Thinking of Lucy strolling around the east African landscape in search of food, we can nowpicture her looking for meat with a stone tool in hand. Bones foundin Ethiopia, push back the earliest known stone tool use and meat consumption by almost one million years and provide the first evidence…
- Part 11
Star Carr Stone Age remains are Britain’s Oldest Home
Archaeologist working on Stone Age remains at a site in North Yorkshire say it contains Britain’s earliest surviving house. It dates to at least 8,500BC when Britain was part of continental Europe. The team from the Universities of Manchester and York unearthed the 3.5 metres circular structure next to an…
Nefertiti and the Aten in Colour! 16,000 Amarna Art Talatat blocks in Luxor with Original Pigment Preserved
Archaeologists are examining a cache of talatat blocks in Luxor that depict Amarna period art in their original colour. “The amount of detail which is shown, where the colour had been preserved, it’s just amazing,” said Dr. Joceyln Gohary. “Some of the most striking details are in the clothing – particularly of…
PASE Domesday Online Database launches ahead of BBC Two Domesday Special
PASE Domesday, a database of Domesday Book linked to mapping resources, has been launched online today, ahead of tomorrows Domesday special to be broadcast on BBC Two (preview video ‘The Domesday Inquest’). In the documentary, Dr Stephen Baxter seeks to prove that the Domesday Book could not have been used…
British Museum’s Book of the Dead Exhibtion Preview Video of Ancient Egyptian Wooden Mask
The British Museum’s upcoming exhibition, “Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead” is set to open on 4th November 2010 and a video posted on the British Museum’s Youtube channel gives a teaser to one of the artefacts which will be a part of the show. The quick video shows the…
Teotihuacan Tunnel found under Temple of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent
Archaeologists have discovered a 1,800 year old tunnel that leads to a system of galleries 12 meters below Teotihuacan’s Temple of Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent, in Mexico. Spanning an area of more than 83 square kilometres, Teotihuacan is one of the largest archaeological sites in Mexico and is a UNESCO…
Britain’s Prehistoric Funerals – Six Feet Under, or a Bronze Age Mound?
You might never have heard of Irthlingborough, in Northamptonshire, but an excavation there in the 1980s revealed some pretty spectacular archaeology, as explained in the first of a series of HKTV videos (Watch the Video). The archaeologists found a round burial mound with cremations buried in the sides. Below the…
Ipswich Museum celebrates opening of new Egyptian gallery with ‘CSI My Mummy’
This week sees the opening of the Ipswich Museum‘s new Egyptian Gallery. Visitors will be able tomarvel at the mummy of Lady Tahathor, or find out about daily life in ancient Egypt as they journey down the Nile. But wait… there has been a terrible crime! A thief has broken…
A real archaeological puzzle: Germans reassemble ancient sculptures destroyed in WWII
After nine years of shifting through WWII bombing debris, restoration experts have puzzled back together over 30 Aramaean sculptures and reliefs. Watch the slideshow. When in November 1943 an air raid on Berlin destroyed the Tell Halaf Museum and its contents, it was thought one of Germany’s most important Near…
Easter Island Was Devastated by Western Invaders and Not Internal Conflict
An archaeologist from the University of Manchester has produced new research suggesting Western invaders should be blamed for the demise of the ancient people and culture of Rapa Nui or Easter Island, further contradicting the once popular idea that its primitive, warlike Polynesian inhabitants had already themselves provoked societal collapse…