The 6th century BC temple on the Greek island Despotiko is not what you might expect: the shrine boasts an enormous dining facility, and is surrounded by a large number of statues. Excavation on this idyllic little uninhabited island has also revealed evidence of an earlier temple – and a rather unnerving statuette of a goddess with wild, staring eyes.
Sidon appears in the Old and the New Testaments, in Homer’s Odyssey, and in inscriptions from Phoenicia to Assyria. But what of its archaeological record? We reveal more than 5,000 years of continuous, often turbulent, occupation from 4th millennium settlers and traders to brutal medieval Crusaders.
The first clues of structures on the imperial estate at Vagnari in the depths of the Puglian countryside were a bit of an enigma. What could they be, built in the middle of nowhere? The answer is a winery, one capable of wine production on a truly industrial scale.
Rapidly falling sea levels during the Last Glacial Maximum created a land bridge between two continents, enabling humans to make their way from Siberia into the Americas. New studies show that, far from being a frozen wasteland, this zone – called Beringia – provided an environmental safe haven, and cores from the now submerged landscape provide convincing dates for human occupation.
How long did it take for groups to make their way down through the Americas? Dates obtained from rock art in the Piauí region of Brazil may throw the cat among the pigeons. Results suggest a human presence here some 10,000 years earlier than previously thought.