Ancient Mysteries

A total of 57 tombs dating back to 2750 BC have been uncovered by archaeologists in Egypt, each with a mummy inside.The find sheds new light on the religion of the ancient Egyptians, some of the tombs were found to be decorated in religious texts that would have put there to help the dead crossthrough the underworld.

Archaeologists have unearthed 57 ancient Egyptian tombs, most of which hold an ornately painted wooden sarcophagus with a mummy inside, Egypt"s Supreme Council of Antiquities said Sunday.

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Lasers have been used to peer through the rain forests and reveal an ancient Maya metropolis in western Belize.The airborne lasers allowed researchers to get a better picture of what the settlement had been like, as it turns out it was far larger than anyone had previously thought. An April 2009 flyover of the Maya city ofCaracol used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) equipment—which bounces laser beams off the ground—to help scientists construct a 3-D map of the settlement in western Belize.



View: Full article | Source: NationalGeographic

Archaeologists in southern Mexico announced Monday they have discovered a 2,700-year-old tomb of a dignitary inside a pyramid that may be the oldest such burial documented in Mesoamerica. The tomb held a man aged around 50, who was buried with jade collars, pyrite and obsidian artifacts and ceramic vessels.

Archaeologist Emiliano Gallaga said the tomb dates to between 500 and 700 B.C. Based on the layers in which it was found and the tomb's unusual wooden construction, "we think this is one of the earliest discoveries of the use of a pyramid as a tomb, not only as a religious site or temple," Gallaga said. Pre-Hispanic cultures built pyramids mainly as representations of the levels leading from the underworld to the sky; the highest point usually held a temple.

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The method believed to be used by the inhabitants of Easter Island to move their statues has been called in to question.Up until now it has been widely believed that the inhabitants used a network of roads to transport the enormous stone head statues around the island however new research by archeologists has now suggested that the roads were purely ceremonial and wouldnot have made for a practical transportation system.

British archeologists are rejecting a 50-year-old theory of how Easter Island"s famous stone statues were moved around the island. Easter Island — a special territory of Chile in the South Pacific — is famous for its hundreds of moai, or statues representing deceased ancestors, built by the early Polynesianinhabitants.

View: Full article | Source: CBCNews