Early Neolithic people parboiled their bulgur wheat to make instant cereal. “In this form, the cereal grain can be stored throughout the year and consumed easily, even without boiling, by merely soaking in hot water,” said Soultana-Maria Valamoti of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Humans were able to light and control fire nearly 790,000 years ago, according to a study of flints from an archaeological site on the bank of the Jordan River, along a key route between Africa and Europe. “Once they mastered fire to protect themselves from predators and provide warmth and light, they were secure enough to move into and populate unfamiliar territory,” said archaeologist Nira Alperson-Afil.  

Aerial photographs show the damage inflicted upon the world’s oldest and largest rock art gallery, in Australia’s Burrup Peninsula, by industrial plants.  

A tunnel near the Xian Gate and Weiyang Palace may have served as an escape route for China’s emperors. Mud filling the tunnel is supporting its walls, which were constructed with blue bricks.  

Rituals held at Viking gravesites were the beginnings of the Norse sagas, claims Neil Price of the University of Aberdeen. “It seems clear that the public enactments took place on these occasions, intended to provide the deceased with a poetic passage into the next life,” he said.   This article adds more new thoughts from scholars of the Vikings. “It seems that the Vikings may not have been as hairy and dirty as is commonly imagined,” says a recently published guide from Cambridge University.  

A 4,000-year-old workshop where ornaments and tools were made has been uncovered on Coloane Island, in the South China Sea. Burnt clay, a hearth, and pottery were also found.  

Volunteers assisted archaeologists at a building site within Fort Knox, Kentucky, this summer. Plenty of metal objects suggest that they found the blacksmith shop.  

Traces of the first college in Arkansas were discovered behind a church in Fayetteville. Arkansas College was founded in 1852 by the Rev. Robert Graham of the First Christian Church, which still stands. “It predates the University of Arkansas by 20 years,” said volunteer Wes Stites.  

Last month, a Civil War re-enactor playing a Union soldier was shot in the shoulder during the filming of a documentary. Police think the shooter may have been a walk-on re-enactor who was not affiliated with a practiced unit. “We don’t let strangers fight. We fight together, we trust each other,” commented Jake Jennette, who commanded Confederate forces at a different mock battle.

Northern communities of Australian Aboriginies may have had contact with other peoples hundreds of years before the British arrived, according to unrecorded rock art ranging from 15,000 years old to 50 years old. “The Aboriginal culture across the top end of the Northern Territory was much more versatile and used to interacting with other people than previously thought,” said Paul Tacon of Griffith University.  

The U.S. has announced a $14 million plan to help refurbish the Iraq National Museum. “This grant shows the great development that has happened in U.S.-Iraqi relations,” said Iraqi Minister of Culture, Mahier Ibrahim al-Hadithi. The museum, which had been left unguarded after the fall of Saddam Hussein, was plundered of 15,000 artifacts.  

A Neolithic farmhouse that had been destroyed by fire was uncovered in northern Greece. “This is a very rare case where the remains have stayed undisturbed by farming or other external intervention for about 6,000 years,” said a statement from the culture ministry. Archaeologists found cooking and eating vessels, stone tools, mills for grinding grains, and two ovens.  

Archaeologists at the National Museum of the Philippines think that 22 bags of 2,000-year-old pottery confiscated from looters may have been made by a “long lost tribe.” “We have no idea where these artifacts come from because the people who were trying to smuggle them out from the area could not tell us where exactly they found those materials. But, I am sure the materials are not fake,” said Eusebio Dizon, head or archaeology at the museum.  

The foundation stones of the Kondo main hall of the Shin-Yakushiji temple have been uncovered in Nara, Japan. The temple complex was built in 747 A.D. by Empress Komyo.  

In the Chinatown section of Portland, Oregon, two archaeologists walking by a construction site spotted a man digging up Chinese ceramics from a brick-lined pit. They questioned him, and he left the site with what he had in his car. “Some guy called me two weeks ago and told me he collected old bottles and wanted to dig there, but I told him no,” said the landowner.  

The water pumps have been switched off, and maintenance of the sea wall surrounding the site of a sixteenth-century Portuguese shipwreck off the coast of Namibia has stopped. Archaeologists will now study the ship and its coins, ivory, copper, tin, cannons, navigational instruments, tableware, and personal effects.  

Army officers from Thailand and Cambodia have reportedly agreed to ease tensions in their border dispute near the eleventh-century Preah Vihear temple, but their negotiations did not cover reducing the number of troops or heavy weapons along the border.