Construction work on a railway in central Athens has revealed what could be the Altar of the Twelve Gods, which marked the center of the ancient city. “Thucydides mentions only a handful of monuments in his historical works. Of these, even fewer have actually been found and they are located in the archaeological sites surrounded by the mass of this densely built city,” explained archaeologist Androniki Makri.

Here’s another article on the former government of Tunisia and the condition of Carthage, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The family of former dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali is alleged to have tapped into a network of Iraqi antiquities smugglers in order to sell off Roman and Byzantine coins, mosaics, and sculptures from the ancient city.  

A Hellenistic burial chamber has been unearthed at Apamea, in central Syria. 

Alex Alvarez, Franco Attolini, and Alberto (Beto) Nava of Projecto Espeleologico de Tulum describe their discovery of an Ice Age mastodon and a human skull deep within a flooded cave in Mexico’s Aktun-Hu cave system for NatGeo News Watch. The human remains could be the oldest in the Americas.  

Archaeologist Takeshi Inomata of the University of Arizona writes from Guatemala, where he is digging deep at the Maya site of Ceibal. He and colleague Daniela Triadan want “to explore the origins of lowland Maya civilization.”  

Budget cuts at the Irish Heritage Council have stopped work at a 700-year-old wooden fishing weir in the Fergus Estuary in County Clare. “There are serious logistical and practical difficulties involved in gathering the data and taking samples,” said Aidan O’Sullivan of University College Dublin.

I’ll be on vacation next week, so I’ll return to the News on Monday, February 28. –Jessica

A small limestone statue of Akhenaten has reportedly been recovered and returned to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

A new study of the 28-foot-high Neolithic tower at the site of Tel Jericho supports the idea that it was built to align with a nearby mountain and the sunset on the longest day of the year. “This was a time when hierarchy began and leadership was established. We believe this tower was one of the mechanisms to motivate people to take part in a communal lifestyle,” said Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University.  

Meet artist Benjamin Neiditz, who recreated the mummies for the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology when the Chinese government pulled the real thing from “Secrets of the Silk Road” exhibition.  

A new model of Oetzi, the 5,300-year-old man discovered in the Alps 20 years ago, will sport brown eyes rather than blue ones. The model will be exhibited at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy.  

Signs of cannibalism, including three cups made from human skulls, have been identified among the 15,000-year-old bones from Gough’s Cave in southwestern England. “It’s impossible to know how the skull-cups were used back then, but in recent examples they may hold blood, wine, or food during rituals,” said Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum.  

A construction project in northeastern Hungary has revealed a Bronze Age settlement, a Sarmatian burial ground, and one hundred Magyar graves.