News from the ancient world
Archaeologists date their finds in several ways: radiocarbon dating of bone, charcoal or other organic material, coins, pottery styles and the layers in which objects lie. A find is called the oldest of its kind when it comes before every other known example in a region. These claims depend on what has been found so far. Each new excavation can confirm them or overturn them.
Recent stories add several earliest examples. A cave in Cumbria held the remains of a girl aged 2.5 to 3.5. She is northern Britain's oldest human, and radiocarbon dates place her burial between 9290 and 8925 BC. In Malawi, an adult woman was burned on a tended pyre about 9,500 years ago. It is Africa's oldest known cremation, some 6,000 years older than the next. Off Kekova Island in Turkey, around 30 Early Bronze Age amphorae lie about 30 metres down. The jars are 4,700 years old and may be the cargo of the world's oldest shipwreck.
Greece · 17th–15th century BC · Hala Sultan Tekke, Larnaca District, Cyprus
The 2026 season at Hala Sultan Tekke found buildings and pottery from the 17th to 15th centuries BC, pushing the city's documented history back by up to two centuries.
Prehistory · Neolithic (not yet dated) · Serengeti National Park, Northern Tanzania, Tanzania
The same Polish-Tanzanian expedition found the fossil skull of an extinct giraffe that may be a new species, and worked at four Middle Stone Age sites.
Near East · c. 2700–2400 BC · Kekova Island, Antalya, Turkey
Around 30 Early Bronze Age amphorae lie about 30 metres down near Kekova Island, and some still hold a glossy residue that researchers are now analysing.
Prehistory · late 5th–3rd millennium BC · Valdelasilla, Illescas, Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Wood and clay burial chambers around a ditched central tomb at Valdelasilla suggest inland Iberia began building monumental tombs as early as its coasts.
Rome · 1st century AD · Windisch (Vindonissa), Aargau, Switzerland
A rescue excavation in Windisch has traced the timber-and-earth defences of Vindonissa's first camp and found a charred loaf, which would be Switzerland's first Roman bread.
Prehistory · c. 9290–8925 BC · Heaning Wood Bone Cave, Great Urswick, Cumbria, England, United Kingdom
The child from a Cumbrian cave was aged 2.5 to 3.5, and radiocarbon dates place her burial between 9290 and 8925 BC.
Egypt · c. 3300 BC · Badari, Asyut Governorate, Egypt
Wear marks and six coils of leather thong on the 63 mm tool from Badari point to bow drilling more than two millennia before some of Egypt's best-preserved drill sets.
Rome · AD 80–171 · Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany
Coins date the sanctuary to between AD 80 and 171, before Regensburg's legionary fortress existed, making it the earliest of nine Mithras temples known in Bavaria.
Prehistory · 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.