A huge archaeological site has been unearthed in Ohio dating to the Hopewell time period. From the news report: Five weeks of digging this summer by professional and amateur archaeologists from the Cleveland Museum and the Firelands Archaeological Research Center, guided by the magnetic readings, have confirmed the presence of a major occupation, and have [...]
Chickasaw.tv, the Chickasaw Nation’s online video network, has produced an amazing video featuring the Moundville site in Alabama. The video features aerial flyovers of the Moundville site revealing its true majesty. The site notes, Moundville was a preeminent ancient center of mound culture on the Black Warrior River, just west of present-day Tuscaloosa, Alabama. It [...]
The Maya of the Postclassic era considered the sea as a source of food and a navigable resource but it was also the cause of devastation and death, as the marine world was linked to the Xibalbá or underworld. And so, a sea crossing meant a transition to the afterlife or a rebirth. Ports like [...]
New research reveals that symbols which appear on ancient Georgia pottery are identical to Mayan glyphs, the symbols used to write the Mayan language. The pottery known as Swift Creek was a highly decorated form of pottery produced around 2,000 years ago beginning around 0 A.D. Many of the Swift Creek designs were collected in [...]
This History Channel documentary entitled “Who Really Discovered America?” highlights the various theories of Precolumbian contact with the Americas by cultures ranging from the Chinese to the Vikings to the Polynesians. It really helps show that ocean voyages have been possible for thousands of years and that neither the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans were the [...]
One of the many mysteries involving the ancient Maya is the origin of a blue pigment they used to paint murals and buildings. Archaeologists have searched far and wide for the source of this pigment. It now appears that the largest source of the clay that makes this pigment can be found in southwest Georgia. [...]
Dennis Stanford spent thirty years of his career searching the Arctic and Russian Siberia for the origins of the Clovis Culture, the supposedly first Native American culture in America. After thirty years of searching he found no evidence that Clovis came across a land bridge from Siberia. What the evidence suggested was that the Clovis [...]
Chihuahua pot from Niesler Mound in Georgia The origins of the Chihuahua have been lost in the mists of time yet new research reveals they once roamed the southern states of Georgia and Tennessee. The discovery was made by analyzing dog effigy pots unearthed in Georgia and Tennessee to determine the most likely breed they [...]
A composite photograph of the front and back of the jade gouge shown with a centimeter scale. CREDIT: Les O’Neil, University of Otago An international team of archaeologists and geologists has found an extremely unusual example of jade in the Southwest Pacific, thousands of miles away from the nearest known geological source. The small green [...]
Watch an excerpt from the Lost Worlds: Georgia DVD. Buy today or make a donation and help support LostWorlds.org. All proceeds help fund future videos and exhibits. Six hours southeast of Atlanta off the Georgia coast on Sapelo Island, archaeologists have unearthed the remains of an ancient walled city which predates the construction of [...]
Some of the oldest known corn cobs, husks, stalks and tassels, dating from 6,700 to 3,000 years ago were discovered at Paredones and Huaca Prieta, two mound sites on Peru’s arid northern coast. (Credit: Tom D. Dillehay) People living along the coast of Peru were eating popcorn 1,000 years earlier than previously reported and before [...]
The discovery that objects from the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age carry patterns associated with high-current Z-pinches provides a possible insight into the origin and meaning of these ancient symbols produced by man. This paper directly compares the graphical and radiation data from high-current Z-pinches to these patterns. The paper focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on petroglyphs. It is found that a great many archaic petroglyphs can beclassified according to plasma stability and instability data. As the same morphological types are found worldwide, the comparisons suggest the occurrence of an intense aurora, as might be produced if the solar wind had increased between one and two orders of magnitude, millennia ago.
Rock-art has been discovered and recorded in forty sites in northeastern Guanajuato, Mexico, as part of an ongoing project carried out by researchers from the National Institute of Anthropology and History. The majority of the images were created by hunter-gatherers who occupied the area during the 1-5 centuries AD, but religious iconography and inscriptions were also discovered dating to the colonial era, as well as the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The earliest explorers of the Amazon recorded that it was filled with villages and towns. After European diseases swept the area and wiped out its inhabitants, the jungle regrew and hid all evidence of these civilizations. Later explorers would find no evidence of such civilizations and the archaeological community, in all their brilliance and wisdom, [...]
Architect and scholar Richard Thornton has published his findings about an archaeological site on the side of Georgia’s highest mountain peak, Brasstown Bald. His conclusion, that the site was built by the Maya, could rock the archaeological community who have insisted for decades that no evidence existed for the presence of people from Mexico in [...]
Ancient rulers and thousands of their subjects thrived in a city behind huge wooden walls that once surrounded the Moundville site. These prehistoric Native Americans farmed, hunted and fished. Their society recognized nobles by birth and praised the feats of great artists, warriors and holy people. Each year, descendants of this vibrant culture return, celebrating the South’s [...]
Recent research shows that the earliest phase of Andean Civilization took place simultaneously with earliest stages of civilization on the Old World. This remarkable phenomenon and its manifestation at the ancient city of Caral in Peru are described in Caral Supe: The Oldest Civilization in the Americas. (Watch both parts below.) Recent research shows that cities [...]
This engraved conch shell was unearthed in Craig Mound at Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma. LeFlore County, often referred to as “Little Dixie,” was once home to a thriving national center of commerce. This lively metropolis enjoyed its heyday not in recent memory, but between 700 and 1400 A.D. According to Dennis Peterson, archaeologist and site manager [...]
Close to the end of the last ice age there was a sudden disappearance of many mammalian species which some paleontologists say was the most severe since the disappearance of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. In North America 95 percent of the megafauna became extinct, these being predominantly mammals having body weights greater than [...]
To the untrained eye, there’s nothing special about the earthen hump that runs for hundreds of feet alongside picturesque Miami Bluff Drive and curves down along the edge of the woods toward the Mariemont Swimming Pool. At certain points, it’s undetectable from the road because trees, honeysuckle and weeds grow on parts of it. But [...]
Was the course of life on the planet altered 12,900 years ago by a giant comet exploding over Canada? New evidence found by UC Assistant Professor of Anthropology Ken Tankersley and colleagues suggests the answer is affirmative.
COLUMBIA — Fans of the Saluda River now have a new place to learn about the area’s Native American history. Officials from South Carolina Electric & Gas and the Saluda Shoals Park are holding a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Wednesday to open a new display at the Saluda Shoals Environmental Education Center in Columbia. The center [...]
EVANSTON, Ill. — Northwestern University researchers ditched many of their high-tech tools and turned to large stones, fire and some old-fashioned elbow grease to recreate techniques used by Native American coppersmiths who lived more than 600 years ago. This prehistoric approach to metalworking was part of a metallurgical analysis of copper artifacts left behind by [...]
