COSMOS MAGAZINE

5 archaeological discoveries uncovering hidden histories

The objects date to about 1800 BCE and include a game board, large structural remains and clay tablets with cuneiform writing unlike anything found in the region. It is possible that the 4,000-year-old city is the hidden city of Qabra, referenced in Old Babylonian monuments.

Hidden history of Mesopotamia revealed in Bronze Age artefacts

Credit: Tiffany Earley-Spadoni.

The longest Greek papyrus ever found in the Judaean Desert has been published, revealing forgery and tax fraud in from the Roman empire. How the document survived remains a mystery. It may have been stashed in a secret hideout cave.

Ancient papyrus from Judaean Desert shows Roman tax fraud

Papyrus Cotton. Credit: Shai Halevi.

Not simply Roman propaganda, new research has found that women were at the centre of social networks in Celtic communities and may have been influential in many spheres of Iron Age life.

Ancient Celtic society may have been led by women

Credit: Bournemouth University.

Researchers have discovered what may be the world’s oldest three-dimensional map, located within a quartzitic sandstone megaclast in the Paris Basin south of the French capital.

World’s oldest 3D map discovered in palaeolithic cave

Credit: Dr Médard Thiry

Clues into the mysterious lives of southern Scandinavia and northern Germany’s first farmers have found both cultivated and wild plant microfossils on the grinding stones that show  the ancient people knew how to enrich their diet.

What did southern Scandinavia’s first farmers eat 5,000  years ago?

Credit: Susanne Beyer, Kiel University.

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