Archaeological Finds I have said it before, but I am going to say it again, I can’t believe all the new archaeological sites being found. If we keep this up, we may someday find the last one. One thing we haven’t found yet, or have and kept secret were ancient alien finds, like the name of the show? Getting back to earth, many people had believed we found most of the ancient Roman ruins, but we are still finding Roman cities. It is one thing to find a lost structure here and there, but lost cities, wow. This time we found a Roman city within an ancient Egyptian one. The ruins of a Roman city from about 1800 years ago were found in the even more ancient city of Luxor in Egypt. Some of the buildings in the city were residential, but there were other buildings like the two towers for carrier pigeons, and different workshops. There was a find made in a place which one would think has been thoroughly explored already, I am talking about Jerusalem. Archaeologists were surprised to find the remains of a moat surrounding the city. It was dug into the rock and is believed to be about 1,000 years old. It was discovered by accident by a construction company. In the walls of the moat are perfectly carved hand prints. I don’t believe anyone knows why the handprints are there. Neanderthals seem to have been underrated for years. We used to think of them as dim witted oafs without the power of speech, who were eventually wiped out by modern humans. Things have changed since those days. First scientists discovered they could talk, they also discovered some of the stone tools we credited modern humans for making were made by Neanderthals. Then we discovered modern humans and Neanderthals lived together in a few caves. Now we have a very strong suspicion some of the very ancient art on cave walls may have been made by Neanderthals. What does all this mean? It means they might have been our equals in intelligence or close to it. It also means if humans and Neanderthals lived together in some places they may have gotten along and were not wiped out by modern humans, but maybe by some disease only they could catch. It is always exciting for archaeologists to find ancient papyruses, but finding one which was 52 feet long must have made them ecstatic. It is a little over 2,000 years old and was found in Saqqara, Egypt. It was found in a tomb, inside a sarcophagus. The contents will be revealed at the grand opening of the Grand Egyptian Museum. The Romans were adept at building structures and sometimes put them where others were built before them. A ritual center was found in England which was estimated to be 4,000 years old. Although it was also built on and used by the Romans, it was built far before they came to England. A construction company was building new housing at the time they uncovered the site. It seems the Romans had added a stone building with one room to the site. The room had painted plaster walls and possibly a ceiling which was painted. Water tanks were also found. Some interesting rock carvings have been found in Iraq. There was a city named Nineveh, which was said to have been the biggest city in the world at one time and the richest. Nineveh was in the country of Assyria. The carvings tell the story of the city. Assyria was a large country ruling what is now Iraq, and parts of Turkey from 1400 B.C. to 700 B.C. It was composed of 1800 acres and had 15 great gates. The city of Nineveh itself was founded in 6,000 B.C., but some believe it could be older. It is believed at one time Nineveh had a population of 120,000 people which made it the most populated city in the world. Another ancient city was discovered in Iraq. Because of an extreme drought, the water which had covered it receded. The city was believed to be Zakhiku. This was part of the Mittani Empire which governed the area from 1550 B.C. to 1350 B.C. The city had been at the bottom of a reservoir. The Mittani’s rule extended from the Mediterranean Sea to northern Iraq. Even though the Pyramids at Gaza have been around for thousands of years and maybe more, there are still things archaeologists don’t know about them. Even more than that, some of the things some think they know are disputed. An example is some believe the pyramids are much older and not built by the Egyptians. Others think they were more like power stations for ancient electricity and point to residue found on the inside of long ports which open out of the pyramid. Some call them tombs for the pharaohs, yet no bodies were found in them. There is even disagreement by some on how they were built. Archaeologists have discovered incredible ruins throughout northern Guatemala. It wasn’t just a few structures, but over 1,000 settlements which stretched over 650 square miles. The sites were Maya and about 2,000 years old. Prior to this discovery, almost nobody thought the area had such a dense population. Lidar was used to make the discoveries. It can see through jungle growth with in a plane or drone above the jungle. It seems an incredible number of finds are being made in Iraq. There is an archaeological dig going on in Nimrud and it has just yielded a great find. A large palace door has been found which dates back to the Assyrian King, Adad-Nirari the third. He ruled from 810 to 783 B.C. The area had been destroyed in 2016 by ISIS. A mysterious tunnel has been found under the Egyptian City of Tapuziris Magna, which is near Alexandria. The city was founded by Pharaoh Ptolemy the second, a Greek pharaoh. When a dig was going on at a temple, scientists found a tunnel cut through the rock. The tunnel was over 4,300 feet long and almost 43 feet under the ground. Pottery has been found in the tunnel, but part of it is under water, making things difficult. Coins, tombs and statues have been previously found at the dig. There is a flurry of digging going on around the world, especially in the more ancient countries. I don’t know if this is one of the busiest years in archaeology, but it certainly is busy. Some of the most prominent digs are happening in Central and South America, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, China and many other places.
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