Jewels, a shipwreck salvage company authorized to dive to the wrecks, wrote that they had recovered more than 1,000 silver reales (also called "pieces of eight") and five gold escudos, along with other rare gold artifacts. Both types of coin were common currency in the Spanish colonies in the Americas.

"Each coin is a piece of history, a tangible link to the people who lived, worked, and sailed during the Golden Age of the Spanish Empire," Sal Guttuso, director of operations for 1715 Fleet - Queens Jewels, said in the statement. "Finding 1,000 of them in a single recovery is both rare and extraordinary."

The coins were most likely minted in the Spanish colonies of Mexico, Peru and Bolivia, according to the statement. Some have mint marks and visible dates, and their excellent condition suggests that they were part of a single collection that spilled and were quickly buried when one of the ships broke apart.

The 1715 fleet, also known as the "Plate Fleet," had been loaded with coins and other products from Spanish colonies, and the 12 ships set sail from Cuba on their annual trip back to Spain on July 24. After a few days of sailing, the fleet encountered an intense hurricane off the east coast of Florida. Eleven ships sank, and their remains were scattered over a span of 50 miles (80 kilometers). Some of the treasure was recovered soon after the disaster, but much of it remained under the ocean for centuries.

"Every find helps piece together the human story of the 1715 fleet," Guttuso said. The coins will be conserved and displayed to the public at local museums, according to the statement.

Exploration of the 1715 shipwrecks has produced other impressive finds over the past decade. In 2015, divers found an extremely rare Spanish coin called a "tricentennial royal" that had been minted for King Philip V of Spain, along with nearly $1 million worth of gold coins and gold chains. But that team, headed by Eric Schmitt of Booty Salvage, failed to report 50 coins they found in the shipwreck. Local authorities working with the FBI managed to recover most of the stolen coins in 2024.

Various treasures from the wrecked fleet are likely still hidden under the ocean. The fleet was said to be carrying jewels belonging to Philip V's second wife as part of her dowry, including a 74-carat emerald ring and 14-carat pearl earrings.

Under Florida law, removal of artifacts from shipwrecks is illegal unless a permit is secured. 1715 Fleet - Queens Jewels has exclusive rights to dive at the wrecks.

These two eagle-shaped pins were discovered in central Spain and date to the early sixth century, when the Visigoth Kingdom ruled the area. A popular symbol among the Visigoths, the predatory bird represented power — and eagle pins are often found in Visigoth women's graves.

These brooches, currently in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, are made of gold-plated bronze and measure about 4.6 inches (11.8 centimeters) tall. The cells in the eagle outline are inlaid in the cloisonné technique with red and blue-green glass as well as white stones. The eagles' eyes are blue gemstones. On the reverse side, pieces of the pin's spring mechanism and clasp remain.

During the Migration Period in Europe (fourth to eighth centuries), the power of the Roman Empire waned and groups such as the Visigoths (Western Goths) moved west from Central Europe into the Iberian Peninsula. They set up a kingdom based in Toledo, Spain, and art and writing flourished in the Visigoth Kingdom in the sixth and seventh centuries.

A recurring theme in Visigoth art was the eagle — a symbol of the supreme being and embodied power, according to Katharine Reynolds Brown, an art historian at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. And these eagle pins are often found in pairs in women's graves, the authors of the textbook "Art and Architecture of the Middle Ages" (Cornell University Press, 2023) wrote. The pins were likely used to secure women's clothing at the shoulder, according to The Walters Art Museum.

In the mid-seventh century, the Visigoth king ordered the establishment of "the Visigothic Code," a set of laws that was quite progressive for the time. Women were allowed to inherit land and titles and could arrange their own marriages, according to historian Suzanne Fonay Wemple. However, only a handful of names of powerful Visigoth women — largely consorts of Visigoth kings — are known from historical records.

Although the eagle brooches suggest their owner was an influential woman, the lack of rigorous excavations at the Alovera cemetery a century ago means we may never know if they were actually the property of a Visigoth queen.

Archaeologists near the Sea of Galilee have discovered a rare, nearly 1,400-year-old hoard of gold coins and jewelry dating to the Byzantine era.

The hoard contained 97 pure gold coins and dozens of jewelry pieces, including earrings inlaid with pearls, semi-precious stones and glass. A team found the treasure while investigating the ancient city of Hippos (also known as Sussita), which is on the slopes of the Golan Heights.

"It is among the five largest gold hoards of that period found in the region," Michael Eisenberg, an archaeologist at the University of Haifa and co-director of the excavation, told Live Science in an email. "The addition of jewelry pieces and small currency makes it more interesting and numismatically important. It's the first of its kind in Hippos so far."

Edie Lipsman, a metal detectorist, discovered the hoard in July while walking by a large stone and two ancient walls. "The device went crazy, I couldn't believe it — gold coins started appearing one after another," Lipsman said in a statement.

The coins feature different emperors, dating from the reign of the Byzantine emperor Justin I (518 to 527) to the early reign of Emperor Heraclius (610 to 613, although Heraclius ruled until 641). Some of the coins had remnants of fabric on them, indicating that the treasure had once been wrapped in cloth.

The coins include solidi, large coins of high gold content from the Byzantine Empire; semisses, which were worth half a solidus; and tremisses, which were worth a third of a solidus.

"When you find coins and jewelry nearly 1,400 years old that look new, it is a rare experience," Eisenberg said in the statement.

One of the tremisses was especially rare; it was likely minted in Cyprus in 610 by the general Heraclius the Elder and his son, who were both revolting against Emperor Phocas. The younger Heraclius won and established the Byzantine Heraclian dynasty, which ruled from 610 to 711.

"This is a rare find that adds an important layer to our understanding of the political and economic history of the period," Danny Syon, the excavation's numismatist (coin expert), said in the statement.

While it's unknown why the hoard was buried, history shows that Hippos was a tumultuous place during the seventh century. In 614, the armies from the Sasanian Empire, which included Iran and parts of the Middle East and Central Asia, invaded Byzantine Palestine. The residents of Christian cities in the region, including Hippos, hid their wealth as the foreign soldiers advanced, according to the statement.

The region remained a battle-heavy hotspot for many years. Jerusalem fell during the 614 attack, but the Byzantines retook the area about 15 years later. In 636, Muslim armies retook it again. Hippos declined during this time, and it was eventually abandoned after an earthquake hit Galilee in 749.

"The first half of the 7th century contains the largest number of emergency hoards of coins in gold and bronze," Eisenberg told Live Science. That's because the Sasanid and Muslim conquests led to widespread chaos at the time. "People were terrified and left relatively a lot of hoards, mainly coins."

The researchers plan to analyze the newfound hoard, which will include reading the coins, documenting the jewelry and doing in-depth research that will put the finds in a regional context, Eisenberg said.

And while it's too soon to know when the hoard will go on display, "I can imagine that from tomorrow, some museums will be interested," Eisenberg said.

Archaeologists have unearthed a dazzling gold wreath in a 2,100-year-old burial mound of a Thracian warrior and his horse. The unique headpiece is part of a set of gold jewelry excavated from the grave of the "Lord of Sakar," named after the mountain range in southeast Bulgaria where he was found.

"The golden treasures discovered in our lands testify to high craftsmanship, rich spiritual life and prosperous societies," Evelina Slavcheva, president of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, said in a statement.

The ancient burial mounds were discovered during digging related to the installation of a solar park in 2024. A team of archaeologists from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences excavated the burials and found that one contained the bones of a young woman and the other a middle-aged man.

Both tombs included many gold artifacts, but the man's grave is the richest ever discovered in Bulgaria, according to a translated social media post from the Municipality of Topolovgrad, where the site is located.

Due to the opulence of the man's burial, complete with the bones of his war horse, he has been dubbed the Lord of Sakar. He lived during the late Hellenistic period, around 150 to 100 B.C., and may have been a warrior aristocrat, according to the statement. At the beginning of the century, the area of Thrace was partly under Greek rule, but by the end of the century, the Romans had conquered it as part of their empire.

Preliminary research suggests the Lord of Sakar was about 35 to 40 years old when he died. The wreath — made from gilded silver — was found encircling his skull. Other artifacts discovered in his grave included ceramic and glass vessels, iron spears and a shield, silver jewelry and a unique gem-covered knife.

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The man's horse was also honored with numerous grave goods, including a gilded bronze decoration on his harness depicting the mythic hero Hercules defeating a giant. The harness featured other bronze depictions of animals, likely representing more of Hercules' exploits, as well as a gold headpiece with the image of a snake.

Less is known about the burial mound of the woman, who lived at the beginning of the second century B.C. Archaeologists recovered two pairs of well-preserved leather shoes; a wooden chest covered in gold, silver and jewels; and numerous gold, glass and bronze items. Near this mound was a small sanctuary dated to the second half of the second century B.C., where archaeologists found a large number of regional coins.

The Hellenistic period gold objects were revealed to the public on Aug. 12 at Bulgaria's National Archaeological Institute with Museum as part of an exhibition called "The Glitter of Hellenistic Gold. The Lord of Sakar." The exhibition is open through Oct. 17.

This gold pendant was discovered in 1930 at the cemetery of Chrysolakkos, which means "pit of gold," in the ancient Minoan town of Malia in Crete. Although the famed archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans suggested the jewelry depicted bees, the identity of the insects on the pendant and the meaning behind the design have been debated for nearly a century.

According to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum in Crete, where the pendant is on display, it is 1.8 inches (4.6 centimeters) long and weighs 0.2 ounces (5.5 grams) — about as much as a U.S. quarter. The ancient goldsmith combined several techniques to create the piece — filigree, granulation, repoussé and incised decoration — and the pendant is considered a "masterpiece of Minoan miniature art," according to the museum.

The pendant depicts two insects facing each other, with their heads and abdomens joined and their wings spread backward. Two legs of each insect appear to grasp a series of concentrically placed gold beads. Three small discs dangle from the wings and joined abdomens.

Some researchers suggest this accessory shows European honeybees (Apis mellifera) in the process of making honey, arguing that the bees are holding a honeycomb and have a drop of honey in their mouths.

"Honey and wax were important elements of the Minoan economy," according to the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, "while bees also appear to have been important Minoan religious symbols."

But this interpretation does not account for the three dangling circles, a group of researchers led by botanist E. Charles Nelson wrote in a 2021 study. These circles may represent the fruits of the Mediterranean hartwort (Tordylium apulum), an edible herb that's common in Crete and produces clusters of disc-shaped fruit with beaded margins.

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If the dangling discs represent this fruit, the insects being depicted may not be bees, the researchers argued. The insects on the pendant more closely resemble the mammoth wasp (Megascolia maculata), they said. When it feeds on flowering plants like the Mediterranean hartwort, the mammoth wasp appears to grab the pollen-producing parts of flowers, curling its abdomen around them, with its wings swept backward.

Exactly what the ancient goldsmith intended to represent with the pendant is still an open question. It's possible they wanted to depict bees and erroneously used wasps as a model. Regardless, experts agree that the pendant's creator was extremely skillful at working with gold.

"While the Malia pendant is often viewed as being associated with the craft of beekeeping," this may not be the case, Nelson and colleagues argued in the study. But in the end, "the jewel represents — indeed celebrates — the natural world of Crete."

An archaeology student from Florida struck gold in the U.K. just 90 minutes into her first-ever excavation, when she discovered a rare ninth-century artifact that may have had a religious or ceremonial use.

"I couldn't believe I'd found something so quickly into my first excavation," Yara Souza, a student at Newcastle University in the U.K. who is from Orlando, Florida, said in a statement. "It was actually quite overwhelming," she said, and "I was really geeking out over it!"

The enigmatic gold object is just 1.6 inches (4 centimeters) long and is shaped like a small knob. It is nearly identical to — but a bit larger than — a similar item discovered by a metal detectorist in 2021. That artifact has been identified as a ball-headed pin dated to roughly A.D. 800 to 1000, during the early medieval period.

Both gold artifacts were found at the same location near a major ancient Roman road, now called Dere Street, in the county of Northumberland in northeast England. This road was important in Roman times for sending supplies into the northernmost extent of the empire in Scotland in the second century.

Because gold was associated with high status, experts think the two similar artifacts are connected and may have had a ceremonial or religious use, rather than being a simple accessory.

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"We know that Dere Street continued to be a major thoroughfare long after the Romans," James Gerrard, a professor of Roman archaeology at Newcastle University who led the excavation, said in the statement. "It is possible that this pair of objects may have been deliberately buried."

Both objects will be analyzed further through the U.K.'s Portable Antiquities Scheme.

"This project is a great example of how metal detectorists and archaeologists can come together to add to our understanding of the past in Northumberland," Andrew Agate, the finds liaison officer for North East England, said in the statement.

Archaeologists in Iran have unearthed the lavish grave of a teenager who lived more than 3,000 years ago, when the region was part of the Greater Khorasan Civilization.

The woman died at about age 18, probably of natural causes. Her rich grave goods, including gold jewelry, indicate that she came from a wealthy family with "inherited status," according to a study published April 21 in the journal Iran.

The grave, at the Tepe Chalow archaeological site in northeast Iran's remote North Khorasan province, is one of the richest ever found from the Great Khorasan Civilization (GKC), study lead author Ali Vahdati, an archaeologist with Iran's cultural heritage ministry, told Live Science in an email.

One of the most remarkable grave goods was a crafted rectangular box made from black stone, rich in "chlorite" minerals, which had been decorated with carvings of snakes and scorpions.

The box was used to store cosmetics or "kohl" — a black powdered mineral often used as eyeliner in ancient times. The snake and scorpion depictions "may have served ritual or protective functions," the study authors wrote.

An extremely similar box had previously been found in a Bronze Age grave north of Tepe Chalow in the ancient region of Bactria, which now spans parts of Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan; and the Tepe Chalow box also seems to have been made from stone imported from Bactria, Vahdati said.

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Greater Khorasan

Vahdati first located the Tepe Chalow site ("Chalow Hills" in Persian) in 2006 during an archaeological survey of a nearby river basin, but was unable to return to excavate it until 2011.

A total of 48 graves have now been unearthed there, situated in widely spaced clusters and covered with low mounds that give the site its name.

Most of the graves date from the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), which was part of the Greater Khorasan Civilization — a Bronze Age polity with fortified settlements and monumental architecture that traded with both Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley until it began to decline in the 13th century B.C., Vahdati said.

But a few of the graves date from even earlier, from the late Chalcolithic ("Copper-Stone") Age in the fourth millennium B.C., when Tepe Chalow was first settled.

The grave of the teenage woman — known as "Grave 12" — was discovered in 2013, but the new study is the first time it has been described in detail, Vahdati said.

The exact age of the grave isn't yet known, but it's thought the woman buried there lived in the late third millennium B.C., the study authors said.

She was buried in a crouched position and lying on her right side, with her face turned to the southeast in what seems to have been an ancient tradition at the Tepe Chalow site, the authors wrote in the study.

"Inherited status"

As well as the elaborate cosmetics box, the young woman's grave contained two gold earrings; a gold finger ring; several pins made from ivory and bronze, including one shaped like a hand; a bronze mirror; several pottery vessels; and a bronze stamp seal depicting human feet.

Vahdati said similar stamp seals have been found at Bronze Age archaeological sites in southern Iran, and that it was one of several seals found in the grave that signified the woman's active role and social standing in her community.

He added that the ivory pins and beads of lapis lazuli indicated that her community had long-distance trade connections with other ancient regions, including what's now Afghanistan and the Indus Valley.

The woman buried in Grave 12 was an important person but was too young when she died to have achieved such status herself, Vahdati said. Instead, it's likely she inherited her social status and wealth from her family, either by birth or through marriage.

"The presence of such wealth in the grave of an adolescent remains unique within the Greater Khorasan Civilization archaeological record," Vahdati said. "At this stage we can only speak of elite status passed down through lineage, which is consistent with the hierarchical nature of GKC society."

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Scientists have used ultrafast high-intensity lasers to superheat gold to 14 times its melting point without turning the solid metal into a liquid.

The record-breaking experiment, which was described in a study published July 23 in the journal Nature, smashed a decades-old theory about the stability of solids and is the first reliable method to precisely measure the temperature of extremely hot systems, the researchers said.

Unusual states of matter, such as the plasma surrounding the sun or the high-pressure cores of planets, can reach incredible temperatures of millions of degrees Fahrenheit. However, actually putting a figure to this so-called "warm dense matter" has proven challenging, as scientists have struggled to measure the short-lived hot material fast enough to get reliable results.

"We have good techniques for measuring density and pressure of these systems, but not temperature," study co-lead author Bob Nagler, a scientist at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, said in a statement. "In these studies, the temperatures are always estimates with huge error bars, which really holds up our theoretical models — it's been a decades-long problem."

Speed was therefore key to taking a successful measurement. To achieve this, the team used 45-femtosecond (45 quadrillionths of a second) X-ray laser pulses to rapidly heat a thin gold film. As the radiation passed through the crystalline film, the atoms vibrated at a frequency directly related to their increasing temperature. A second pulse fired at the hot sample then scattered off these vibrating atoms, and the shift in frequency of these deflected beams provided a quantitative measurement of the atoms' speed and therefore temperature.

However, the researchers realized that they had achieved much more than a new measurement technique. "We were surprised to find a much higher temperature in these superheated solids than we initially expected, which disproves a long-standing theory from the 1980s," study co-lead author Thomas White, an associate professor of physics at the University of Nevada, Reno said in the statement.

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The solid gold sample reached a staggering 19,000 kelvins (33,700 degrees Fahrenheit, or 18,700 degrees Celsius) — 14 times the element's standard melting point of 1,337 kelvins (1,947 F, or 1,064 C). "This is possibly the hottest crystalline material ever recorded," White added in another statement. "I was expecting the gold to heat quite significantly before melting, but I wasn't expecting a fourteen-fold temperature increase!"

Normally, solids and liquids have a defined temperature at which they change from one state to another. But under certain conditions, materials can be heated beyond these limits without changing state — a phenomenon known as superheating. This effect is sometimes seen in water heated in a microwave. If the container is smooth, there are no irregularities around which bubbles can form so the liquid water bypasses 212 F (100 C) without boiling. However, the slightest disturbance can trigger "catastrophe," and the water explosively boils as this metastable state is broken.

In the 1980s, physicists calculated the limit of this superheating effect for solids as three times the melting point, which they dubbed the "entropy catastrophe." Above this point, the solid would theoretically have a greater entropy, or disorder, than its liquid form, breaking the second law of thermodynamics. As this law states that entropy must always increase, the idea that the neatly arranged particles of a solid could be more disordered than the random distribution of particles in a liquid is an impossible contradiction.

So how did the gold sample remain solid at 14 times its melting point? The team suggested that the sheer speed at which they heated the gold prevented the crystal structure from expanding during the timescale of the experiment.

"It's important to clarify that we did not violate the second law of thermodynamics," White said. "What we demonstrated is that these catastrophes can be avoided if materials are heated extremely quickly — in our case, within trillionths of a second."

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These two brooches were part of a small hoard discovered along with a gold arm ring in southwestern Jutland, Denmark. Dated to the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066), the brooches are decorated with ornamental wire bent into delicate shapes.

Each gold brooch measures about 3.3 inches (8.5 centimeters) in diameter and weighs between 2.1 to 2.6 ounces (60 to 75 grams), according to a 1994 study by Lene Frandsen, curator at the Varde Museum. The designs on the brooches include examples of both Norse and Christian art, according to the National Museum of Denmark, where the accessories are on display.

One brooch includes four forward-facing animal heads in a Norse style, suggesting it was made locally by a Danish or Viking goldsmith. The other brooch has leaves and vines that may connect to Christianity, as grapevines were used in early Christian art to represent Jesus as the "true vine of life" and the idea of the resurrection.

During the Viking age, Jutland was an advanced center of goldsmithing. Still, the Hornelund brooches are "completely unique in the Danish jewelry collection," archaeologist Władyslaw Duczko wrote in a 1987 study. Some may have been made for export, as several similar brooches have been discovered in Sweden. And it's possible that the Jutland goldsmiths got their decoration ideas from jewelers in Slavic countries like Estonia, Duczko wrote, where similar swirling patterns have been found on accessories dated to the late 10th century.

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The Hornelund brooches, however, are somewhat mysterious even today. They were recovered by a servant tilling his landlord's field in 1892. Historical records show that the landowner turned the hoard over to the National Museum of Denmark and was paid 295 Danish krone — worth about $4,000 USD today.

But the farm was not archaeologically investigated at the time, and recent excavations there have yielded no new information on the hoard, according to Frandsen. So experts do not yet know if the jewelry came from a grave, a homestead or a hastily buried cache of wealth. They hope that one day excavations will yield more clues to the meaning of the Hornelund hoard.

​​In pursuit of prestige and riches, wealthy people across medieval Europe worked in vain to transmute everyday metals into gold. Today, this process, known as chrysopoeia, is mostly dismissed as an alchemical dream. But is there any science to show that metals can be turned into gold?

In fact, there is — but it would be far from a profitable business, evidence shows.

The idea of transmuting metals to gold goes back to ancient Greece and the philosopher Zosimos of Panopolis. He believed transforming lesser metals into gold was a reflection of the purification and redemption of the soul and the work had a deep spiritual significance. When the concept reemerged in medieval Europe, it was with a purely practical focus — converting a cheap metal into gold was a sure fire route to riches.

"Natural philosophers had this idea of ripening," Umberto Veronesi, an archaeologist and heritage scientist at the NOVA University Lisbon in Portugal, told Live Science. "Base metals were seen as impure stages and would eventually ripen to the purest form of all, which was gold. The only problem was that it would take a very long time for this to happen in the Earth."

Alchemists believed that if they could only create the philosopher's stone — a mythical substance — they would be able to catalyze this ripening process. Metals were thought to contain a mixture of fundamental ingredients: mercury, sulfur and salt. Therefore, by rearranging these components and drawing out any impurities, all metals would ultimately turn to gold, they hypothesized.

"Chrysopoeia was generally consistent with theories of matter and theories of transformation at the time," Veronesi said. "Nobody really doubted that this could be done."

Related: Which is rarer: Gold or diamonds?

The emergence of modern science during the 17th and 18th centuries gradually discredited these ideas, and alchemy was abandoned in favor of the new disciplines of chemistry and physics. However, incredibly, nuclear scientists have held the secrets to this legendary transformation for almost a century.

Today, we know that the identity of an element is determined by the number of protons in its nucleus. Much-coveted gold atoms contain 79 protons, while lead has 82.

"The nucleus is held together by the strong force, and it's very difficult to remove a proton or neutron," said Alexander Kalweit, a physicist working at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.

However, rearranging these fundamental components of an atom means it's theoretically possible to convert one element into another. "If you have enough energy, you can actually perform such operations," Kalweit said. "When you remove three protons from the lead nucleus, you have created a gold nucleus."

The first successful transmutation of another metal into gold was reported in 1941, when Harvard scientists used a particle accelerator to fire lithium and deuterium nuclei into atoms of mercury, which contains one proton more than gold does. The high-energy particles knocked protons and neutrons from the mercury nuclei, creating three short-lived radioactive isotopes of gold, which quickly decayed because the high-energy nuclei were unstable.

Forty years later, this extraordinary achievement was repeated by Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Glenn Seaborg at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. His team was investigating the fragmentation of bismuth nuclei in relativistic (speed-of-light) collisions and converted several thousand atoms of the element into gold by bombarding the sample with carbon and neon nuclei in a particle accelerator.

Today, research teams at particle accelerators around the world continue to report the production of gold as a by-product from their experiments. At the Large Hadron Collider, Kalweit's team is investigating the collisions of lead ions at close to the speed of light.

"In the head-on collisions, we essentially liberate the quarks that are inside the protons and neutrons, and they, for a short time, form a state of matter that existed a few microseconds after the Big Bang in the early universe," he explained. "It's the so-called quark gluon plasma."

These head-on collisions are so intense that the protons and neutrons are completely destroyed. But lower-energy near-miss interactions — where the particles are extremely close but not touching — generate a powerful electromagnetic field that knocks protons out of the lead nuclei. The result: The team detected around 29-trillionths of a gram of gold during a three-year experimental run.

However, despite having achieved the alchemist's dream, it's unlikely that nuclear physicists will ever turn a profit by synthesizing gold in a particle accelerator. The expense of building and running a facility like the Large Hadron Collider is astronomical compared with the value of the volume of gold produced; it's estimated that Seaborg's experiments in the 1980s cost around a trillion times the price of the gold they produced. Plus, the rarity of interesting interactions means researchers must wade through billions of data points to even identify the transformed atoms.

"Since the 1940s, there are many experiments which have produced gold," Kalweit said. "But what is common to all of them is that none of them is even remotely close to being profitable."

Periodic table of elements quiz: How many elements can you name in 10 minutes?

A 2,200-year-old Celtic settlement containing several hundred coins and over 1,000 pieces of jewelry has been discovered in the Bohemia region of the Czech Republic.

The site, "unparalleled in its scale and character in Bohemia," held a vast number of ancient riches, including amber and fine pottery, Museum of Eastern Bohemia representatives said in a translated statement. The site was not fortified, suggesting that the people who lived were major players in regional trade.

The settlement was discovered by archaeologists who were surveying the area before a motorway was built. In addition to the valuable artifacts, they found the remains of buildings, including dwellings, production facilities and at least one religious sanctuary, according to the statement.

The settlement, near the city of Hradec Králové in the north-central Czech Republic, was large — about 62 acres (25 hectares), or about the size of nearly 47 American football fields, said Tomáš Mangel, a professor of archaeology at the University of Hradec Králové who is co-leading the excavation.

Some of the coins are silver, and some are gold, the statement said. While it's not yet clear exactly how many coins have been found, there appear to be several hundred, Mangel told Live Science in an email. The jewelry includes "pieces of bronze and iron brooches, fragments of armlets, metallic components of belts, glass beads and armlets," Mangel said.

The site dates to the La Tène culture, an Iron Age culture that flourished in parts of Europe from roughly 450 to 40 B.C. The culture is generally associated with the Celts and has similarities in the crafting of its art and artifacts, many of which have anthropomorphic designs.

The newly found settlement helps us better understand how settlements were organized between the third century and the first century B.C., Mangel said.

Related: Were the Celts matriarchal? Ancient DNA reveals men married into local, powerful female lineages

Who lived here?

Historically, the Celts were different groups that lived across continental Europe, including the Gauls in France and the Celtiberians in Iberia. Traditionally, the Celtic people who lived in Bohemia were believed to be from a tribe called the Boii. However, Mangel said we cannot be sure that the Boii actually lived at the newfound site. There were other Celtic groups that lived in the region and no inscriptions have been found at the site that tell us who exactly was living there.

"Bohemia is traditionally really connected with [the] Boii," Mangel said. "But the research [done recently] shows that we can only say that [the] Boii were settled somewhere in Central Europe."

While some researchers used to think the name "Bohemia" came from the word "Boii," he said, the two words may not be directly related. The name Boii was connected to Boiohaemum, which was an ancient name for the region, Mangel said. The name Boiohaemum was in turn connected to Bohemia, which today is part of the Czech Republic.

The "connection Boii - Boiohaemum - Bohemia - Czech Republic is rather cliché based on misinterpretations of historical sources in the 19th and earlier 20th [century]," Mangel said. "It is simply not correct."

"Amber route corridor"

The discovery of the rich artifacts, including the amber and fine pottery, suggests that the people who lived there likely traded amber and other products on routes across Europe, the statement said, noting that luxurious ceramics may have been made at the settlement.

Maciej Karwowski, an archaeologist at the University of Vienna who was not involved with the excavation, told Live Science in an email that "the newly discovered site is particularly interesting."

It is similar to other settlements found on the "amber route corridor," Karwowski said. This trade system transported amber from the Baltic and North seas to Central Europe during this time period.

A museum exhibit featuring some of the artifacts from the settlement will debut during the winter holidays, the statement said.

Celtic quiz: Test your knowledge about these fierce tribes once described by Julius Caesar

In 1860, a farmer was tilling a field in central Slovakia when he unearthed a spectacular paneled gold Byzantine crown. For more than a century, experts have argued whether it belonged to the 11th-century ruler Constantine IX Monomachos and how the crown ended up on the far northern reaches of the Byzantine Empire.

Constantine IX reigned from 1042 to 1055. His last name Monomachos — meaning "one who fights alone," or essentially "the gladiator" in Greek — distinguished him as part of an aristocratic family that was active in the politics of the Byzantine Empire. But he was not born into the royal family and ruled as emperor only because he was the spouse of Empress Zoë, and they shared the throne with Zoë's sister Theodora.

The Monomachos Crown, in the collection of the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest, consists of seven gold plates, each with a rounded top and colorful enamel decorations. The largest of the plates is 4.5 inches (11.5 centimeters) tall and depicts Constantine IX holding a cavalry standard in his right hand and a purple silk roll in his left, which were both imperial symbols of leadership. An inscription in Greek on the central panel reads, "Constantine, Emperor of the Romans, the Monomachos."

Related: Assyrian swimmers: 2,900-year-old carving of soldiers using inflatable goat skins to cross a river

Flanking Constantine IX are panels depicting Empress Zoë on his right and Empress Theodora on his left. Both are labeled as "most pious" in Greek. Rounding out the crown are four panels decorated with dancers and the personification of two Virtues: Justice and Humility.

According to the Hungarian National Museum, the symmetrical holes on the sides of the gold plates may mean they were originally attached to a fabric cap rather than fastened together into a stand-alone crown.

But the meaning of the crown and the person who really owned it have been debated for decades.

In 1994, Byzantine scholar Nikolaos Oikonomides argued that the crown was actually a 19th-century forgery, basing this claim on unusual choices in the imperial clothing, errors in the Greek inscriptions, along with the crown's discovery in present-day Slovakia, far from the seat of imperial Byzantine power in Istanbul.

But art historian Etele Kiss rebutted those claims in a 2000 study, pointing out similarities between the imperial clothing and other Byzantine art, the fact that the Greek errors are largely accents that suggest a simple shift in pronunciation, and noting the crown may have ended up in Nitra as a diplomatic gift from Constantine IX to a local ruler.

The Monomachos Crown is one of only three surviving Byzantine crowns, but it is currently impossible to draw final conclusions about many aspects of it, Kiss said. Additional research is needed to fully understand the significance of the gold paneled headwear.

A stunning gold ring lost at a medieval castle in Slovakia over 700 years ago has been rediscovered. The jewelry was likely worn by a bishop and includes an unusual Sri Lankan reddish-purple sapphire set in a band flanked by lions.

"Such a ring embodied deep spiritual meanings, protective powers, and societal status, allowing the wearer to display wealth while also seeking the divine protection associated with the symbols they bore," Noémi Beljak Pažinová, an archaeologist at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia, told Live Science in an email.

Beljak Pažinová led a team of researchers in studying the ring, which was discovered at Zvolen Castle in central Slovakia. A treasure hunter found the ring in 2001, but archaeologists didn't receive it until March 2023. The researchers published their findings online June 4 in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

Although rings were common accessories for both men and women in medieval Europe, the discovery of a gold ring with a valuable gemstone is extremely unusual, the researchers wrote in the study.

To analyze the ring, the researchers used nondestructive techniques, including Raman spectroscopy, which analyzes scattered light to figure out the chemical composition of a material, and micro-X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, which uses X-rays to determine the elements in a material. They determined that the band was made from 18-karat gold and that the gem is a 2-carat corundum, a hard mineral that forms both rubies and sapphires.

"The primary difference between sapphires and rubies is their color," Beljak Pažinová explained. Rubies are red because of the inclusion of chromium, while sapphires are found in a variety of colors. "We are inclined to believe that it is a sapphire," Beljak Pažinová said.

Related: Medieval crowns of Eastern European royalty hidden in cathedral wall since World War II finally recovered

The trace elements present in the gemstone suggest that the corundum in the ring came from Sri Lanka, which has been an important source of the mineral since Roman times and is still known for its sapphire trade, the researchers said. The gemstone likely arrived in Central Europe via historical trade routes through Aleppo (in Syria) or Constantinople, the researchers wrote.

The lion on the gold band is also a rare example of a symbolic animal motif on a medieval ring, according to the study. Lions were popular heraldic animals in the Middle Ages and considered a sign of strength, courage and royalty. They were also a symbol of resurrection in Christianity.

"Bishops were required to wear such rings as an official symbol known as bishops' rings of office," Beljak Pažinová said, and therefore "we can consider a high ecclesiastical official as the bearer of this ring."

But when the ring was lost and who originally wore it are still open questions. The castle fell into disuse in the second half of the 14th century, according to the researchers, and the ring was an accidental find from the residential courtyard. The style of the ring, though, places it around 1300.

The gold band with the reddish-purple sapphire and lion imagery is unique in medieval Europe, the researchers wrote.

Gold is a heavy metal and one of Earth's rarer elements, formed in space when neutron stars collide. But just how rare is gold on Earth, and how much of it is there in the world now?

To answer these questions, it is easiest to start with the amount of gold that humans have mined to date. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that throughout history, humans have extracted about 206,000 tons (187,000 metric tons) of gold from rocks and rivers, with much of the gold mined and produced today used to make jewelry.

This estimate is significantly smaller than the one given by the World Gold Council, which states that 238,391 tons (216,265 metric tons) of gold has been mined to date — an amount that would fit in a cube measuring approximately 72 feet (22 meters) on each side. About 45% of this gold has been used to craft jewelry, 22% is kept in collections as gold bars and coins, and 17% is stored in central banks, the council notes.

Humans have mined a sizable proportion of the gold that can be economically extracted from Earth's crust, but there are still reserves left. In the most recent USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries report for gold, the agency found that there are roughly 70,550 tons (64,000 metric tons) of gold still sitting in economically viable deposits worldwide. The countries with the largest untapped gold reserves are Russia, Australia and South Africa, the report indicated, but China extracted and brought more gold to market than any other country in 2024.

Experts distinguish between reserves, or the portions of an ore deposit that can be economically extracted, and resources, which are ore deposits that researchers and companies have less geological knowledge about and confidence in. According to the World Gold Council, which pulls its data from the research consultancy Metals Focus, global gold reserves amount to 60,370 tons (54,770 metric tons), while gold resources are estimated to weigh about 145,626 tons (132,110 metric tons).

Related: Why is gold so soft?

Taken together, the USGS and World Gold Council estimates suggest there are between 277,000 and 299,000 tons (251,000 to 271,000 metric tons) of gold in human objects and known crustal deposits. But there is much uncertainty in that number.

What's more, most of the gold on Earth is not in concentrated deposits or circulating above ground. Tiny flecks and nuggets of gold that aren't worth extracting occur throughout the crust, and such particles are especially widespread in seawater and igneous rocks, according to the University of California, Berkeley. The concentration of gold in Earth's crust is about 4 parts per billion, or 0.004 grams per metric ton, so all the particles in the crust put together likely weigh around 441 million tons (400 million metric tons), according to The Royal Mint.

If that sounds like a lot of gold, it's still only a fraction of what the planet actually holds, according to experts. The amount of gold in Earth's crust is dwarfed by the amount locked away in the planet's core, which geologists say holds 99% of the world's gold — enough to coat the planet in a layer 1.6 feet (0.5 m) thick.

When Earth formed, most of the gold that was available sank into the planet's core due to its density, Chris Voisey, an ore deposit geologist and research fellow at Monash University in Australia, told Live Science in an email.

"Consider that 99.5% of the Earth's mass formed when things were molten and could differentiate based on density (so, gold would sink to the core)," Voisey said. The remaining 0.5% landed later on the planet during the "Late Heavy Bombardment," a period between 4.1 billion and 3.8 billion years ago when Earth was violently pummeled by meteorites. That 0.5% holds the gold that geologists and resource explorers find in rocks and concentrated as ore deposits today, Voisey said.

The gold in this tiny fraction of Earth's mass did not sink into the core because the planet had already formed a solid crust when it reached the planet, Voisey said. "A lot of Earth's precious metals that form ore deposits is believed to be sourced from this event, since it isn't locked in the iron-nickel core," he said.

Since the Late Heavy Bombardment, the amount of gold on Earth has not changed much with inputs from space. Deliveries of gold via meteorites are "more or less negligible," Voisey said, and gold that is already on Earth "is simply shuffled around by geological processes which can form ore deposits."

Given that so much of Earth's gold is in the core and that concentrations are so variable in the crust, Voisey said he "seriously doubts" that researchers could ever accurately measure all the gold on the planet. It would also be "impossible" to determine exactly how much gold humans haven't discovered yet, he said.

New details of gold coins found off the coast of Colombia around the "world's richest shipwreck" verify they are from the Spanish galleon San José, a treasure ship that sank in 1708 during a cannon duel with British warships.

The galleon was laden with up to 200 tons (180 metric tons) of gold, silver and uncut gemstones when it sank, and the treasure's modern value may be as high as $17 billion, Live Science previously reported.

Colombia's government hopes to recover some of the artifacts for a dedicated museum that is yet to be built. But there are opposing claimants, including the Spanish government, which asserts the wrecks of its naval vessels, no matter how old, remain the property of Spain.

The authors of a new study, published Tuesday (June 10) in the journal Antiquity, include researchers from Colombia's navy and other Colombian authorities. Their analysis included studying images taken by remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) of dozens of rough coins that now lie scattered around the wreck at a depth of roughly 1,970 feet (600 meters).

In 2015, Colombia's government announced that it had located the San José in the Colombian Caribbean near the city of Cartagena, and the observations were made during four ROV expeditions to the wreck in 2021 and 2022.

According to the study, the observations confirm that the coins and the nearby wreck debris are from the 1708 wreck of the San José.

Related: Treasure trove of gold and jewels recovered from a 366-year-old shipwreck in the Bahamas

Sunken gold

The researchers describe seeing dozens of rough gold coins — the total number is not known — at several locations within the shipwreck, surrounded by other artifacts from the cargo, guns and everyday life as it was on board more than 300 years ago.

They used high-definition photography to closely examine the coins and determined that they had an average diameter of 1.3 inches (32.5 millimeters) and a likely weight of 27 grams (about 1 ounce).

The ROV images revealed the coins' designs. One side has a variation of a Jerusalem cross — one large cross surrounded by four smaller crosses — and a shield decorated with castles and lions. On the back, these coins show the "Crowned Pillars of Hercules above the waves of the sea," with the waves being unique to the Lima Mint, the researchers wrote in the study.

They also noted that some bore distinctive marks that had been hammered into the metal, including the marks of an assayer — an expert who tests the purity of metal — from the Spanish mint in Lima, now the capital of Peru, in 1707.

By cross-referencing their observations with colonial records, the researchers determined that the coins and other artifacts came from the San José, the study said.

Study lead author Daniela Vargas Ariza, a maritime archaeologist at Colombia's Almirante Padilla Naval Cadet School in Cartagena and the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History in Bogotá, said these colonial Spanish coins were often cut from gold or silver ingots.

"Hand-struck, irregularly shaped coins — known as cobs in English and macuquinas in Spanish — served as the primary currency in the Americas for more than two centuries," she said in a statement.

Richest shipwreck

The San José wreck is one of the most valuable ever found, and there are intense legal disputes about who has the right to recover it — although it's not known if that's possible. Colombia hopes some of the treasure could be sold to pay for the archaeological recovery effort of the entire ship, but Colombian law may prohibit selling anything deemed a historical artifact.

Spain also claims the shipwreck and all of its treasure, under an international convention on the Law of the Sea that states the wrecks of naval vessels belong to their original nation. But Colombia hasn't ratified that convention, and critics say the provision is intended to protect modern warship technologies, not centuries-year-old treasure wrecks.

The San José was leading a treasure fleet of 18 ships from Cartagena bound for Europe on June 8, 1708, when it was attacked by a squadron of five British warships; Britain was Spain's enemy during the War of the Spanish Succession at that time.

The three largest Spanish galleons fired back with their cannons, but the San José blew up and sank when its stores of gunpowder exploded; most of the Spanish fleet fled to safety in the harbor at Cartagena.

Three centuries after horse-drawn chariots were introduced to Scandinavia, a Bronze Age artisan crafted the Sun Chariot, a stunningly detailed object that may represent an ancient mythological scene or even a rare calendar.

The Sun Chariot was discovered in 1902 by a peat farmer who was working on the Trundholm moor in Denmark, about 42 miles (67 kilometers) northwest of Copenhagen. It was found in numerous pieces and has since been reconstructed by experts at the National Museum of Denmark, where it is on display.

Taken as a whole, the bronze object is about 21 inches (54 centimeters) long and 14 inches (35 cm) tall. The large disk is covered in a thin layer of gold on one side and decorated with spirals, which are commonly found on Nordic Bronze Age artifacts, according to Flemming Kaul, curator of the prehistory collections at the National Museum.

Related: Prosciutto di Portici: A portable sundial that looks like a pork leg — and it was likely owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law before Mount Vesuvius erupted

Kaul has interpreted the artifact as representing a prehistoric Bronze Age idea of the voyage of the sun, as the divine horse pulls the sun across the heavens from east to west during the day and into the underworld at night. Spirals on the disk and the use of wheels may indicate the sun's constant journey, and the object may have been used by ancient priests to demonstrate the astronomical myth.

An alternative interpretation of the disk is that it represents a prehistoric calendar. In a 2006 study, Danish archaeologist Klavs Randsborg argued that there was an interesting mathematical pattern in the concentric circles on the disk, and he pointed out that the total number of ornamental designs on the gilded side of the sun is 52, or the number of weeks in a year. And a 2008 study by astronomers Rahlf Hansen and Christine Rink posited that the Sun Chariot was a movable calendar that could predict lunar eclipses.

In 2011, the Sun Chariot was put on the Danish 1,000-krone banknote. As of June 1, 2025, however, this banknote is no longer legal tender due to changes the Danish government is making to its cash currency.

An amateur metal detectorist has discovered a 1,000-year-old gold Viking arm-ring — a piece of craftsmanship created by braiding together eight gold rods — that was snipped apart, likely to help its owner cover costs during financial transactions.

The arm-ring was found by Ronald Clucas this spring on the Isle of Man, an island in the Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland. Numerous artifacts from the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) have been found on the isle, which Vikings initially used for trading and later settled, starting in the 800s.

"It was quite a big shock to discover this lovely piece of gold, I couldn't really believe it at first!" Clucas, a member of the Manx Detectorist Society, said in a statement from Manx National Heritage. "Gold generally gives a very low signal on the detector, so you can't really predict what is going to be uncovered."

The goldsmith who made the arm-ring about a millennium ago was clearly skilled, braiding eight gold rods together. Clucas found the ring folded in two, measuring about 1.5 inches (3.7 centimeters) wide and 3 inches (7.7 cm) long. It weighs nearly 1 ounce (27.3 grams), a "significant weight" for jewelry this size, according to the statement.

On May 29, the Isle of Man Deputy Coroner of Inquests declared that the arm-ring was "treasure," a designation given to U.K. artifacts made of precious metals that are at least 300 years old.

The arm-ring is the second piece of "Viking treasure" found by Clucas, who has been metal detecting for 50 years. Previously, he unearthed a silver ingot and a lead ingot, which he found in 2005.

Related: 2,000-year-old spoon from Isle of Man may have been used in blood rituals for fortune telling

A bracelet that's both bling and bank

The arm-ring, which dates to around A.D. 1000 to 1100, was likely used both as jewelry and as currency, according to Allison Fox, curator for archaeology at Manx National Heritage.

"Jewellery items such as this had several functions in the Viking Age both as prized personal possessions and visible displays of wealth," Fox said in the statement. "They were easily portable and were also used to cover costs in financial transactions."

Often, Viking Age transitions included hacksilver (also known as hacksilber), or pieces of silver that were weighed to calculate their worth for financial deals. On the Isle of Man, there was a dual economy of coins and bullion pieces of silver or gold. However, gold pieces are rarer from the Viking Age, making this intricate bracelet an uncommon find.

The arm-ring has likely been cut twice, possibly from two different transactions, Fox noted.

"One cut removed the terminal end of the arm-ring, the other one cut the original complete arm-ring almost in half," Fox said. "For reasons we will never know, this fragment of gold arm-ring was buried in the ground until discovered. It may have been hidden for safe-keeping, could just have been lost or may even have been buried as an offering to the Viking Gods."

The arm-ring is now on display in the Manx Museum's Viking Gallery, alongside other Viking Age hoards of silver and gold.

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

A blue-eyed boy buried in southern Germany more than 1,300 years ago was interred with rare riches — including a small sword, silk clothes and a gold cross — indicating that he came from a wealthy local family before he died of an infection at about 18 months old, a new analysis finds.

The remains of the child, dubbed the "Ice Prince" because archaeologists flash froze the burial chamber to excavate its contents in a single block, were discovered in 2021 near the town of Mattsies in Bavaria.

The child's tomb was found south of the Upper Germanic Limes that once defined the Roman frontier. But the Western Roman Empire was extinguished in this area when Germanic tribes invaded in the early fifth century — centuries before the boy died in the seventh century.

The latest research includes anatomical studies that estimated the boy was about 1.5 years old when he died, and radiocarbon dating that indicates he died between A.D. 670 and 680. A strontium isotope analysis of the enamel on his teeth indicated he was born in the region and had fed mainly on breast milk. Analysis of his DNA suggested the boy had blue eyes and light-colored hair. The studies also indicated that he had died from "chronic infection" caused by a middle-ear infection.

The boy was buried in leather clothes and with a small sword on a richly decorated belt. Other details of the well-furnished grave and the rare remnants of a silk garment — a sign of wealth — indicated that the boy came from a locally important family, archaeologists for the German state of Bavaria said in a translated statement.

Related: 1,800-year-old warhorse cemetery held remains of a beloved horse — and a man considered an 'outsider' to Roman society

"Ice Prince"

The toddler's stone burial chamber was discovered amid the remains of a Roman-age villa near Mattsies during excavations for new buildings, according to the translation of a 2021 statement. Archaeologists said the villa seemed to have been repurposed as a burial place for the child, perhaps in line with the concerns of his family.

"The boy's death must have shocked his regionally important family," the statement said. "They apparently made great efforts to give the child a burial in keeping with his social status."

The stone ceiling and walls of the burial chamber were tightly sealed against sediment, so the entire burial was in "excellent condition," the statement said.

State government archaeologists decided to flash freeze the contents of the entire burial chamber using liquid nitrogen so it could be excavated as a single block over 14 hours. The researchers used liquid nitrogen because its temperature of minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 196 degrees Celsius) prevents freezing water from creating large and destructive ice crystals, the statement said.

Rich grave

The latest studies reveal that the body was laid on a fur blanket within the chamber and that one of the boy's garments was a long-sleeved shirt made from linen and trimmed with strips of silk. At that time, silk was available only through the Byzantine Empire, and it was a rare status symbol. The fabrics' exceptional preservation due to the tightly sealed grave makes them an even more exceptional find, the researchers said.

The boy was buried with silver bracelets on his arms and silver spurs attached to his shoes, according to the statement. Nowadays, most toddlers start walking at between 8 and 18 months of age, so it's possible this toddler had started walking before his death.

The burial chamber also contained a cloth decorated with a cross made from thin strips of gold, which may indicate early Christian beliefs; Bavaria didn't become fully Christianized until after Charlemagne conquered it in the eighth century. In addition, several grave goods — including a bronze basin, a comb, a wooden bowl and a drinking cup with silver fittings — had been placed on a woven mat at the foot of the body.

The archaeologists also found the remains of hazelnuts, apples and a pear, which were presumably whole when they were placed in the burial chamber. What were once thought to be the bones of a dog have now been identified as the dismembered remains of a piglet, which may have been cooked and placed as a food offering.

The investigations have also shown that the building where the Ice Prince was found was renovated twice in the years after the burial, which indicated that the site was used over a long period as a place of remembrance of the dead, the statement said.

Gold mining is literally sucking the Amazon rainforest dry, creating an environment where trees cannot grow, according to a new study.

Researchers found that suction mining not only degrades the soil, it also drains moisture and traps heat, creating extreme conditions where even seedlings cannot survive.

"It's like trying to grow a tree in an oven," study co-author Josh West, a professor of Earth sciences and environmental studies at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, said in a statement.

Throughout the Amazon, gold mining accounts for nearly 10% of deforestation, and it's increasing significantly. The amount of land in the Amazon used for mining gold has doubled since 2018 following a sharp increase in the price of the precious metal, according to the Amazon Mining Watch. In 2023, an estimated 5,000 square miles (13,000 square kilometers) was being mined for gold.

The impact on the landscape is devastating, with ground temperatures reaching 145 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) and several meters of dry sand, natural regeneration of the land is nearly impossible, except in areas near water sources.

In a study published Monday (June 2) in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, researchers were looking to find out why trees fail to regrow on land that has been mined for gold.

Related: Tropical rainforests could get too hot for photosynthesis and die if climate crisis continues, scientists warn

The scientists studied two abandoned mining sites in the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru.

This mining practice used at the sites, run primarily by small-scale ventures, uses a dredge that requires large volumes of water to suction sediment and sand from river and stream beds in search of gold particles.

The effect of "water cannons," as lead author Abra Atwood, a researcher at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, describes them, is that they wash away the clay- and nutrient-rich topsoil. The landscape is transformed into dry ponds, some as large as soccer fields, surrounded by mounds of sand up to 22 feet ( 7 meters) high.

The team used remote sensing methods; electrical resistivity analysis, a technique that measures how easily moisture moves through soil; soil property measurements; and thermal imaging cameras to assess the impact of mining on the land.

They discovered that mining waste acts like a sieve, allowing water to seep through much faster than in primary forest soils (nearly 50 feet (15 m) per day compared to just 0.2 feet (0.074 m) per day in the forest). This leaves the soil with less moisture and more heat, exacerbated by the lack of shade due to deforestation, making it virtually impossible for new roots to take hold. Replanted seedlings "simply die," Atwood told Live Science.

However, areas near the edges of the dry ponds and in low-lying zones have higher soil moisture, lower temperatures, and therefore better natural regeneration.

To gauge the magnitude of this problem, the team found that between 1980 and 2017, small-scale mining destroyed more than 367 square miles (950 square km)) of rainforest in this territory — an area more than seven times the size of San Francisco — and operations continue to grow, putting biodiversity and Indigenous territories at risk. "The current landscape in the suction mining areas where we worked provides very little in terms of ecosystem services beyond gold mining. Habitat loss will also deeply impact long-term biodiversity," Atwood said.

In response, the researchers propose specific recommendations for redesigning the landscape and improving water retention in the affected areas. The first step would be to fill the mining ponds to restore flat terrain. This would bring tree roots closer to groundwater, increase moisture retention, and stimulate plant regeneration. Then, the topsoil should be restored.

However, Atwood cautioned that these actions face significant financial, logistical, and even political challenges. Illegal gold mining impacts many Amazonian regions, including Peru, Brazil, Suriname and Guyana.

"Our message is to focus efforts on natural water sources to give reforestation initiatives the greatest chance of survival," she noted. "To address a large-scale problem, you need a large-scale solution, even if the financial costs are high."

"There's only one Amazon rainforest," West said in the statement. "It's a living system unlike anything else on Earth. If we lose it, we lose something irreplaceable."

Pirates and the loot they plundered have long fascinated us. Stories like "Treasure Island" and movies like "Pirates of the Caribbean" have helped increase the popularity of these sea raiders. In this countdown, Live Science looks at some of the biggest treasures that pirates have ever plundered.

While valuables were plundered by well known pirates, such as Capt. William Kidd, others were captured by pirates that are much more obscure. Many of the pirates that captured these stashes didn't live long to enjoy them, although a few managed to survive the ensuing manhunts.

Henry Every captures the largest pirate haul in history

In September 1695, a fleet of pirate ships commanded by Henry Every (also known as Henry Avery) attacked a convoy of 25 ships that belonged to the Mughal Empire of South Asia. They succeeded in capturing several ships, including the Ganj-i-Sawai, a ship belonging to the Mughal emperor himself. They stole more than 500,000 pieces of gold and silver, making it the largest prize taken by pirates in history, Srinivas Reddy, a visiting assistant professor of religion studies at Brown University, wrote in a 2020 paper published in the journal Asian Review of World Histories.

Every soon found himself on the run as the British government and the East India Company, a British trading company that conducted extensive business with the Mughals, both put large bounties on his head. While Every was never captured, it's not clear what his fate ultimately was.

William Kidd captures the ship "Quedagh Merchant"

On Jan. 30, 1698, Capt. William Kidd captured a vessel named the "Quedagh Merchant" that was loaded with gold, silver, silks, satins and other valuable goods. Kidd was a privateer, which meant that he had permission from the English crown to attack ships that belonged to England's enemies. However, the Quedagh Merchant didn't belong to England's enemies; it had an English captain and carried goods that belonged to the East India Company and the Mughal Empire, Reddy noted in the paper.

Kidd was branded a pirate by England and was captured in New York City. He was transported to London where he was hanged in 1701. What happened to William Kidd's treasure has long been a source of speculation and led to stories that he hid it somewhere before his capture.

Capture of the ship "Nossa Senhora Do Cabo"

On April 8, 1721, a group of pirate ships captured the Portuguese ship Nossa Senhora Do Cabo (our lady of the Cape) that was carrying cargo being transported for two individuals, the viceroy of Goa (a city and state in India that was controlled by Portugal at the time) and the archbishop of the city. The treasure consisted of ingots of gold and silver, chests full of pearls and a gold cross that weighed about 220 pounds (100 kg) and was studded with rubies, researcher Denis Piat wrote in his book "Pirates & Privateers in Mauritius" (Didier Millet, 2014). While an impressive haul, it didn't end well for Olivier Levasseur (also known as "La Buse," French for "The Buzzard") who was one of the pirate captains. He was captured and hanged on the island of Reunion in 1730.

According to one story, just before he was hanged he tossed a manuscript containing a cryptogram (a coded message) to the assembled crowd and said that it led to the location of some of the treasure — which to this day has never been found. However, some scholars believe that this story is false and the cryptogram that he supposedly wrote was created after his death. Today some modern-day treasure hunters still seek his riches.

Whydah Gally treasure

In January or February of 1717, a group of pirates led by Sam Bellamy captured a slave ship called the Whydah Gally in the Bahamas. The ship had already completed a trip bringing slaves to North America at the time it was captured. Impressed by its size, speed and armaments, the pirates decided to make it their flagship. Their fleet had captured and looted dozens of merchant ships in the Caribbean and much of their plunder was stored on the flagship, the Whydah Pirate Museum notes on their website. Unfortunately for the pirates, the ship sank in a storm on April 26, 1717 and only two people on the ship survived. Bellamy himself was killed when the ship sank.

The survivors claimed that the ship held more than 30,000 British pounds worth of treasure in its hold. That's worth more than 5.4 million pounds ($7.2 million USD) today, according to the Bank of England's inflation calculator. In 1984, a team of explorers succeeded in finding the wreck and in uncovering some of the artifacts, which can now be seen in the Whydah Pirate Museum in Yarmouth, Massachusetts.

Robert Culliford & Dirk Chivers capture the ship "Great Mohammed"

In 1698, the Dutch pirate Dirk Chivers and the English pirate Robert Culliford, along with their crews, teamed up to capture the "Great Mohammed" — a ship carrying pilgrims bound for Mecca, Tim Travers, professor emeritus of history at the University of Calgary, wrote in his book "Pirates: A History" (The History Press, 2009). The captured plunder was worth about 130,000 pounds or more than 19 million pounds ($25.5 million USD) in present-day value, the Bank of England's inflation calculator says.

The pirates took their ill-gotten gains to the island of St. Mary (also known as Saint Marie or Nosy Boraha) near Madagascar. During the trip, the passengers met a terrible fate, with surviving witness accounts claiming that the pirates tortured and raped passengers who were traveling on the Great Mohammed. Both pirates were captured not long afterward; Chivers died in a Bombay prison while Culliford decided to testify against other pirates in exchange for his freedom. It's unclear what became of the treasure.

An amateur metal detectorist in England has unearthed a macabre piece of history: an 18th-century gold band with an inlaid enamel skull decoration.

The ring, which was found in a field in Norfolk on England's east coast, is linked to a member of the British nobility whose name and date of death are inscribed on the inside of the golden band.

"I knew this was something very special and I did a bit of a dance," detectorist Malcom Weale told BBC. Weale found the ring in August, and it has already been studied through the U.K.'s Portable Antiquities Scheme by experts at the British Museum.

The gold ring has a thick, D-shaped cross-section, and its flat interior includes the hand-inscribed phrase "B.G. Bart. ob: 10. Oct: 1723. aet: 56." According to the British Museum, this Latin inscription means "B.G. Baronet, died 10 October 1723, aged 56," which suggests it was made to memorialize Sir Bassingbourne Gawdy, 3rd Baronet of Harling and a member of the British nobility, who died in a hunting accident.

On the ring's exterior, an oval depression has been filled with jewelry enamel, which is made by fusing powdered glass or ceramic of different colors at a high temperature. Against the grayish background, black spots and lines have been used to create a squashed-looking skull.

Based on the British Museum's measurements, the Gawdy ring is roughly a U.S. size 6 or 7 (U.K. size L to N), meaning that it might have been made for a woman or a teenager. However, historical records suggest that Sir Bassingbourne Gawdy died unmarried and that his hereditary title went extinct, so it is unclear who commissioned or wore the band to mourn the loss.

Mourning bands were common in England from the 16th century through the Victorian era and are often known by the Latin phrase "memento mori" or "remember that you will die." Other forms of popular mourning jewelry included pendants, lockets and brooches with tiny human skulls and the name of the deceased.

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But the Gawdy band is actually a late example with an unusual skull, according to the British Museum. Instead of an engraved skull filled with enamel, the Gawdy ring has a large depression enamelled in two colors.

The maker's mark on the ring appears to read TU but does not shed further light on the artisan who designed the band.

Since the ring is made of gold and is over 300 years old, it falls under the U.K.'s Treasure Act of 1996. This means that a museum may acquire the ring, and the finder and landowner may share in any reward for turning it in.

"It's very rare to put a name to anything you find,” Weale said. “But I knew this was something very special."

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Researchers have found evidence that Earth's core is leaking gold and other precious metals, according to a new study.

The vast majority (99.9%) of Earth's gold and other precious metals are hidden in the center of our planet, with thousands of miles of near-impenetrable rock between us and these natural treasures. However, while humans are unlikely to ever mine Earth's core, new research indicates that some metals have migrated out of the core into enriched rocks that eventually ended up at the surface.

While investigating volcanic rocks in Hawaii, a team of scientists identified signs of the precious metal ruthenium — a platinum group metal — that they conclude could only have come from the core-mantle boundary, more than 1,800 miles (2,900 km) below the surface.

"When the first results came in, we realised that we had literally struck gold!" study first author Nils Messling, a researcher in the geochemistry department at Göttingen University in Germany, said in a statement. "Our data confirmed that material from the core, including gold and other precious metals, is leaking into the Earth's mantle above."

The researchers published their findings May 21 in the journal Nature.

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Earth is made up of three basic layers: a crust, mantle and core. The crust acts like a thin outer shell, the mantle is a less rigid middle layer of rocks that makes up most of the planet, and the core is the sphere in the middle. At the core, there's a sea of molten metals about 1,400 miles (2,300 km) thick – called the outer core — swirling around a mostly solid iron ball that's about 1,520 miles (2,440 km) wide — called the inner core.

Previous research has found that the make-up of Earth's Ru changed during the later stages of the planet's formation as it accumulated more material, so the Ru locked away in the core is slightly different from the Ru typically found in the mantle and crust.

For the new study, the researchers analyzed volcanic rock samples from Hawaii, including those collected at a lava lake in the active — and currently erupting — Kilauea volcano. They compared the Ru detected in these samples to Ru typically found in the mantle and found higher concentrations of the core Ru in Hawaii's volcanic rocks compared to other mantle rocks, suggesting that the Hawaii Ru originated from Earth's center.

The detection of Ru linked to the core demonstrates that precious metals, including gold, can move out of the center of the Earth. That means some of these precious metals we mine today may have originally come from the core. The study also tells scientists something about the formation of Hawaii and other regions tied to the core-mantle boundary.

"Our findings not only show that the Earth's core is not as isolated as previously assumed," study co-author Matthias Willbold, a professor in the geochemistry department at Göttingen University, said in the statement. "We can now also prove that huge volumes of super-heated mantle material — several hundreds of quadrillion metric tonnes of rock — originate at the core-mantle boundary and rise to the Earth's surface to form ocean islands like Hawaii."

Hawaii is thought to be sitting on a deep mantle plume of hot rock, driving volcanic activity in the region. Researchers recently found new evidence that Africa is being torn apart by another deep mantle plume, which also probably originated from the core-mantle boundary, like the ruthenium.