Scholars are translating Maya glyphs describing the practices of a priest who lived in the eighth century A.D. The glyphs are inscribed on seashell earrings and manta ray stingers that had been buried with the priest, whose remains were excavated 11 years ago in southeastern Mexico. “It is the longest Maya hieroglyphic script ever found to date in Tabasco,” said a statement released by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History.

Students surveying the ruins of a medieval settlement in Dartmoor, England, discovered a 700-year-old stone cross. Win Scutt of City College Plymouth explained that such crosses were “placed in the more remote parts of the parish, so people were reminded to go to church.”  

Hundreds of ancient American Indian artifacts were uncovered during the construction of an industrial plant in southwest Ohio.  

A retired teacher thinks a battle of the Mexican War of Independence took place 197 years ago on his property in Somerset, Texas. He’s found bones, weapons, and a silver button inscribed with the year 1813.   

Historic hammans, or bathhouses, are falling into disrepair across the Middle East. “The historic ones have never been fully protected, many have disappeared. In places like Cairo and Damascus, many have been demolished. The decline is amazing,” said Magda Sibley of the University of Manchester School of Architecture.  

England’s city of Bath, named for its Roman baths, is featured in a new UNESCO website.

 Neolithic axes, adzes, and chisels have been unearthed in southeastern Tibet.

Here’s more information on the discovery of General Cao Cao’s 1,700-year-old tomb in central China.  

The modern cattle industry began in the eighteenth-century at Rancho de las Cabras, in Floresville, Texas. Its walls have been buried in sand to protect them until funding can be found for their preservation and maintenance.  

A human tooth was discovered in the attic at Blickling Hall, a Jacobean home in Norfolk, England, that was once owned by the Boleyn family. “You find a lot of interesting things working in a house with centuries of history, and you do develop a strong stomach over time, but we’ve never found a tooth before, so we’re just really interested to know where it came from and why it’s ended up in our attic,” said assistant house steward Louise Green.  

In Oxford, archaeological botanist John Letts has developed an old variety of grain that produces tasty bread and a straw long enough to use as roofing thatch.  

Chimps living in the Nimba Mountains of Guinea, Africa, use stone and wooden tools to prepare volley-ball sized Treculia fruit for eating. “It’s the first time wild chimpanzees have been found to use two distinct types of percussive technology, i.e. movable cleavers versus a non-movable anvil, to achieve the same goal,” said Kathelijne Koops of the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies in Cambridge.