In Malaysia’s easternmost state of Sabah, which is located on the northern tip of the island of Borneo, archaeologists found more than 1,000 stone tools scattered on the ground while walking to Samang Buat Cave. The tools indicate that humans came to Borneo from the Asia at least 20,000 years earlier than previously thought.

Conservators at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University are preserving what could be the last Alutiiq kayak  made of sea lion skin stretched over a wooden frame. The kayak was constructed in the early 1860s on Alaska’s Kodiak Island and then brought to the museum in 1869 after the U.S. Army surveyed the region. Several strands of human hair stitched into the surface near the kayak’s double prow indicate that it was a vessel used for hunting and war. “Over 7,000 years of our people’s living knowledge went into construction of this kayak. There is no known kayak of its age today. It’s unique and holds so much information,” said Sven Haakanson, a member of the Alutiiq tribe and director of the Alutiiq Museum. Most kayaks were probably buried with their owners.

Traces of prehistoric buildings have been found on Skomer Island, located off the coast of Wales, during a geophysical survey. It had been thought that the island had only been occupied for about 100 years, but now archaeologists from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales and Sheffield University think it may have been settled before the arrival of the Romans. “It’s very, very well preserved. This is a place on Wales where we can study prehistoric fields, Iron Age life, a Celtic way of life, in a way that in other parts of Wales has been lost,” said team member Toby Driver.

Additional information suggests that the skeleton discovered by soldiers from Taiwan’s military on Liang Island may provide a link between the people of southern China, the Polynesians, and the Maori of New Zealand. Samples from the bones, which are estimated to be 7,900 years old, have been sent the U.S. and Germany for radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis. “Judging from the way the body was buried, it could be a person from what we now call the Austronesia language family,” said Chen Chung-yu, head of the archaeological team.

Mining for metal in the southernmost Indian state of Tamil Nadu has sliced into a burial ground for 3,500-year-old urns. The unmarked urns, which were covered by only one or two feet of soil, held human remains and ritual pottery. Similar burial grounds have been found in the region, some with stone circle markers on the surface, or with the urns deposited in granite-lined chambers.

Parts of small Buddhist figurines made of soapstone were uncovered in India’s southwestern state of Karnataka. A damaged Buddha head has been stylistically dated to the seventh century A.D. A fragment of a Bodisatva face retains portions of an ear, eyes, nose, and lips, and probably dates to the second century A.D. Other figurine fragments included parts of bulls and human body parts.

The destruction of the Eagle & Phenix Dam on the Chattahoochee River in Columbus, Georgia, drained its pool and revealed clues to the city’s nineteenth-century industrial history, including wooden and stone dams, buckets, and a pipe wrench, in addition to plenty of modern trash. Other structures found in the riverbed may have supported a guideline for a raft or ferry system to haul workers and materials to the mills and factories.

The iconic 3,400-year-old bust of ancient Egypt’s Queen Nefertiti  was discovered by a German excavation team digging at Amarna in the workshop of Tuthmosis, a court sculptor, in December 1912. The bust was taken to Germany, where it first went on display in Berlin in 1924. Egypt has been requesting its return ever since, claiming that under the Egyptian antiquities law of the time, unique artifacts must remain in Egypt, and that permission had never been granted for the famed bust of Nefertiti to leave the country. This article in Al-Ahram Weeklyoffers a history of the negotiations between Germany and Egypt concerning the unfinished sculpture.

J. David Hacker of Binghamton University has completed a new statistical study of U.S. census records from 1850 to 1880. He suggests that 750,000 soldiers died in the Civil War, an estimated 20 percent higher than previous counts, which had been based upon battlefield reports, pension filings made by widows and orphans, and other faulty records. Many documents created by the Confederacy were destroyed when the Union Army captured Richmond, Virginia.

Over the weekend, several costumed gladiators reportedly climbed the walls of the Colosseum in Rome to protest the crackdown on their business—posing for pictures with tourists. The Italian culture ministry says that the gladiators have become too aggressive with tourists and behave inappropriately.