10 #Archaeology #Discoveries made in May 2026 #artifacts

Oh hey there! Have you been wondering what kind of discoveries archaeologists have made lately? Well, off the tip of my trowel I can think of Neanderthal root canals, the Great Pyramid was engineered to be earthquake proof, one of the victims of Pompeii was a doctor, two, yes two, major viking hordes, one of gold bracelets and another of silver coins, a burial of two unrelated female hugging skeletons, a porcelain cargo shipwreck in Singapore, Teotihuacan era tombs, the bones of 37 people inside a stone jar in Laos. Finding this size and the fact it's just like full of these skeletons is what's so unique. Oh and the debate about which dirt layer came first at Monteverde and how that relates to pre-Clovis settlement of the Americas rages on with three new scathing rebuttal letters published by the original excavator and 29 other scholars. These are just 10 of the many discoveries archaeologists made in the past month that are rewriting history. Let's go on a journey through time exploring these exciting stories from around the world that I've curated just for you using my years of experience as an archaeologist to sift through the clickbait AI and pseudoscience to find out what's really rewriting history. And if that wasn't enough incentive to keep watching, my executive producer Emma will also be making a few cameos throughout the video. Won't you Precious? Say hello! If this all sounds like it's right up your trench, let's dig in to the latest discoveries from May 2026. I'll be presenting this list in chronological order starting with the discovery that goes the farthest back in time. Our journey begins nearly 60,000 years ago in the Altai Mountains of Siberia where evidence of the world's earliest known dental treatment has been found in a cave. This cave contains the most extensive collection of Neanderthal fossil remains in North Asia with over 70 fossils and 26 dental specimens that have been found here during excavation. New analysis has focused on one particular molar that was found on what would have been the cave's floor and thus has been associated with the earliest stage of the cave's occupation, roughly 59,000 years ago. It is a lower second molar of an adult and features a deep hole in the center of the tooth extending into the pulp cavity. Microscopic x-ray imaging revealed changes in mineralization that indicated severe tooth decay. Very well, do you want to show them your molars? I didn't think so but... The researchers conducted experiments on three modern human teeth to demonstrate that a hole of the same shape and pattern of grooves could be drilled into the tooth manually by rotating a narrow elongated tool made from local jasper between two fingers, essentially doing this motion. Penetrating the dentin using this approach took between 35 and 50 minutes of continuous work. Talk about a hand cramp. Such a procedure would have been incredibly painful for the patient but ultimately would have relieved the pain of a dental infection by removing the damaged part of the tooth. Modern dentists have described the treatment as the beginnings of a root canal. Further wear on the tooth that could only have happened after the procedure shows that the individual lived for a while after it was done although since the resulting hole in the tooth was left unfilled they would have been vulnerable to chronic infections. This rudimentary dental treatment shows us that Neanderthals had the capacity to identify the source of pain, determine how to treat it, the dexterity needed for such an efficient operation to fix it and could control themselves to endure painful treatment clearly understanding the concept of short-term pain for long-term gain. This is the first time dental drilling has been demonstrated outside of Homo sapiens and it is the oldest example of this kind of behavior by more than 40,000 years. Next up is an update on the Monteverde drama. In case you need catching up, this site is located in Chile and it was found in 1976 and excavated by Dr. Tom Dillehay for nearly 50 years during which time he recovered stone tools, preserved wood, bones and skin of extinct animals, a human footprint, edible plant remains, hearths and natural rope. The occupation of the site was radiocarbon dated to 14,500 years ago making it the only securely dated late Pleistocene archaeological site in South America which upended the Clovis first theory. Then in March 2026, Dr. Todd Suravel published a controversial study claiming that the dating was wrong and in fact Monteverde was only 8,200 years old. His hypothesis was based on newly collected soil samples and the identification of a well-dated layer of volcanic ash aka tephra adjacent to the site. It's worth noting that retesting the site itself is not possible because it's actually been destroyed by flooding slash erosion from the creek along which it sat. The new work was done on material from the surrounding area. Now three scientific letters totaling more than a hundred pages have been published in response critiquing Dr. Suravel's work and systemically dismantling his claims and refuting their conclusion. In addition to the tephra layer identification which Dillehay and company claim doesn't exist at Monteverde, another reason Suravel and colleagues believe that the site is younger than it's claimed is because of the complex geology of the creek bank. They think that the older radiocarbon dates come from material that was washed onto the site and redeposited in the younger layers making it seem older than it actually is. In the response letter it's noted that the Suravel study provided no evidence that any of the dated wood or bones had ever been moved and the stratigraphy aka the layers of dirt that they described don't match the stratigraphy of the Monteverde site. The response also pointed out that further genetic studies fully support an age of 14,500 years for the site and has shown that all ancient and present-day Native Americans trace their ancestry to three lineages. Ancient Beringians who split off around 20,000 years ago and then Northern and Southern Native Americans who split off around 15,000 years ago. This proves the pre-Clovis presence of humans south of the continental ice sheets earlier than 13,000 years ago which is what Clovis is all related to. One particularly scathing clapback points out that Suravel's team came to their conclusions after and I quote a few hours of field work with no excavation. That is a that is a sick burn in the world of archaeology. Suravel has said he is planning his own formal response to these letters and it seems that this fiery war of publications and argument over which layer of dirt came first that is effectively what it amounts to isn't going to be over anytime soon. Next up on our time traveling adventure we head to the Giza Plateau in Egypt where research into the 4,600 year old Great Pyramid of King Khufu has given us new insights into its architectural features and specifically its remarkable resilience to earthquake damage. In fact most of the reason it's not survived 100% intact is because humans took the outer stones and repurposed them to build modern day Cairo. Since it was built the pyramid has lost only about 10 meters or 33 feet of height despite experiencing strong earthquakes that have caused significant damage to other historic Egyptian monuments. To understand this resilience geoscientists placed 37 vibration sensors in and around the pyramid and recorded ambient vibrations when there were no tourists inside. The sensors found that throughout the pyramid vibrations were remarkably similar ranging from about 2 to 2.6 hertz. This was quite different from the frequencies on the ground nearby which was usually around 0.6 hertz. This gap means that during earthquakes the pyramid sits apart from the vibrations that were then traveling through the ground. Other features contributing to the pyramid's stability include its massive base strong limestone foundation and symmetrical geometry. Effectively a pyramid is the best kind of shape to resist this kind of damage. The vibrations do increase towards the top of the structure which is typical in most buildings even modern ones but this pattern is interrupted by the pressure relieving chambers above the king's chamber inside which are thought to have been built to take some of the weight off of the roof of the king's final resting place. As it turns out they also dampen vibrations that otherwise might travel towards the structure's apex. All of this suggests that the ancient Egyptian architects possessed quite an advanced geotechnical understanding and were able to optimize design and site characterization to protect the structure against seismic hazards across literally thousands of years. This advanced geotechnical and architectural understanding is something that they gained over time as it's clear from earlier pyramids like the collapsed one at Meidum that they experimented with slope geometry and internal layouts before really perfecting their craft at Giza. If you want to learn more about the evolution of the pyramids you should really watch my video on it. The researchers plan to take more measurements at Giza and hope to use similar methods at other sites and pyramids in Egypt. Our next find takes us to the site of Pompeii in Italy which was engulfed and preserved in volcanic ash from Mount Vesuvius around 2,000 years ago. In 1961 archaeologists identified an outdoor garden which contained the remains of 14 adults and children who were trying to find a way out of the Nosura gate and were fatally caught by an avalanche of hot gas, ash and rock. Their flesh had rotted away but left behind were hollow cavities that the archaeologists filled with plaster preserving these people's final moments. And now a new discovery has allowed us to learn a little bit more about their story by giving a professional identity to one of them. A doctor struck by tragedy while attempting to escape taking with him the tools of his trait. This breakthrough came from the study of a small case hidden inside the plaster of one of the cast. X-ray and CT scans of it revealed that it was a small box made of organic material with metal elements inside. A fabric bag of bronze and silver coins and a series of metal instruments including a small slate slab that could have been used for mixing ingredients for medicine or cosmetics and the small metal instruments are have been interpreted as being surgical tools based on their similarity to other excavated and known Roman doctors kits. These elements support the hypothesis that the victim was a medicus, a Roman doctor. The use of these advanced diagnostic technologies including AI-assisted CT scans and 3D reconstructions allowed the cast contents to be analyzed without compromising its integrity. It's a non-destructive approach which is ideal in archaeology. This approach opens up new perspectives for further study of the other casts of people from Pompeii and has also revealed previously unseen details of the refined mechanical structure of the box which featured a sophisticated locking system with a toothed wheel. It would seem as though this man took his tools with him to be ready to rebuild his life elsewhere but also perhaps to help others who had been caught in the deadly explosion. This discovery shows us how Pompeii's cast can still produce new archaeological information when studied with modern tools and underlines the importance of museum storerooms where objects excavated decades ago can still give us new information and stories. Now we head to Tula de Allende in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico where archaeological salvage work on the route of the Mexico-Queretaro train project has uncovered a series of funerary contexts including five shaft tombs dating to the Teotihuacan period. The site appears to have been occupied between roughly 225 to 550-600 CE with smaller scale reoccupations during the late post-classic period. The first hint of this find came from ceramic material scattered across the surface and test excavations subsequently revealed foundations of ancient walls. Aerial photography then identified a pattern of small residential compounds linked by courtyards with houses oriented along north-south and east-west axes. Most of the structures belong to phases associated with the civilization of Teotihuacan whose capital is just 90 kilometers away. Numerous burials were found within the rocky substrate beneath the settlement. Surface kists and shaft tombs were even found inside several rooms. In one of them archaeologists found the remains of eight individuals most of them adults alongside 47 miniature ceramic vessels. Six of the individuals were placed in a seated position with ceramic offerings at their feet while two had been disturbed. It appears that the tomb was reused and when the final person was put inside the funerary bundle of a previous person was removed or moved. Among the grave goods were small shell fragments of a semi-circular mother of pearl pendant and a small plaque made from the same material. Inside ceramic vessels were also found and removed with the surrounding soil for micro-excavation to see what may have been inside them. This region had been exploited for raw materials since the pre-hispanic times particularly for lime which may have been essential for producing the stucco used in Teotihuacan's monumental architecture. The discoveries are expected to provide important insights into the beliefs, social structure and culture of communities that flourished during the height of this civilization. Our feature interview this month takes us to the upland valleys and lower foothills of the central plain of the plateau in Laos known worldwide as the Plain of Jars. Archaeologists have been trying to solve the mystery of what these megalithic monuments were used for for almost a hundred years. Local legends say that they were made by a race of giants brewing and storing rice wine to celebrate a victory in battle. New archaeological work paints a very different picture and Dr. Nicholas Skopel is here to tell us all about it with the results of his recent research. Let's dig in to what he has to say. Hi and welcome to the channel Dr. Skopel. Can you please start by introducing yourself and your relation to the Plain of Jars project? My name is Nick Skopel. I'm an archaeologist at James Cook University and I am co-director of a project called the Archaeology of Northern Laos. So effectively if you've sort of got PNTR it's anything north of that and I do a lot of work at the Plain of Jars. More recently in the sort of peripheral areas of the sites. Thank you so much for joining us today. Can you give us and anyone watching who's unfamiliar a brief history of the Plain of Jars? It is actually one of Southeast Asia's most amazing megalithic landscapes because it's huge. You've got, I call them the glorious sites, but there's the main sites sort of sites one, two and three and they're these large stone jars. Some go up nearly three metres, two metres wide, way up to like 20 tonnes. Not all of them but and then you just have you have hundreds of some of these sites but altogether there's about two and a half thousand I think recorded out there so far. Sort of littered throughout the landscape in the mountains, the jungles and things like that. They're first reported by early explorers, like British, French explorers in the late 1800s, early 1900s, but there was this French lady, Madeleine Kalani, she did all the formative work there and she excavated quite a few sites and really and now she's got these two big books that she wrote everything up in and that sort of talks to it all. But the big thing is we actually don't know that much about the stone jars. They're mortuary sites but the big thing is we don't know who the people are who made them. We don't really know the chronology, though I think we're starting to understand that better and we don't exactly know how they were used. And that's an excellent segue into the fact that you have recently published a discovery that helps illuminate a little bit more about what the jars might have been used for. Can you tell us about what you've found? So what you've got is up at this site, Site 75, it's the most north-easterly site. It's actually not a very spectacular site to be honest. It's this big broken jar that is one of the jars there and I've never seen this jar like a jar like this and I have seen a lot of jars. And then about 500 meters away along this same ridge line, there's seven smaller jars and just more like the normal size jars you might get at like Sites 1 and 2 and things like that. Most of the excavation is focused on inside and around this big jar we found. What we found inside, after about three seasons digging there, the remains of 37 people inside dating to about a thousand years ago. So it's super spectacular because when you actually look at all the stone jars, the issue is most of the work has happened at Site 1. No one's really found anything inside the jars. So Kalani, back in the 1930s, she found some cremated human remains inside some of the jars. But we've never really found that since. But there's been teams working around the jars there and they've found human burials around these jars. So it's been like collections of secondary burials or there's pot burials as well, buried in the ground. And around these stone jars you also get these stone discs and there's some place boulders and things like that. But just at Site 1 you get all these different mortuary treatments. So actually there's one primary burial, secondary burials and then you get some cremated remains. So already there's a lot of sort of confusion as to like, OK, what's happening with these jars? Having been to so many sites because I went and surveyed as part of my PhD, I found a whole lot of new sites and this Site 75 is one of them. They aren't really full of human remains, like a cursory look. So finding this site and the fact it's just like full of these skeletons is what's so unique. However, it does not answer the question. It is quite a unique jar. It actually is more like a big, like, it's probably more like a cauldron. It's just a little bit different. Look, it's made of stone conglomerates that could impact how it was shaped. But it's just, it's still, I haven't seen a jar like this. So as a bit of a follow-up, is one of the reasons why perhaps it's so difficult to determine the purpose of these jars in relation to human remains maybe because since the tops of the jars and they themselves are basically exposed, that means that if there are human remains, they're more vulnerable to environmental processes that would make them degrade more quickly. So even if there were human remains in some of these jars, they're not now because they, the bones have effectively disappeared because of, you know, exposure or predators, et cetera, et cetera. Definitely something that could have happened if they're at least a thousand years old. Like that's it. And then the stories of like people coming down from the north and like emptying the jars out or some of the main sites, but there's still, there's sites and the sites have found like very remote ones, like right up in the mouth of the jungle, tiger country, like, and they they're pristine and there's sediment still all through the jars. So there's a large chance that if you find these undisturbed sites, that there might actually be like more human remains inside. What it is, is I think it provides more of a clue as to how the jars may have been used in some instances. Our hypothesis is this group of jars, like 500 metres away, we're getting similar dates. It looks like they're the same time as this large jar. And what it could be is that when the person dies, they take the person and they put them inside the stone jar and it sort of distills all the flesh of them. And then they take the bones and then they're transported to this large jar and placed in there. And that might explain why we're not finding all these human remains inside the jars in a lot of these other areas. Like there might just be a temporary thing for the dead where they're only used for like part of the mortuary process. Potentially, but like, we don't know. And then when you actually go to the... I'm also working on the other side of the province and you get different type of jars there. Like they're quite different. And clearly there's a different mortuary treatment probably happening up there as well. So you can't look at these jars and suddenly be like, right, everything, it must be like this. I think there's like regionalism happening or things might change over time, which is what makes them so fascinating. What has your preliminary analysis of the bones of the individuals from Site 75 told you about them so far? It's a range. We're getting infants, like, you know, all the way up to like, you know, children and through to adults. So we're sort of getting the whole spectrum and it looks like, you know, male and female as well. Although that has been a bit difficult to tell based on the preservation. And some of the dates based on the bones suggest they were using this over a long period. So, you know, they keep coming back. And something that's very fascinating, but we just can't quite work out how it's happening is, so when we're inside this jar, based on the skulls we found, we found 19 skulls in there. However, the teeth we found right at the base showed that there's an MNI of the 37 people. So you can see there's this discrepancy. So the idea is that, okay, maybe when they're putting the bones inside, they're also actually removing bones as well over time and placing them somewhere else. So like, maybe it's this huge mortuary process or they're only putting select bones inside in the first place or something's changed over time. So there's a whole nother question there. Around the jar, there were like pots and things like that, likely for like offerings. And there's some suggestion there's these sort of stone slabs, you can find with burials underneath. But what we find with a lot of the soil around this area is it's acidic and it could be eating, like destroying the human remains. So if there were any, maybe there were some around the jars or they're taking these bones to where they live or they're putting them somewhere else. So there's still those sorts of questions, but really interesting. So a question that I have as somebody who doesn't really know a lot about the history of Laos or a lot about Southeast Asia, Asian archaeology in general. A question that I have and I think other people would have as well is the dates that you're getting back for this are between 800 to 1250 CE. This is a time in history where there's a lot of other civilizations going on around Laos that write things down that we know a lot about them. So can you explain a little bit more about why exactly there's this kind of gap in knowledge for what we know about what's going on in Laos at this pyramid period and what's happening in kind of like the world around it that would maybe affect it and the behaviors of these people? I actually don't know. And this is what's exciting is as I look at this, I'm like, I personally think that these stone jars are like from this time period and this was a thriving period. One of the issues, we can't date the stone jars. This is one of the problems. But sort of based on the archaeology and things that we're finding, it's just starting to suggest that, look, I think it is during this time. But you've got to think this time period, you have the Song Dynasty in China, you have the Dali Kingdom in Yunnan province in modern day China, you have Pagan in Myanmar, Burma, and then you have these kingdoms in Thailand and Vietnam and you have the Angkor, the Khmer Empire down south. So it is thriving. Like everyone was doing their thing sort of throughout this period. And what's interesting is a lot of the dates, so say around this sort of 1250 time, that's when the Mongols are moving down and that's when Song Dynasty collapses and that's when Dali Kingdom gets conquered and all this sort of, and it's interesting. So potentially, this is just like an idea I had is potentially, does this explain, was there mass migration? Something pushed these people down and that's why a lot of the dates we get around the stone jars finish around that time. What are some of the challenges that you guys have come across in excavating this jar and other jars on the plane of jars? In particular, I remember reading about how there's a lot of unexploded bombs in Laos left over from modern day war. So I can imagine that can make for a quite tense environment and a difficult place to try and find stuff when you have to be so much more vigilant about where you're walking. It is a problem. So Laos during the secret war, so in the, I think it was the seventies, it's actually the most heavily bombed country ever in the world. And specifically like Jingquan province, which is where all these, most of the stone jars are, that's where they hit a lot of. So everywhere when I was surveying for jars and trekking through, we always had to be careful where we're standing. So you get what is called UXOs, unexploded ordnance. They're not mines, they're like cluster bombs and things like that. And yeah, it's devastating. Like for the local people, it is hard because they're all through the farmland. There are teams out there, MAG who go out and clear areas. When I'm excavating at a site, most of the time we'll get the MAG team in to clear because otherwise, yeah, when you're digging along, you don't really want to dig up a cluster bomb. At this site 75, there's actually massive craters around there from where they're bombing. So what are the next steps for the project? Then you've done your kind of preliminary publication of your paper. Are you going to do some more analysis of the bones like ancient DNA or stable isotopes? We're doing the ancient DNA work on them, which they still be incredibly cool because it hasn't been done yet. And I think there might be some teams trying at some of the other sites, but to get an idea of who these people were, because we have no idea because we don't know where they live either. We can't find where they're living, these habitation sites. That would be fascinating if we get the results, if we can. It's always hard though, because in the tropics, it is really hard to get DNA, like have it preserved. That is one of the conundrums we have. So let's like fingers crossed. So last question then is, since there's clearly more to come from your project and from the Plane of Jars, how can people follow your work, what you're doing and keep updated on the project? I have finally set up an Instagram account, which I am slowly trying to put things on, so you can follow me there. But otherwise, look, I will make sure publications are coming out. I do try to do like outreach things like this, so like the broader public, because if you don't bring the public along, like there's not much point. Well, what do you think? Do you still have questions? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks so much to Nick for taking the time to speak with me. And I look forward to more exciting stories from his team. I'm going to briefly pause this video to speak about its sponsor, Mantasleep. Now I have always valued a good sleep. What's your favorite part? Nap time. Even more so since I became a parent. So I jumped at the chance to try their silk sleep mask and pillowcase bundle, plus the accessory cooling pads that you can actually switch out into the mask. When they say these are blackout, they are not kidding. Here, let me show you. See, I really like how the iPads, the way that they're designed, doesn't put any pressure on your eyes, especially with the weighted cooling pads. The pillowcase is so soft and cool, which makes it extra appealing in a hot summer. So if you're looking for a nice wee treat to upgrade your sleep, head on over to their website and use the code INSIDEARCHEOLOGY for 10% off. Happy snoozing. Now we head to the forests of Northern Denmark, where archaeologists have uncovered one of the most important Viking Age gold hordes in decades. This story begins in April when a local resident brought two heavy gold rings to the archaeological department at the North Jutland Museums after noticing them partly exposed in the soil along a farm track in a wooded area. The objects were quickly identified as Viking Age gold arm rings, an unusual and highly significant find. A field investigation followed with archaeologists returning to the site and doing a metal detecting survey across a wider area. This soon found a third gold ring close to the original spot and three more appeared just 15 meters away, bringing the whole total of what was found to six. All of them are intact and made of solid gold. Together they weigh 762.5 grams or nearly 1.7 pounds. The collection includes both twisted and smooth rings showing different forms of advanced metalworking. Three were made by twisting together two gold rods and one includes a thin inlaid gold wire and a knob-shaped clasp. The remaining pieces were shaped from gold rods or wire and finished with tightly wrapped closures known as running knots. One ring stands apart from the rest with flattened joined ends decorated with zigzag patterns and triangular designs. The rings date to the late Viking age, so roughly a thousand years ago, a period when Denmark was moving towards political unification under a single monarchy. Arm rings of this type have been found before in Scandinavia but they're usually made of silver because during this time, gold was largely controlled by the social elite. This and the fact that all the rings are intact makes this find incredibly rare. Because the hoard was buried intact, we think that their deposit was deliberate. The hoard has now become state property under Danish law and the rings are undergoing further analysis, documentation and conservation before being transferred to the National Museum of Denmark and will hopefully be on public display soon. It would appear that May is a popular month for Viking hoards as our next find is very similar and I was alerted to its existence by several commenters last month. It brings us to a field near Rina in Norway where more than 4,000 silver coins have been found in a single hoard, the largest such ever found in Norway. The discovery was initially made by two metal detectorists who found 19 coins while conducting detecting over some farmland. After finding the first group, they stopped their search and contacted archaeologists, which is 100% what you should do in this case. Their decision allowed the professionals to secure the area before uncontrolled searching damaged the site. At first, the team expected to find a small hoard. On their first day, they found 70 more coins but then more of them just kept on appearing. The count soon passed 500, then 1,000 and now it's more than 4,000. Most of the coins were minted in English and German territories. A smaller number come from Denmark and Norway. The hoard includes coins linked to rulers like Knut the Great, Æthelred II, Otto III and Harald Hardrada. The Norwegian coins in particular have drawn special attention. Harald Hardrada ruled Norway from 1046 to 1066. He famously died trying to become king of England fighting against Harald Godwinson who then went on to be killed by King William the Conqueror. He introduced a national coinage system to Norway after returning from working in Byzantium around 1045. Before his reforms, foreign silver coins dominated trade in Norway. Since some Norwegian coins in the hoard appear to be newly minted, archaeologists believe the deposit belongs to the early years of this monetary shift. Overall, the coins are in very good condition with sharp details and clear inscriptions even after nearly 1,000 years in the ground. The silver was probably originally buried inside a leather or textile pouch that has since decayed. Farming later scattered them throughout the field via repeated plowing. The area had never been searched by detectorists before. Archaeologists also use ground penetrating radar to look for buried buildings, graves or other features but so far they haven't found anything else connected to the hoard. This suggests that, like the rings, they were intentionally hidden as during this time people often buried silver and other valuables for safekeeping during periods of instability or conflict. The site is now protected under Norwegian cultural heritage law and the coins will be sent to the Cultural History Museum and Coin Cabinet for conservation and identification. Now we head to the exaltation of the Holy Cross Cathedral on Opole, Poland where ancient DNA analysis has shed new light on two 800-year-old medieval skeletons buried in a mutual embrace. Perhaps I should be hugging Emma for this story. One moment. Double and multiple burials like this offer archaeologists valuable insights into the cultural practices and social structures of past societies as people buried together are often interpreted as having been connected in life through social ties or biological kinship. For example, when an adult and a child are buried together they are assumed to be related while mixed-sex adults buried together are treated like married couples. However, these conclusions have traditionally relied on things like body positioning and determining sex from just looking at the features of a skeleton which can sometimes be misleading, not there, or indeterminate. Ancient DNA analysis can accurately determine both genetic sex and biological kinship allowing archaeologists to either confirm or challenge previous assumptions made about relationships among people who are buried together. In this case in Poland, it really challenges the narrative. In 2022 and 2025, excavation work at the church uncovered multiple human remains but one double burial stood out. In it, the first person was buried according to Christian rites lying on their back with their arms placed along their body. A second person had been buried beside them on their side with one arm beneath the first person's head as if embracing them. Based on these positions, the researchers think that they were interred at the same time. Notably, there was no coffin and both of them were placed on byers. The preservation of the skeletons was poor especially with regards to their lower limbs which is probably due to how deep they were buried and the fact that there was a high amount of use of the cemetery for other burials. This meant that our traditional morphological analysis of sex where you look for markers of sex on the bones which are mostly found on the pelvis and the skull was inconclusive. So it was decided to conduct ancient DNA to help paint a fuller picture and what came back is not what the researchers expected. The analysis determined that both of the skeletons were female and they were not closely related making this grave the first genetically confirmed same-sex double burial in medieval Poland. But does that mean that we can now say confidently that these two people were lovers? Unfortunately, this will probably remain a mystery because the historical and the archaeological evidence contradict each other. The women were buried next to the cathedral walls, a position often reserved for kings and local elites and there is no evidence that they were shunned or marginalized by their society. However, historical legal and religious sources from this time harshly condemned same-sex relationships punishing them with execution. The archaeologists think that if these women had been suspected of being lovers then they would not have been given such a prominent high status grave. So while this is inconclusive, it does show us that how past relationships were expressed after death is more diverse than we previously thought. What do you think? Were they secret lovers? Best friends? Sisters-in-law who died at the same time? Let me know in the comments. The last destination in our travels today is the coast of Singapore where a four-year excavation has produced the earliest known shipwreck in the country's waters as well as strong evidence for the existence of a busy trading port over 700 years ago. Over the course of the dig, the archaeologists recovered around 2,300 ceramic shards from the wreck along with several intact or nearly intact pieces. However, the remains of the ship that carried them are completely gone, scattered by waves and currents, or consumed by naval shipworms aka the termites of the sea. Analysis of the ceramics found that the assemblage consisted of Yuan dynasty blue and white porcelain, green glazed longquan celadon, chengbai slash shufu ware, dehua whiteware, olive toned greenware likely from Fujian provincial kilns, stoneware storage jars, and small mouse jars from Xizhou. When looked at together, this cargo reflects a coordinated export system of large-scale trade drawing from multiple kin complexes in southeastern China. This prompts the question of when did this ship sail and where exactly was it going? The first question was answered with historical analysis of the ceramics. Blue and white porcelain was first produced in the late 1320s to early 1330s. One motif in particular, mandarin ducks swimming among lotus blooms, became widespread after 1340. Production appears to have been severely disrupted by the red turban uprisings around 1352. Since we have pieces with the mandarin swimming ducks on the ship, it means that the wreck's final voyage was probably between 1340 and 1352 at the height of Singapore's historical Temasek period. As for the ship's intended destination, this becomes clearer when the ceramics are compared with finds from land excavations in Singapore. Decorative patterns on smaller bowls and vases match fragments found at the nearby Fort Canning and other sites. However, large blue and white platters that were popular in India and the Middle East during this time are missing from the cargo. And it was concluded that the ship was probably a Chinese junk, that is a type of ship, that was loaded in Kwanzo and was bound for the thriving trading home of Temasek. This find is significant because for decades, popular narratives have portrayed pre-1819 Singapore as a minor settlement. Archaeology has been steadily dismantling this impression, but this wreck provides one of the most decisive pieces of evidence that we found. It's tangible proof that Singapore's global story began long before colonial maps drew its outlines. All right everyone, time to pack up our finds and hang up our shovels. That's everything for this video. Did you like it? Which discovery was your favorite? Is there anything important that I missed? Don't forget to comment, like the video, or subscribe to the channel before you leave. If you're feeling extra generous, you can give me a super thanks or go to my Ko-fi page and support me with a small donation. If you like the look of my bookshelf or perhaps you're curious as to what's on it, I have an Amazon storefront as well where you can shop my shelf. I also have a Redbubble store where I have made a few archaeology themed designs that you can get put on a variety of different kinds of merchandise. 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