England
Luckily for Ikea the Roman Empire no longer exists, otherwise they’d be sued under the Patents Act for stealing their ideas.
“Flat-pack” churches were a common feature under the Roman emperor Justinian – they were shipped to all corners of the empire to be quickly erected so as to enforce the new religion. This was most likely carried out in an attempt to bring order to the crumbling empire, which had transformed into the Byzantine era with its power base shifted to Constantinople in modern-day Turkey.
This particular flat-pack church had been lying on the sea bed off Sicily since the 6th Century when the ship carrying it sank, and it will be re-erected and on display in the Ashmolean Musuem of Oxford next June.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/byzantine-flat-pack-church-to-be-reconstructed-in-oxford-after-spending-1000-years-on-the-seabed-a6732376.html

The World
To celebrate the achievements of our ancestors, who watched and mastered the movements of the stars and planets, and gave us all our knowledge, and who calculated the solar year and figured out the shortest and longest days and the equinoxes, happy winter solstice to all.
The winter solstice was, and still is, THE most important date in the year for it signals the end of the dark days. Ahead is a brighter future of planting crops and the coming season of fertility of the land and animals.
It’s a real shame this important festival was almost erased by the new monotheistic religion that arose nearly two thousand years ago. The date of December 25th has nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. It marks the first day when the sun starts to rise in the sky once again, after seemingly staying static on the horizon for three days. This is the resurrection, which occurs three days after the solstice. The crucifixion cross also represents the star system of the southern cross, which is the star sign directly visible in the sky where the sun sits for three days. Hence why the ‘son’ of God’ dies on the ‘cross’, and after three days is resurrected. ‘God’ has always been the sun. In all ancient cultures the sun was the most revered entity, and thus Jesus is the ‘son (sun) of God’.
I am sure I will offend many when I say that Jesus Christ never existed. His attributes are clearly taken from both Osiris, from ancient Egypt, and Krishna, from ancient and modern Hinduism in India. They were both born of a virgin on 25th December, both died and were resurrected, etc, etc.
The story is always the same – the symbolism is the dying sun that is resurrected or reborn. Whether you are a Christian or a Muslim or anything else, you are always following a pagan religion and worshipping the pagan life-giver – the sun – the son of God.
Everyone should celebrate the solstice!

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El Salvador
I really don’t like clichéd titles but it’s not surprising this place has been labelled the “Pompeii of the New World”. Despite the lack of frozen in time dead bodies the similarities are all to apparent.
That means, of course, an archaeologists dream – a site frozen in time and providing an insight into daily life which, as far as I am concerned, is the jewel in any archaeological site. All too often we hear of kings, queens and palaces, but very little about the people who struggled day to day. In fact, we see our world in a rather strange way – we often remember and give credence to kings who were, most of the time, nothing more than barbaric bullying criminal murderers, and that’s being polite. And, let’s face it, things haven’t changed very much.
Take Alexander the Great, for example. What a fantastic name for a genocidal maniac. He conquered the whole of Asia Minor and got as far as India in a very rapid time. Finally the Indians repelled his advance and he turned back towards the Middle East, not before murdering hundreds of women and children after he promised their safety. Funny how that’s been kept out of the record books in the West. Okay, I’ve gone off on a rant again…
So… sites like this one in Cerén – the best preserved Maya village in the whole of Central America – are very valuable indeed.
Cerén was covered in a blanket of ash in 660 AD when the nearby Loma Caldera volcano erupted.
Discovered in 1978, the site still contains many unexcavated buildings and work will continue years into the future.
This article is well worth a read…

http://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2015/11/06/el-salvador-buried-ash/

Argentina (Peru, Chile, Bolivia)
A boy sacrificed by the Inca on a mountaintop in Argentina around 500 years ago has had his complete mitochondrial DNA sequenced and this maternal DNA is from an extremely rare genome.
One section of the DNA can be traced through the Paleoindian genome all the way to 18,000 years ago, but the rare DNA, which has only been found in a few individuals in modern-day Peru and Bolivia, was most likely unique to the Andes around 14,000 years ago and has since been diluted and almost disappeared.
This rare DNA, known as C1bi, comes from a population that has never been identified, but it was likely a common genome prior to the arrival of those horrible Europeans.

http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2015/11/inca-child-mummy-reveals-lost-genetic-history-south-america

China
It seems China’s first female emperor was as brutal as her male equivalents.
Wu Zetian declared herself emperor – or should we be saying ’empress’ – when her emperor husband died in 690 AD.
A tomb discovered in China in 2002 (and not reported until 2014) contained, among other things, several bluestones inscribed with a very interesting tale…

http://news.yahoo.com/tomb-tells-tale-family-executed-chinas-1st-female-145238045.html

Australia
I was engaged last night in an argument about Darwinism on an archaeology forum.
My position is I am not convinced by the Darwinistic model of evolution, and the argument formulated from an article which stated a study of primates suggests we evolved certain sleeping patterns. I pointed out that in no way can studying primate behaviour say anything about human sleeping patterns, and that this was simply bad science.
Suffice to say I came under immediate attack from the Darwinist corner, sadly some of it abusive (from those who clearly do not have an evolved brain), and amid that argument I put forward my case that I am not convinced that Man left Africa and then spread around the world – I believe we “evolved” in different areas around the world, independent of the African line.
Putting that argument aside, this finding in Australia will go some way to backing up my ideas, and certainly will utterly transform the ancient history of Australia.
It proves, if anything, that our understanding of human evolution is completely and utterly flawed. Already the idea Man left Africa 50,000 years ago has been put back to 100,000 years in the light of hominin remains being found over the world that date long before 50,000 years ago. Well, now they’ll have to put it back to 150,000 years after this finding in Australia.
The “Man left Africa” theory is simply dissolving in the Great Barrier Reef as we speak…

http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/research-suggests-first-peoples-were-firestick-farming-north-queensland-140000-years

**Breaking News**
Colombia
The San Jose galleon, sunk by the British off the Colombian coast in 1708 and carrying up to $1 billion (£662 million) worth of gold and jewels, has been found by divers near Cartagena.
Naturally the exact location remains a secret, and the price of gold bullion most likely just took a tumble! 😉
Joking aside, this is one of the most astounding underwater finds in the history of archaeology.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-35014600

Kazakhstan
Known as the Steppe Geoglyphs, the incredible earthworks that astonished the archaeological world when they were discovered in 2007 are still baffling everyone who comes across them.
Their purpose is completely unknown, their size takes everyone’s breath away and, like the geoglyphs of Nazca, in Peru, South America, they can only be seen from the air.
The Ushtogaysky Square, for example, is much larger than the base of the Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. It contains 101 raised mounds which form a square, with two diagonal lines running from corner to corner.
In all there are at least 260 geoglyphs in the Turgai region of northern Kazakhstan and the oldest dates to at least 6000 BC.
Again we are seeing evidence of advanced building methods being used long before the accepted chronology of such techniques, and the 8,000-year-old geoglyphs are thousands of years older than places like the pyramids in Egypt and Avebury in England. In fact, there are few sites in the world older than the Steppe Geoglyphs of Turgai.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/science/nasa-adds-to-evidence-of-mysterious-ancient-earthworks.html?_r=0

Turkey
Another travelogue, this time Phaselis in ancient Lycia.
Phaselis is set in a pine forest and walking amongst the ruins is a breath of fresh air – literally – as the canopy of trees and calm waters of the ocean provide a crisp feeling of pleasure in the otherwise hot temperatures of Turkey.

https://www.stephenmaybury.co.uk/travelogue/17-phaselis/