Carbon dating of seaweed samples once used as food and medicine indicates that Chile’s Monte Verde site is about 14,000 years old. These dates support the idea that people entered the New World by crossing the Bering land bridge 16,000 years ago, and then traveled along the coasts to reach South America.

Here are two more articles on the Florida court battle between Spain and the salvage company Odyssey Marine Explorations. Odyssey denies allegations by the Spanish government that the 500,000 coins retrieved from the Atlantic last year are from the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes. But Spain claims that the coins, ship fittings, and other materials from the wreck site have been documented to have been on board the Mercedes when she was sunk in 1804.  

A sediment core taken from the bottom of Chad’s Lake Yoa reveals the gradual change in northern Africa from savannah to Sahara some 6,000 years ago. Such a shift in climate may have led to the rise of Egyptian civilization.

A crumbling chimney standing in Colorado’s Pike National Forest was defaced with a painting of cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants. (You’d think only the evil Plankton would stoop so low.) The cabin had been built by the Forest Service in 1914. “For whatever reason, we’re seeing an increase in graffiti and tagging activity,” said Tom Healy, Forest Service law enforcement officer.

Lawyers for the government of Spain submitted evidence to a Florida court that the ship codenamed The Black Swan by the salvage company Odyssey Marine Exploration, is indeed Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a Spanish navy frigate, which sank during the Battle of Cape Saint Mary in 1804.

Construction workers stumbled upon 27 Etruscan tombs 50 miles north of Rome. “I hope that we have found tombs that are still intact,” said archaeologist Maria Tecla Castaldi. 

Aboriginal leaders from Australia’s Fraser Island are calling for a halt to the construction of a six-foot-tall dingo fence around tourist areas. They say the work has damaged sacred sites and burial areas.  

 The Druze people, who live in mountainous regions of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Jordan, have been shown to carry ancient lineages of mitochondrial DNA, providing “a sample snapshot of the genetic landscape of the Near East prior to the modern age,” according to Karl Skorecki and his team from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.  

 In Hungary, underwater archaeologists will begin to search the Danube River for ships belonging to Queen Mary. The sixteenth-century monarch fled to Vienna during an Ottoman invasion, but legend states that a few of her treasure-laden ships didn’t finish the trip.