Archaeologists as surveying the underwater wreckage of as many as ten French warships that sank during the Siege of Louisbourg in 1758.

“You are not seeing a lot of structure above the sea bed,” he said Wednesday morning, after the five-person team returned to the wharf in Louisbourg. “A lot of the heavier materials located in the lower-most reaches of the ships are laying on the seabed.

“A common thing we are seeing is cannons that were on the warships when they went down: cannonballs, cannon shot, bar shot — all of the kinds of ordnance that was on the vessels when they sank.”

Some ship parts like some rigging, pulley components, stone and iron ballast are also on the ocean floor.

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Story: Cape Breton Post | Photo: Parks Canada

Analysis of the remains of 51 slaughtered dogs found in eastern Russia suggest that they were killed as part of an initiation rite for boys looking to become warriors.

At first, archaeologists Dorcas Brown and David Anthony were deeply puzzled. While excavating the Bronze Age site of Krasnosamarkskoe in Russia’s Volga region, they unearthed the bones of at least 51 dogs and 7 wolves. All the animals had died during the winter months, judging from the telltale banding pattern on their teeth, and all were subsequently skinned, dismembered, burned, and chopped with an ax.

Moreover, the butcher had worked in a precise, standardized way, chopping the dogs’ snouts into three pieces and their skulls into geometrically shaped fragments just an inch or so in size. “It was very strange,” says Anthony.

[Full story]

Story: Heather Pringle, National Geographic | Photo: Yulia Rubtsova, ITAR-TASS/Alamy

DNA analysis performed on a 4,000-year-old skeleton suggests that the Minoan civilization was founded by the descendants of the first European populations and not from Egyptians as a previous theory proposed.

To test that idea, the research team analyzed DNA from ancient Minoan skeletons that were sealed in a cave in Crete’s Lassithi Plateau between 3,700 and 4,400 years ago. They then compared the skeletal mitochondrial DNA, which is stored in the energy powerhouses of cells and passed on through the maternal line, with that found in a sample of 135 modern and ancient populations from around Europe and Africa.

The researchers found that the Minoan skeletons were genetically very similar to modern-day Europeans — and especially close to modern-day Cretans, particularly those from the Lassithi Plateau. They were also genetically similar to Neolithic Europeans, but distinct from Egyptian or Libyan populations.

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Story: Tia Ghose, LiveScience | Photo: Andrei Nekrassov, Shutterstock

A log boat that dates back between 500 and 5,000 years has been found in the Boyne River in Ireland.

An ancient log-boat, possibly thousands of years old, has been discovered partly embedded in the banks of the River Boyne in Drogheda, possibly where it originally sank.

An initial examination by specialist archaeologist Karl Brady, suggests it could be unique because, unlike other dug-outs or log boats found in the Republic, it has a pair of oval shaped blisters on the upper edge.

Such features were “ very rare”.

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Story: Irish Times | Photo: BFRRS

Construction crews have demolished a 2,300-year-old Maya temple in Belize to use the stones in a road-building project.

“It’s a feeling of incredible disbelief because of the ignorance and the insensitivity … they were using this for road fill,” Awe said. “It’s like being punched in the stomach, it’s just so horrendous.”

Nohmul was in the middle of a privately owned sugar cane field, and lacked the even stone sides frequently seen in reconstructed or better-preserved pyramids. But Awe said the builders could not possibly have mistaken the pyramid mound, which is about 30 metres (100ft) tall, for a natural hill because the ruins were well known and the landscape there was naturally flat.

“These guys knew that this was an ancient structure. It’s just bloody laziness,” Awe said.

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Story: AP | Photo: Jaime Awe, AP

The Elephants Tomb at the Carmona necropolis in Seville, Spain may have originally been built to serve as a temple of Mithraism.

The so-called Elephant’s Tomb in the Roman necropolis of Carmona (Seville, Spain) was not always used for burials. The original structure of the building and a window through which the sun shines directly in the equinoxes suggest that it was a temple of Mithraism, an unofficial religion in the Roman Empire. The position of Taurus and Scorpio during the equinoxes gives force to the theory.

The Carmona necropolis (Spain) is a collection of funeral structures from between the 1st century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D. One of these is known as the Elephant’s Tomb because a statue in the shape of an elephant was found in the interior of the structure.

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Story: Science Daily | Photo: University Pablo Olavide

A shaft tomb dating back between 1,500 – 2,500 years old has been found in Mexico, complete with the remains of 28 individuals.

“At the burial’s center –he added– they discovered a unique shaft tomb; unique, because its shaft (1.2 meters [3.9 feet] deep) was covered by a mud mix that had not been found in Colima.

“The tomb’s access is a shaft with a 70 centimeter [27.55 inches] diameter, located 80 centimeters [31.49 inches] underneath the street. The shaft’s end is decorated with a stepping stone oriented from west to east that allows access to the vault. The vault contains a great quantity of piled up bones in disarray, from which we have identified eight craniums. However, by the great quantity of osseous remains, it’s possible there might be more than 10 individuals”.

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Story: Cristina Perez Ayala, Art Daily | Photo: Art Daily

The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, has been found in DNA samples taken from the remains of 19 different people who lived in 6th century Bavaria.

“After such a long time — nearly 1,500 years, one is still able to detect the agent of plague by modern molecular methods,” researcher Holger Scholz, a molecular microbiologist at the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology in Munich, Germany, told LiveScience.

The researchers said these findings confirm that the Justinianic Plague crossed the Alps, killing people in what is now Bavaria. Analysis of the DNA suggests that much like the later two pandemics of plague, this first pandemic originated in Asia, “even if historical records say that it arrived first in Africa before spreading to the Mediterranean basin and to Europe,” Bramanti told LiveScience.

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Story: Ewen Callaway, Nature | Photo: Alan Collins/Alamy

Genetic research suggests that all modern Europeans have common ancestors who lived 1,000 years ago.

Whether they are a Serb and a Swiss, or a Finn and a Frenchman, any two Europeans are likely to have many common ancestors who lived around 1,000 years ago. A genomic survey of 2,257 people from 40 populations finds that people of European ancestry are more closely related to one another than previously thought, and could help to bring about new insights into European history.

The first efforts to trace human ancestry through DNA relied on ‘uniparental genetic markers’ — DNA sequences from the mitochondrial genome, which is inherited through mothers, or on the Y chromosome, which men inherit from their fathers.

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Story: Ewen Callaway, Nature | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A quarry, complete with ancient tools, has been uncovered in Jerusalem.

Some of the huge stones would’ve reached about 6.5 feet (2 meters) in length and weighed tens if not hundreds of tons, the researchers said.

In total, the team uncovered an area of around 11,000 square feet (1,000 square meters) where the ancient quarry would’ve existed. The quarry connects with other previously identified quarries, all of which seem to be situated in Jerusalem’s so-called “city of quarries” dating to the Second Temple period.

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Story: Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience | Photo: Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority

Researchers have mapped the medieval port town of Dunwich which was submerged by the waters of the Dunwich River in the 15th century.

He comments, “Visibility under the water at Dunwich is very poor due to the muddy water. This has limited the exploration of the site.

“We have now dived on the site using high resolution DIDSON ™ acoustic imaging to examine the ruins on the seabed — a first use of this technology for non-wreck marine archaeology.

“DIDSON technology is rather like shining a torch onto the seabed, only using sound instead of light. The data produced helps us to not only see the ruins, but also understand more about how they interact with the tidal currents and sea bed.”

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Story: Science Daily | Photo: University of Southampton

Roman-era mosaics have been found in the ancient city of Milas in southwestern Turkey.

Milas District Governor Bahattin Atç?, gendarmerie Lt. Col. Ertu?rul Memi? and gendarmerie Lt. Gürkan Uygun held a press conference on Friday about the findings. Atç? said he believes the newly found tiles will significantly contribute to Turkey’s cultural wealth. “We already knew that there were very precious historical artifacts in the region. We need to focus more on unearthing them,” he said.

Atç? noted that the mosaic tiles that have been found might be as valuable as ones found in the ancient city of Zeugma in the southern province of Gaziantep. Zeugma is one of the four most important historical settlements under the reign of the Kingdom of Commagene.

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Story: World Bulletin | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The graves of an infant and and adult have been found during excavations at the Church of Saints James and Philip just outside of Milan, Italy.

Excavations of the Church of Saints James and Philip, which began in March, led to discoveries that are especially important to the history of the Lombardy region and its earliest inhabitants.

Findings related to the community, once known as Nocetum, include tombs of an infant and an adult, and coins dating from the time of Roman emperor Magnentius, usurper of the empire from 350 to 353.

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Story: Ansa.It | Photo: Guarda la foto

The remains of a British soldier who died during a battle in 1799 has been found in a sand dune in the Netherlands.

For more than two centuries, the remains of a soldier lay undisturbed on a windy beach in the northern Netherlands.

But in March 2011, birdwatchers discovered bones and metal artefacts among sand-dunes that had once been covered in asphalt.

The find was near an area known as the “Bonehole” because of the number of historic remains that had previously been unearthed.

A team of archaeologists was called in to dig further. Among them was 28-year-old Esther Poulus, whose involvement was to lead her to the National Archives in Kew, Surrey, in an attempt to discover the identity of the fallen soldier.

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Story: Caroline Wyatt, BBC News | BBC News

A research team has discovered that the Cerro del Gentil pyramid in Peru aligns perfectly with two geoglyphs and the setting sun.

An ancient astronomical alignment in southern Peru has been discovered by researchers between a pyramid, two stone lines and the setting sun during the winter solstice. During the solstice, hundreds of years ago, the three would have lined up to frame the pyramid in light.

The two stone lines, called geoglyphs, are located about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) east-southeast from the pyramid. They run for about 1,640 feet (500 meters), and researchers say the lines were “positioned in such a way as to frame the pyramid as one descended down the valley from the highlands.”

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Story: Owen Jarus, LiveScience | Laura Griffin

New research suggests that the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon may actually have been built in Niniveh, 300 miles from Babylon.

The evidence presented by Dalley, an expert in ancient Middle Eastern languages, emerged from deciphering Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform scripts and reinterpreting later Greek and Roman texts. They included a 7th-century BC Assyrian inscription that, she discovered, had been mistranslated in the 1920s, reducing passages to “absolute nonsense”.

She was astonished to find Sennacherib’s own description of an “unrivalled palace” and a “wonder for all peoples”. He describes the marvel of a water-raising screw made using a new method of casting bronze – and predating the invention of Archimedes’ screw by some four centuries.

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Story: Dalya Alberge, The Guardian | Photo: Bettmann/Corbis

Mark Pagel, an evolutionary theorist from the University of Reading, believes that many of today’s languages could have stemmed from one original language that dates back 15,000 years.

Because words don’t have DNA, researchers use cognates found in different languages today to reconstruct the ancestral “protowords.” Historical linguists have observed that over time, the sounds of words tend to change in regular patterns. For example, the p sound frequently changes to f, and the t sound to th—suggesting that the Latin word pater is, well, the father of the English word father. Linguists use these known rules to work backward in time, making a best guess at how the protoword sounded. They also track the rate at which words change. Using these phylogenetic principles, some researchers have dated many common words as far back as 9000 years ago. The ancestral language known as Proto-Indo-European, for example, gave rise to languages including Hindi, Russian, French, English, and Gaelic.

Some researchers, including Pagel, believe that the world’s languages are united by even older superfamilies, but this view is hotly contested. Skeptics feel that even if language families were related, words suffer from too much erosion, both in terms of sound and meaning, to be reliably traced back further than 9000 or 10,000 year, and that the similarities of many cognates may be pure chance. What was missing, Pagel says, was an objective method of analysis.

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Story: Elizabeth Norton, Science Magazine | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A 1,700-year-old Roman cemetery has been found beneath a parking lot in Leicester, England.

The new discovery, found at the junction of Newarke and Oxford Streets, includes numerous burials and skeletal remains from 13 individuals, both male and female of various ages. The cemetery is estimated to date back to around A.D. 300, according to University of Leicester archaeologists who led the dig.

“We have literally only just finished the excavation and the finds are currently in the process of being cleaned and catalogued so that they can then be analyzed by the various specialists,” John Thomas, archaeological project officer, told LiveScience in an email.

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Story: Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience | Photo: University of Leicester Archaeological Services

An ancient rock art site on Vancouver Island, titled Cedar By the Sea, has been damaged by a local power company’s contracted workers.

Douglas White, chief of the Snuneymuxw First Nation said the damage is disrespectful of native heritage and he doesn’t understand how crews could make the mistake, since existing petroglyph rock art sites are documented and protected by legislation.

Petroglyphs can be more than 2,000 years old and typically feature etched drawings that serve as a record of First Nations history on the surface of flat bedrock sandstone.

“This is a notoriously well-known site,” White said. “I don’t understand this to be a mistake that can be made … this is the kind of desecration where I would expect charges to be laid.”

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Story: Ben Ingram, The Record | Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Dancing naked men found on a restored 15th century painting may be the first Western depictions of Native Americans.

The painting, by the Renaissance master Pinturicchio, was finished in 1494, just two years after Christopher Columbus first set foot in the New World.

It has adorned the walls of the Borgia Apartments in the Vatican for 500 years but was only recently subjected to restoration work.

The naked men, who appear to be dancing, were spotted by a restorer, Maria Pustka, as she removed centuries of grime.

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Story: Nick Squires, The Telegraph | Photo: Musei Vaticani

Irrigation features dating back to Spanish colonial times have been found in Brackenridge Park in San Antonio after being buried for 300 years.

Local and state officials will provide more details Friday of recent excavations that unearthed waterway features linking the park to the Spanish colonial era in San Antonio.

City Archaeologist Kay Hindes said the discoveries, done under contract with the river authority for trailheads and other features of the Museum Reach of the San Antonio River Improvements Project, revealed “one of the most concentrated groupings of acequia features in the past 10 or 15 years.”

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Story: Scott Huddleston, My San Antonio | Photo: Darren Abate, The San Antonio Express-News

Logging equipment is responsible for damaging a prehistoric Native American village in California.

“We don’t want to impact a cultural site. We’re very concerned about that,” Nelson said.

A quick on-the-ground inspection of the area produced numerous obsidian chips and other American Indian artifacts, leading Nelson and Cal Fire officials to immediately expand a buffer area from less than an acre to around 3 acres.

The Maidus welcomed the temporary protections but remained skeptical about the company’s commitment to protect the valley it owns.

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Story: Jane Braxton Little, The Sacramento Bee | Photo: Jane Braxton Little, The Sacramento Bee

Archaeologists have been finding ancient artifacts in piles of dirt left behind by moles digging through the Roman fort of Epiacum in Cumbria, England.

As well as fragments of pottery and glass, the moles have dragged up some attractive and intact artefacts.

A molehill recently pushed up a piece of Samian ware – a type of brown pottery common on Roman sites – thought to be a stand for a vase or bowl, or possibly an egg cup.

Last year they discovered a jet bead and a decorative bronze dolphin.

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Story: BBC News | Photo: BBC News

A collection of 300 leather fragments belonging to an Egyptian Old Kingdom royal chariot have been rediscovered in the storerooms of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Ikram describes the discovery as very important and the collection as “extremely rare.” Only a handful of complete chariots are known from ancient Egypt, and of these, only one heavily restored in Florence and one in the Egyptian Museum have any significant amount of leather.

“Even then, they are largely unembellished and not as well-preserved as the fragments we found,” asserted Ikram. Although horse-drawn chariots are often illustrated in ancient Egyptian artwork, she said, archaeological evidence that goes beyond wooden frames is rare due to their organic nature, as leather fragments seldom survive.

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Story: Ahram Online | Photo: Ahram Online

Several cracks have appeared in six buildings in Alexandria, Egypt, due to an illegal excavation in the vicinity.

Six buildings sustained damage early Thursday morning in Alexandria’s Karmouz neighbourhood, possibly due to unauthorised excavations under an adjacent building. No casualties have so far been reported.

Police have arrested one suspect, Ahmed Hassan Ali, 29, who had several clay pots – which appeared to be very old – in his possession.

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Story: Ahram Online | Photo: Reuters