A team of German scientists from the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine rejects the recent Egyptian conclusion that Tutankhamun died of malaria after a fall. Instead, they think the boy king suffered from the genetic blood disorder known as sickle cell disease, which could account for the lesions on his foot bones.

Tomb raiding is rampant in China—in May, four men were sentenced to death for using explosives and heavy machinery to loot a dozen tombs. Yet, plundered antiquities “have become a new currency of bribery,” according to one collector. He alleges in this USA Today article that the “best antiques” are all either shipped to foreign countries or are given to “corrupt high-ranking officials in China.”  

A Neolithic tomb on the Channel Island of Guernsey has yielded 4,500-year-old pottery and flints, in addition to a highly polished greenstone ax head. “So far the results have been quite spectacular,” said project leader George Nash.  

In Vermont, 16 projectile points estimated to be 7,000 years old were excavated from land slated for development. “I feel that if these historic preservation people want to preserve these artifacts, they should put them in a museum and leave me alone,” said the landowner.  

Danish archaeologists say they have located Harald Bluetooth’s 1,000-year-old royal palace near a complex of burial mounds and runic stones in southern Jutland. The Jellinge site is revered as the cradle of the Danish kingdom. 

The steamship L.R. Doty, which sank carrying a load of corn during a terrible storm in 1898, has been found at the bottom of Lake Michigan. “Her hull is really clean. No dings, no dinks. She was a very new ship and we can see that in her wreck,” said Great Lakes maritime historian Brendon Baillod.  

Reuters has posted ten photographs of artifacts that have made headlines this month, including recently unearthed terracotta warriors from the tomb of China’s first emperor in Xi’an.  

Enjoy these photographs of the Lewis Chessmen, a total of 93 medieval ivory game pieces discovered on Scotland’s Isle of Lewis, although they were probably crafted in Norway.  

A Roman military road has been found in southeastern Serbia. “This road was one of the main roads of the Roman Empire. [It] was built in the mid-first century and was used for several more centuries, most likely until the seventh century,” explained archaeologist Miroslav Lazic.  

The Roman Colosseum’s subterranean passageways are set to open to tourists this summer. The passages kept gladiators and caged animals out of the view of spectators until they were sent into the arena. “It would have been very crowded, very hot, probably very dark and there would have been a terrible smell,” said architect Barbara Nazzaro.  

Discovery News blogger Zahra Hirji supports the idea that the small-brained and small-bodied Homo floresiensis could have evolved from Homo erectus on the Indonesian island of Flores. “Instead of viewing it as a step backwards, archaeologists should view it as a laudable display of evolutionary adaptation. Gandalf bestowed the burden of the One Ring on Frodo, a hobbit. Why? Because men were too easily corrupted by its power; they would certainly destroy themselves lusting after it. Like Homo floresiensis surviving on Flores, hobbits—and not men—were simply better suited to the task,” she writes.

“Humans are very efficient biters,” concluded Stephen Wroe, a biomechanist and paleontologist at the University of New South Wales. Wroe and his colleagues used computer models of actual skulls to compare modern human jaw muscles with those of chimps, gorillas, orangutans, and the human ancestors Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus boisei, aka “the nutcracker man.” “For our size, we humans are comparable in terms of maximum bite force to these fossil species,” he added.

Aida Gomez Robles of the University of Granada thinks that the separation of modern humans and Neanderthals into different species may have happened one million years ago, or 500,000 years earlier than previously thought. She analyzed dental fossils from all the known species of hominids from different sites in Africa, Asia, and Europe, and found that “none of them has a probability higher than five percent to be the common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Therefore, the common ancestor of this lineage is likely to have not been discovered yet,” she explained.  

In Ontario, a fisherman spotted the 4,600-year-old grave of a robust man who had been buried with a flat slab of granite and red ochre. “We’ll be taking a closer look at the stone as part of our analysis to see if we can find any evidence of function,” said Scott Hamilton of Lakehead University.  

Meet Francesco Bandarin, who will become UNESCO’s assistant director general for culture.  

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has applauded Turkey’s efforts to preserve the Byzantine port of Theodosius, discovered during the construction of a much-needed subway line connecting Istanbul’s European and Asian shores. PACE also supports the preservation of the second-century Roman thermal baths and an Asklepion in Izmir that could be flooded by the activation of the Yortanli Dam.  

Here are some more photographs of the fourth-century paintings uncovered in Rome’s catacombs of St. Tecla, dubbed the oldest-known images of the Christian apostles.  

The 123-year-old Pitt Rivers museum of ethnography and world archaeology at the University of Oxford has been refurbished, but it has not lost the charm of its “period atmosphere and eclectic collections.” Lt. Gen. Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers donated 20,000 objects to the university in 1884.  

The Peruvian Times has embarked on a series of 20 articles on the country’s history. This first article focuses on Caral, which dates to 3000 B.C., and is noted for its monumental architecture.