Malta – the three-island archipelago in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea — has been ruled by many groups since it was first inhabited around 5200 BCE, including Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Sicilians. However, long before these cultures, it was inhabited by a mysterious prehistoric group that built the world’s only known prehistoric subterranean temple — Hal Saflieni Hypogeum – which was used as a necropolis and where archeologists found a number of elongated skulls … skulls whose origin has never been determined, leaving them open to speculation that their owners were extraterrestrials. Now, for the first time, those elongated skulls will be subjected to intense scientific study with the intention of determining their true origin.

Photograph of the Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni made before 1910

“From an examination of the skeletons of the polished-stone age, it appears that the early inhabitants of Malta were a race of long-skulled people of lower medium height, akin to the early people of Egypt, who spread westward along the north coast of Africa, whence some went to Malta and Sicily and others to Sardinia and Spain.”
— NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE January to June, 1920 VOLUME XXXVII

Malta Today announced that the project – called The Sentinels of Ħal Saflieni, Malta: Science Facts versus Science Fiction — will be carried out by Heritage Malta, the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage and Macquarie University of Sydney, Australia. The Hal Saflieni Hypogeum was accidentally discovered in 1902 by construction workers who initially attempted to hide it. Determined to have been used from about 4000 BCE to 2500 BCE, it was excavated by a number of archeologists, including Sir Themistocles “Temi” Zammit, a noted Maltese archeologist, who documented the discovery of around 7,000 skeletons, including many with skulls that were elongated and one that was mysteriously missing a Fossa median – the join that runs along the top of the skull. Unfortunately, the remains crumbled at the touch and only about 20 skulls survived intact.

That’s where the mystery and myth surrounding these remaining elongated skulls deepens. National Geographic was able to examine some and concluded that they were from an entire long-skulled culture. A number of them were put on display in the Archaeological Museum in Valletta, the capital of Malta. In 1985, they were removed from the display by Heritage Malta, the authority responsible for Malta’s prehistoric heritage, and have never been seen in public again. While some say they’ve disappeared, Heritage Malta insists they have been available for scientific research. However, only a handful of people have actually been granted permission. Two were Dr. Anton Mifsud and Dr. Charles Savona Ventura, who published books and articles detailing the skulls’ elongation, abnormally developed temporal partitions, and drilled and swollen occiputs (back of the skull). These are apparently the skulls that will be used in the new analysis.

A physical examination of the skulls will not necessarily resolve other mysteries about their discovery. For example, the papers of the man who first found the site – Emmanuel Magri – have never been published and appear to have disappeared. The original reports of the discovery said there were 33,000 skeletons, not 7,000 – and the latter number was eventually reduced to a mere 100. Of the 20 skulls said to have survived, only six are left. What happened to the others?

Then there are the stories of giant humanoids living in hidden caverns below the already-subterranean Hal Saflieni Hypogeum and the unconfirmed disappearance of 30 children and a teacher on a school tour of the catacombs – whose cries were said to have been heard all over the island.

Let’s hope the new study can solve the origin of the elongated skulls of Malta. As for the other mysteries? Malta obviously knows how to guard its secrets.

Footprints that could be as ancient as 950,000 years old have been found on a beach in Happisburgh, Norfolk County, England. The line of footprints – the oldest ever discovered in all of Europe and the oldest in the entire world outside of Africa – were found by archaeological enthusiast Paul Macro. The world’s oldest footprints were found in Tanzania and they date back to around 3.5 million years ago.

Mr. Macro was surveying the beach’s coast for a 3D scanning company called ScanLAB Projects when he discovered the footprints (pictures of the footprints can be seen here). “They don’t last long because of the layer they are in, and the sea. We made a 3D scan, and two days later they were covered in sand,” he explained.

The footprints are believed to have been made by a human ancestor called Homo Antecessor, also known as “Pioneer Man”. Close to that same location, other footprints from around the same time period were also discovered in 2013 as well as some ancient tools. “They had simple stone tools. They used flint and raw materials to flake tools. We’re dealing with the earliest types of stone tool technology,” explained Professor Simon Lewis from Queen Mary University. With the discovery of the footprints as well as tools, researchers are hoping that they will eventually find bones of the ancient human ancestor.

Skull of a Homo Erectus

Homo Antecessor was an advanced form of Homo Erectus.They were believed to have been between 5.5 and 6 feet tall and weighed around 90 kg (just under 200 pounds). Their brains were smaller than those of today’s humans, measuring between 1,000 and 1,150 cm³ (the average size of a modern human’s brain is 1,350 cm³). Dating as far back as one million years ago, they are one of the earliest humans who have ever been found in Europe.

According to archaeologists who found remains in Burgos, Spain, in 1994, Homo Antecessor was believed to have been right-handed and communicated with each other by possibly using symbolic language. While it’s still unclear what other ancient humans Homo Antecessor was related to, numerous anthropologists think that there was an evolutionary link between Homo Ergaster and Homo Heidelbergensis, while others believe that it was a completely other separate species that came from only Homo Ergaster. Another debate is that some believe that Homo Antecessor is in fact the same species as Homo Heidelbergensis, as they lived in Europe during the Pleistocene Era between 600,000 and 250,000 years ago.

Neanderthals

Dr. Matthias Meyer, who is a palaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, weighed in on the debate, “The evolutionary history of archaic humans in the Middle Pleistocene was quite complex,” adding, “It could be that both the ancestors of the Sima people and Denisovans interbred with another archaic group like Homo Antecessor or Homo Erectus.” He also said, “Or it is possible that the mitochondrial DNA we know from late Neanderthals came in from another group that left Africa.” And the debate continues…

We are far from documenting all of the great mysteries of our history and prehistory. Throughout the world there are places that have remained hidden from out gaze right up into modern times, sequestered in a realm beyond our knowledge to evade our insatiable drive for discovery. One such place sat entombed in darkness and forgotten for tens of thousands of years in a remote area of France, stuck in time even as the world above it marched on into new eras. It is a magnificent caves system of cryptic paintings of great historical importance that has managed to elude understanding and has since its discovery been sealed off yet again, off-limits to most and keeping its secrets close as it always has.

One of the greatest archeological discoveries made in modern times happened quite by accident. On September 12, 1940, an 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat was out exploring in the countryside of southwestern France, near the village of Montignac in the Dordogne region, along with his faithful dog. It was a perfectly normal day until at some point the dog tumbled down a hole in the ground at a place called the hill of Lascaux. Ravidat would call some friends to come investigate the hole with him, as it seemed to lead off into the murk into a passageway, and their minds raced with the wonders that may lie down there in the clinging dark. They went about widening the hole until they were able to fit through, and armed with a makeshift lamp they penetrated into the gloom, where they would find an ancient world lost to mankind for millennia, long a stranger to the light, and which would become a mystery that has fascinated scientists to this day.

After descending through a 49ft deep shaft and squeezing through some very narrow passageways, the corridor emptied into a larger room that seemed mundane at first until the walls were licked by the flickering illumination of their lamp. There covering the walls and dancing about in the lamplight were myriad ancient paintings depicting various animals, humans, and more, as well as abstract symbols, all mostly in red, yellow, and black. Excited by this incredible new treasure they had found, the boys returned the following day and delved deeper into the complex to find other alcoves and chambers similarly adorned with these mysterious paintings, and that is when they would finally come out with their discovery and the real research on what would come to be known as the Lascaux Caves would begin in earnest.

It was found that the mysterious cave system was divided into several main areas that between them held hundreds upon hundreds of ancient cave paintings depicting animals, including deer, aurochs, ibex, bison, deer, equines, birds, and feline species, as well as human figures, bears, lions, a rhinoceros, and abstract signs, yet none of trees, vegetation, or the landscape itself, and none of reindeer, odd because that is believed to have been the main source of food for the people who painted it all. Most of the animals seen were of species long extinct, belonging to the Upper Paleolithic era, and most can be identified, yet there are also some anomalies among them, such as a monstrous creature with panther skin, the tail of a deer, a bison’s hump, two horns, and a prominent male member. What was this thing? No one knows.

All of these figures are meticulously rendered in a variety of mineral pigments, with some amount of engraving directly into the stone also seen, all of it often incorporating the angles and curves of the walls themselves into the designs. The paintings in general show great skill and care in their creation, often exhibiting artistic skills and techniques far ahead of their time. Among the different sections of the caves are the so-called Hall of the Bulls, which shows various horses, stags, and bulls, including an immense, 17-foot-long image of a bull, as well as another section called the Nave, which holds painting referred to as “The Crossed Bison,” which uses tricks of perspective that were very advanced for their era, and the Abside (Apse), a smallish chamber in which practically every inch is covered in thousands of entwined, overlapping, engraved drawings, and other sections with names like the Shaft of the Dead Man, the Chamber of Engravings, the Painted Gallery, the Chamber of Felines, and others.

It is all rather breathtaking in its ambitious majesty, but it is also permeated with a great deal of mystery, and there is much we don’t know about this place. One thing that has never been agreed on is just how old the paintings actually are. From the species depicted and the various tools found scattered about it is believed that they date to between 17,300 to 20,000 years ago, but it is still debated as to exactly how old they really are. It is also not fully understood why the paintings were made in the first place. While there are other cave paintings to be found in the region, there is nothing approaching the grand scale of what can be seen in the Lascaux Caves, suggesting this place had some special significance among the people that made it, but just what this might be is unclear, with theories ranging from that this was a place for rituals to that it held some spiritual capacity. Making it all more impressive is that a main component in the pigments used are certain manganese oxides that do not exist in the immediate area, with the nearest source lying 250 kilometres away, meaning these artists went through great lengths to import these materials and then lock themselves deep underground with animal fat lamps to complete their work over the course of generations.

Another mystery still is that no one really knows what all of these paintings actually mean, and although some seem to tell a story and even continue on into other rooms, no one is quite sure what that story is or why it was recorded here in this manner. One idea is that these paintings tell spiritual stories or even creation myths, while another is that they are rituals to bring success in hunting, or another still that they are just hunting records or records of the wildlife of the area. No one really knows, and there are fewer and fewer opportunities to study these wonders because in modern times the caves are almost completely off limits to even scientists and researchers.

This wasn’t always the case. The caves were opened to the public in 1948, where they began to attract droves and droves of people coming to peer into this window to the past, but this unfortunately led to a change in the cool, dark atmosphere within the cave that began to seriously threaten the paintings. Factors such as carbon dioxide, heat, humidity, artificial lighting, changes in air circulation and temperature, and various contaminants conspired to lead to visible deterioration of the paintings that began to progress at an alarming rate. By the 1960s there were crystals, algae, and lichens appearing within the caves, and they were finally closed down to the public in 1963. This severely limited access to the caves, but things would get even worse still, when in 2000 a destructive white mold was found running amok here, and in 2007 a mysterious black fungus of an entirely new species never seen before began doing irreparable damage to the paintings, and in 2008 the caves were closed altogether for three months, with only a single person allowed in for 20 minutes at a time once a week to monitor the site and take readings.

Since then the fungus problem has been ongoing, and access is still extremely limited, meaning very few people have had the privilege of seeing these paintings up close. Even researchers and experts are only allowed very limited access to the caves at present, making study of the ancient treasures inside an agonizingly slow process. Tourists are able to see the paintings only through a replica cave called Lascaux II, created in 1983 only about 200 meters from the actual site, which holds recreations of certain sections of the real caves, and this is about as close as most people will ever get to seeing the real thing. It is somewhat sad to think that this piece of our past might forever be hidden away down in the earth like it did for millennia before its discovery, to keep its secrets that only the long dead know of. One can only hope that we find the answers we seek, but until then this remains a window to another era which was open to us for a time, but which has had the curtains pulled over it once again.

A massive and mysterious underground structure has been detected beneath the ancient Naryn-Kala fortress in Derbent, Russia. Scientists still aren’t sure what the void may be, but the current thinking is that the structure may be evidence of the oldest church in Russia, dating all the way back to 300 CE.

Karyn-Nala

Derbent is in what is today known as the republic of Dagestan which lies on the Caspian Sea just north of Azerbaijan. Derbent is recognized as the oldest occupied city in what is now Russia and evidence exists suggesting Derbent has been inhabited since at least the 8th century. Because of its location perfectly situated between Asia and Europe, Derbent has changed hands many times throughout the centuries between Persian, Arab, Mongol, Timurid, Shirvan and Iranian kingdoms. In 1813 the city became part of Russia as a result of the Russo-Persian War. 

The Naryn-Kala fortress is believed to have been built in the 6th century by the last kingdom of the Persian Empire shortly before the rise of Islam throughout the region. Today, the fortress is a UNESCO World Heritage site and is still being actively excavated by archaeologists.

In one such excavation, scientists with the Russian Academy of Sciences and two Russian universities discovered a massive underground structure by using muon radiography, a revolutionary new form of imaging which leverages cosmic rays as a non-invasive source of radiation. Already, muon radiography has enabled scientists to detect previously unknown structures in the Great Pyramid of Giza and other archaeological sites.

The underground structure is roughly cross-shaped with a dome in the center and measures around 11 metres (36 feet) high, 15 metres (50 feet) from north to south, and 13 metres (43 feet) from east to west. It was originally believed that the structure was a water tank, but the latest muon radiography offers a previously unknown level of detail that suggests it may have been something more.

A cemetery just outside the walls of Karyn-Nala.

Natalia Polukhina, the senior author on the published study of the mysterious void in Naryn-Kala, says the shape of the structure and its location indicates that it likely played an important role in the fortress at the time:

The unusual building, in which we have put our detectors, has the shape of a cross, oriented strictly to the sides of the world, one side is two meters longer than the others. As the archaeologists who began excavations say, during construction, the building was entirely on the surface and it stands on the highest point of the Naryn-Kala. What is the sense to put the tank on the surface, and even on the highest mountain? It is strange. Currently, there are more questions than answers.

It’s still impossible to determine the structure’s purpose until actual physical excavations are conducted – if they ever can be without harming the ancient fortress.

The club of weird, giant, prehistoric bird-lizards we call dinosaurs just got a new member, and this one has a face like a shovel. Aquilarhinus palimentus was discovered at Big Bend National Park in the Chihuahuan Desert and belongs to a group of other strange-faced dinosaurs called Hadrosaurids, known for their distinctive “duck-bill” jaws. This newly identified hadrosaurid genus roamed the Earth roughly 80 million years ago when the Chihuahuan desert was a lush river delta, and represents the most primitive species of hadrosaurid yet discovered.

The discovery was published in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology earlier this week. According to the paper, the name Aquilarhinus palimentus refers to the shape of the dinosaurs face and is Latin for eagle-nosed shovel-chin, which sounds like an insult from a schoolyard bully. If dinosaurs have ghosts, that’s one angry shovel-faced dino-ghost. You can see an artist’s rendition of the unfortunate beast here.

Part of the dinosaur’s remains were actually discovered in the 1980’s by paleontologist Tom Lehman, one of the co-authors of the new study and professor of paleontology at Texas Tech University. The fossils were originally misidentified as belonging to a member of the Gryposaurus genus of duck-billed dinos. Revisiting the fossilized bones, however, showed that this was an example of an entirely new subspecies of Hadrosaurid.

Art of two Hadrosaurids feeding in a river bed.

Old shovel-face represents the most primitive example of the Hadrosaurid family of dinosaurs ever discovered. According to professor Tom Lehman:

“This new species is particularly interesting because it is among the earlier representatives of the duck-billed dinosaurs, and it shows us what the narial crest, or nose, of these animals looked like before the wide variety of distinctive noses evolved in later species of duck-billed dinosaurs.

In addition, instead of a duck bill, this animal had a shovel-shaped beak that suggests it had a unique way of feeding. Most of what we know about duck-billed dinosaurs is based on the wide variety of species found in Alberta, Canada, Montana and Utah. So, this new species also is interesting because it shows us that duck-billed dinosaurs that lived in Texas were different from those that lived farther north.”

The Hadrosaur evolutionary tree, of which the recently discovered dinosaur is the earliest known member.

Credit: Debivort (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The area of big Bend National Park where the discovery was made looked very different 80 million years ago when Aquilarhinus palimentus was alive. It was a wet and silty river delta and researchers believe Aquilarhinus palimentus used its unique jaw to scoop silt out of the river bed, eating the loosely rooted plants of the tidal river delta. The researchers believe that when the dinosaur died, its remains were washed downstream and covered with silt over the course of millions of years.

According to the researchers this discovery suggests that there may be many more lineages of Hadrosaurid yet to be discovered, and if the previous findings are to be any indication they’ll likely also be ridiculous.

The story of human origins is a mysterious and complex tale, and one full of shadows. These aren’t just the shadows of a past that we can’t fully recall, either through the study of the historical record or earlier anthropological evidence; modern science continues to discover the literal “shadow” of our past relatives in our modern DNA.

Human ancestry was far more diverse and complex than was once believed, and every year we are adding new members to our ancient family tree. But unlike in the past when such discoveries were made in the dusty floors of caves or in ancient burial sites, today we can learn almost as much about our complex origins from studying the genetics of modern human groups around the world.

And, rather strikingly, we continue to find traces of unknown hominid ancestors when doing so.

Reconstruction of Homo neanderthalensis skull.

Science Alert recently reported on a study led by João Teixeira of the University of Adelaide, and his colleague, biologist Alan Cooper, who discovered evidence of what they believe to be “ghost” ancestors in modern DNA.

One such discovery, made in 2018 but which had not been widely reported at that time, indicated an unusual genetic trait that is discernible in the population of Flores, Indonesia, which the researchers believe to be “as divergent from modern human DNA as Neanderthal or Denisovan.”

Neanderthal fossils were first discovered at the Feldhofer Cave of the Neander Valley, near Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1856. Although different in appearance from modern humans, there is still some debate as to whether they should be categorized as an entirely different species from us, or as a subspecies of modern humans. The Denisovans weren’t discovered until fairly recently, and going off of little more than a fingertip fragment and teeth recovered from Denisova cave in Siberia. Since then, other fragmentary remains have been discovered, including one mysterious hominid jawbone found off the Taiwanese coast which some believe could have Denisovan origins.

The Penghu jaw fragment, recovered by fishermen off the coast of Taiwan sometime prior to 2008.

In all of the aforementioned cases, the discovery of these archaic human groups involved physical remains recovered from what a type site (the location after which the species or group is named) or other location. There is now also genetic evidence of encounters between modern humans and these known, but now-extinct relatives; shortly after our exit from Africa, Homo sapiens encountered Neanderthals, and the results of these interactions can still be found in the DNA of as much as 2% of modern populations. Similar genetic traces of our interactions with the Denisovans can be found (albeit to a lesser degree than that of Neanderthals).

However, there are also traces of interactions between humans and species that cannot be identified. According to Science Alert:

The first unknown extinct hominid – named EH1 – was roughly genetically equidistant from Denisovans and Neanderthals. The ancestor of all Asian and Australo-Papuan populations bred with EH1, resulting in 2.6 to 3.4 percent shared EH1 ancestry.

The other “unknown” in this equation, as discussed earlier in relation to genetic traces found among the modern populations of Indonesia (dubbed EH2) “only appears in short-statured people that live near Liang Bua Cave,” which, not surprisingly, is where evidence of Homo floriensis, a diminutive species that have been likened to real-life “Hobbits” of the ancient world, was discovered in 2004 (we should note that the unidentified EH2 is not taken to be one and the same as Homo floriensis, but rather some other extinct hominid type that remains undocumented).

As Teixeira and Cooper summarize, “At least 3 different hominin groups appear to have been involved in Asia, of which only the Denisovans are currently known. Several interbreeding events are inferred to have taken place east of Wallace’s Line, consistent with archaeological evidence of widespread and early hominin presence in the area.”

Teixeira and Cooper’s paper appeared in the journal PNAS. 

Current archaeological evidence, as with that of fossil remains, provides no evidence that these archaic human groups made it as far south as Australia and Tasmania (both being parts of the ancient continent of Sahul, as it would have existed prior to 18,000 years ago). However, as the authors of the PNAS study have noted, genetic evidence in this region of the world “remains enigmatic,” hinting at further possibilities with relation to the many mysteries in our ancient family tree… and the “ghosts” of others whom our ancestors occasionally encountered.

An ancient Greek pyramid dating back to the Bronze Age – making it the same age as Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt – has been discovered on an island in the Aegean Sea and has archeologists and Greek historians throwing around the exclamation “This changes everything!” It certainly changes one thing … who knew the Greeks built pyramids? And how did they get a pyramid’s worth of marble to an island 4,600 years ago? Did they get any advice from the Egyptians or the early Brits? Did they give them any?

“It is by far the largest prehistoric marine transport operation that has ever come to light anywhere in the world. It demonstrates quite clearly just how important, and integral to their culture, seafaring was to these early Bronze Age Aegean people.”

Keros

The story broke this week in The Independent but the actual announcement of the discovery was made earlier by members of the four-year Cambridge Keros Project centered at the University of Cambridge, with help from the Ephorate of the Cyclades and the Cyprus Institute. Keros is the well-known Aegean island where the large collection of artistic and unbroken marble Cycladic figurines now called the “Keros Hoard” was previously found. The nearby smaller island of Dhaskalio, was once linked to Keros by a narrow causeway, is where pyramid was discovered under what was once a settlement. There are few quality marble formations on Keros or Dhaskalio, so this massive pyramid-covering amount of the stone had to be transported there by Bronze Age sailors – a concept that archeologists and historians never believed these ancient Greeks were capable of.

How much marble? The project team estimates between 7,000 and 10,000 tons of glossy white marble was transported by sea from the island of Naxos, about 10 km (6.2 miles) north. It’s estimated that the Aegean boats at that time — Cycladic boats that were only 10-15 meter long and capable of carrying only between one and two tons of stone – made over 3,500 trips over a 20-year period totaling 45,000 miles.

What the builders used all of that marble for was a six-step terrace pyramid built by terraforming the island’s small mountain. (Photo here.) The terraces were six meters wide the end result was a thousand meters of glistening marble pyramid. The archeologists believe the top terrace was once flat and used for ceremonies, and Greek sanctuary expert Dr. Alan Peatfield of University College Dublin’s School of Archaeology thinks this may have been the first and a model for the later ones.

Aerial view of sophisticated prehistoric public architecture uncovered at Keros, Greece.

Image credit: Cambridge Keros project

Excavation in Trench B at the staircase.

Image credit: Cambridge Keros Project

An intact metalworking hearth from 2500 BCE at Keros, Greece. Image credit: Cambridge Keros Project

ENGINEERING: The pyramid shape of the island is man-made 

(Pic: Cambridge Keros Project)

“It is potentially a fundamental place of origin for the phenomenon of sacred mountains within the Greek world.”

If it was the first, it was an impressive start, according to Professor Colin Renfrew of the University of Cambridge and co-director of the excavation.

“At Dhaskalio we see a number of sophisticated architectural techniques employed in a well-thought through manner. These include massive entranceways, stone-flagged stairways, and an intricate drainage system covering the entire island. This gives the clear impression of a skilled architect and a guiding hand planning and executing a building programme whose scope can only be compared with a site like Knossos on Crete.”

An Egyptian steppe pyramid

The mountain pyramid may have symbolized the importance of Dhaskalio and Keros as a metalworking center and marketplace for metal products such as high-quality daggers. With those metal products being found throughout the islands, this new discovery reinforces the new theory that the seafaring skills of the ancient Greeks began earlier and were much more impressive than first thought.

Is it just a coincidence that this Greek pyramid, Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids (and possibly those in Central and South America and Asia) were built at about the same times? Or was something else going on that influenced these nearly simultaneous  “This changes everything!” constructions? That’s a question for another day and a different set of experts.

A dig led by the Israeli Antiquities Authority unearthed what they believe is the biblical city of Ziklag where David took refuge from King Saul. The remains of several buildings and artifacts from the Philistine-era were discovered underneath a burnt settlement from the time of King David.

According to ancient biblical texts, the Philistines ruled the central and southern part of Israel and the Gaza Strip, and were feared by the Israelites. David (who wasn’t a king yet) ended up seeking refuge with the Philistines from King Saul who was trying to kill him. However, when King Saul heard that David was being protected by Philistine King Achish of Gath, “he sought him no more”.

King David

The city of Ziklag was given to David as a gift from the Philistine king. However, while David was away fighting with the Philistine army, the city was burnt down by Amalekite raiders. They enslaved the residents of Ziklag as retaliation for an attack conducted on the Kingdom of Israel. David would later become the second king of Israel.

The exact location of the city has been debated over the years, as twelve previous locations around the southern part of Israel were thought to have been the site of Ziklag. But none of the previous sites proved to have had Philistine and Israelite settlements. Now, however, with the most recent discovery at the Khirbet Al-Rai site in the central part of Israel (close to Kiryat Gat), the mystery surrounding the exact location of the ancient biblical city may finally be solved.

“It is not 100 percent sure, but I think it’s 90 percent that this was biblical Ziklag,” archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University stated to UPI.

King David

Excavations began in 2015 and since then archaeologists have unearthed artifacts from the Philistine civilization in addition to pottery vessels from the same time that the biblical King lived. They have dug in three primary locations on the site which covers an area of 10,764 square feet in total. The date of the remains is believed to have been from between the 12^th and 11^thcenturies BC.

According to Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority, four houses have been unearthed so far and one of those homes contained over 1,500 tools that were used to cut wheat. Other discovered artifacts include statues, vessels, storage jars (for oil and wine), and other different types of pottery from the Philistine culture. In fact, they match previous Philistine-era artifacts that were recovered from Ashdod, Ekron, Ashkelon, and Gath.

You can see pictures here of some of the artifacts that were uncovered.