A team of divers has begun to map some of the 25 freshwater lakes White Face in Belize, which was of major importance to the ancient Maya. Divers have found fossilized remains of animals, pottery shards, and explored the largest lagoon, a huge underwater cave.

This project, led by anthropologist Lisa Lucero of the University of Illinois, is the first of what Lucero expected to be a series of dives in the lakes of the southern lowlands of the Maya in central Belize. Divers will assess the feasibility of carrying out an archaeological dig at the bottom of the ponds, some of which are over 60 meters deep. (more…)

A process using carbon-14 dating has enabled an international team of researchers to establish for the first time an absolute chronology of Dynastic Egypt (approximately between 2700 and 1100 BC). The analysis of short-lived organic samples, archaeologically attributed to a specific period or reign in Egyptian history, has confirmed previous chronological estimates, but has also questioned other estimates. (more…)

A leadership structure of water in the Maya city of Palenque, Mexico, is the oldest known example in America of technology to increase water pressure. This is indicated by the results of recent research. However, it remains unknown what exactly the Maya used the water pressure. (more…)

A team of archaeologists from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, headed by Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute and chief of the expedition, along with a team of fellow Syrians, is finding new clues to prehistoric society and laid the foundations for urban life in the Middle East even before the invention of the wheel.
The analysis of the archaeological site of Tell Zeidan, which has not been excavated so far, and above which are not thereafter ever built, is revealing a society rich in trade, in the metallurgy of copper and production ceramics.

Artifacts found there recently are providing greater support to the hypothesis that Tell Zeidan, in the Euphrates River Valley, near Raqqa, Syria, was among the first Middle Eastern societies to develop social classes according to their degree of power and wealth. (more…)

In recorded history, many speak of and just explained sudden end of empires and civilizations. The political climate is deteriorating, passions ignite, riots broke out and the next thing that is revealed is that this culture became a thing of the past, often being relegated to a short chapter in a history book.

The natural world leaves a record in the form of rings in trees. These growth rings can be read as a book rich in detail, covering an extensive period of human history. Now a team of researchers has mapped the mysterious fall of Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire in Cambodia, with a drought that lasted for decades, interrupted by heavy monsoon time, all in the XIV and XV. (more…)

The eye makeup that she took her mesmerizing looks and the legendary beauty of Queen Nefertiti, and other celebrities of the ancient Egyptian royalty was more than that.
Christian Amatore of the department of chemistry at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris and his colleagues have revealed that the attractive eye makeup could also be used to help prevent or treat eye diseases to also act as an agent against infections.
Thousands of years ago, ancient Egyptians used lead-based substances such as cosmetics, including an ingredient for eye makeup. Some Egyptians believed that makeup also played a “magic” by which the ancient gods Horus and Ra protect against several diseases to the wearer. However, modern scientists had largely discarded, until now, the possibility that the makeup had medicinal effects, since the lead-based substances can be quite toxic. (more…)