47 Times Archaeologists Dug Up Surprising Finds That Should Have Been Major News

While many people are fixated on the future, there’s still plenty that we don’t know about the past. After all, our planet has been here for billions of years, so there’s no way we could learn the entirety of human history in school.

That’s why archaeologists have such an important job, and apparently, they’re making groundbreaking discoveries all the time. Redditors have been discussing mind-blowing information archaeologists have uncovered, so we’ve gathered a list of their most fascinating findings. Enjoy scrolling through these discoveries that you may not have heard about, and be sure to upvote the ones that you believe should have been major news!

1

In the Netherlands, a whole bunch of Roman boats were found almost completely intact. They were probably used to go up and down the rivers of the Roman border to supply the forts with food/ammo, etc.

2

We discovered a previously unknown ice age human population in southern Arabia.

3

In Egypt, a female Egyptian Priest was found buried nearby one of the pyramids. Female priestesses are not commonly believed to be common, so this discovery is truly remarkable and makes us see the life of a high-power priestess over 4000 years ago.

4

I'm primarily an Egyptologist but I work for a UK regional archaeology crew, and recently they found a specific vessel which was very unusual. Its hard to describe but I couldn't find a picture, but it was a smallish clay pot, which had been made on a wheel and was incredibly well-made, but the neck of it was tiny, and it pinched in and out at points. Bad description I know. Anyway, we got it dated to around the Stuart era, and gave it over to a potter who we sometimes worked with, so he could attempt to make a copy.

He couldn't do it. He made a lovely pot, but it was nothing like the original. He explained that he couldn't get the clay thin enough to pinch like the original, because his hands were simply too big to make a pot with a neck of that size.

So after a lot of thought, they came to a conclusion that it must have been children making these pots (I suggested women but it turned out even women's hands were too big). Based on other circumstantial evidence from the same context, this was from a relatively poor family, who trained their children in the same trade as them to create beautiful pottery to sell to the elites. In the Stuart era, that style of pottery was around a lot, but it had started not too far from the city we found it in, so we figured they must have been copying the popular style. It's so interesting to think that a child, probably no more than 8, made such a beautiful piece of work.

5

In my hometown of Luebeck in northern Germany, they found a latrine from the middle ages and analyzed the genes of the tapeworms in it. Apparently, that dude who pooped there has also pooped in England because his DNA has been found in tapeworms there as well.

6

I live along Hadrian's wall. And my god, it's been so well-kept there are daily finds. From bathhouse sandals, leather boots, and various clothing, just tapping into how the Romans lived and how culture and tradition still stayed intact all the way north of England far from Rome.

7

A well-preserved T-rex skeleton has been discovered in Saskatchewan. They named the new World's largest & oldest T-rex skeleton.

8

Though discovered quite a few years back, Gobekli Tepe only recently escaped the controversy of its significance. Now widely considered to possibly be the first temple of worship, the site has caused a rethinking of early humankind's spiritual practices.

To give you an idea, Gobekli Tepe is estimated to be six millennia older than Stonehenge.

9

The recent discovery of tree-climbing humans with monkey feet as recent as 40,000 years ago in Indonesia.

10

A couple of Viking ships and settlements have been found recently in Norway using LIDAR.

11

I'm an archaeological geophysicist. At the end of last year, I found a Roman theatre in a Roman town near Hull, UK. I've just completed a second survey there, with a couple of new buildings, but nothing as exciting as the theatre.

12

The lost city of Etzanoa, home to as many as 20,000 inhabitants, was discovered in southern Kansas. The site was also the location of a battle between the Spanish and the Native American inhabitants.

13

Orkney was the capital of Neolithic Britain, turning the traditional map upside down.

14

A ceramic wine vessel, decorated with grape clusters, from Tbilisi, Georgia, pushing back the archaeological evidence for a functioning winery and vinicultural industry in the Transcaucuses 1000 years from Areni One and Hajj Furiz Tepe to over 8000 years ago.

15

I'm an archaeologist who mostly works in the private sector. We find a lot of cool stuff, but almost everything we do is classified to some degree or another to discourage pot hunters and vandalism. This year, I've found an extension of a really important Late Woodland site and worked on a very cool 19th-century burial ground that had been partially destroyed out of negligence by a construction company, which is a big problem we run into. Both sites were super cool, but I can't get into specifics about where they're located!

16

Not an archaeologist. Recently in Pakistan, specifically around the City of Peshawar, the remains of a somewhat intact workshop were found. People believe it may be from the Gandhara Civilization, but some think it may be older.

17

In the 1960s, two headless skeletons were found in a latrine of a house on the Greek island of Delos. This is a big deal because Delos was a sacred island and no one could be buried there, instead, there was a cemetery on the neighbor island. But what is even more interesting is the excavators couldn't find the heads anywhere. But what is even MORE interesting is that within this house was the largest single collection of phallus statues.

So fast forward to 2014, excavations were beginning again at this same house, and they found the heads! Two rooms over. It has been suggested that because of their unusual burial context, the fact that they were decapitated, and the fact that they were on Delos at all, indicated that these two individuals got their lives taken away!

18

A thousand years before folk decided to pile up rocks on Salisbury Plain, the Orkney Islands probably held the most important religious sites in Britain.

19

Recently, a tonne of phenomenal finds have been excavated in Britain. Examples include a preserved Iron Age shield found in Leicestershire, which changes how we perceived Iron Age British tribal equipment in combat, hoping it will open the door to a broader understanding of the military capabilities of this period, and that C14 dating will give us a more specific dating assessment.

I've mainly worked in classical Greek and Imperial Roman archaeology, and Vindolanda is one such site that has been pumping out phenomenal research and artifact findings. Being a reasonably well-preserved Roman fort along Hadrian's wall, artifacts are found daily. During the past couple of weeks, finds have ranged from leather shoes, tent canvas, even bathhouse sandals to prevent you from burning your feet on the hot tiles. These finds have opened a window of immense understanding of daily life within a Roman defensive fort.

20

A huge cemetery was discovered in Athens, in the area of Faliro, which used to be the port of ancient Athens before it was moved to Piraeus. An entire year of construction was put on hold due to the discovery of ancient buried buildings that now have to be preserved.

Apparently, the cemetery is interesting not only because it hosts many dead babies and children, who were buried inside vessels, (infant mortality rate was very high) but also many prisoners and criminals who were executed. There's also a mass grave of about 80 shackled men.

It has been speculated that the mass grave may be related to Cylon of Athens, a winner in the Olympics and wannabe tyrant, who tried to stage a coup by taking over the Acropolis but was promptly chased out of there by Megacles (of a powerful Athenian clan) and escaped to Megara. His followers sought refuge in the altar of Athena Polias. Anyone present at an altar was considered to be under the protection of the gods, and was not allowed to be harmed. They agreed to descend the Acropolis after being promised they would be left unharmed but were slaughtered nonetheless by the followers of Megacles, as they considered the men unworthy of the gods' protection.

21

They recently discovered possible evidence that there were humans 100,000 years ago in the Americas. In San Diego, they found evidence of what we think are tools made of mastodon bone. So essentially, archaeologists are stubborn just like any other type of academic ideology and they’re reluctant to let go of the theories that dominated the 20th century. For example, we’ve always been taught 'Clovis first' meaning the first people to populate the Americas were the Clovis people 10-12k years ago. But now there is overwhelming evidence that the Americas were populated before that and possibly all the way back to 100,000 years ago, which would completely change our understanding of humans.

22

Australasians reached South America tens of thousands of years before the northern migration. They keep the remarks within the relatively accepted time frames of 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. But the hidden truth is there is evidence of settlements closer to the 100,000 BCE mark.

23

The mythical cities of the Amazon may not have been so mythical, and Mayan cities in Guatemala are being uncovered too due to the use of LiDAR. LiDAR is able to penetrate the forests and see the ruins below.

24

In April 2019, a new hominid species was declared in the Philippines. This has been ongoing research since 2007 but the research study was only recently unveiled to the world. This species shares commonalities with many of its contemporary humanoids (sapiens, neanderthalensis, floresiensis). With the current finds, it is believed that h. Luzonesis was short (less than 4 ft. tall) just like its Indonesian cousin h. Floresiensis.

25

Yesterday, I was reading about a mixed Denisovan and Neanderthal family in a cave with a mixed-breed 13-year-old daughter. So neat!

26

Re-examination of an assemblage from the Early Iron Age Oakbank crannog in Loch Tay, Scotland, has identified a wooden lyre bridge. A wooden whistle is also known from the site, and these two artefacts alone are some of the earliest and best evidence for musical instruments in Western Europe. The site was in use between 500-350 BC. A reconstructed crannog houses the collection, and they recently got money for a project this year aiming to promote and display these artefacts to the local community and visitors.

27

My anthropology professor from this semester spent the first half of the semester in Ethiopia doing an excavation. They found a piece of bone with scratch markings on it, indicating a form of symbolism from 80 thousand years ago, which is nearly 30 thousand years before the previously oldest discovery.

28

Atlantic Canada flip-flopped hands between France and England when the New World was colonized. We are using ground-penetrating radar to discover some burial grounds that don't exist on paper.

29

Not an archaeologist, but apparently, there has been found a temple full of columns buried directly beneath the Temple of Hathor (Dendera Temple Complex in Egypt).

30

Archaeology student here. I'm surprised nobody mentioned Must Farm. It's basically a Bronze Age Pompeii. The preservation is incredible, and when the processing of the finds is done, we'll have a whole new view of Bronze Age day-to-day life.

31

Not really that major, but last year, I did a field school in North Jersey at a Revolutionary War encampment, and we found a button with 'USA' written on it. It was really interesting to see the use of that acronym from such an early stage in America's infancy. Everybody in the field school was freaking out about it.

32

The Tomb of Neithhotep was discovered in the early 1900s, but it was badly damaged, and we're still investigating all the material we have. A lot of it was burnt by tomb robbers, but there is still some epigraphic evidence.

One of the most interesting pieces is a tiny piece of pottery with a serekh on it, the symbol of the name of the king. For context, Neithhotep was from Predynastic Egypt, just before the first dynasty. And this is where it gets exciting - Neithhotep is believed to be the mother of the first pharaoh of Egypt. However, on this piece of pottery, her name is written in a serekh. Indicating she was a pharaoh. Of course, it's possible that it was just indicating her as Queen, but it's quite fun to think that there's a very good chance the first pharaoh of Egypt was a woman. Furthermore, as far as we can tell, this is the earliest ever surviving evidence of a woman's name written down.

33

A bunch of fossils and bones of some sort of horned dinosaur were found on a construction site in Highlands Ranch, Colorado. My cousins' boyfriend was one of the workers who found them. Some jerk on his team was trying to load his truck up with a bunch of the fossils and bones and destroyed them, the museum had to confiscate stuff from him. But it's still pretty cool that Colorado has another dinosaur! (I think we've had another dinosaur and another really good set of fossils found here.)

34

Not an archaeologist, but aspiring to be one. There is currently a hunt for Caligula's third pleasure boat. The first two were found in Lake Nemi but were destroyed during the First World War, so this possible third one is the last one in existence.

35

Not an archaeologist, except in my youthful dreams. A Bronze Age canoe was recently uncovered during the building of a new bypass in North Wales. While not an earth-shattering discovery, if it is a canoe, it is an extremely rare discovery and the first prehistoric example to be found in North West Wales.

36

I'm an Endiocronozoologist. In 1964, my team discovered the remains of a Ziwanis elder tribesman who had in his tomb the ancient talisman of Sha'Na, however, it was missing a very distinct piece. Very recently, upon expedition to the greater isles of Naath, we set upon that jewel. The adventure that led to its discovery is a tale of the ages.

37

4 years ago, a guy in Finland was metal detecting and found a small metallic wolf's head figure that the Finnish museum officials at the time said was just a piece of garbage. After a recent re-examination, it turns out it is similar in design and composition to the type of figurine popular with Roman troops, and the find might mean that their trade routes reached way further north than just Denmark. Circumstantial evidence dates it to the Middle Ages, but more research is needed. Either way, it is a very significant find. The lesson here I guess is to always get a second opinion on your findings, this one might have ended up in the trash otherwise.

38

Not an archaeologist, but in Eritrea, they are currently working on uncovering the port city of Aksum Adulis. So far, they've found a Byzantine church. An Italian university group is the lead of the Adulis program. They are still trying to dig up the rest of the city, which is about 40 hectares. They've managed to do just a small percentage of that.

39

Not archaeology but related: I worked on a television series about the Dutch 80 Years War; a series of conflicts between 1568 and 1648 that formed our kingdom. It is Game of Thrones minus the dragons. I was amazed at the knowledge historians have about this period. Stuff like the exact locations of troops on a certain date more than 400 years ago. The exact route they took and local weather at the time. How they were received in different cities. Names and oil paintings of all the important people. All this information from clever combinations of information from archives, museums, and private collections from all over Europe.

40

Yes, actually! I don't specialize in Ancient Egypt (my focus is on Greek and Roman Mechanical Technology) but a really interesting paper came out about the Great Pyramids that seems to explain a lot about them. I personally thought the theory was really compelling but I'm interested to see what people who are actually experts in the matter have to say about it. It suggests that water from a lake was used to half-fill the pyramid before escaping from the hidden door in a waterfall-like manner and created a moat around the base of the pyramid, and it seems to take into account all of the weird chambers in the pyramid that people haven't been able to explain, and it corresponds well with ancient writings on the pyramids such as Herodotus and Strabo.

41

Not exactly archaeology, but linked to that - at the end of the last Ice Age, there was a swift drop of temperatures to much colder than it was even during the end of the Ice Age. It lasted for centuries and coincides with the extinction of many species of the Ice Age fauna (various mammoths, rhinos, cave bears, cave lions...). It was speculated about what caused it and there was a hypothesis, which was considered pretty much obscure by many scientists, that a impact of an asteroid