A first-century wall mosaic depicting Apollo has been discovered in a tunnel built to help support Trajan’s Baths in Rome.

Modern humans may have outnumbered Neandertals ten to one, according to a new study of archaeological sites in southwestern France. “These data imply that numerical supremacy alone must have been a powerful if not overwhelming factor” in the demise of the Neandertals, write Paul Mellars and Jennifer French of the University of Cambridge in Science.

Could this be the world’s first-known protractor? This object was retrieved 100 years ago from the tomb of the Egyptian architect Kha, who died around 1400 B.C.

The Institute for the Exploration of Seneca Village History has found hundreds of artifacts in an area of New York City’s Central Park this week. Two-thirds of the residents in this short-lived, early nineteenth-century community were African American. “The vast array of materials that we uncovered really gives us a true sense of a strong, stable community,” said Cynthia R. Copeland of New York University.

Live Science has more information on the engraved image of a reindeer that is being called Britain’s oldest rock art.

German art historian Bert Praxenthaler continues the quest to rebuild Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. He says that up to half of the pieces of the statues have been recovered from the rubble.

Tell Qarqur, located in northwest Syria, was occupied for 10,000 years, and even grew at a time when many settlements in the Middle East were collapsing. Did climate change, drought, and politics play a role in the decline?

Who dug the Erdstalls of southern Germanyand why? These narrow dirt tunnels and galleries are thought by some to the homes of elves, gnomes, or spirits. Archivist Josef Weichenberger thinks they were medieval hiding places.

A World War II landing craft capsized off the coast of the Isle of Wight while heading for the D-Day landings in 1944, spilling tanks and other cargo into the sea. Divers and maritime archaeologists are working together to map the wreck site and apply land legislation to this underwater case.