Archaeology Facts

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.

Pollen never deteriorates. It is one of the few natural substances that lasts indefinitely.

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.

Honey never spoils. Archaeologists have found 3,000-year-old honey in Egyptian tombs that was still perfectly edible.

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.

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.

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.

King Tut's complete tomb collection is on display all together for the first time. Howard Carter found all 5,398 pieces in 1922. For a century, most sat in storage - Cairo's old museum showed only about a third. Egypt's Grand Egyptian Museum, beside the Giza pyramids, opened in November 2025 with all of it under one roof. A century after being found, it's all together at last.

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.

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.

In 2019, scientists extracted a complete human genome from a 5,700-year-old wad of chewed birch pitch found at Syltholm, Denmark. It belonged to a young woman with dark skin, dark hair, and blue eyes. They even recovered DNA from her last meal: duck and hazelnuts.

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.

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.

A natural gas company's robot found hundreds of ancient jars on the Mediterranean floor: a 3,300-year-old Canaanite cargo ship, the oldest ever found in deep water. At 1.8 km depth, cold oxygen-free water kept it perfectly intact. Bronze Age sailors were crossing the open sea by the stars, not hugging the coast.

The Colosseum has a hidden underground corridor that Roman emperors used to enter the arena unseen and avoid assassination. Called the Passage of Commodus, it sat sealed beneath Rome for nearly 2,000 years. On October 27, 2025, it opened to the public for the first time after a year-long restoration. Part of the tunnel still leads toward an unknown destination.

In 1901, sponge divers exploring a 2,000-year-old shipwreck off Greece hauled up a corroded lump of bronze. Decades of scanning revealed what it was: a mechanical computer of around 30 interlocking gears that tracked the Sun, Moon and planets and predicted eclipses. Nothing this complex appears again for more than a thousand years.

The Great Pyramids of Giza were once covered in polished white limestone blocks so smooth that a knife blade could not fit between them. In sunlight they blazed like mirrors across the desert. In 1303, an earthquake loosened the casing. A sultan stripped the stones to build mosques in Cairo - and the rough stepped core we see today is what was left behind.

Stonehenge's central slab is the Altar Stone - a 6-tonne sandstone block. Scientists believed for a century it came from Wales. A study in Nature matched its mineral fingerprint to northeast Scotland, over 750 km away. That is the longest recorded stone haul of the Neolithic era. How Neolithic people moved it there remains unsolved - possibly by sea.

Machu Picchu has been called the wrong name for over 100 years. A 2022 study found the Incas most likely called it "Huayna Picchu." The name "Machu Picchu" belongs to a different mountain nearby. Explorer Hiram Bingham attached the wrong label in 1911. The world knows it wrong - and it will stay that way.