political history news

Archaeologists discover 2,000-year-old ‘Sphinx Room’ hidden in Emperor Nero’s Golden Palace

Archaeologists have discovered a hidden vault in the ruins of Roman Emperor Nero’s sprawling palace, hidden under the hills near Rome’s ancient Colosseum.

According to a statement (translated from Italian) from the Colosseum archaeological park, which includes the palace’s ruins, the chamber has sat hidden for nearly 2,000 years, likely dating to between A.D. 65 and A.D. 68.

The chamber, nicknamed the Sphinx Room, is richly adorned with murals of real and mythical creatures including — you guessed it — a sphinx.

Painted in rich red, green and yellow pigments that have survived the last two millennia incredibly well, the vaulted room is also decorated with images of a centaur, the goat-rumped god Pan, myriad plant and water ornaments, and a scene of a sword-wielding man being attacked by a panther.

According to the statement, the Sphinx Room was discovered accidentally, while researchers were setting up to restore a nearby chamber.

The room’s curved ceilings are 15 feet (4.5 meters) high, and much of the room is still filled in with dirt.

Nero began constructing his massive palace — known as the Domus Aurea, or “golden house” — in A.D. 64 after a devastating, six-day-long fire reduced two-thirds of Rome to ashes.

That researchers are still uncovering new rooms in the Domus Aurea after hundreds of years of excavation (the ruins were first rediscovered in the 15th century) is no surprise. In its prime, the palace sprawled over four of Rome’s famous seven hills and is believed to have included at least 300 rooms.

Thanks, in part, to his narcissistic construction project, Nero’s reputation suffered in the eyes of history, and he is remembered today as a power-mad despot. Following Nero’s suicide in A.D. 68, much of his palace was looted, filled with earth, and built over.

One of the palace’s central features, a large manmade lake, was eventually covered up by the Flavian Amphitheater — better known as the Roman Colosseum — in A.D. 70.

Thanks to the lake’s infrastructure, the bottom of the Colosseum was occasionally flooded to wage mock naval battles, bringing glory to the mad emperor’s successors.

An Underground City Full Of Giant Skeletons Discovered In The Grand Canyon

In the early 20th century, chance led us to the gate of the underground town of the most prominent giants of that period. This was an unprecedented find in the Grand Canyon, which soon repeated in the press.

The Grand Canyon was the birthplace of a culture in which, according to an article published in the Gazeta de Arizona on April 5, 1909, people of cyclopean proportions existed. A civilization that only left us some structures as a testimony of its existence.

The article mentions the discovery of a huge subterranean citadel by an explorer named GE Kinkaid, who accidentally found it while rafting on the Colorado River. It is worth mentioning that Kinkaid was a recognized archaeologist and had the financial support of the Smithsonian Institution.

According to their descriptions, the entrance to this mysterious city was at the end of a tunnel that extended for something more than 1,600 meters underground.

Kinkaid was impressed that the cavern was almost inaccessible. The entrance was about 450 meters under the wall of the steep canyon. The place was in a zone protected by the government and the access was penalized under fine.

Skeletons Found Under a Florida Wine Shop May Be Some of America’s First Colonists

Historians recently announced in Florida that several small children’s bones buried beneath underneath the last place one might think to look: a wine shop.

However, there will be no police inquiry. The Florida wine shop happens to be located in St. Augustine, America’s oldest city. And those bones? They’re just about as old as the city is.

The archaeologists actually believe that these skeletal remains could have been among the first settlers in North America.

In the past few weeks, researchers have found seven people including three children, in the ancient graveyard.

According to the St. Augustine Register, one of them was a young white European woman.

Researchers are still examining the other remains, but a pottery fragment found nearby suggests that these people died sometime between 1572 and 1586.

“What you’re dealing with is people who made St. Augustine what it is,” Carl Halbirt, St. Augustine city archaeologist, tells FirstCoast News. “You’re in total awe. You want to treat everything with respect, and we are.”

Archaeologists were able to dig underneath the building thanks to the effects of last year’s Hurricane Matthew, the flooding from which convinced the building’s owner that it was time to replace the wooden floor.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, the building’s floor was constructed in 1888, and the soil beneath the building has remained untouched since then, thus creating a virtual time capsule.

The building also happens to be built where the ancient Church of Nuestra Señora de la Remedios used to stand.

“The mission churches across Florida buried everybody in the church floor,” Ellsbeth Gordon, an architectural historian, told FirstCoast News. “It was consecrated ground, of course.”

According to Smithsonian, Sir Francis Drake burned the church down in 1586, a hurricane destroyed it again in 1599, and the British once again burned it down in 1702.

That last time may have been for good, but until then the church had been the main meeting point for a colony that had been established 55 years before the Pilgrims ever set foot on Plymouth Rock.

While the archaeologists are planning on moving the bones found outside the wine shop to a nearby cemetery, the skeletons found inside will stay right where they have lain for the past 400 years.

Greek Farmer Stumbles Onto 3,400-Year-Old Tomb Hidden Below His Olive Grove

Unbeknownst to a Greek farmer, a 3,400-year-old tomb containing two coffins and dozens of artefacts dating back to the Late Minoan era had been lying beneath his olive grove in southeast Crete.

Both were buried in large vases – intricately embossed clay coffins that were common in Minoan culture in the Bronze Age – and they were surrounded by colourful funeral vases that indicated their owners’ good rank. The burial site was eventually sealed with stone masonry and forgotten leaving the dead unidentified for nearly 3,400 years.

George Dvorsky revealed to Gizmodo earlier this summer that a local farmer accidentally brought an abrupt end to the pair’s millennia-long rest. The farmer tried to park his vehicle on his property under a shaded olive grove when the ground gave way, forcing him to find a new parking spot.

When he started driving off, the unidentified local noticed a four-foot-wide hole that had formed in the patch of land he had just vacated. Perched on the edge of the gaping space the man realized that “a wonderful thing” had been unintentionally unearthed.

Archaeologists from the local heritage ministry Lassithi Ephorate of Antiquities, have launched excavations under the olive grove of the farmer at Rousses, a small village just northeast of Kentri, Ierapetra, in southeastern Crete, according to a statement.

They identified the Minoan tomb, nearly perfectly preserved despite its advanced age, in a pit measuring roughly four feet across and eight feet deep. Space’s interior was divided into three carved niches accessible by a vertical trench.

In the northernmost niche, archaeologists found a coffin and an array of vessels scattered across the ground. The southernmost niche yielded a second sealed coffin, as well as 14 ritual Greek jars called amphorae and a bowl.

Two Minoan men were buried in the Crete tomb roughly 3,400 years ago (Lassithi Ephorate of Antiquities)

Forbes’ Kristina Kilgrove writes that the high quality of the pottery left in the tomb indicates the individuals buried were relatively affluent. She notes, however, that other burial sites dating to the same Late Minoan period feature more elaborate beehive-style tombs.

“These [men] could be wealthy,” Kilgrove states, “but not the wealthiest.”

Unlike many ancient tombs, the Kentri grave was never discovered by thieves, Argyris Pantazis, deputy mayor of Local Communities, Agrarian and Tourism of Ierapetra, tells local news outlet Cretapost.

In fact, the site likely would have remained sealed in perpetuity if not for the chance intervention of a broken irrigation pipe, which watered down the soil surrounding the farmer’s olive grove and led to his unexpected parking debacle.

“We are particularly pleased with this great archaeological discovery as it is expected to further enhance our culture and history,” Pantazis added in his interview with Cretapost. “Indeed, this is also a response to all those who doubt that there were Minoans in Ierapetra.”

According to Archaeology News Network, most Minoan settlements found on Crete are located in the lowlands and plains rather than the mountainous regions of Ierapetra.

Still, a 2012 excavation in Anatoli, Ierapetra, revealed a Minoan mansion dating to between 1600 and 1400 B.C., roughly the same time period as the Kentri tomb.

This latest find offers further proof of the ancient civilization’s presence—as Mark Cartwright notes for Ancient History Encyclopedia, the Minoans are most renowned for their labyrinthine palace complexes, which likely inspired the classic Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. According to legend, Queen Pasiphae of Crete gave birth to the Minotaur, a fierce half-man, half-bull hybrid, after falling for a bull sent to Earth by the Greek god Zeus.

The Minotaur, doomed to an eternity spent wandering the halls of an underground labyrinth and killing anyone it encountered, was eventually defeated by the demigod Theseus, who relied on an enchanted ball of thread provided by the king’s daughter, Ariadne, to escape the maze.

Much of the Minoans’ history remains unclear, but Forbes’ Kilgrove reports that natural disasters, including the eruption of the Thera volcano, an earthquake and a tsunami, contributed to the group’s downfall, enabling enemies such as the Mycenaeans to easily invade. Analysis of the excavated Kentri tomb may offer further insights on the Minoan-Mycenaean rivalry, as well as the Cretan civilization’s eventual demise.