The world’s oldest case of breast cancer

Research carried out on the remains of a woman found in the necropolis of Qubbet el-Hawa in Egypt have revealed that she had breast cancer.

“The study of her remains shows the typical destructive damage provoked by the extension of a breast cancer as a metastasis,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

Despite being one of the world’s leading causes of death today, cancer is virtually absent in archaeological records compared to other diseases – which has given rise to the idea that cancers are mainly attributable to modern lifestyles and to people living for longer.

But the finding, along with evidence reported last year by British researchers of metastatic cancer in a 3,000-year-old skeleton found in a tomb in modern Sudan, suggests cancer was around in the Nile Valley in ancient times.

[Full story]

Story: Reuters | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Albertans are 300 years older than thought

New radiocarbon dates obtained for an ancient hunting site in Alberta are pushing back the date the first Albertans arrived there to 13,300 years ago.

That means the 13,300-year-old bones, along with stone choppers and knives used to butcher the animals, predate what was thought to be North America’s first identifiable ancient culture.

“It’s quite awe-inspiring to stand there and know that these are the first Albertans,” Kooyman said.

“We can see the butchered bones and we can see the tracks of the animals. We can actually see the footprints of camels and horses. It’s like they were here yesterday.”

[Full story]

Story: CTV News | Photo: Canadian Press

Porcupine unearths ancient oil lamp

An ancient oil lamp has been found in Israel after a porcupine brought it to the surface while digging a burrow.

Ira Horovitz from the anti-antiquities theft unit of the IAA said that “the porcupine is an excellent archaeologist, a relentless digger… It often happens that porcupines dig their burrows at the site of archaeological digs… he skillfully throws the dirt aside, and with it whatever archaeological findings are in his path.”

[Full story]

Story: Jerusalem Post | Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority

Villa of Mysteries restored at Pompeii

A two-year project to restore the Villa of Mysteries in Pompeii has finally come to an end.

Italy unveiled the restored crown jewel of the ancient city of Pompeii on Friday, showing off a rare success story as it races to shore up the site marred by such mismanagement and neglect that it risked losing EU funding and its Unesco World Heritage site listing.

Dario Franceschini, the Italian culture minister, cut the ribbon to open the restored Villa of Mysteries, a spectacular estate on the outskirts of Pompeii’s city centre that features some of the best-preserved frescoes of the site.

[Full story]

Story: AP | Photo: Alessio Paduano/Corbis

Complete crossbow found with Terracotta Army

A complete crossbow, complete with bow string made from animal tendon, has been found with the Terracotta Army in Xi’an, China.

Among hundreds of pieces of crossbows unearthed in the past, this one is said to be the best-preserved in general, with a 145cm arch and a 130cm bow string. The bow string has a smooth surface which experts believe to be made from animal tendon instead of fabric and the trigger mechanism is made of bronze, according to Shen Maosheng, head of the archaeological team.

Shen also points out that this new discovery sheds light on how Qing, two wooden sticks usually discovered alongside the weapon, were used to maintain and transport the crossbows in ancient times. Although ancient documents often mentioned Qing, its function had never been clearly identified until this recent discovery.

[Full story]

Story: ECNS | Photo: China News Service/Zhang Tianzhu

Celtic bronze bracelet discovered in Poland

A Celtic bronze bracelet dating back to the 3rd century B.C. has been found in southeastern Poland.

Scientists were informed of the discovery by the finder. Only fragments of the bracelet were preserved. According to the archaeologist, it is hard to determine the circumstances in which the ornament ended up in the ground. The fact that it was discovered in the fragmented form drew the attention of scientists – it could be deliberately destroyed.

Archaeologists know from previous studies that ancient Celtic settlement had existed near the village Pakoszówka. There are other monuments of this period in the collections of the Historical Museum in Sanok – mainly fragments of pottery, a fragment of glass bracelet and a gold coin. “Maybe the owner of the bracelet lived in the village, the traces of which have been recorded in the same place” – believes Kotowicz.

[Full story]

Story: Science & Scholarship in Poland | Photo: Dariusz Szuwalski, Science & Scholarship in Poland

Animal fats found on 500,000-year-old tools

Animal fats residue has been found on 500,000-year-old flint tools unearthed in southern Israel.

The archaeological record indicates that elephants must have played a significant role in early human diet and culture during Palaeolithic times in the Old World. However, the nature of interactions between early humans and elephants is still under discussion. Elephant remains are found in Palaeolithic sites, both open-air and cave sites, in Europe, Asia, the Levant, and Africa. In some cases elephant and mammoth remains indicate evidence for butchering and marrow extraction performed by humans. Revadim Quarry (Israel) is a Late Acheulian site where elephant remains were found in association with characteristic Lower Palaeolithic flint tools. In this paper we present results regarding the use of Palaeolithic tools in processing animal carcasses and rare identification of fat residue preserved on Lower Palaeolithic tools. Our results shed new light on the use of Palaeolithic stone tools and provide, for the first time, direct evidence (residue) of animal exploitation through the use of an Acheulian biface and a scraper. The association of an elephant rib bearing cut marks with these tools may reinforce the view suggesting the use of Palaeolithic stone tools in the consumption of large game.

[Full story]

Story: PLoS ONE | Photo: PLoS ONE

Early Roman fort found in Italy

Lidar technology has led to the discovery of an early Roman fort, dating back to 178 B.C., near Trieste, Italy.

The finding is big news for researchers studying the Roman Empire—the timing of building of the fort coincides with the second Istrian War. The early Romans were keen to protect a settlement called Tergeste (which grew to become Trieste) from the people to the north which the Romans referred to as pirates. They lost the first war, and the building of the fort suggests they were quite serious about winning the second. But more importantly, the hope is that further study of the fort will offer clues about the very beginnings of the Roman army and how it came to become such an effective force. Another hope is that further investigation will lead to direct evidence connecting the fort with a fort that was mentioned by early Roman historians.

[Full story]

Story: Bob Yirka, Phys.org | Photo: Civil Protection of Friuli Venezia Giulia

Ring reveals Viking/Islamic contact

An engraved 9th century ring found in a Viking grave in Sweden is revealing contact between Vikings and the Islamic world.

Excavators of a Viking trading center in Sweden called Birka recovered the silver ring in the late 1800s. Until now, it was thought that it featured a violet amethyst engraved with Arabic-looking characters. But closer inspection with a scanning electron microscope revealed that the presumed amethyst is colored glass (an exotic material at the time), say biophysicist Sebastian Wärmländer of Stockholm University and his colleagues.

An inscription on the glass inset reads either “for Allah” or “to Allah” in an ancient Arabic script, the researchers report February 23 in Scanning.

[Full story]

Story: Bruce Bower, Science News | Photo: Christer Åhlin/The Swedish History Museum

Malaria test developed for ancient human remains

Scientists have developed a test for ancient human remains to determine if the deceased had Malaria.

A Yale University scientist has developed a promising new method to identify malaria in the bone marrow of ancient human remains. It is the first time researchers have been able to establish a diagnostic, human skeletal profile for the disease, which is transmitted by mosquitoes and continues to infect millions of people a year.

The new process may allow scientists to track the spread of malaria back to its first appearance in human populations. The method, which works effectively on bones resistant to previous forms of testing, also may be applicable to other diseases.

[Full story]

Story: Jim Shelton, YaleNews | Photo: Michael S. Helfenbein

Ancient Egyptian tax receipt translated

Researchers have translated a rare ancient Egyptian land-transfer tax receipt.

Written in Greek on a piece of pottery, the receipt states that a person (the name is unreadable) and his friends paid a land-transfer tax that came to 75 “talents” (a unit of currency), with a 15-talent charge added on. The tax was paid in coins and was delivered to a public bank in a city called Diospolis Magna (also known as Luxor or Thebes).

But just how much was 90 talents worth in ancient Egypt?

“It’s an incredibly large sum of money,” said Brice Jones, a Ph.D. student at Concordia University in Montreal, who translated the text. “These Egyptians were most likely very wealthy.”

[Full story]

Story: Owen Jarus, LiveScience | Photo: Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill University Library and Archives

Cave paintings found in Spain

Paleolithic cave paintings have been found in Aurea Cave in Cantabria, Spain.

The cave drawings include what appears to be a reoccurring sign, consisting of a red vertical line and dots and appearing at different locations within the cave. Some paintings appear to be draw by fingertip while others appear to be made by blowing paint onto the wall.

The Paleolithic period is characterized as when humans first made primitive stone tools. Humans during this period usually lived together in small hunter-gatherer societies.

[Full story]

Story: Government of Cantabria | Photo: TheLocal.es

Lost Homo Erectus tooth found in Sweden

A 500,000-year-old teeth belonging to “Peking Man” have been found in unpacked boxes from Otto Zdansky’s expedition to the caves of Zhoukoudian near Beijing in the 1920s.

‘It is a spectacular find’, says Per Ahlberg. ‘We can see numerous details that tell us about this individual’s life. The crown of the tooth is relatively small, which indicates that it belonged to a woman. The tooth is quite worn, so the individual must have been quite old when she died. In addition, two large chips have been knocked out of the enamel, as if hit by something, or perhaps by biting into something really hard such as a bone or a hard nut. At least one of the chips was old when the individual died, since it is partly worn down.

[Full story]

Story: Uppsala University | Photo: Uppsala University

The world’s oldest Pretzel

The remains of 250-year-old pretzel, as well as a roll and croissant, have been found at a site in Bavaria, Germany.

Silvia Codreanau-Windauer from the Bavarian Bureau for the Conservation of Historic Monuments confirmed that: “this is definitely the oldest pretzel ever found” – although she would give no word on whether it was past its expiration date.

Alongside the remains of the pretzel, archaeologists also found the charred remains of a bread roll and a croissant – suggesting that someone missed out on quite the historical breakfast buffet in the 18th century, the period the find has been dated to.

The baked goods are only preserved because they were burnt when originally made. Archaeologists suggest that the baker must have thrown them away in disappoinment.

[Full story]

Story: The Local | Photo: DPA

Neanderthal eagle talon jewelry found in Croatia

Polished eagle talons found in Croatia 100 years ago have been reexamined and researchers now believe the talons were worn by Neanderthals as jewelry 130,000 years ago.

However, a discovery that includes a University of Kansas researcher has found that some Neanderthals were more cognitively advanced than we knew. A set of eagle talons found in present-day Croatia dated approximately 130,000 years ago includes several marks and polishing facets that show they were manipulated into a piece of jewelry, said David Frayer, a professor emeritus of anthropology who was part of the study.

“Neanderthals are often thought of to be simple-minded mumbling, bumbling, stumbling fools,” Frayer said. “But the more we know about them the more sophisticated they’ve become.”

[Full story]

Story: University of Kansas | Photo: Luka Mjeda

Yucatan struck by Tsunami 1,500 years ago

New evidence suggests the Yucatan Peninsula may have been hit by multiple tsunamis between 1,500 to 900 years ago.

There are several lines of evidence for an ancient tsunami, foremost a large, wedge-shaped berm about 15 feet above sea level paved with washing machine-sized stones, said the researchers. Set back in places more than a quarter of a mile from shore, the berm stretches for at least 30 miles, alternating between rocky headlands and crescent beaches as it tracks the outline of the Caribbean coast near the plush resorts of Playa del Carmen and Cancun.

[Full story]

Story: University of Colorado | Photo: Samantha Davies, University of Colorado

2,300-year-old stash of silver found in Israeli cave

A spelunker exploring a cave in northern Israel came across a stash of silver jewelry hidden in the cave 2,300 years ago.

Zakai was recently spelunking with his father and a friend, all of whom are members of the Israeli Caving Club, when Zakai spotted a shiny silver object in one of the most well-hidden stalactite caves in northern Israel.

As Zakai moved in for a closer look, he found two ancient silver coins stashed inside a nook. The coins were meant to be hidden, perhaps to be retrieved at a later date. Instead, they lay in secret for more than 2,000 years in a small hoard that will give archaeologists a valuable insight into ancient Israel.

[Full story]

Story: Jethro Mullen & Oren Liebermann, CNN | Photo: CNRS-Cfeetk / J. Maucore

Religious artifacts found at Karnak

38 religious artifacts have been unearthed near the temple for the god Ptah at Karnak.

The Centre franco-égyptien d’étude des temples de Karnak (CNRS/Egyptian Ministry of State for Antiquities) has just completed the excavation of a favissa, a pit discovered in early December 2014 near the temple of the god Ptah. The dig has unearthed 38 statues, statuettes and precious objects, making this an exceptional find, both for the quantity and quality of the religious artifacts brought to light. Furthermore, a completely new recording method was used during the dig that makes it possible to virtually reconstruct each step of the discovery with millimeter accuracy.

[Full story]

Story: CNRS | Photo: CNRS-Cfeetk / J. Maucore

18th-Dynasty tomb found in Luxor

A tomb dating back to the 18th Dynasty has been found in the Gorna necropolis in Luxor.

Minister of Antiquities Mamdoud Eldamaty told Ahram Online on Tuesday that the tomb is a T-shaped tomb with two large halls and an unfinished small niche at its end. An entrance leading to a side room with a shaft at its middle is found at the tomb’s southern side. “Such a shaft could lead to the burial chamber,” Eldamaty pointed out.

He went on saying that the tomb’s walls are painted with scenes depicting the tomb’s owner and his wife in front of an offering table. Hunting scenes are also decorating a part of the walls.

[Full story]

Story: Nevine El-Aref, Ahram Online | Photo: Ahram Online

17th-century shallow grave found in Oxford

The shallow grave of a woman who was buried in the 17th century has been found in Oxford, England.

The body of a young woman buried with a silver shilling on her eye in a 17th century shallow grave has been discovered in Oxford alongside a set of coins struck by Charles I at the Tower Mint during the Civil War.

Archaeologists suspected the St Cross College site could have been an unknown burial ground. But other bones found at the site were confirmed as animal remains, with maps from the period suggesting that the area was used for gardening rather than buildings or cemeteries.

[Full story]

Story: Ben Miller, Culture24 | Photo: Oxford Archaeology

Stone tool uncovered by Alaska landslide

A prehistoric stone tool has been discovered after an Alaskan landslide brought it to the surface.

A devastating landslide near Sitka last year has produced an interesting discovery — evidence of early human occupation.

Against unbelievable odds, a pair of Forest Service hydrologists mapping the Starrigavan slide found a curiously-shaped rock amid the thousands of tons of rubble. They recognized it instantly as a prehistoric stone tool.

Some finds in archeology are made through careful research and painstaking excavation. But some finds are just an unbelievable stroke of luck.

[Full story]

Story: Robert Woolsey, KCAW | Photo: Robert Woolsey/KCAW

Mass graves of plague victims found in Paris

The remains of more than 200 people have been uncovered by construction in Paris.

The site was formerly the cemetery of a hospital that functioned from the 12th to the 17th century but it was believed the corpses had been moved in the 18th century to the Paris Catacombs which house the bones of six million people transferred from the city’s cemeteries 200 years ago.

Archeologists, called in by the Monoprix supermarket to inspect the site before building work was due to be carried out, had expected to find some remains but were astonished to find the large collection of bodies neatly laid out in the earth of the store’s basement.

[Full story]

Story: Rory Mulholland, The Telegraph | Photo: Denis Gliksman/Inrap

Anglo-Saxon pendant found in Norfolk

An archaeology student exploring a private field with a metal detector stumbled across a gold and jewelled pendant, leading to the grave of an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman.

The pendant is the undoubted star find from the excavation, but there are other items to indicate that this was a noblewoman of wealth and taste. Some of them were made in the Kingdom of the Franks, part of what was to later become France.

They include two pendants made from re-used gold coins. One of them has been dated to between 639-656 when it was minted for Frankish king Sigebert III, probably near Marseilles, so we know the grave must be dated to just after this. The pendants, along with two gold beads, formed part of a ‘choker’-style necklace.

[Full story]

Story: Trevor Heaton, EDP24 | Photo: EDP24

Secret room found at ancient Sidon temple

An underground room has been discovered at the Temple of Sidon in Lebanon.

Claude Serhal Doumit, head of the delegation, described the finding as significant, and said the room had been concealed by later developments built over it.

“Sealed by the imposition of a Persian period building constructed on top of it, this new room is of the highest importance in terms of its monumentality and untouched pottery material, both [domestically produced] and imported from Cyprus and Mycenae,” read a statement released by the delegation.

[Full story]

Story: Mohammed Zaatari, Daily Star | Photo: Mohammed Zaatari,Daily Star

Islamic coins found in Viking shield boss

A leather purse containing several Islamic coins has been found inside a Viking shield boss at a site where a sword was found by a metal detectorist last year.

Arabs (Moors) conquered Spain in the year 711 while Norwegian Vikings came to Spain in the 800s. They plundered, among other cities, Seville in 844. Maybe the coins have been stolen in Spain?

Or has he got hold of them when he travelled eastwards following the Volga trade route?

The Vikings traveled all the way to Constantinople by rowing and sailing down the Russian rivers – and maybe the coins have been payment for slaves, or furs and walrus ivory?

[Full story]

Story: ThorNews | Photo: Åge Hojem / NTNU Museum of Natural History and Archaeology

Well-preserved Roman tombstone found in England

An extremely well-preserved Roman tombstone has been found in Cirencester, England.

What’s weird is that the inscription only fills half of the panel, so there’s a space left below it.

“You can see horizontal marking-out lines, so I guess what they were going to do was come back later when her husband died and add his name to the inscription,” Mr Holbrook added.

He added that the skeletal remains, including the skull, were being excavated from beneath the headstone.

[Full story]

Story: BBC News | Photo: BBC News

19th century shipwreck beer analysed

Researchers have analysed the contents of four bottles of beer that date back to the 1840s which were found in a Baltic Sea shipwreck.

The new analysis found that bacteria inside the beer bottles survived 170 years until it was discovered by divers in 2010, according to Brian Gibson, senior scientist at the VTT Technical Research Centre in Espoo, Finland.

“These bacteria were still alive,” Gibson said. The analysis “gave us some insight into the way that beers were brewed. We have a reasonably good idea about what kind of hops were used, different ones than today. These hops would have been harsher, these days they are quite mild. The one surprising thing is the beers were quite mild. The original alcohol level was 4.5 percent, nothing extreme.”

[Full story]

Story: Eric Niiler, Discovery News | Photo: VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland

Neolithic town found outside Greek cave

The remains of the ancient town of Ksagounaki have been unearthed outside the entrance of Greece’s Alepotrypa Cave.

The Field Museum’s Dr. William Parkinson explains that perhaps the most surprising discovery was a Mycenaean-period burial structure, filled with the disarticulated bones of dozens of individuals accompanied by Late Bronze Age painted pottery, exotic stone beads, ivory, and a Mycenaean dagger made of bronze. Parkinson and his team have suggested that the megalithic buildings at Ksagounaki, constructed during the Neolithic Age, may have attracted the attention of Mycenaeans over 2,000 years after they were abandoned.

[Full story]

Story: The Field Museum | Photo: Greek Reporter

Giant Iron Age tomb of Celtic prince found in France

A large fifth century tomb belonging to a Celtic prince has been found in eastern France.

The major find so far has been a one-metre diameter giant bronze cauldron, with four circular handles decorated with the head of Acheloos, the horned Greek river-god, and eight lioness heads. Inside, a ceramic oinochoe wine jug is decorated with black figures and there is a drawing of Dionysos stretched under a vine.

Inrap says this Greco-Latin wine set is typical of what would have been a centrepiece of an aristrocratic Celtic banquet and was the northernmost found so far. Mr Garcia said it “confirmed exchanges between the Mediterranean and the Celts”.

[Full story]

Story: The Connexion | Photo: Manuel Valls

Genghis Khan’s fortress unearthed in Mongolia

Archaeologists believe they have discovered the remains of a 13th-century fortress built for Genghis Khan.

The researchers surveyed ruins about 880 kilometers west of Ulan Bator in 2001 and found that geographical features around them were similar to the landscape depicted in a travel book written by a medieval Chinese Taoism leader.

The researchers also unearthed pieces of Chinese ceramics dating to the 13th century. An aerial photograph taken in 2001 shows the remains of a fortress surrounded by a soil wall, measuring 200 meters by 200 meters.

[Full story]

Story: Kunihiko Imai, The Asahi Shimbun | Photo: Japanese-Mongolian Joint Research Team

Examination shows Pharaoh died in battle

An examination carried out on the remains of the Pharaoh SenebKay shows that the king was killed in battle.

The King was probably on his horse when he was attacked and hit at his lower back then ankles till he got on the ground when the attackers brutally killed him with their axes on his skull.

Even though using horses in battles were not common at that time but the ancient Egyptians showed good skills in horse riding during the Second Intermediate Period which is an indication of the great role horses played in the military actions during this period even before the chariots technology in Ancient Egypt.

[Full story]

Story: Luxor Times | Photo: Josef Wegner

Granite busts of lioness goddess unearthed in Luxor

Two black granite busts depicting Sekhmet, a lioness goddess, have been unearthed in Luxor.

The European-Egyptian archaeological mission headed by famed Egyptologist Horig Sourouzian unearthed two busts of the lioness goddess Sekhmet at the north-eastern side of the pillar halls of King Amenhotep III’s temple at Kom El-Hitan on Luxor’s west bank.

Sourouzian told Ahram Online that the temple’s pillars hall is now a void area filled with dust and sand. He said that the mission is currently working there to see if there is anything to discover amidst the ruins.

[Full story]

Story: Nevine El-Aref, Ahram Online | Photo: Ahram Online

Gerbils may be to blame for the Black Death

New research suggests that gerbils, not rats, may be the main cause of the Black Death, and that they arrived along the Silk Road in the mid-14th century.

“We show that wherever there were good conditions for gerbils and fleas in central Asia, some years later the bacteria shows up in harbour cities in Europe and then spreads across the continent,” Prof Stenseth said.

He said that a wet spring followed by a warm summer would cause gerbil numbers to boom.

“Such conditions are good for gerbils. It means a high gerbil population across huge areas and that is good for the plague,” he added.

[Full story]

Story: BBC News | Photo: Science Photo Library

Mummified monk found inside 1000-year-old Buddha statue

The skeletal remains of a monk have been found inside a 1,000-year-old Buddha statue in the Drent Museum in the Netherlands.

Sitting in the lotus position, the mummy fits within the statue perfectly.

“On the outside, it looks like a large statue of Buddha,” the museum said in a release. “Scan research has shown that on the inside, it is the mummy of a Buddhist monk who lived around the year 1100.”

Glowing through the statue’s golden cast, the human skeleton is believed to belong to Buddhist master Liuquan, a member of the Chinese Meditation School.

[Full story]

Story: Rosella Lorenzi, Discovery News | Photo: Discovery News

Archaeologists use drone technology in the Amazon

Archaeologists looking for new geoglyphs and ancient agricultural fields are employing the use of drones equipped with Lidar technology.

The Amazon River Basin is the largest rainforest in the world, covering 40 percent of the South American continent. For at least 13,000 years ancient civilizations inhabited parts of the Amazon forests but just how they used the land remains largely unknown.

Now a team of international scientists plan to send a drone into the region to scan for answers. The project, which is funded by the European Research Council, hopes to shed some light on the ancient societies and their impact on the environment. DW spoke to Jose Iriarte, archeology professor at the University of Exeter, who’s leading the project.

[Full story]

Story: DW | Photo: Survival International

700-year-old artifacts found in Singapore

A collection of artifacts, most of which date back 700 years, have been found at an excavation our side Empress Palace in Singapore.

A team of archaeologists digging at an excavation site in front of the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall have managed to haul up 400kg of artefacts in less than two weeks.

Most of these artefacts, which include Chinese ceramics, jars and figurines, are at least 700 years old, dating as far back as the Yuan dynasty period or 14th century.

These items were recovered from an archaeological excavation site that is currently being carried out at a 1,000 sq m large area – the size of 10 4-room HDB flats – at Empress Place.

[Full story]

Story: Karen Lim, AsiaOne | Photo: AsiaOne

The origin of many of today’s languages

Using data gathered from over 150 languages, linguists have determined that many of today’s languages first emerged 5,5,00-6,500 years ago from the Pontic-Caspian steppe.

This article provides new support for the “steppe hypothesis” or “Kurgan hypothesis”, which proposes that Indo-European languages first spread with cultural developments in animal husbandry around 4500 – 3500 BCE. (An alternate theory proposes that they diffused much earlier, around 7500 – 6000 BCE, in Anatolia in modern-day Turkey.)

Chang et al. examined over 200 sets of words from living and dead Indo-European languages; after determining how quickly these words changed over time through statistical modeling, they concluded that the rate of change indicated that the languages which first used these words began to diverge approximately 6,500 years ago, in accordance with the steppe hypothesis.

[Full story]

Story: Linguistic Society of America | Photo: Julie McMahon

How ants came to the old world

New research carried out on the genomes of insects from 192 locations have revealed that tropical fire ants traveled the world on 16 century ships.

“A lot of these ships, particularly if they were going somewhere to pick up commerce, would fill their ballast with soil and then they would dump the soil out in a new port and replace it with cargo,” said University of Illinois entomology professor and animal biology department head Andrew Suarez, an author on the study. “They were unknowingly moving huge numbers of organisms in the ballast soil.”

[Full story]

Story: University of Illinous at Urbana-Champaign | Photo: Julie McMahon

Hoard of gold coins found on seafloor

More than 2,000 gold coins have been found on the seafloor at the ancient Roman harbor of Caesarea in Israel.

The largest treasure of gold coins discovered in Israel was found in recent weeks on the seabed in the ancient harbor in Caesarea National Park. The group of divers from the diving club in the harbor found the lost treasure. According to them, at first they thought they had spotted a toy coin from a game and it was only after they understood the coin was “the real thing” that they collected several coins and quickly returned to the shore in order to inform the director of the dive club about their find who in turn reported the discovery to the Marine Archaeology Unit of the Israel Antiquities Authority. After quickly organizing, divers of the Israel Antiquities Authority went together with the group of divers out to where the coins were found and using a metal detector discovered almost 2,000 gold coins in different denominations: a dinar, half dinar and quarter dinar, of various dimensions and weight.

[Full story]

Story: Israel Antiquities Authority | Photo: Israel Antiquities Authority