Secret World War II heroine's file released

[AP]  Buried deep in Eileen Nearne's secret World War II file, released Friday by the National Archives, is the secrecy agreement she signed on September 4, 1942. It was a commitment she honored until her death last month at the age of 89.   More...

New find raises the prospect our forebears came out of Asia

[Irish Times]   OUR ANCIENT forebears arose within Africa, or so the evolutionary story goes. New research findings bring this assumption into question however. Our earliest roots could well have been somewhere in Asia.  More...

Researchers unearth ancient water secrets at royal garden dig

[Sify]   Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient royal garden- which dates back to the 7th century B.C.-at the site of Ramat Rachel near Jerusalem.  More...

UN Org.: Rachel's Tomb is a Mosque

[Israel's National News]  The vote called for Rachel's Tomb and the Tomb of the Patriarchs – the burial site of the other Biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs – to be removed from Israel's National Heritage list.  More...

Ancient asteroid hit New York with tsunamis

[msnbc]  Space rock impact off New Jesey coast may have sent surge of water.  More...

Cornell Archaeologist Makes Neolithic Era Discovery

[The Sun]  Prof. Sturt Manning, classics, and his team of undergraduate and graduate students from Cornell, the University of Toronto and the University of Cyprus, have uncovered new evidence that agricultural settlements had been formed up to half a millennium earlier than previously believed.  More...

8,000 year old boy is Europe's oldest

[Austrian Times]  Scientists have unearthed one of the earliest humans in Europe after discovering an 8,000-year-old skeleton during the building of a motorway in Kroum, Bulgaria.  More...

Armenian archeologists: 5,900-year-old skirt found

[AP]  An Armenian archaeologist says that scientists have discovered a skirt that could be 5,900-year-old. More...

Oldest Modern Human Outside of Africa Found

[National Geographic]  A fossil human jawbone discovered in southern China is upsetting conventional notions of when our ancestors migrated out of Africa.  More...

Mummy Bundles, Child Sacrifices Found on Pyramid

[National Geographic]   A rare undisturbed tomb atop an ancient pyramid in Lima, Peru, has yielded four 1,150-year-old, well-bundled mummies of the Wari culture, archaeologists announced on October 20.  More...

Probe launched after human skulls received at BYU

[AP]  Police and state officials are trying to trace the source of two human skulls received by the history department at Brigham Young University in Utah. Campus police Lt. Arnold Lemmon said Wednesday the skulls were found Monday in a box delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. Investigators say they appear to be ancient artifacts -- possibly a Native American adult and child.   More...

Mystery of why man-made mound at Silbury Hill was built is solved...

[Daily Mail UK] Silbury Hill - one of the most mysterious and striking monument in Britain - was a prehistoric 'cathedral', built layer by layer over 100 years, a new study suggests.The 4,000 year old earth mound, which towers over the Wiltshire countryside, was the tallest man-made structure in Europe until the Middle Ages. But despite its size, and repeated attempts to tunnel into the heart of the mound, archaeologists have long been puzzled about how and why it was created.  More...

FBI seizes looted ancient artifacts

[AP]  The FBI has seized numerous ancient artifacts originating in Mesopotamia, which were looted from Iraq and smuggled into the United States.   More...

Research Reveals Bahama Islands Shaped By Ice Age Megaflood

[Top Wire News]  A team of researchers has uncovered evidence that a Mega-Flood, or series of megafloods, from beneath the Ice Age Laurentide Ice Sheet shaped the Bahama Islands. These Mega-Floods traveled down the Mississippi River Valley and into the gulf of Mexico.  More...

Ancient Indian burial ground and artifacts discovered

[WLBT]  Ancient Indian artifacts have been discovered off of U.S. Highway 61 north. Construction crews were excavating a 33-acre construction site for the U.S. army corps of engineers when they happened upon an extensive Indian burial ground in Rolling Fork [Missouri].  More..

Pompeii heat blast brought death at six miles

[Irish Independent]  The people of Pompeii who died when Vesuvius erupted nearly 2,000 years ago were killed by intense heat rather than suffocation, according to a new study.  More...

Ancient Skulls Vindicate Columbus of Spreading Syphilis

[Fox News]  Skeletons unearthed in a cemetery may have cleared Christopher Columbus as the original transatlantic vector of syphilis.  More...

The Church Where Pocahontas Was married Is Found

[Wall Street Journal]   Her life has been celebrated in song, story and a Disney cartoon, but no one knew where Pocahontas tied the knot with a tobacco farmer—until now.  More...

Asian Neanderthals, Humans Mated

[Discovery]  Early modern humans mated with Neanderthals and possibly other archaic hominid species from Asia at least 100,000 years ago, according to a new study that describes human remains from that period in South China.  More...

Revealed: How British spy lured Hitler's deputy to Britain where he was imprisoned for life

[Daily mail UK]  It has been one of of the enduring mysteries of World War Two - why did Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess come to Britain? Now a new book claims to have solved the riddle - and revealed how a heroic spy played a huge part in his capture.  More...

How mosquitoes helped swarm the redcoats at Yorktown

[Washington Post]   Major combat operations in the American Revolution ended 229 years ago on Oct. 19, at Yorktown. For that we can thank the fortitude of American forces under George Washington, the siegecraft of French troops of Gen. Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, the count of Rochambeau - and the relentless bloodthirstiness of female Anopheles quadrimaculatus mosquitoes.  Those tiny amazons conducted covert biological warfare against the British army.  More...

Insects in Ancient Amber Reveal Unexpected India-Asia Ties

[Live Science]  A cache of ancient insects trapped in amber reveals that the Indian subcontinent wasn't as isolated 50 million years ago as previously believed, according to a new study.  More...

Navy in hunt for John Paul Jones' famous sunken ship, the Bonhomme Richard

[Washington Post]  Bob Neyland, chief archaeologist for the Navy's Underwater Archaeology Branch, is searching for the wreckage of the USS Bonhomme Richard, a Continental Navy ship captained by John Paul Jones during the Revolutionary War that sank on Sept. 25, 1779, off the coast of Yorkshire, England.  More...

Greece seeks Marathon boost for 2,500th anniversary of ancient battle and run

[Canadian Press]  A record 12,500 runners are set to take part in the Athens Classic Marathon on Oct. 31, which will mark 2,500 years since the Battle of Marathon..  More...