Longest Ocean-Crossing Ever Needed to Settle Marianas

TINIAN, MARIANAS ISLANDS—A husband-and-wife team working in the Northern Marianas Islands have found a settlement on Tinian that they say dates to 3,500 years ago. The site is roughly 1,200 miles of sea from the nearest known inhabited area, in what is today the Philippines. Recently, Michael Carson and Hsiao-chun Hung, archaeologists from Australian National University, believe they can show that the migration must have gone from the Philippines to Tinian by following a trail of pottery between the two. Ceramics bearing similar designs to those found at ancient archaeological levels on the Marianas have been uncovered in the Philippines and dated back to almost 4,000 years ago. "That constituted the longest ocean-crossing in human history of its time 3500 years ago,” Carson said.

Spectacular Roman Rooster Figurine Restored

CIRENCESTER, ENGLAND—An enameled bronze rooster figurine dating to 100 A.D. and discovered in a Roman child's grave has just been restored. According to archaeologist Neil Holbrook, the object is the most important artifact found in the past 40 years at Cirencester, once the second largest Roman town in Britain. Conservation work highlighted the fine detail and workmanship that went into the figurine. "This must have cost, in current money, thousands of pounds to buy and countless hours to make," says Holbrook. "To actually put this into the grave of a two or three-year-old child is not something that you would do lightly." It's possible the figurine was left in the grave because roosters were associated with Mercury, who accompanied souls to the afterworld. 

Ancient City Found in Eastern India

CHHATTISGARH, INDIA—Archaeologists in India believe they have found the remains of a city dating to the second or third century B.C. in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh. The claim comes after the serendipitous 2008 discovery of several artifacts on the banks of the Kharun River, including bones, coins, and ceramics. Several structures found around the initial finds combine to give the impression of what was once a market area, located 20 miles from the Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh. The site, which the Archaeological Survey of India has approved for excavation, has also offered up terracotta figurines of both human and animal forms.  

Medieval Knight Found in Edinburgh Parking Lot

EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND—British parking lots are certainly starting to seem like archaeological treasure troves. Hot on the heels of the recovery of Richard III's remains from a parking lot in Leicester, the grave of a medieval knight has been found in a parking lot in the Old Town section of Edinburgh. The skeleton of the grave's one-time occupant was found in the immediate vicinity of the headstone that bore the Calvary Cross. The buried nobleman, uncovered as part of a construction project to build the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh Center for Carbon Innovation, points to the location of the long lost Blackfriars monastery, which was founded in A.D. 1230 and destroyed during the Protestant Reformation of the mid-1500s.

Egyptian Text Describes Jesus Changing His Shape

NEW YORK CITY—A recently translated, 1,200-year-old religious text written in the Coptic language tells the story of Jesus' crucifixation in a way that departs significantly from Biblical accounts. The text was orginally from an Egyptian monastery that seems to have ceased operating in the tenth century. The manuscript resurfaced in 1910, and was purchased by New York financier J.P. Morgan. According to Utrecht University historian Roelof van den Broek, who translated the text, it is written in the name of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, a fourth-century saint. Among other apochrypal claims, the text says that Jesus had dinner with Pontius Pilate before the crucifixation, and that Judas used a kiss to identify Jesus for those who came to arrest him because he was constantly changing his shape. Van de Broek says that while the Bible was canonized by the fifth century, apocryphal stories remained popular among Egyptian Christians long after that. The manuscript is on display at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

Big Eyes Doomed Neanderthals

OXFORD, ENGLAND—A new study claims Neanderthals used so much of their brains to process visual information that they never developed the cognitive abilities that would have allowed them to compete with Homo sapiens. Anthropologists have long suspected that Neaderthals needed more acute vision because they evolved in Europe, where nights are long and the days often dim. But our ancestors evolved in Africa, where plentiful sunshine and relatively short nights meant we never had to devote too much brain power to seeing. Oxford University anthropologist Eiluned Pearce tested the theory by comparing the skulls of 32 Homo sapiens and 13 Neanderthals and found that our extinct cousins had significantly larger eye sockets. "Since Neanderthals evolved at higher latitudes, more of the Neanderthal brain would have been dedicated to vision and body control," says Pearce, "leaving less brain to deal with other functions like social networking." That could have been the difference between extinction and survival.

Sophisticated Stone Tools Appear Earlier in China

BEIJING, CHINA—Paleoanthropologists re-examining stone tools from the Paleolithic site of Shuidonggou have found that the relatively sophisticated stone tools known as blades began to appear in northern China around 34,000 to 38,000 years ago. That's about ten thousand years earlier than archaeologists assumed. The discovery shows that not only were people using diverse technologies in eastern Eurasia at this time, but that the cultural traits neccessary to make these blades moved quickly from Central Asia to China.

New Look at Heretic Pharaoh's Reign

AMARNA, EGYPT—Analysis of remains from a cemetery at the city of Amarna is painting an unsettling picture of the reign of the famously monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten. Sometime around 1350 B.C, Akhenaten rejected the traditional pantheon of Egyptian gods and moved his capital to Amarna, some 200 miles south of modern Cairo, where he established a religion dedicated to the worship of the sun god Aten. Art from the period depicts Amarna as an idyllic city of plenty, but the cemetery tells a different story. Remains of children show they were malnourished and engaged in an unsually high degree of physical activity. Adult skeletons show evidence of hard labor and numerous injuries. "We have evidence of the most stressed and disease-ridden of the ancient skeletons of Egypt that have been reported to date," says University of Arkansas bioarchaeologist Jerome Rose. "Amarna is the capital city of the Egyptian empire. There should be plenty of food. Something seems to be amiss."

Storm Exposes a Shipwreck in Maine

YORK, MAINE—On a Maine beach last weekend heavy seas exposed the hull of a shipwreck that could date from 1750 to 1850. The 50-foot-long hull probably belonged to a sloop, a single masted vessel used for fishing or transporting cargo. One of 1,595 shipwrecks known on the coast of Maine, the vessel first appeared after a storm washed sand away from the timbers in 1958. It has been periodically exposed by storms a few times since, but archaeologists have always allowed sand to reclaim the ship. "It's often best just to leave them in the ground," says Leith Smith, a historical archaoelogist who works for the Maine Preservation Commission. "When it's covered, it's fairly well preserved."  

British Parliament Debates Richard III's Burial Place

LONDON, ENGLAND—Thanks to University of Leicester archaeologists, the final resting place of Richard III will not be a parking lot. But the question of where the House of York's last king should be reburied is now consuming politicians representing regions historically associated with the monarch. The terms of the original excavation permit give the University of Leicester team the responsibility of deciding where the bones are reburied, and Leicester Cathedral seems to be their choice. An online petition favoring reburial in Leicester, where the king was killed in the 1485 battle of Bosworth Field, has drawn more than 7,500 signatures. But some 25,000 have signed a dueling petition calling for re-interring the bones in York Minster. "The call is strong from the great county of Yorkshire that Richard III did want to be buried where he was loved," said minister Julian Sturdy, who represents a York constituency. "That was the key thing. He was loved and supported in the great county of Yorkshire." The House of Commons is scheduled to hold a debate on the issue today.

Lioness Goddess Statues Unearthed in Egypt

LUXOR, EGYPT—A team led by German Egyptologist Horig Sourouzian has discovered 14 black granite statues of the goddess Sekhmet in the funeral temple of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. Standing six feet tall, each statue depicts the half-human, half-lioness goddess sitting on a throne. The team had already excavated 64 Sekhmet statues of differing sizes at the fourteenth-century B.C. temple, which is on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor. The goddess of war, Sekhmet also played a role as a guardian, which may account for the large number of statues depicting her. According to ‪Mohamed Ibrahim, minister of state for antiquities, some scholars "believe that king Amenhotep constructed a large number of goddess Sekhmets in an attempt to cure him of a specific disease that he suffered during his reign." The statues will soon be added to a virtual reconstruction of the funerary temple, which aims to show where all the excavated statuary would have stood in the original temple.

Stonehenge Builders Came From Across Britain

LONDON, ENGLAND—After a decade of intense investigations at Stonehenge, archaeologists from University of College London now say that as many as 4,000 people gathered to construct the ancient monument, at a time when the total population of Britain was only in the tens of thousands. Their findings suggest that Stonehenge was not built as an observatory or an astronomical calendar, but rather may have been erected as part of a social ritual that brought together people from across the island. Analysis of animal teeth found nearby suggests that people came from as far away as Scotland to help build the monument. "What we have discovered is it's in building the thing that's important," says archaeologist Michael Parker Pearson. "It's not that they're coming to worship, they're coming to construct it."