History Facts About Archaeology

The worlds oldest piece of chewing gum is over 9000 years old!

The first semi-permanent settlements appeared in Florida around 5000 B.C.

In 2009, archaeologists in Modena, Italy discovered two skeletons buried holding hands for 1,500 years. Originally assumed to be a romantic couple, a 2019 DNA study revealed both individuals were male—making it the first known burial of two men holding hands from antiquity.

Jericho is the oldest walled city in the world at 9,000 yrs old!

The oldest stone tools found are dated from 2.7 - 2.9 million years ago. The species that made these tools is unknown.

Scientists are excavating the ruins of a major civilization which pre-dates both the pyramids and Stonehenge by over 7,000 years. In 15 years, they have uncovered only about 5% of the site.

A retired gardener borrowed a metal detector in 1992 to find a lost hammer in a Suffolk field. Instead, he uncovered 14,865 Roman coins and 200 pieces of ancient jewelry - the largest late Roman treasure hoard ever found in Britain, valued at £1.75 million. They found the hammer too. It's in the British Museum.

Amelia Earhart's plane may have been hiding in plain sight for 89 years. A researcher spotted a strange shape in a Pacific lagoon in 2020. The same shape turns up in aerial photos from 1938, just months after Earhart disappeared. Researchers say its size and outline match the tail and wing of her plane. A Purdue-backed team sets sail July 28 to investigate.

In 2012, archaeologists dug up a parking lot in Leicester and found the skeleton of King Richard III - lost for 527 years. An amateur historian convinced a university to dig on a hunch. They found him in the first trench, six hours into a two-week dig. The parking space above his grave was marked with the letter R.

In April 2024, archaeologists in Pompeii uncovered a 15-metre banqueting hall with jet-black walls and vivid frescoes of Helen of Troy meeting Paris - sealed under volcanic ash since 79 CE. Nearly 2,000 years in the dark, and the dinner party was still on.

Hikers called the cops when they found a body melting out of an Alpine glacier in 1991. Police treated it as a routine mountain casualty. Carbon dating later revealed the man had been dead for 5,300 years. A decade later, X-rays found an arrowhead in his shoulder - he had bled to death in minutes.

George Washington's cherry tree story is a myth invented after he died. But archaeologists just found real cherries hidden in his actual home. In 2024, workers at Mount Vernon uncovered 35 glass bottles buried in the cellar. Most still held whole cherries and berries, preserved for 250 years. When one bottle was opened, it still smelled like cherry blossoms.

Two brothers were cutting peat in a Danish bog in 1950. They found a body so well preserved, they called the police. Closed eyes, stubble, a calm face. They were sure it was a recent crime. It was actually Tollund Man, dead for 2,400 years. A braided leather noose was still around his neck. Archaeologists believe he was a ritual sacrifice, not foul play. His last meal, a barley porridge, was still in his stomach.

Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is the oldest known temple on Earth. Its massive stone pillars date back roughly 11,600 years, about 6,000 years before Stonehenge was built. Hunter-gatherers built it before writing, metal tools, or farming even existed. Then they deliberately buried the enclosures, and nobody knows exactly why.

Marcel Ravidat was 18 when his dog went down a hole near Montignac, France. He climbed in after it, then returned days later with three friends. They found cave walls covered in painted animals: over 600 images made some 17,000 years ago. One black bull stretches over 17 feet across the rock. Visitors' breath damaged the paintings so badly the cave closed in 1963. A replica nearby lets people see it today.

A Bedouin shepherd threw a stone into a cave by the Dead Sea to chase a lost goat. He heard pottery shatter instead. Inside were clay jars holding scrolls close to 2,000 years old - the oldest known copies of the Hebrew Bible ever found, roughly 1,000 years older than any manuscript known before. Over the next decade, searchers found more than 900 manuscripts across 11 caves.

Mehmed Çakir spotted odd metal shapes on the seabed off Turkey in 1982. The sponge diver called them metal biscuits with ears. They turned out to be 3,300-year-old copper ingots from one of the richest Bronze Age shipwrecks ever found. Its cargo came from at least seven ancient civilizations, including Egyptian ivory and Baltic amber. There was enough copper and tin aboard to arm 5,000 soldiers with bronze swords.

Farmers near Xi'an, China were digging a well in March 1974 when their shovels hit a buried clay head. It led to the Terracotta Army: an estimated 8,000 soldiers, of which only 2,000 have been dug up so far. They guard the 2,200-year-old tomb of China's first emperor, a tomb that has never been opened. Ancient writers said it holds rivers of mercury, and soil tests found the mercury is real.

Archaeologists have found around 130 strange bronze objects across the old Roman Empire. Each one has twelve flat faces and a knob on every corner. Holes of different sizes are cut into every side. Some fit in a palm. Some are as big as a grapefruit. No Roman text, painting, or mosaic ever mentions them. Two thousand years later, nobody knows what they were built for.

Shackleton's ship Endurance was found in 2022, 3,000 meters down on the Antarctic seafloor - lost since 1915. The name still stood out across the stern. The freezing water had kept the wooden hull almost perfectly preserved for 107 years. Shackleton lost the ship in the ice - but all 28 men survived a 22-month ordeal and made it home.