Did the Greeks Help Sculpt China's Terra Cotta Warriors?

                                                                        

                                                                  

The 8,000 terracotta warriors that have kept watch over the tomb of China’s first emperor for more than 2,000 years were the result of outside influence, new evidence suggests. 

Based on DNA remains found on the site, archaeologists think ancient Greek sculptors could have been on hand to train local artists - a find that could overturn centuries-old assumptions about contact between the East and the West before Marco Polo.
"We now have evidence that close contact existed between the first emperor’s China and the West before the formal opening of the Silk Road. This is far earlier than we formerly thought," Li Xiuzhen, a senior archaeologist at the Emperor Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum in China, told Maev Kennedy at The Guardian.

"We now think the Terracotta Army, the acrobats, and the bronze sculptures found on site, have been inspired by ancient Greek sculptures and art."
The Terracotta Army was discovered back in 1974 by local farmers in the Lintong District of Xi’an - one of the oldest cities in China, located slightly to the northeast of the country’s centre.

Buried underground for centuries with the remains of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, the army is spread across a vast funerary complex, made up of three massive pits, containing more than 8,000 soldiers and 150 cavalry horses, plus 130 chariots pulled by 520 horses.

It might be the most famous - and massive - pit of terracotta warriors found in China, but it certainly isn’t the only one. 

Many more pits of terracotta soldiers have been found across the country, but they’re all much smaller, and tend to be far more stylised than these highly detailed and realistic depictions of Emperor Qin’s real-life army.

As the BBC explains, there was no tradition of building life-sized human statues in China before this tomb was created, and nothing like this terracotta army has ever been uncovered in the country since. So why the sudden change in style? 

Archaeologists and historians working on the site have uncovered traces of European mitochondrial DNA from skeletons buried nearby, which suggests that Westerners might have settled, lived, and died in the area even before the rule of the First Emperor.

They have also matched the style of terracotta acrobats and bronze figures of ducks, swans, and cranes in the royal tomb to ancient Greek art of the same time period.

The team, which includes experts from institutions all over the world, says these could be indications that the East and the West were in regular contact more than 1,500 years before Venetian merchant Marco Polo hit the scene, and the Greeks might have shared their sculpting techniques with the local Chinese artisans.

"I imagine that a Greek sculptor may have been at the site to train the locals," Lukas Nickel, chair of Asian art history at Vienna University in Austria, told The Guardian.

The new evidence is the result of a large-scale investigation into the pits, which involved the use of remote sensing, ground-penetrating radar, and core sampling to reveal hidden sections of the funerary complex. 

As A. R. Williams reports for National Geographic, the tomb is far larger than previously thought - covering some 98 square kilometres (almost 38 square miles) - and thanks to the investigation, a number of new burials have been uncovered at the site.

"Archaeologists have discovered mass graves that appear to hold the remains of the craftsmen and labourers - including convicted criminals in chains - who died during the three decades it took to create the royal mausoleum," says Williams.

"Other mass burials seem to tell grisly tales of a brutal struggle to capture the emperor’s throne."

Of course, the evidence is all circumstantial at this point, so until more definitive proof comes to light, the hypothesis that Greek travellers worked with the Chinese to create the terracotta warriors remains just that. 

And there'll be a lot of pressure on the team to back their speculation up with something more substantial, because foreign influence on one of the most iconic works of art in Chinese history is bound to be controversial. 

But if a case can be made to support this scenario, it will force an entire rethink on what historians had assumed about Western contact with China more than 2 millennia ago. 

Until now, it was believed that Marco Polo was among the first Europeans to make contact with China in the 13th century, but thanks to the DNA evidence, we now know that Europeans were there well ahead of Marco Polo - but in what capacity is anyone's guess.

The results of the investigation will be revealed in the documentary, The Greatest Tomb on Earth, made by the BBC and National Geographic, which will be screened later this month. We're holding out for a peer-reviewed paper on the studies before we get too excited, but we can't wait to see where this research leads.

By Bec Crew

With many thanks to Science Alert 



Related posts:

Stonehenge: A Breakthrough In An Age-old Mystery?

Chauvet Cave Paintings: Cave Women Left Their Artistic Mark

Colossal Pharaoh Statues of Amenhotep III Found in Egypt’s Temple City Luxor

Lost City of Heracleion Gives Up Its Secrets

Shilling Discovery 'Could' Rewrite Canadian History

Fake Pharaoh: Tutankhamun Replica To Safeguard Original Tomb

10,000-year-old House Uncovered Outside Of Jerusalem

Great Zimbabwe

Rock-hewn Tombs From Ancient Egypt Discovered In Aswan

Europe's Oldest Human Footprints Found: 900,000 Year-old Norfolk Footprints 'Definitely Human”

First Pharaoh Ruled Ancient Egypt Earlier Than First Thought  

The Antikythera Mechanism - The World's Oldest Known Computer

Archaeologists Digging Up Cecile B DeMille's Movie Treasures

The Lost Technology of Ancient Egyptians

The Elgin Marbles - A Continuing Controversy

Zeugma: 2,000-Year-Old Mosaics Uncovered In Turkey
 
Five Lost Cities

China's Lost Civilization: The Mystery Of Sanxingdui
 
Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh

Ancient Tomb in Amphipolis Revealed
 
Easter Island: Scientists Are Closer To Understanding What Wiped Out Its Society

The World’s Priceless Treasures

Relief of Queen Nefertiti

Gold Treasures Discovered in Ming Dynasty Tomb

Unique Mosaic Images Uncovered in Fifth-Century Synagogue 

 Philip of Macedonia, Greece’s Ancient King, Found 

Queen Nefertiti: Was She Hidden In King Tutankhamun’s Tomb?

The Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain

The Antikythera Mechanism: Second Expedition Seeks More Mechanism Remains 

 Discovery Of Ancient Cave Paintings In Petra

Scientists Find ‘Superhenge’ That Could Be Five Times The Area Of Stonehenge

New Clues to Ancient Roman Art Discovered in Egyptian Mummy Portraits

Babylonians Tracked Jupiter with Fancy Math, Tablet Reveals

Rome Reborn – An Amazing Digital Model of Ancient Rome

A Day in Pompeii

The Holigost: 600 Year Old Pride of Henry V’s Fleet May Have Been Found

Ippolito Rosellini: The Monuments of Egypt And Nubia

Gem-Filled Warrior's Tomb Discovered in Ancient Greek City  

Amenhotep’s Fragmented Book Of The Dead Found 

Acra: Ancient Citadel Unearthed In Jerusalem 

Glastonbury Legends, King Arthur’s ‘Grave’, Made Up For Cash By Monks

 Is Queen Nefertiti Buried In King Tutankhaman’s Tomb? - Latest News

King Hezekiah's Seal Impression Found

Spanish Galleon San Jose Discovered Laden With Treasure Off Colombia 

Has The Lost Island Of Kane Been Found?

Britain's Pompeii' Found at Bronze Age Settlement

New Clues to Ancient Roman Art Discovered in Egyptian Mummy Portraits

Hidden Rooms In King Tut’s Tomb May Contain Organic Material

Shipwreck Discovered From Explorer Vasco da Gama's Fleet

Ancestral Puebloans Were Hit By Boom and Bust

Bible Breakthrough Found In Israel

Queen Hatshepsut's Building Blocks Discovered

What’s REALLY Inside A Pyramid:1st 3D Images Created Using Cosmic Particles

The World's 20 Most Impressive Ancient Builds

Rare Ancient Greek Gold Crown Discovered Under A Bed. 

Dagger in King Tut's Tomb Was Made With Iron From A Meteorite 

Team Testing New Scanner on Egypt's Great Pyramid

Ancient Mayan Observatory Was Used To Track Venus And Mars

Has The Gateway to Ancient Greek God's Compound Been Uncovered?

Archaeologists Find 22 Ancient Greek Shipwrecks

Archaeologists Reveal Probable Sites Of Two Missions That Predate The Alamo

Palace Found At Tintagel, Fabled Birthplace Of King Arthur 

 Marble Statues of Aphrodite Unearthed At Petra
 
Ancient Skeleton Uncovered At The Antikythera Shipwreck

Egyptian Mummy And Temple 4200 Years Old With Well-Preserved Art Revealed

 

Superheroes Of The Ancient World

                               

                                                                    
Over the past few years, even the most ardent comic book nerd might have wondered if there were too many superhero movies playing in the local multiplex.

For every Iron Man, or Avengers, there have been a couple of less-than Fantastic Fours and enough dubious Hulks to smash the sternest spirit. Studios keep making these films because they know audiences will flock to see them, even if the heroes include a raccoon and a tree. So the question this poses is: why are we so drawn to superhero stories? And since when?

The answer to the second question is more brief than the first. 

Superheroes have existed for as long as stories, before writing and across every culture from which we can find evidence. Fionn mac Cumhaill built the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, and Gilgamesh defeated Humbaba in Mesopotamia. Rama was exiled from Ayodhya in India, while Beowulf slew Grendel and Grendel’s mother in Scandinavia. And that’s before you think about the ancient Greeks, who boasted a plethora of heroes to match any collection from Marvel or DC.

                                                                        

Many of today’s most popular superheroes have roots in ancient characters – Wonder Woman, like Hippolyta, is one of the Amazons, a female warrior race (Credit: Warner Bros)

The rules about what makes a superhero are pretty flexible. Superman is an alien, pre-empted by almost two millennia by the Assyrian satirist Lucian who wrote in his True Stories of extra-terrestrial armies engaged in a war. 

Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider, and Bruce Banner was dosed with gamma rays: in other words, they are ordinary human beings with an extra power imposed upon them. The ancients used a similar narrative device, but with semi-divinity as the explanation, rather than science: Perseus, for example, is a hero because his father is Zeus. Wonder Woman, like Hippolyta and Penthesilea before her, is an Amazon, and so also semi-divine.

Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark’s superpowers are their limitless credit cards, which also explains why Agamemnon – least heroic of all heroes, surely – is so concerned about acquiring more booty than other Greek hero during the Trojan War: money is power. 

But perhaps my favourite subgroup of superheroes includes Hawkeye and Green Arrow, whose superpower is ‘being especially good with a bow and arrow’. This ties them neatly to the wiliest of all ancient heroes, Odysseus. After a 20-year absence from his home of Ithaca, he proves his identity to those who thought him long dead by stringing a complex bow and shooting an arrow through twelve axe-heads.

Every superhero has his origin story, and a surprisingly large number of modern ones owe those origins to myths of gods and heroes who existed millennia before their cultural descendants. Even Ant-Man isn’t a completely recent phenomenon: Zeus turned himself into an ant, as part of his scheme to have sex with every pretty girl in the ancient world while disguised as an array of different creatures. 
Leda was ravished by him in swan form; poor Eurymedusa was accosted by him as an ant. Achilles’ warriors, the Myrmidons, legendarily owe their name to this union (the Greek word for an ant is myrmex): they too are Ant-men.


Comics and classics
So that brings us back to the first question, which is rather more complicated: what is it about the superhero narrative that has such a primal appeal we’ve been telling stories about men and women with superpowers for as long as we’ve told stories? For the ancients, heroes and gods acted as a kind of bridge between what they could understand and explain, and what they could not. 

For example, ancient Greeks and Romans experienced large numbers of earthquakes; they knew the ground shook, but they could not possibly have guessed the existence of tectonic plates. So they extrapolated: a light, wooden table would shake if you stamped your foot next to it, on a wooden floor. When buildings shook, it made sense then that something very powerful was stamping on the ground somewhere. Thus, Poseidon acquired his honorific title ‘Earth-shaker’. The idea of a god lurking beneath the ocean smacking his trident into the seabed may seem like a fanciful explanation to us. But as a way of explaining the information available to the ancients, it’s not bad.

                                                                  

Some Marvel characters aren’t just indirectly inspired by antiquity – The Avengers’ Thor, and his brother Loki, are supposed to be the gods of Norse myths (Credit: Disney/Marvel)

And heroes in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid – the epic poems of the Trojan War and its aftermath – often have an intimate connection to the gods that shapes their heroic stories. 

Achilles is the son of Thetis (a sea-nymph for whom Zeus has an especially soft spot). Aeneas is the son of Venus, and though Odysseus boasts mortal parentage, he is the favourite of Athena (and bête-noire of Poseidon). 

Odysseus is described by Homer as ‘Polumetis’, which means ‘of many wiles’. But still, some of his best schemes are provided by one god or another: without the help of Hermes, for instance, he would not have the stratagem in place to defeat the witch Circe.

This connection to a higher power which can influence the world around them (whether it is Zeus or SHIELD) is a crucial aspect of many heroes. And perhaps it is this particular characteristic that grants the superhero one of their more troubling tendencies: the excessive individualism which allows them to operate outside the rules of society and beyond or above the rule of law. 

It’s a common trope of modern superhero films: who is Batman to decide what kind of justice Gotham deserves? He’s a masked vigilante who sets himself above his fellow citizens and acts as judge, jury and sometimes executioner on the villains who populate the city.

The existential X-Men
This question too is not a modern one. In Book II of The Iliad, a man named Thersites makes a brief cameo appearance. He is not described, as so many characters are, with reference to his father: whoever that is, he’s not important enough for a name-check. 

Thersites is also vulgar and misshapen: we are surely supposed to conclude that he is far from heroic material.

More so when he begins to speak, and issues a trenchant critique of the character of Agamemnon, the king who oversees all the Greeks: Theristes accuses him of being greedy and cowardly – sentiments which echo those Achilles has made of Agamemnon earlier in the poem.

Thersites is then beaten by Odysseus and he weeps at the pain and humiliation. 

But the question is now surely lodged in the audience’s mind: why should Agamemnon be treated as a great king, worthy of all the treasure he has claimed for himself. What sets him above us, apart from his monstrous self-regard? Especially when all are agreed that Achilles is the greater warrior, a braver man.

And what happens when a hero turns completely away from the path which most of us would consider good? Magneto, for example, starts out fighting alongside Charles Xavier, before their choices place them on opposing sides. 

His story echoes that of Ajax, who fights alongside the other Greek heroes during the Trojan War. But after he is tricked out of what he sees to be his rightful reward (which is instead given to Odysseus), he turns on his erstwhile comrades. Only an enchantment from Athena (protecting Odysseus as always) clouds his mind, and convinces him that he is slaughtering Greek warriors when he is actually killing livestock. The humiliation is so terrible that he takes his own life when he realises what he has done.

                                                                    

Ancient tales not only depicted the struggles of heroes, but of villains too – such as Polyphemus, brought to terrifying life by Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin
(Credit: Wikipedia)

We are surely drawn to heroes and superheroes because they illuminate the human condition – and they do so precisely because they operate at a slightly inhuman level. Heroes are like us, but more so: stronger, cleverer, faster. They suffer from the same human frailties as we do, but because of their superior powers, these struggles are played out in a more dramatic arena than our own.

Superheroes impose order on a chaotic world, which can often seem to be filled with nefarious powers (from natural disasters to supervillains) that mere mortals cannot identify or hope to fight. We clearly prefer a world of lawless superheroes to one with no superheroics at all. And we always have.

                                                                   

By Natalie Haynes
With many thanks to BBC Culture
Picture credit for Superman: EW.com 
(My favourite).
 
Some related posts on literature:
Helen of Troy - The Movie, The Music and Jon English
'The Great Gatsby': Seven Life Lessons
Shakespeare First Folio found on Scottish Isle of Bute
The Musketeers

William Shakespeare: The World As He Made It

Cleopatra: Was She Killed By A Snake?

Where Do Fairy Tales Come From? 

Winnie The Pooh Named Kids' Favourite Book 

The Best and Worst of Hollywood's Book Adaptations? 

Is This Pasted Note Jane Austen's Final Missive? 

Sherlock Holmes: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hero Still Going Strong 

Alice in Wonderland at 150 

Fairy Tales Are Grim! 

Diggers discover Thomas Hardy’s ‘Tess’, Martha Brown

Ben-Hur: A Remake On The Way

Shakespeare’s World Revealed In 400-year-old Handwriting

The Banjo: A History by Laurent Dubois

The Battle Over Troy

Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" Remade Again

Maggie Smith: Michael Coveney’s Biography 

Sir John Monash: Grantlee Kieza’s Biography

Mysterious 'Man in the Iron Mask' Revealed
Father Of Anne Frank Listed As Co-Author Of Diary To Extend Copyright

The Book Of Kells: A Medieval Treasure

William Shakespeare is still a relevant literary voice.
Queen Marks Magna Carta Anniversary
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Press Pass for the Spanish Civil War Found

Palace Found At Tintagel, Fabled Birthplace Of King Arthur 
Ancient Egyptian Works To Be Published Together In English For The First Time
Who Was Cleopatra? 
The Untold Truth About The Holy Grail
 

 




 

 




                                                                       

Archaeologists Find 22 Ancient Greek Shipwrecks

                                                                     

A spate of shipwrecks recently found near a group of Greek islands has given researchers new insights into how trade routes and sailing technology evolved in the Eastern Mediterranean. And with more exploration planned, additional discoveries are still likely.

Over a stretch of two weeks in September, tips from local fishermen and sponge divers led a team of Greek and American archaeologists to the precise locations of 22 shipwrecks in a 17-square-mile area around the Fourni archipelago in the eastern Aegean.

The find is remarkable both for the sheer number of wrecks in the small area and the range of time periods the vessels came from.

The earliest wreck dates to the Archaic Period (700-480 B.C.), while the most recent is from the Late Medieval Period (16th century A.D.). Ships from the Classical Period (480-323 B.C.) and the Hellenistic Period (323-31 B.C.) were also found, though a majority—12 of the 22—sailed and sank at some point during the Late Roman Period (300-600 A.D.)

“It’s an extremely rich area,” says Greek director George Koutsouflakis, an archaeologist with the Hellenic Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities.

Finding 22 shipwrecks in only two weeks is incredibly rare, but more discoveries in the area are likely—the team has surveyed only 5 percent of Fourni’s coasts, and local fishermen have given them many more tips.

All the ships were merchant vessels traversing a route that connected Anatolia, Samos, and the Black Sea region to Rhodes, Cyprus, and even Egypt. Wooden ships generally decompose underwater or get eaten by seaworms. But their cargo—ancient clay storage jars called amphorae—survive. Each ship was carrying several hundred amphorae. By assessing the size and shape of the jars, archaeologists can infer where and when they were made.

Residue or DNA analysis will confirm what they contained, but the primary goods are not in doubt.

“We know from comparable shipwrecks and terrestrial sites that the three major goods would have been olive oil, wine, and fish sauce,” says Jeffrey Royal, a co-director from the Florida-based RPM Nautical Foundation.

These bulk items were likely stored in the larger amphorae, while smaller ones might have held jams, fruits, honey, hazelnuts, almonds, as well as luxury commodities like perfumes.

Many merchant crews in the Classical Period were composed of 10 to 15 sailors. By the Late Roman Period advances in sailing technology, such as lateen sails that ran from fore to aft, reduced crews to as few as five to seven people. Unlike the famous Greek and Roman warships known as triremes, the smaller merchant ships derived power primarily from sails rather than banks of rowers.

Some of the ships around Fourni appear to have encountered sudden storms and strong winds that smashed them against cliffs and rock formations in shallow water.

“You can look at the spatial patterning of the sites and reconstruct a plausible story about what happened,” says Peter Campbell, a co-director of the project from the University of Southampton. “It looks like some of them were anchored behind cliffs to shelter from a northwest wind, but this made them vulnerable to a southern wind that drove them against the cliffs.”

The ancient sailors’ chances of survival would have been slight. “Of the 22 wrecks we studied, there were probably four where they might have had a chance to swim to a beach or shore. But most of the spots were next to sheer cliffs. There’s no way they would’ve survived in a storm,” Campbell says.

The archaeologists have only begun to analyze the material they collected from the shipwrecks in September, but the abundance of late Roman ships is already striking. They suspect that this apparent spike in traffic may be linked to the rise of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire in the fourth century. They expect their ongoing research to answer many specific questions about ancient maritime trade networks and how they related to the shifting political structures of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Fourni was already known to some smugglers before this September’s survey. Locals had reported seeing suspicious activity in the water near certain sites, and the archaeologists found some evidence of looting when they dove the wrecks.

Pinpointing exact locations for 22 of the area’s shipwrecks will make it easier for Greek authorities to supervise the sites. The archaeologists also hope that the knowledge gained during excavations will give local communities a stronger sense of connection to their history.

“An engaged local population is the best form of protection,” Campbell says.

By Nick Romeo

With many thanks to NatGeo

                                                                  

Some related posts:

Henry VIII’s Favourite Ship,The Mary Rose, Resurfaces In Portsmouth


Stonehenge: A Breakthrough In An Age-old Mystery?

Chauvet Cave Paintings: Cave Women Left Their Artistic Mark

Colossal Pharaoh Statues of Amenhotep III Found in Egypt’s Temple City Luxor

Lost City of Heracleion Gives Up Its Secrets

Shilling Discovery 'Could' Rewrite Canadian History

Fake Pharaoh: Tutankhamun Replica To Safeguard Original Tomb

10,000-year-old House Uncovered Outside Of Jerusalem

Great Zimbabwe

Rock-hewn Tombs From Ancient Egypt Discovered In Aswan

Europe's Oldest Human Footprints Found: 900,000 Year-old Norfolk Footprints 'Definitely Human”

First Pharaoh Ruled Ancient Egypt Earlier Than First Thought  

The Antikythera Mechanism - The World's Oldest Known Computer

Archaeologists Digging Up Cecile B DeMille's Movie Treasures

The Lost Technology of Ancient Egyptians

The Elgin Marbles - A Continuing Controversy

Zeugma: 2,000-Year-Old Mosaics Uncovered In Turkey
 
Five Lost Cities

China's Lost Civilization: The Mystery Of Sanxingdui
 
Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh

Ancient Tomb in Amphipolis Revealed
 
Easter Island: Scientists Are Closer To Understanding What Wiped Out Its Society

The World’s Priceless Treasures

Relief of Queen Nefertiti

Gold Treasures Discovered in Ming Dynasty Tomb

Unique Mosaic Images Uncovered in Fifth-Century Synagogue 

 Philip of Macedonia, Greece’s Ancient King, Found 

Queen Nefertiti: Was She Hidden In King Tutankhamun’s Tomb?

The Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain

The Antikythera Mechanism: Second Expedition Seeks More Mechanism Remains 

 Discovery Of Ancient Cave Paintings In Petra

Scientists Find ‘Superhenge’ That Could Be Five Times The Area Of Stonehenge

New Clues to Ancient Roman Art Discovered in Egyptian Mummy Portraits

Babylonians Tracked Jupiter with Fancy Math, Tablet Reveals

Rome Reborn – An Amazing Digital Model of Ancient Rome

A Day in Pompeii

The Holigost: 600 Year Old Pride of Henry V’s Fleet May Have Been Found

Ippolito Rosellini: The Monuments of Egypt And Nubia

Gem-Filled Warrior's Tomb Discovered in Ancient Greek City  

Amenhotep’s Fragmented Book Of The Dead Found 

Acra: Ancient Citadel Unearthed In Jerusalem 

Glastonbury Legends, King Arthur’s ‘Grave’, Made Up For Cash By Monks

 Is Queen Nefertiti Buried In King Tutankhaman’s Tomb? - Latest News

King Hezekiah's Seal Impression Found

Spanish Galleon San Jose Discovered Laden With Treasure Off Colombia 

Has The Lost Island Of Kane Been Found?

Britain's Pompeii' Found at Bronze Age Settlement

New Clues to Ancient Roman Art Discovered in Egyptian Mummy Portraits

Hidden Rooms In King Tut’s Tomb May Contain Organic Material

Shipwreck Discovered From Explorer Vasco da Gama's Fleet

Ancestral Puebloans Were Hit By Boom and Bust

Bible Breakthrough Found In Israel

Queen Hatshepsut's Building Blocks Discovered

What’s REALLY Inside A Pyramid:1st 3D Images Created Using Cosmic Particles

The World's 20 Most Impressive Ancient Builds

Rare Ancient Greek Gold Crown Discovered Under A Bed. 

Dagger in King Tut's Tomb Was Made With Iron From A Meteorite 

Team Testing New Scanner on Egypt's Great Pyramid

Ancient Mayan Observatory Was Used To Track Venus And Mars

Has The Gateway to Ancient Greek God's Compound Been Uncovered?

Archaeologists Reveal Probable Sites Of Two Missions That Predate The Alamo

Palace Found At Tintagel, Fabled Birthplace Of King Arthur 

Top Ten Lost Treasures of the World

Will Hair Unlock The Secrets Of The Bounty Mutineers?

Sir John Franklin's Long-lost HMS Terror Believed To Be Found

 Marble Statues of Aphrodite Unearthed At Petra

Ancient Skeleton Uncovered At The Antikythera Shipwreck

Did the Greeks Help Sculpt China's Terra Cotta Warriors?

Egyptian Mummy And Temple 4200 Years Old With Well-Preserved Art Revealed