Archaeology
A team of archaeologists has made discoveries of extensive water management and agricultural production in and around the ancient desert city of Petra, located in present-day Jordan.
Successful terrace farming of wheat, grapes and possibly olives resulted in a vast, green, agricultural "suburb" to Petra in an otherwise inhospitable, arid landscape. This terrace farming remained extensive through the third century and surface finds plus comparative data shows this type of farming continued in some extent until around the end of the first millennium, between 800 and 1000 A.D. …
Archaeologist William Mills found a treasure-trove of carved stone pipes in southern Ohio a century ago - buried almost 2,000 years earlier.
The Native American site became famous as Tremper Mound. Mills said the pipes had been carved from local stone and that has been accepted to this day.
But a new analysis spanning nearly a decade tested the stone pipes and pipestone from quarries across the upper Midwest, and concluded that those who buried the pipes in Tremper Mound got most of their pipestone, and perhaps even the finished, carved pipes, from Illinois.
They first collected the…
While the origins of modern behavior will never be known, new discovery about technological advancement among our ancestors in southern Africa some 70,000 years ago, has taken a step closer to firmly establishing Africa, and especially South Africa, as a primary hub for the early development of our behavior.
A new research paper is the first detailed summary of the time periods a group of international researchers have been studying in South Africa: namely the Still Bay techno-traditions (c. 75 000 – 70 000 years) and the Howiesons Poort techno-tradition (c. 65 000 – 60 000 years).…
The creation and dispersal of modern humans and of modern human behavior are of great interest to archeology and anthropology and engraved objects are a hallmark of cognition and symbolism, important features of modern human behavior.
Why aren't there more discoveries of these in Asia? In recent years, engraved ochre, bones and ostrich eggs unearthed from various Paleolithic sites in Africa, the Near East and Europe have attracted the attention of many scholars but they are rarely encountered at Paleolithic sites in East Asia.
Professor Gao Xing and Dr. Peng Fei from the Laboratory of…
Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a fleet of early-19th century ships and ancient harbor structures from the Hellenistic period at the city of Akko (Acre), one of the major ancient ports of the eastern Mediterranean and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, they revealed at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research.
Located on the northern coast of Israel, the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Akko is one of the few cities in the Mediterranean and contains over 5,000 years of maritime history. It has also been called known as Acre,…
Human ancestors were making stone-tipped weapons 500,000 years ago at Kathu Pan 1, an archaeological site in South Africa. The revelation pushes back the date for manufactured weapons another 200,000 years
Attaching stone points to spears - hafting - was an important advance in hunting for our early ancestors. Though hafted tools require a great deal of effort to manufacture, a sharp stone point on the end of a spear can increase its killing power and that shows strategic foresight.
Hafted spear tips became common in Stone Age archaeological sites around 300,000 years ago but this new…
Tel Beth-Shemesh, an ancient village that resisted the aggressive expansion of neighboring Philistines, has been hiding an 11th century B.C. sacred compound. The complex is comprised of an elevated, massive circular stone structure and an intricately constructed building characterized by a row of three flat, large round stones.
Beth-Shemesh frequently changed hands between the ambitious Philistines and the Canaanite and Israelite populations that resisted them. The temple and its history reflect the power struggles that defined the region in the 12th-11th century B.C. Archaeologists say that…
A concrete marker to condemn the assassination of Julius Caesar has confirmed that the legendary statesman and general was stabbed right at the bottom of the Curia of Pompey while he sat, presiding over a meeting of the Senate. Currently, the remains of this building are located in the archaeological area of Torre Argentina, right in the historic center of the Roman capital.
Caesar's adopted son and successor, Augustus, ordered the structure created to protest the death of his father. The classical texts had stated Julius Caesar was stabbed in the Curia of Pompey on March…
A massive Roman mosaic, from the apex of Imperial reach and power, has been unearthed in southern Turkey.
The 1,600-square-foot decorative handiwork is believed to be the biggest mosaic of its type and demonstrates the reach and cultural influence of the Roman Empire in the area during the third and fourth centuries A.D. The archeology team has been investigating the remains of the ancient city of Antiochia ad Cragum on the southern Turkish coast. Antiochus of Commagene, a client-king of Rome, founded the ancient city in the middle of the first century. Antiochia ad Cragum was a…
Hank |
The Gallic War showed Julius Caesar as a great military leader, proof that even 2070 years ago politicians who get stuff done got farther ahead than politicians people simply liked. It is also the first instance of a military commander documenting a campaign, so we know quite a bit.
It started with a problem in Transalpine Gaul (the French side of the Alps, Marseille and surrounding area) which happened to be a region that Caesar was responsible for, at a time when the shared leadership - the triumvirate - had two renowned military leaders already. Caesar was what we would today call a…