A salvage crew following a faint metal-detector signal through deep mud off the Florida Keys hauled up a 55-pound copper ingot from the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, a 400-year-old Spanish shipwreck that keeps giving up its secrets. Captain Drake Nicholas was working from the deck of the salvage vessel DARE, roughly 35 miles west of […] The post Treasure hunters pull 55-pound copper ingot from legendary Atocha wreck, eye 19 more targets appeared first on American Almanac .
A salvage crew following a faint metal-detector signal through deep mud off the Florida Keys hauled up a 55-pound copper ingot from the Nuestra Señora de Atocha, a 400-year-old Spanish shipwreck that keeps giving up its secrets. Captain Drake Nicholas was working from the deck of the salvage vessel DARE, roughly 35 miles west of Key West, when his detector registered a barely-there hit. He dug. The signal grew louder. What he pulled from the seafloor was not the cannon he expected but a crude block of copper that had sat in the mud since 1622. The ingot is worth an estimated $18,000 to $25,000, according to an August press release from Mel Fisher's Shipwreck Expeditions , the company that has spent decades recovering treasure from the…Open
Archaeologists in western Slovakia have uncovered an ancient Roman military camp littered with soldiers' remains and battlefield weapons dating to the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a find officials say reshapes understanding of Rome's reach into barbarian territory. The Institute of Archaeology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences announced earlier this summer that excavators working […] The post Roman military camp unearthed in Slovakia reveals soldiers' bones, weapons from Marcus Aurelius era appeared first on American Almanac .
Archaeologists in western Slovakia have uncovered an ancient Roman military camp littered with soldiers' remains and battlefield weapons dating to the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a find officials say reshapes understanding of Rome's reach into barbarian territory. The Institute of Archaeology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences announced earlier this summer that excavators working near the town of Šurany, in Slovakia's Nitra region, had struck something far older than the industrial park they were preparing to build. Beneath roughly 370 acres of earth lay the footprint of a Roman marching camp from the second century A.D., the first ever found in that part of the country. What came out of the ground told a story of combat and sudden…Open
An Oxford researcher says the famous curves of the Parthenon were never designed to fool the human eye, and the story that they were rests on zero direct evidence. For more than two millennia, students, tourists, and architecture professors have repeated the same elegant claim: the ancient Greeks built subtle curves into the Parthenon so […] The post Oxford mathematician dismantles a 2,000-year-old myth about the Parthenon appeared first on American Almanac .
An Oxford researcher says the famous curves of the Parthenon were never designed to fool the human eye, and the story that they were rests on zero direct evidence. For more than two millennia, students, tourists, and architecture professors have repeated the same elegant claim: the ancient Greeks built subtle curves into the Parthenon so that its perfectly straight lines would not appear to sag. The idea has shown up in textbooks, documentaries, and guided tours of the Acropolis. Professor Alain Goriely, an Oxford mathematician, now argues in a peer-reviewed study that the whole thing is a myth, and always was. Goriely's paper, titled "The illusion of illusions: there are no optical corrections in the Parthenon," was published in the…Open
A hobbyist with a metal detector stumbled onto thousands of silver coins buried in the Finnish countryside for roughly a thousand years, a find experts are calling the largest Late Iron Age coin cache ever discovered in Finland. Kalle Lappinen was sweeping a field near Sysmä, a quiet town in southern Finland, on September 3 […] The post Amateur archaeologist unearths Finland's largest Viking Age silver hoard with a metal detector appeared first on American Almanac .
A hobbyist with a metal detector stumbled onto thousands of silver coins buried in the Finnish countryside for roughly a thousand years, a find experts are calling the largest Late Iron Age coin cache ever discovered in Finland. Kalle Lappinen was sweeping a field near Sysmä, a quiet town in southern Finland, on September 3 when his detector signaled something beneath the soil. What he found was no stray relic. Buried about 18 inches underground, packed inside birch bark containers wedged between stones, lay a trove of Viking Age silver that professional archaeologists would spend the next day pulling from the earth, ABC News reported . By September 4, the retrieval team from Lahti Museums had recovered almost 10 pounds of silver from…Open
Archaeologists in Bulgaria have unearthed the skeleton of a young man who climbed into a storage jar to hide from attackers roughly 1,600 years ago, and never climbed out. Professor Lyudmil Vagalinski of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences announced the discovery on August 10, after his team dug through layers of construction debris at the […] The post Skeleton in a jar: archaeologists piece together a young Roman's final moments in Bulgaria appeared first on American Almanac .
Archaeologists in Bulgaria have unearthed the skeleton of a young man who climbed into a storage jar to hide from attackers roughly 1,600 years ago, and never climbed out. Professor Lyudmil Vagalinski of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences announced the discovery on August 10, after his team dug through layers of construction debris at the ancient Roman city of Deultum. Inside a burned-out defensive tower at the city's western gate, they found the lower half of a massive clay storage jar, and, crouched within it, the remains of a young man who had been sealed beneath a replacement floor for sixteen centuries. The find offers a grim, human-scale window into the collapse of Roman order along the empire's eastern frontier. Deultum, one of…Open
Archaeologists working near Cairo have unearthed the remarkably preserved tomb of a Fifth Dynasty judge and his father, a find Egypt hopes will draw fresh attention and tourist dollars to its ancient heritage. A joint Egyptian-Spanish mission discovered the burial site during this summer's excavation season at Saqqara, the sprawling necropolis south of Egypt's capital. […] The post Egyptian-Spanish team uncovers 4,300-year-old tomb of ancient judge and his father at Saqqara appeared first on American Almanac .
Archaeologists working near Cairo have unearthed the remarkably preserved tomb of a Fifth Dynasty judge and his father, a find Egypt hopes will draw fresh attention and tourist dollars to its ancient heritage. A joint Egyptian-Spanish mission discovered the burial site during this summer's excavation season at Saqqara, the sprawling necropolis south of Egypt's capital. The tomb, a flat-roofed structure known as a mastaba, dates back roughly 4,300 years to the reign of Pharaoh Djedkare Isesi, one of the most influential rulers of Egypt's Fifth Dynasty. CBS News reported that the find came from the Mariette Cemetery area of northern Saqqara, part of a long-running collaboration between the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Egypt's…Open
A man in northern Denmark struck something strange with his garden fork while preparing ground for a new patio, and pulled up 41 pounds of Viking-age silver, the biggest such haul ever found in the country. The unnamed homeowner in Rebild, a small town in northern Jutland, had planned a routine afternoon of yard work. […] The post Danish homeowner digging a patio unearths the country's largest Viking silver hoard appeared first on American Almanac .
A man in northern Denmark struck something strange with his garden fork while preparing ground for a new patio, and pulled up 41 pounds of Viking-age silver, the biggest such haul ever found in the country. The unnamed homeowner in Rebild, a small town in northern Jutland, had planned a routine afternoon of yard work. He was clearing grass, stones, and gravel to lay a tiled terrace. Half an hour in, his fork hit something that made an unusual sound. He assumed it was old iron or fencing wire. It was not. When he dropped to his knees and started digging with his hands, he began pulling metal objects from the soil one after another. Within minutes he realized he was holding jewelry, coins, and silver bars, roughly 700 objects and fragments…Open
Ten pupils from King Charles’s former school have helped uncover what is believed to be a 1,000-year-old Viking church beneath a newer building on the abandoned Orkney island of Swona, working alongside professional archaeologists in a hands-on dig that could shed new light on Scotland’s early Christian past. During a six-day summer trip, ten students […] The post Students from Gordonstoun uncover medieval church remains on deserted Orkney island appeared first on American Almanac .
Ten pupils from King Charles’s former school have helped uncover what is believed to be a 1,000-year-old Viking church beneath a newer building on the abandoned Orkney island of Swona, working alongside professional archaeologists in a hands-on dig that could shed new light on Scotland’s early Christian past. During a six-day summer trip, ten students from Gordonstoun School worked closely with archaeologists from the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology (Orca) to excavate part of Swona, an island left deserted since 1974. The group, joined by housemaster Dan McLean, dug a test pit, cleared weeds, and discovered a stone step just under the surface, leading to what would have been the altar of a medieval church. Radiocarbon samples…Open
A time capsule sealed inside an Illinois Masonic temple more than a century ago was pried open Saturday in downtown Aurora, revealing blueprints, lodge documents, and artifacts that narrowly escaped a three-alarm fire and demolition. Nearly 100 residents packed the plaza outside the Grand Army of the Republic Military Museum before 5 p.m., watching as […] The post Aurora's mayor found a century-old Masonic time capsule in a closet — and what was inside survived fire, demolition, and a hundred years of silence appeared first on American Almanac .
A time capsule sealed inside an Illinois Masonic temple more than a century ago was pried open Saturday in downtown Aurora, revealing blueprints, lodge documents, and artifacts that narrowly escaped a three-alarm fire and demolition. Nearly 100 residents packed the plaza outside the Grand Army of the Republic Military Museum before 5 p.m., watching as three people took turns with a hammer and chisel. It took at least ten minutes to crack the lid. What came out was a collection that Aurora Historical Society Executive Director John Jaros, a man with more than 40 years working in the city, called "exceptionally rare." The capsule's journey to that moment was almost as unlikely as its contents. Aurora Mayor John Laesch discovered it tucked…Open
A routine construction project at a pasta plant near Naples turned into one of Italy's most remarkable recent archaeological finds, a sprawling ancient burial ground filled with Egyptian, Greek, and Etruscan treasures. Workers breaking ground on an expansion at the Pasta Garofalo factory in Gragnano, a small town near Naples long famous for its pasta-making […] The post Pasta factory expansion in Italy unearths a 2,600-year-old necropolis packed with rare artifacts appeared first on American Almanac .
A routine construction project at a pasta plant near Naples turned into one of Italy's most remarkable recent archaeological finds, a sprawling ancient burial ground filled with Egyptian, Greek, and Etruscan treasures. Workers breaking ground on an expansion at the Pasta Garofalo factory in Gragnano, a small town near Naples long famous for its pasta-making tradition, did not expect to hit stone burial chambers. But between 2025 and 2026, archaeologists excavating the site ahead of construction uncovered a necropolis dating to the first half of the sixth century B.C., roughly 2,600 years old, predating the rise of the Roman Empire by centuries. The company announced the findings in July. Rows of tombs held human remains, pottery, and a…Open