A second-century Roman temple has been found beneath a Byzantine church in the center of the ancient city of Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee during the Roman period.

Skipper Philip Beale and a crew of 20 volunteers will attempt to circumnavigate Africa in a wooden vessel modeled on ancient Phoenician ships. The trip will take about a year, and Beale thinks there is a 70% chance of completing the voyage. “But there’s a 30% chance we make a serious navigational error or we come up against pirates and we are kidnapped or something,” he said.  

A replica Viking ship completed a 2,800 nautical-mile journey over the weekend. The Sea Stallion sailed from Denmark to Ireland and back, “over swell after swell, the whole hull twisting and shaking with every wave it met, but continuing undaunted,” wrote passenger Soren Nielson.  

The Army Corps of Engineers has allowed a casino company to begin limited work at a Revolutionary War site on Philadelphia’s waterfront, before the review of the property’s historical significance has been finished. “By going ahead with construction, you’re basically cheating on the process,” said archaeologist Douglas Mooney of the Philadelphia Archaeological Forum.  

At the proposed site for a new elementary school in South Carolina, archaeologists discovered 4,500-year-old artifacts, including arrowheads and a stone tool, and pottery.  

Did cooking food fuel changes in the human brain that made it smarter? Eating cooked food would have eased human digestion, perhaps freeing up energy for brain function, according to a new study of energy metabolism in Genome Biology.  

You’ll recognize parts of this story on the archaeology of northern Afghanistan from last week. MSNBC has restored paragraphs of text from the Associated Press and added photographs.  

Romanian archaeologists have reportedly found a Dacian cemetery in Ukraine.

Scientists have sequenced mitochondrial DNA taken from a 38,000-year-old Neanderthal bone. “For the first time, we’ve built a sequence from ancient DNA that is essentially without error,” said Richard Green of the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Who would win the most Olympic events: Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, or Australopithecus afarensis?  

The fourteenth-century palace of the governor of Bulgaria’s Rhodoppe region was reportedly found at Perperikon, next to a standing battle tower. Medieval coins and pottery were also uncovered.  

Venusmania is being celebrated in Austria, where the prehistoric figurine known as the Venus of Willendorf was discovered 100 years ago. Reproductions of the sculpture have been created in chocolate, marzipan, and soap for the occasion.  

Farming, highways, and housing obstruct the views and are causing water damage at Abydos, an Egyptian funerary center and home to the temples of Seti I and his son, Ramses II. Changes planned for the next six years are intended to “develop the whole site in a way that matches its archaeological and historical importance,” according to this article in Al-Ahram.  

Protesters halted construction of a house on the Hawaiian Island of Kaua’i. Some 30 sets of human remains have been found on the property, but state and local authorities gave the landowner permission to build. “If they can do this here, they can do this on all Hawaiian burial sites throughout the Hawaiian Islands,” said Hanalei Colleado of Maui.  

Canadian archivists revealed what is thought to be the oldest document ever printed in Australia. The playbill was printed in 1796. “We’re incredibly grateful first of all that they should have saved and guarded this thing for so long and especially that … they were generous enough to give this very special item to Australia,” said Jan Fullerton of the National Library of Australia.  

A mysterious document surfaced at the Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum in Philadelphia during its move to a new location. Curators are trying to determine if the document, which carries the terms and conditions of Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in 1865, is the general’s missing copy. “We have an original document of some kind, but we don’t want to make claims about it. It’s important to be skeptical,” said curator Andrew Coldren.  

Here’s another article on the slave trade and the excavation at the site of Lumpkin’s Jail, in Richmond, Virginia. “We want to find as much of the complex as we can. We’re hopeful we’ll find evidence of the jail,” said archaeologist Matthew R. Laird.