News from the ancient world
Every discovery we reported in 2026, newest first. Use the Atlas to see them on a map. See the top 10 of 2026.
Bronze Age · c. 2280 BC · Saqqara, Giza Governorate, Egypt
The Old Kingdom official was buried beside King Merenre's pyramid, and although his tomb held the instruments, no inscription in his burial chamber calls him a doctor.
Stone Age · Neolithic, c. 7000 BC · Diyarbakır province, South-eastern Anatolia, Turkey
The roughly 9,000-year-old work area had a stone-paved floor and six postholes, and Turkey's culture minister says local mining continued for about 2,000 years.
Greece & Rome · 1st–8th centuries AD · Mérida, Iberian Peninsula, Spain
A study of 243 people who lived between the 1st and 8th centuries AD puts the Germanic newcomers' genetic share at 12 to 22 percent, depending on region and social context.
Bronze Age · 17th century BC · Hala Sultan Tekke, Larnaca, Cyprus
Swedish archaeologists have found the first buildings at Hala Sultan Tekke from the 17th to the 15th century BC.
Greece & Rome · c. AD 28 · Velsen, North Holland, Netherlands
Leiden archaeologists reopened a 1977 find and think the man's own comrades most likely killed him.
Iron Age · c. 500 BC · Korskro, Jutland, Denmark
A belt of post pits from around 500 BC blocked the old Drivvej in western Denmark.
Stone Age · c. 3000 BC · Fanshan, Liangzhu, Zhejiang, China
Post holes at Fanshan outline three wooden buildings next to China's highest-ranking Neolithic graves, built about 5,000 years ago.
Bronze Age · c. 2700–2400 BC · Kekova Island, Antalya, Turkey
At least 30 storage jars, some probably made in the Jordan Valley, lie about 30 metres down near Kekova Island, though the wooden hull has not survived.
Bronze Age · c. 1400 BC · Kayalıpınar (Šamuḫa), Sivas province, Turkey
Excavators at Kayalıpınar, ancient Šamuḫa, recovered 131 tablets and fragments from the reign of Tudhaliya II in 2026, bringing the archive to 184 pieces.
Bronze Age · c. 1259 BC · Hattusa (Boğazkale), Çorum province, Turkey
The clay piece, part of an Akkadian copy of the pact between Ramesses II and Hattusili III, preserves clauses on people fleeing between the two kingdoms.
Stone Age · c. 9000 BC · Karahan Tepe, Şanlıurfa, Turkey
The 70-centimetre sculpture, about 11,000 years old, reverses a known motif at the site, where earlier statues show humans carrying live leopards on their backs.
Byzantium · Late 7th to early 8th century AD · Polače, Mljet, Dubrovnik-Neretva County, Croatia
The 7th or 8th-century ship that sank near Mljet carried more than 600 grams of gold, jewelled belt sets and a signet ring showing a Heraclian emperor.
Iron Age · 10th–8th century BC · Ashur, Iraq
Yale and Münster researchers argue that three short-lived Neo-Assyrian rulers of the 10th and 8th centuries BC were later removed from the official Assyrian King List.
Iron Age · c. 900–200 BC · Issyk, Almaty Region, Kazakhstan
Genomes from 85 Iron Age steppe nomads show that high-status people were related across cemeteries more than 100 km apart, and nearly half of them were women.
Byzantium · 4th century AD · Ain el-Sabil, Dakhla Oasis, New Valley Governorate, Egypt
The 4th-century AD mudbrick settlement at Ain el-Sabil had a street grid, a central church, a fortress and an earlier house that may have served as a church.
Greece & Rome · 2nd century BC · Herculaneum, Campania, Italy
Nearly 1.5 metres of text from PHerc. 1667, a Greek philosophical work of around the 2nd century BC that may be Stoic, were recovered with X-ray scans and AI.
Iron Age · 5th century BC · Casas del Turuñuelo, Guareña, Extremadura, Spain
Half of the 5th-century BC cart, decorated with a horned river god sticking out its tongue, has been recovered at Casas del Turuñuelo in Extremadura.
Bronze Age · c. 2600–1900 BC · Mohenjo-daro, Sindh, Pakistan
University of York researchers analysed house sizes from old excavation records and found the gap between large and small homes narrowed as the city matured.
Bronze Age · 13th to 10th century BC · Aghios Vasileios, Xirokambi, Laconia, Greece
A Linear B archive at Aghios Vasileios and a hilltop sanctuary at Amyklai suggest the Spartans joined an older Lacedaemonian community rather than replacing it.
Stone Age · c. 4500–2500 BC · Atbai Desert, Eastern Sudan
Only about 20 of the circular tombs in the Atbai Desert were known before; they were built between about 4500 and 2500 BC as the Sahara dried.
Stone Age · 4th millennium BC · Eurasian steppe, Eastern Europe and Central Asia
A Science Advances study argues that people rode, milked and managed horses in the 4th millennium BC, long before the spread of the DOM2 lineage around 2200 BC.
Stone Age · c. 4300–2300 BC · Valdelasilla, Illescas, Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Dates on human bones show the planned cemetery, with a central tomb inside a 36-metre ditch, was laid out in the late fifth millennium BC.
Stone Age · Neolithic, before 3000 BC · Loch Bhorgastail, Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, United Kingdom
Archaeologists recorded the Neolithic island above and below the waterline as one structure, using a new shallow-water camera method described in Advances in Archaeological Practice.
Greece & Rome · Late Ptolemaic to Byzantine · Muharram Bey, Alexandria, Alexandria Governorate, Egypt
Rescue excavations in central Alexandria found a site occupied from the Ptolemaic to the Byzantine period, with marble statues of Bacchus, Asclepius and possibly Minerva.
Bronze Age · c. 1200 BC · Pylos, Messenia, Greece
Researchers read one sign as a plant root and argue that another, long taken to mean fruit, records a dry stalk such as cinnamon or fenugreek.
Greece & Rome · Late 3rd–early 4th century AD · York, North Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom
Chemical tests on gypsum burial casings held by York Museums Trust give the first confirmed evidence of the costly imperial dye on Roman textiles from York.
Greece & Rome · 2nd century AD · Berlanga de Duero, Soria, Castile and León, Spain
Found by a farmer near Berlanga de Duero, the 2nd-century bronze cup is the first of its rare type to list forts on the Wall's eastern sector.
Greece & Rome · AD 400–700 · Altheim near Landshut, Bavaria and Hesse, Germany
Genomes from 258 people buried in Bavaria and Hesse between AD 400 and 700 show northern Europeans arrived before Rome's collapse and merged with provincial populations after about 470.
Byzantium · 6th century AD · Great Lavra Monastery, Mount Athos, Mount Athos, Greece
Codex H, a copy of St Paul's letters cut up for bindings at the Great Lavra Monastery, holds the earliest known chapter lists for Paul's letters.
Bronze Age · c. 2500 BC · Giza, Giza Governorate, Egypt
Radar, ultrasound and resistivity scans by the ScanPyramids team located two air-filled cavities behind a polished granite patch, supporting the idea of a second entrance.
Bronze Age · 13th century BC · Tell El-Faraoun (Imet), Sharqia Governorate, Egypt
The five-to-six-ton figure was probably carved in the royal capital Pi-Ramesse and later moved to Imet for reuse in a local temple.
Bronze Age · c. 2000–1500 BC · Kolona, Aegina, Attica (Saronic Gulf), Greece
Excavators at Kolona on Aegina found gold pendants, beads and carnelian, probably from one necklace of the first half of the second millennium BC, but no tomb.
Greece & Rome · Early Roman Empire (Augustus to 1st century AD) · Windisch (Vindonissa), Aargau, Switzerland
A rescue excavation in Windisch, Aargau, has traced the timber-and-earth wall of Vindonissa's first military camp and found what may be Switzerland's first known Roman bread.
Greece & Rome · Roman period · Oxyrhynchus (El Bahnasa), Minya Governorate, Egypt
At Oxyrhynchus in Minya, a Spanish-Egyptian team also found jars of cremated human remains buried with cat bones, a rare practice in the area at that time.
Stone Age · Late 4th to 3rd millennium BC · Bury, Oise, Hauts-de-France, France
Genomes of 132 people buried near Paris show the tomb's first community collapsed around 3000 BC and was replaced by newcomers with ancestry from southern France and Iberia.
Stone Age · 3842–3838 BC · Biel, Canton of Bern, Switzerland
Tree rings from the timbers date the 23-house settlement at Biel to 3842–3838 BC, when a west windstorm and floods wrecked it.
Byzantium · Mid-6th century AD · Phanagoria, Krasnodar Krai, Russia
Coins dropped as residents fled a blaze of AD 545–554 include bronze staters minted two centuries earlier and local fakes struck from a single die.
Stone Age · 40th–39th century BC · Stăuceni-'Holm', Botoșani, Botoșani County, Romania
A 350-square-metre building at Stăuceni-'Holm' near Botoșani gave radiocarbon dates of the 40th or 39th century BC, later than its pottery phase is thought to have ended.
Byzantium · Late 6th to mid-8th century AD · Hippos, Northern District, Israel
The southern hall at Hippos, above the Sea of Galilee, was sealed by the earthquake of AD 749 with a three-cavity marble block, a reliquary and a bronze candelabrum inside.
Greece & Rome · 2nd century BC to 6th century AD · Tell el-Farama (Pelusium), North Sinai, Egypt
First taken for a council chamber, the 35-metre brick basin at Pelusium, fed by a branch of the Nile, is now identified as a sanctuary used for nearly 800 years.
Stone Age · c. 3800–3200 BC · Caithness and Orkney, Highland and Orkney, Scotland, United Kingdom
Genetic study of chambered tombs in Caithness and Orkney, used between about 3800 and 3200 BC, finds many men buried together were paternal relatives.
Greece & Rome · 76–72 BC · Irulegi, Navarre, Spain
Arrowheads, sling bullets and Roman-type javelins in the burnt streets of Irulegi record an assault on the Vascon settlement during the Sertorian War, which the team dates to 76–72 BC.
Greece & Rome · 1st century BC · Baiae (Bacoli), Campania, Italy
The terraced villa at Baiae, partly swallowed by the sea, may have belonged to Publius Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's son-in-law, though the attribution is still unconfirmed.
Greece & Rome · c. 1st century BC · Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
A papyrus about 2,000 years old in the archives of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology preserves part of Empedocles' poem Physica on vision and perception.
Bronze Age · c. 2700–2200 BC · Mohenjo-daro, Sindh, Pakistan
A mudbrick structure that Mortimer Wheeler took for a flood embankment now appears to be a city wall begun around 2700–2600 BC, over an even older Early Harappan settlement.
Byzantium · 5th century AD · Al-Qalaya, Hosh Issa, Beheira, Egypt
The 13-room building at Al-Qalaya in Beheira has a prayer room, a hall for visitors, wall paintings of monks and a Coptic epitaph.
Stone Age · c. 13,000–10,000 BC · Hayonim, el-Wad, Nahal Oren and Eynan-Mallaha, Northern Israel
The 142 unfired beads and pendants predate pottery and farming, and 50 fingerprints show that children, adolescents and adults all made them.
Iron Age · c. 40 BC to AD 40 · Melsonby, North Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom
Two deposits near the Brigantes' stronghold at Stanwick held parts of at least seven dismantled, bent and partly burned vehicles, buried between about 40 BC and AD 40.
Stone Age · c. 8500 BC · Lüchow LA 11, Duvensee Moor, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
The skull of a wild ox, impaled on a pine post about 10,500 years ago, stood in front of the oldest known cremation burial in northern Germany.
Greece & Rome · 3rd century BC to 11th century AD · Athribis (Nagaa Sheikh Hammad), Sohag, Egypt
The Egyptian-German mission says Athribis has now yielded 43,000 ostraca since 2005, including more than 130 that deal with astronomy and the zodiac.
Greece & Rome · 1st–3rd century AD · Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt
About 30 inscriptions in three ancient Indian languages, left in six tombs in Roman times, include eight signatures by a man named Cikai Korran, probably from southern India.
Stone Age · c. 12,000–10,000 BC · Şika Rika 5, near Akıncı, Mardin province, Turkey
Round stone houses at Şika Rika 5 in Mardin province date to about 12,000–10,000 BC, and the team says settled life there may have had deeper local roots than thought.
Greece & Rome · 6th century BC · Kleidi Samikon, Elis, Western Greece, Greece
Excavators at Kleidi Samikon in Elis found fire-damaged bronze sheets in the same hall that yielded a large bronze inscription in 2024.
Byzantium · 10th century AD · Blois, Centre-Val de Loire, France
The 10th-century leaf, identified in Blois by CNRS researcher Victor Gysembergh, carries part of On the Sphere and the Cylinder and is half hidden under a painting added around 1942.
Greece & Rome · 15–10 BC · Barcelona (Roman Barcino), Catalonia, Spain
Slabs laid between 15 and 10 BC, when the colony of Barcino was founded, run parallel to the main east-west street, challenging the forum's traditional orientation.
Greece & Rome · Imperial period to late antiquity · San Paolo Fuori le Mura, Rome, Lazio, Italy
Excavations ahead of a student residence found five vaulted tombs, probably columbaria, and a plainer late antique cemetery in a previously unknown sector of the Ostiense Necropolis.
Bronze Age · c. 1300–800 BC · Esperstedt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Most people studied in Central Germany grew up locally, and communities seem to have tried millet for a time before going back to wheat and barley.
Iron Age · c. 1070–715 BC · Qurna, Luxor, Luxor Governorate, Egypt
The coffins still hold their mummies, date to Egypt's Third Intermediate Period, and most bear titles, chiefly 'singer of Amun', instead of their owners' names.
Bronze Age · c. 1915–1595 BC · Beycesultan Höyük, Denizli Province, Turkey
Two scraps of cloth from Beycesultan Höyük, carbonised by fire nearly 4,000 years ago, include a blue hemp fabric made with a single needle around 1915–1745 BC.
Stone Age · 7th millennium BC · Zagros Mountains, Western Iran
Milk fats in pottery and milk proteins in dental plaque place dairying in western Iran in the seventh millennium BC, according to a Nature Human Behaviour study.
Stone Age · c. 5635–5230 BC · La Marmotta, Anguillara Sabazia, Lazio, Italy
Wood analysis of 19 bows from La Marmotta, near Rome, shows its early farmers used six local tree species, most often hornbeam, in an area where yew did not grow.
Stone Age · c. 10,000–5500 BC · Umm Araka Plateau, near Serabit el-Khadim, South Sinai, Egypt
Red animal paintings on the ceiling of a sandstone shelter near Serabit el-Khadim open a sequence of images that runs into the Islamic period.
Stone Age · 9290–8925 BC · Heaning Wood Bone Cave, Great Urswick, Cumbria, England, United Kingdom
The child, aged 2.5 to 3.5 and named the Ossick Lass, was buried between 9290 and 8925 BC in a cave later reused by Neolithic and Bronze Age communities.
Iron Age · Third Intermediate Period, Twenty-second Dynasty · Tanis (San al-Hagar), Egypt
A French team found 225 figurines inscribed for the Libyan king at the foot of an uninscribed sarcophagus, which probably belonged to him.
Bronze Age · c. 2445–2421 BC · Abu Ghurab, Abusir, Giza Governorate, Egypt
An Italian team has cleared more than half of the 4,400-year-old Fifth Dynasty building, which groundwater kept out of reach after its location was identified in 1901.
Stone Age · c. 4500–2500 BC · Rhine-Meuse region, Netherlands, Belgium and Germany
A Nature study of 112 genomes finds farmer ancestry entered Rhine-Meuse forager groups mainly through incoming women, until steppe newcomers arrived around 2500 BC.
Greece & Rome · 1st to 4th century AD · Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
The 2nd-century lararium, with painted plaster and its altar slab, was found with a 1st-century staircase during work for Cologne's new MiQua museum.
Stone Age · c. 3300 BC · Badari, Asyut Governorate, Egypt
Wear marks and six coils of leather thong indicate that a 63-millimetre copper alloy tool from a Predynastic grave was spun with a bow about 5,300 years ago.
Greece & Rome · c. AD 330 · Ostia Antica, Lazio, Italy
Excavators found a marble-clad reception hall at least eight metres high beside a church built around AD 330, probably the seat of Ostia's bishops.
Greece & Rome · AD 80–171 · Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany
Coins date the wooden sanctuary, excavated ahead of housing construction in 2023, to between AD 80 and 171, before Regensburg's legionary fortress was built.
Byzantium · c. AD 712/713 · St Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai, South Sinai, Egypt
Written around AD 712/713 in Syriac and later translated into Arabic, the 'Maronite Chronicle of 713' survives in one damaged 13th-century copy at St Catherine's Monastery.
Greece & Rome · Roman imperial period · Gallipoli, Puglia, Italy
Italy's financial police spotted the merchant ship on a routine patrol in June 2025, and the find was kept secret for months to protect it from looters.
Byzantium · 7th–15th century AD · Deep Mani, Peloponnese, Greece
Over half of men in the remote Peloponnese region descend from one man who lived around the 7th century AD, which researchers read as a sign of a severe population collapse.
Iron Age · c. 810–786 BC · Körzüt Fortress, Muradiye, Van province, Turkey
Three basalt slabs from a temple at Körzüt Fortress near Lake Van describe Minua taking Luḫiuni, a royal city he claims no one had conquered before.
Bronze Age · 14th century BC · Hala Sultan Tekke, Larnaca District, Cyprus
Two 14th-century BC tombs at the copper port of Hala Sultan Tekke were reused for generations and held imports from Egypt, the Aegean, Sardinia, India and the Baltic.
Bronze Age · c. 3000 BC · Wadi Khamila, South Sinai, Egypt
Found in Wadi Khamila by an Egyptian antiquities inspector, the scene carries an inscription naming the god Min as ruler of the copper region, a Bonn Egyptologist says.
Stone Age · c. 9000 BC · Kızılöz, Samsat, Adıyaman province, Turkey
Falling water in the Atatürk Dam reservoir exposed stone enclosures near Kızılöz village in Samsat, which investigators believe are around 11,000 years old.
Iron Age · Late 3rd century BC · Colina de los Quemados, Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain
A wrist bone from an elephant's right foreleg, found under a collapsed adobe wall at Iberian Corduba, may be a rare physical trace of Carthage's war elephants.
Greece & Rome · 2nd–3rd century AD · Tongeren, Limburg, Belgium
Two researchers read stylus marks left in the wood of 85 tablet fragments, naming a senior magistrate, lictors and Rhine fleet veterans in Belgium's oldest city.
Greece & Rome · 1st century AD, before AD 79 · Pompeii, Campania, Italy
Photographic imaging revealed 79 unknown inscriptions on plaster exposed since 1794, bringing the corridor's graffiti to nearly 300, including a gladiator duel and a love note.
Greece & Rome · 1st century BC · Fano, Marche, Italy
Column bases found under Piazza Andrea Costa match Vitruvius' own description in De Architectura, making this the only surviving building firmly attributed to him.
Byzantium · AD 541–750 · Jerash, Jerash Governorate, Jordan
Bodies were laid in the disused arena within days, and the University of South Florida team says the dead were part of a mobile population within the city.
Iron Age · 8th century BC · Karaağaç Tumulus, Bilecik, Bilecik Province, Turkey
A wooden burial chamber, decorated bronze buckets and an inscribed pot from the Karaağaç Tumulus near Bilecik closely match royal burials at Gordion, a new study argues.
Greece & Rome · Early 3rd century AD · Aken, Trabitz and Deersheim, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Ditches at Aken, Trabitz and Deersheim in Saxony-Anhalt date to the early 3rd century AD, and a coin of Caracalla suggests a campaign around AD 213.
Bronze Age · 3200–2000 BC · Rafina, Attica, Greece
The pithos tomb in eastern Attica held two people covered by large stones, and two metres away lay a burnt pit containing a complete equid skeleton.
Bronze Age · c. 1000 BC · Turlojiškė, Kalvarija, Marijampolė County, Lithuania
Radiocarbon dates show at least 11 young men died at about the same time around 3,000 years ago at Turlojiškė, several with injuries consistent with weapons.
Byzantium · 5th–6th century AD · Al-Qarya bi-al-Duweir, Tama, Sohag Governorate, Egypt
Excavators in Upper Egypt found a fifth- or sixth-century AD monastic complex with a church, vaulted rooms thought to be monks' cells and Coptic inscriptions.
Iron Age · 604–562 BC · Kish (Tell Al-Uhaimir), Babil Governorate, Iraq
Handed over in 2013 after being found on the surface of the mound and now published in the journal Iraq, the near-identical texts are the first foundation inscriptions for the king's work there.
Iron Age · 50 BC–AD 50 · Thetford, Norfolk, England, United Kingdom
The deposit near Thetford, dated to between 50 BC and AD 50, also held Britain's first known boar's head standard and five shield bosses.
Bronze Age · c. 3200–2800 BC · Tapeh Tyalineh, Kouzaran, Kermanshah province, Iran
Rubbish pits at Tapeh Tyalineh in Kermanshah province held sealings, figurines and tokens from 3200–2800 BC, with designs paralleled at sites from Susa to eastern Turkey.
Stone Age · c. 7500 BC · Hora 1, Mount Hora, Northern Region, Malawi
An adult woman was burned on a large, tended pyre some 6,000 years before Africa's next known cremations, and people lit fires on the spot for centuries afterwards.
Bronze Age · c. 1200–400 BC · Brusselstown Ring, County Wicklow, Ireland
Surveys and test excavations at Brusselstown Ring in County Wicklow point to a densely packed community occupied from around 1200 BC into the Early Iron Age.