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- Stone spheres in Costa Rica. Giant stone spheres — some dating as far back as A.D. 600 — pepper the Diquis Delta of southern Costa Rica. Known locally as Las Bolas ("The Balls"), these monuments were the works of a Pre-Colombian civilization, and most are made from gabbro, a rock that forms from molten magma.
- Antikythera mechanism. Like something from a fantastical treasure movie, the discovery of the Antikythera Mechanism remains a major archaeological head-scratcher.
- Cleopatra's tomb. Cleopatra VII was the last of a series of rulers called the Ptolemies who ruled Egypt between 305 and 30 B.C. Much is known about her intelligence, beauty and romantic relationships (she had children with both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony), but one fact about Cleopatra is still shrouded in mystery — her burial place.
- Qin Shi Huang's tomb. In 1974, farmers in China's Shaanxi province accidentally unearthed one of the biggest archaeological finds of the 20th century — the life-size terracotta army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang (259 B.C.
- Overview
- HISTORY Vault: Engineering an Empire: Egypt
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From King Tut's tomb to the pyramids, here are the greatest archaeological finds from Egypt.
Ancient Egypt may be long gone, but archaeologists keep finding its treasures.
For more than 3,000 years, one of history’s greatest civilizations flourished along the winding Nile River in northeast Africa. But after Egypt fell under first Greek, then Roman, and finally Muslim control, the ancient civilization’s glories were buried under layers of these different cultures, only to surface again centuries later as archaeologists and historians embraced the study known as Egyptology.
Beginning in the 19th century, bombshell discoveries such as the Rosetta Stone and the lavish tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings, as well as the excavation of the Pyramids at Giza, opened the doors to a new understanding of ancient Egypt’s mysteries, fueling an explosion of interest—and tourism.
Egyptian Pyramids
Many of ancient Egypt’s rulers—known today as pharaohs—built themselves elaborate monuments and tombs, inscribing them with their names and achievements in hieroglyphics. Through painstaking excavations, research and translation, modern scholars have used these written records to trace Egypt’s history and divide it into three distinct periods—known as the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms—with periods of relative instability in between.
Egyptian temples, fortresses, pyramids and palaces redefined the limits of architectural possibility and alerted Egypt's enemies: The world's most advanced civilization could accomplish anything.
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Explore the greatest archaeological finds from Egypt, from the pyramids to the Rosetta Stone, and learn about the ancient civilization's history, culture and mysteries. Discover how these treasures reveal Egypt's achievements in art, mathematics, engineering and language.
- Sarah Pruitt
- Massive geoglyph in India. A massive geoglyph, possibly the world's largest, was found in the Thar Desert in India, covering an area of about 51 acres (20.8 hectares) near India's border with Pakistan.
- Lost Golden City. Archaeologists have discovered a "Lost Golden City" near Luxor (ancient Thebes) in Egypt. The city was known as the "The Rise of Aten" and was founded by pharaoh Amenhotep III, who ruled between 1391 and 1353 B.C.
- Roman crucifixion uncovered. In Cambridgeshire, U.K., archaeologists found the body of a man who was crucified when he was between 25 and 35 years old. A nail was found driven through at least one of his heel bones, and additionally during the crucifixion his hands would have been tied to a cross; the position this put him in likely caused him to suffocate to death.
- Europe's oldest map. A series of engravings on a 4,000-year-old stone slab in France is actually the oldest map in Europe, researchers found. The slab has a series of lines that represents the Odet River and its surrounding valley in western France — an area of about 18.6 miles by 13 miles (30 kilometers by 21 km), the researchers said.
- Meilan Solly
- Missing masterpieces. Over the course of human history, natural disasters, the ravages of time, theft and iconoclasm have destroyed countless masterpieces.
- Ancient art. The missing masterpieces outlined above owe their significance to their famous creators. But scholars also value millennia-old artworks crafted by anonymous artists who inadvertently offered enduring glimpses into ancient cultures.
- Warfare. Physical evidence of long-ago clashes is plentiful in the archaeological record, running the gamut from an iron dagger used by warriors during India’s ancient Sangam period to a trove of Roman weapons buried in Spain around 100 B.C.E.
- Prehistoric peoples. Broadly defined as the period between humans’ invention of stone tools and the development of writing systems, prehistory can be difficult to parse given the lack of documentation available.
- Meilan Solly
- Missing masterpieces. For as long as humans have been making art, natural disasters, the ravages of time, theft and iconoclasm have threatened their creations’ survival.
- Ancient art. Scholars also value millennia-old artworks crafted by anonymous artists who inadvertently offered enduring glimpses into ancient cultures. In Egypt, archaeologists unearthed traces of a civilization whose history spans more than 3,000 years, including two limestone sphinxes depicting Amenhotep III, grandfather of King Tutankhamun, and a cache of inscribed ostraca, or pottery shards that essentially served as notepads.
- Warfare. Military conflicts tend to leave their mark on the landscape, dotting battlefields with weapons, armor and other traces of bloodshed. Reminders of warfare unearthed this year included two helmets found abandoned near a temple to the Greek goddess of war Athena, a Roman watchtower in Morocco likely dated to the reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius (138 to 161 C.E.)
- Prehistoric peoples. Broadly defined as the period between humans’ invention of stone tools about 2.6 million years ago and the development of writing systems in the fourth millennium B.C.E., prehistory can be difficult to parse given the lack of documentation available.
The goal of Ancient Origins is to highlight recent archaeological discoveries, peer-reviewed academic research and evidence, as well as offering alternative viewpoints and explanations of science, archaeology, mythology, religion and history around the globe.
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Oct 21, 2021 · Explore the history and methods of archaeology, the science that studies the material remains of past human cultures. Discover how archaeologists have uncovered the stories of our ancestors through excavations on six continents.
