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Here's to a happy and prosperous 2011!!!!!

Dental exam shows Neanderthal man cooked and ate veggies

WASHINGTON: Neanderthals were not just meat-eaters, say researchers who believe the ancient near-human creatures cooked a variety of plants.

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Mosaics found in SE Turkey lead to unearthing of ancient Roman city

The accidentally found mosaics led to the unearthing of the Roman-era city of Germenicia in the southeastern province of Kahramanmaraş. When the work is complete, the area will become an open-air museum.

The ancient city of Germenicia, which has been underground for 1,500 years, is being unearthed thanks to mosaics found during an illegal excavation in 2007 under a house in Southeast Turkey. Excavations are ongoing in the area, with authorities aiming to completely reveal the mosaics and the city, and then turn the site into an open-air museum.

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Ancient Egyptian Priests' Names Preserved in Pottery

By Rossella Lorenzi

Broken pieces of clay pottery have revealed the names of dozens of Egyptian priests who served at the temple of a crocodile god, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) announced.

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Researchers: Ancient human remains found in Israel

by Daniel Estrin

JERUSALEM – Israeli archaeologists said Monday they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern man, and if so, it could upset theories of the origin of humans.

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30,000-year-old girl's pinkie points to new early human species

(CNN) -- An overlooked female pinkie bone put in storage after it was discovered in a Siberian cave two years ago points to the existence of a previously unknown prehistoric human species, anthropologists say.

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Mummified Forest Found on Treeless Arctic Island

Mason Inman in San Francisco
for National Geographic News

An ancient mummified forest, complete with well-preserved logs, leaves, and seedpods, has been discovered deep in the Canadian Arctic, scientists say.

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Preserving Africa’s Ancient Manuscripts

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Hailemariam Dessalegn said that although Africa is the poorest continent economically, it has a wealth of cultural heritage.

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Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart's

NORMAN, Okla. – The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.

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Pythagoras, a math genius? Not by Babylonian standards

by Laura Allsop

(CNN) -- Over 1,000 years before Pythagoras was calculating the length of a hypotenuse, sophisticated scribes in Mesopotamia were working with the same theory to calculate the area of their farmland.

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Forensics reunites French king and his head

By Maria Cheng

LONDON—After nine months of tests, researchers in France have identified the head of France's King Henry IV, who was assassinated in 1610 aged 57.

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2,400-Year-Old Pot of Soup Found in Chinese Tomb

By Theunis Bates

Wondering what to do with those slowly molding Thanksgiving leftovers festering at the back of your fridge? Well, if you let them rot for another few thousand years, they could become an important archaeological treasure.

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Gales unearth Roman-era statue on Israel's coast

(Reuters) - A Roman statue that had been buried for centuries has been unearthed by the winter gales that have raked Israel's coast. The white-marble figure of a woman in toga and sandals was found in the remains of a cliff that crumbled under the force of winds, waves and rain at the ancient port of Ashkelon, the Israel Antiquities Authority said on Tuesday.

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The real-life Da Vinci Code: Historians discover tiny numbers and letters in the eyes of the Mona Lisa

Art historians are probing a real-life Da Vinci Code style mystery after discovering tiny numbers and letters painted into the eyes of the artist's enigmatic Mona Lisa painting.

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What’s inside? Sealed jar discovered at Qumran – site of Dead Sea Scrolls

An intact, sealed, jar has been discovered at Qumran, the site where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in nearby caves.

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Was Medieval England more Merrie than thought?

LONDON (Reuters) – Maybe being a serf or a villein in the Middle Ages was not such a grim existence as it seems. Medieval England was not only far more prosperous than previously believed, it also actually boasted an average income that would be more than double the average per capita income of the world's poorest nations today, according to new research.

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Roman Museum Saved In Canterbury, Kent, UK

The fight to save the Roman Museum has been won thanks to public support and better marketing. Canterbury council sparked outrage last year when it said three of the city’s museums, including the Roman Museum in Butchery Lane, would have to close as part of a round of budget cuts.

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'Vandals have hacked at the heart of Christianity': 2,000-year-old Holy Thorn Tree of Glastonbury is cut down

Luke Salked

Standing proudly on the side of an English hill, its religious roots go back 2,000 years. But a single night of vandalism has left an ancient site of pilgrimage in splinters.

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Egyptian Bones Could Help Solve Canine Conundrum

Scientists are still trying to explain how the gray wolf could evolve into over 400 breeds of dogs, ranging from the pug to the pinscher. One aid in solving this riddle has been found in an unlikely place: a giant animal shrine from ancient Egypt.

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Heathen Buried in Iceland, 1,100 Years Post-Mortem

A burial took place in Reykjanesbaer municipality in southwest Iceland yesterday. The news wouldn’t have had any special significance if not for the fact that the person buried, an ancient heathen, passed away 1,100 years ago and the ceremony took place inside the Viking World museum.

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2,300 year old temple discovered at Thmuis in Egypt – built by Ptolemy II Philadelphus

A temple built by Ptolemy II Philadelphus has been discovered at the ancient city of Thmuis (also known at Tell Timai) on the Nile Delta in Egypt.

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Scientists Discover 'Koreaceratops': First Horned Dino From Korea

Triceratops has a new cousin -- one from a distant continent, that is. Scientists from South Korea, the United States and Japan just announced the discovery of a new horned dinosaur, based on an analysis of fossil evidence found in South Korea. Dubbed "Koreaceratops" after its country of origin, the new dinosaur fossil was found in 2008 in a block of rock along the Tando Basin reservoir.

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From Iran to Corinth – Pottery research shows Greek city engaged in long distance trade during medieval times

At the end of ancient times, Corinth, one of the most famous cities in the Greek world, lay partly in ruins. “The mid 6th century city fell victim first to bubonic plague, with high mortality levels, and subsequently a deep economic recession that lasted, according to the archaeological finds, for 500 years,” write archaeologists from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in an overview on their website. The school has been excavating Corinth since 1896.

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2,300-Year-old Maya ruins destroyed for pastureland

Mexico City – An ancient Mayan residential complex some 2,300 years old was destroyed by heavy machinery in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucutan to clear the land for pasture on a private ranch, officials told Efe.

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Italy: Another building collapses at ancient Pompeii site

Another part of the world-famous ancient Roman city of Pompeii in southern Italy has collapsed, archaeological officials at the site told Adnkronos on Tuesday. Following days of heavy rains, a section of a wall belonging to the House of the Moralist gave way, Adnkronos learned.

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Archaeologists: Roman and Byzantine Findings Unearthed in Southern Syria

Syria (Suwaida) - The Syrian archaeological mission working at al-Gharia village unearthed nine cemeteries and a number of findings from the Byzantine and Roman eras.

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Crown Suggests Queen Arsinoë II Ruled Ancient Egypt as Female Pharaoh

ScienceDaily — A unique queen's crown with ancient symbols combined with a new method of studying status in Egyptian reliefs forms the basis for a re-interpretation of historical developments in Egypt in the period following the death of Alexander the Great. A thesis from the University of Gothenburg (Sweden) argues that Queen Arsinoë II ruled ancient Egypt as a female pharaoh, predating Cleopatra by 200 years.

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Staggering Picasso trove turns up in France

By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Jamey Keaten, Associated Press

PARIS – A retired French electrician and his wife have come forward with 271 undocumented, never-before-seen works by Pablo Picasso estimated to be worth at least 60 million euros ($79.35 million), an administrator of the artist's estate said Monday.

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More Proof That Vikings Were First to America

By Lisa Bend

Pity poor Leif Ericsson. The Viking explorer may well have been the first European to reach the Americas, but it is a certain Genoan sailor who gets all the glory. Thanks to evidence that has until now consisted only of bare archeological remains and a bunch of Icelandic legends, Ericsson has long been treated as a footnote in American history: no holiday, no state capitals named after him, no little ditty to remind you of the date of his voyage. But a group of Icelandic and Spanish scientists studying one mysterious genetic sequence — and one woman who's been dead 1,000 years — may soon change that.

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Ancient Lambayeque civilizations domesticated cats 3500 years ago

Recent finds at the Ventarrón archaeological site have revealed some of the oldest examples of ancient Peruvian domestication of animals.

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2,000-year-old intact female skeleton with gray hair unearthed in Hubei

A 2,000-year-old intact skeleton of an elderly woman was unearthed from a tomb from the early Western Han dynasty at the construction site of an industrial park in the north of Zhuchengjie, a satellite city of Wuhan, capital of east-central China's Hubei Province, on Nov. 19.

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London's National Portrait Gallery Finds Relics of English King Richard II in Its Basement

LONDON.- An archivist at the National Portrait Gallery has found relics from the tomb of King Richard II while cataloguing the papers of its first Director Sir George Scharf (1820-1895). Among the hundreds of diaries and notebooks left behind in boxes not opened for years were contents from the coffin of a medieval English king, and sketches of his skull and bones.

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Ancient Egyptian temple submerged in sewage

An ancient Egyptian temple to the god Ptah in the village of Meet Rahina near Memphis, just south of Cairo, now sits submerged in sewage. The temple, which was built during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses II (1279 BC - 1213 BC) and was once a major tourist attraction, now serves as a home for stray dogs. According to local residents, sanitation authorities never removed the piles of garbage dumped around the temple by villagers.

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Boy, 3, uncovers $4M gold medieval relic

Forget the tricycle — your kid needs a metal detector.

James Hyatt, then 3, found $4 million worth of medieval gold on a trip with his father and grandfather while scouring the Essex countryside with their device.

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Ancient Roman soldiers' bathhouse found in Jerusalem

By Shira Medding

Jerusalem (CNN) -- Israeli archaeologists have discovered an ancient Roman bathhouse that was probably used by the soldiers who destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, the Israel Antiquities Authority announced Monday.

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Burnt City woman's face reconstructed

Rome's National Museum of Oriental Art has displayed the reconstructed face of a female skeleton which was found in Iran's Burnt City wearing an artificial eyeball. The reconstructed version of the 5,000-year-old skeleton was unveiled during a ceremony attended by head of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization Hamid Baqaei and Iran's ambassador to Italy Seyyed Mohammad-Ali Hosseini.

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Dozer Driver Makes Fossil Discovery of the Century

by Loren Grush

An accidental discovery by a bulldozer driver has led to what may be the find of the century: an ice-age burial ground that could rival the famed La Brea tar pits. After two weeks of excavating ancient fossils at the Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado, scientists from the Denver Museum of Natural Science returned home Wednesday with their unearthed treasures in tow -- a wide array of fossils, insects and plant life that they say give a stunningly realistic view of what life was like when ancient, giant beasts lumbered across the Earth.

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