Bookmarks (16)

Twenty hectares near Inca ruins affected in blaze started by farmers burning grass before sowing cropsPeruvian firefighters were fighting to contain a forest fire near the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu as the blaze threatened to close in on the ancient city in the Andean mountains on Thursday.The fire, which had engulfed an area about half the size of Vatican City, was started on...

Discovery in the Klondike ranks as the most complete mummified mammal found in the AmericasIt was a young miner, digging through the northern Canadian permafrost in the seemingly aptly named Eureka Creek, who sounded the alarm when his front-end loader struck something unexpected in the Klondike gold fields.What he had stumbled upon would later be described by the territory’s palaeontologist as “one of the...

500-year old structure, found in working-class area of Lima, thought to contain remains of society elitesScientists have unearthed an Inca-era tomb under a home in the heart of Peru’s capital, Lima, a burial believed to hold remains wrapped in cloth alongside ceramics and fine ornaments.The lead archeologist, Julio Abanto, told Reuters the 500-year-old tomb contained “multiple funerary bundles” tightly wrapped in cloth. Continue reading...

Modern techniques to test traditional explanation that most bones from 1815 battle were ground into powder for fertiliserIt was an epic battle that has been commemorated in words, poetry and even a legendary Abba song, but 207 years to the day after troops clashed at Waterloo, a gruesome question remains: what happened to the dead?While tens of thousands of men and horses died at...

HMS Gloucester could be the ‘most historic maritime discovery since the raising of the Marie Rose’The wreck of a Royal Navy warship which sank in 1682 while carrying the future king James Stuart has been identified off the coast of Norfolk.The wreckage of HMS Gloucester was actually found in 2007 by two brothers, Julian and Lincoln Barnwell, alongside their late father and two friends,...

The prehistoric artefacts, all made to a similar shape and template, are found in enormous numbers across southern Africa across vast distancesGet our free news app; get our morning email briefingA 65,000-year-old tool – a kind of ancient Swiss Army knife – found across southern Africa has provided scientists with proof that the ancestors of modern homo sapiens were communicating with each other.In a...

Jim Fitton, 66, hoped for short suspended sentence after collecting fragments during archaeology tourLawyers for a British geologist handed a 15-year sentence by an Iraqi judge after being convicted of smuggling antiquities will immediately appeal against the shock verdict, which has left his family “stunned”.Jim Fitton, 66, arrived at court in Baghdad hoping for a short suspended sentence after being charged with collecting fragments...

Painted wooden coffins and bronze statues of deities dating to 500BC found by archaeologists in SaqqaraArchaeologists working near Cairo have uncovered hundreds of ancient Egyptian coffins and bronze statues of deities.The discovery at a cemetery in Saqqara contained statues of the gods Anubis, Amun, Min, Osiris, Isis, Nefertum, Bastet and Hathor along with a headless statue of the architect Imhotep, who built the Saqqara...

Researchers estimate the city, which features the Mayan Puuc style of architecture, to have been occupied from AD600 to 900Archaeologists have uncovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city filled with palaces, pyramids and plazas on a construction site of what will become an industrial park near Mérida, on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.The site, called Xiol, has features of the Mayan Puuc style of architecture,...

Skull discovered in drought-depleted Minnesota River last summer to be returned to Native American officialsNative American officials will be given a partial skull discovered last summer by two kayakers in Minnesota after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years old.The kayakers found the skull in the drought-depleted Minnesota River about 110 miles (180km) west of Minneapolis, Renville county sheriff Scott Hable said. Continue reading...

Family ‘baffled’ by Foreign Office after Jim Fitton arrested for taking pottery pieces from ancient siteThe family of a British man who has been detained in Iraq for more than six weeks and faces execution for collecting fragments of pottery at an ancient site has accused British ministers of abandoning him, and expressed concern over the conditions he is being held in.Jim Fitton, 66,...

Archaeologists say find of tools and bones changes our understanding of the Lapita people, the first to make landfall in Remote OceaniaGet our free news app; get our morning email briefingThe peopling of the Pacific is one of the most significant migrations in human history. And now an archaeological discovery on a small island in Papua New Guinea has recast the early scope of...

Peruvian historian and US archaeologist say the pre-Columbian town was called Huayna Picchu by the Inca peopleMachu Picchu is one of the world’s best-known archaeological sites, a wonder of pre-Columbian architecture that has been closely studied for decades and a tourist attraction that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.But a new academic paper argues that since its rediscovery more than a century...

National Trust acquires two areas of land near monument that it will turn back into chalk grasslandPart of a ceremonial approach to the great circle of Stonehenge and a spot nearby where ancient hunter-gatherers shared feasts with the first British farmers have been saved from the threat of modern agriculture.The areas are to be restored as chalk grassland, which will benefit flora and fauna,...

At its peak Monte Albán was home to 17,000 people, despite a lack of water supplies or fertile landGreater equality than that experienced in other Mesoamerican cities may have been key to the successes of an ancient Zapotec community in Mexico which survived far longer than any contemporaneous metropolis, a new study suggests.The ruins of Monte Albán – which include pyramids, canals and a...

Finds from fourth-century wreck ‘perfectly preserved’ just 2m below the surface off one of Mallorca’s busiest beachesOne squally day or stormy night about 1,700 years ago, a boat carrying hundreds of amphorae of wine, olives, oil and garum – the fermented fish sauce that so delighted the ancient palate – came to grief during a stopover in Mallorca.The merchant vessel, probably at anchor in...