Flipboard 2025 Archaeology And Discoveries

It started as a crushed fossil discovered decades ago in central China. Now, thanks to new digital reconstruction, scientists have realized this ancient skull—known as Yunxian 2—is about one million years old, and it’s completely reshaping what we know about the human story.

Archaeologists in Bulgaria unearthed a significant historical treasure hidden in the sewer system below an ancient city—but its discovery is not what’s making history.

History is full of unsolved mysteries, but sometimes, new technology leads historians to answers. Here are some historical mysteries that we’ve recently figured out.

Archaeologists unearthed fifteen monumental lamassu statues and stone reliefs at Nineveh, former capital of the mighty Assyrian Empire.

Archaeologists at Karahantepe near Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey found a mysterious stone pillar decorated with a carved human face, the first of its kind ever seen here.

In northeastern Iran, archaeologists found one of the largest Sassanid-era fire temples far from what’s considered the heartland of the Sassanids.

Secrets etched in stone don't disappear. They wait patiently, sometimes for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian rulers knew this well. Their messages, carved into desert rocks, speak directly to us today.

In the ancient Macedonian city of Aegae, workers hit the façade of a sealed chamber tomb that turned out to be about 2,300 years old. Archaeologists were called in and carefully opened a doorway that had been deliberately blocked with stones. Inside was a compact, lavishly painted room—and a story about Hellenistic high society waiting to be told.

Cleopatra VII once ruled a kingdom where politics and divinity intertwined. Her ships sailed from glittering harbors along Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, carrying both wealth and whispers of empire. Now, more than two thousand years after her death, the sea that once bore her fleet may hold the final traces of her reign. Near the temple of Taposiris Magna—long suspected to be linked to her burial—researchers have uncovered a sunken Ptolemaic port. Its discovery breathes new life into one of history’s most enduring mysteries: where the last queen of Egypt chose to rest after her fateful alliance with Rome.

Few discoveries stop Egyptologists in their tracks, but this one did. During a routine excavation near Djoser’s Step Pyramid, archaeologists brushed aside centuries of dust and uncovered a sealed coffin containing a tightly rolled papyrus. When carefully unrolled, it stretched an astonishing 52 feet—the first full Book of the Dead papyrus uncovered in Egypt in over a hundred years. If ancient Egyptians believed words had power, these had clearly held their own. The document belonged to a man named Ahmose, possibly an official or priest, whose burial dates to around 50 BC. Despite its age, the papyrus’s hieroglyphs remain vividly inked in black and red, depicting prayers, spells, and rituals meant to guide the deceased through the afterlife. Each line echoes an ancient belief—that the soul’s journey didn’t end with passing; it simply changed form.

In March 2025, a New Orleans couple unearthed an astonishing piece of history while gardening — a 1,900-year-old Roman gravestone missing since World War II. Their discovery sparked an international investigation linking an ordinary backyard to ancient Rome, wartime Europe, and modern-day archaeology.

Four and a half millennia after Khufu’s builders sealed the Great Pyramid, scientists have slipped a tiny camera through its ancient stones and spotted something remarkable. A narrow corridor, untouched since antiquity, lies hidden above the pyramid’s main entrance. What purpose it once served remains a puzzle, but its discovery adds a new layer to Egypt’s greatest mystery. Keep reading to see how modern tech cracked an ancient secret.