Researchers Solve Mystery of Headless Roman Statues
When a museum displays a piece of art, they usually try to show it in its entirety. It’s rare to see a painting with half its canvas missing, or a tapestry with one side unraveled. But when it comes to ancient Roman statues, they can come a little broken, and that’s pretty much the norm. Walk through any classical art museum, and you’re likely to see broken noses, severed fingers, and a whole lot of severed heads.
The world’s largest observatory, built before our era, is located in Egypt
In 2024, archaeologists discovered a huge observatory in Egypt, which they say is the largest ever found and dates back to the sixth century BC. Several stones with sundials and inscriptions related to astronomy were found at the site.
The oldest calendar and the oldest analog computer were discovered in the summer of 2024
Yet these historical monuments were practically before the eyes of scientists. For example, archaeologists recently reinterpreted the markings on a stone pillar at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey, the site of one of the oldest ancient farming communities in the world. The Mesopotamian monument is about 12,000 years old, dating back to the early Holocene, which marks the most recent era on Earth since the glaciers retreated. Divers also discovered the wreckage of an ancient ship off the island of Antikythera in 1900. Several masterpieces of ancient sculpture were brought to the surface. Unexpectedly, among the fragments that were initially mistaken for sculptural fragments, they saw gears. The bronze parts were corroded and covered in marine sediment.
New facts in the history of Ancient Egypt have been discovered
It would seem that Egypt has been dug up and down, but archaeologists and scientists are finding new facts to study. For example, mysterious plasma bubbles have appeared above the pyramids; China has recorded these strange atmospheric phenomena using modern radar. Archaeologists have discovered a 3,000-year-old fort in the desert, which contains evidence of the pharaoh’s stay. The ancient Egyptians used so much copper that they polluted the harbor near the pyramids.
Top Archaeological Novelties Found Underwater in 2024
Surprisingly, historical landmarks can survive in water. A 2,000-year-old temple from the “Indiana Jones civilization” has been found submerged off the coast of Italy. An ancient sunken bridge in Spain shows that people inhabited the Mediterranean island nearly 6,000 years ago. A torrential downpour hit an excavation site and uncovered a 233-million-year-old dinosaur. Archaeologists have discovered underwater images of several New and Late Kingdom pharaohs in the southern Egyptian province of Aswan. Archaeologists have found a centuries-old statue of a Greek god at the bottom of a Roman sewer.
Archaeologists in Norway have discovered an ancient cemetery where mostly children were buried
Archaeologists in Norway have discovered a cemetery dating from 800 to 200 BCE, where mostly children were buried. Because the remains of nearly 40 children, all under the age of 6, were found there, experts are unsure what prompted the discovery of these remains in Norway. Each grave was marked by carefully placed, symmetrical stone circles. The group of 41 stone circles near Fredrikstad in southeastern Norway puzzled the team of archaeologists when they first discovered them. What they found beneath the circles did not help solve any of the mysteries.