The ruins of an ancient bath dating back to the 8th century have been found near the Ngempon Temple in Central Java.

The ruins are located on a riverbank, 200 meters away from the Hindu temple. Ngempon stands on the other side of the river, close to hot and cold springs.

Wahyu, an official from the Center for Preservation of Cultural Heritage, who came to the location, said the newly discovered structure was believed to date back to the eighth century.

Nurkholis, a local resident who found the structure, said, “I immediately reported the finding to a worker restoring Ngempon Temple. He told me to stop digging until an official from the center arrived.”

A piece of wood found during a fossil hunt workshop in England is believed to be a Bronze Age paddle.

The artefact, thought to be 3,000 years old, was found during the annual fossil hunt organised by Wildwood wildlife conservation park near Canterbury.

An “eagle-eyed individual” spotted the wood sticking out of mud in the Bronze Age sediment near Swalecliffe.

The Wildwood Trust said the paddle was in a container of water until the county conservator could examine it.

Vandals have damaged the wall of a Cornish castle which dates back to the 11th Century AD.

The offenders struck in the early hours of Sunday and pulled a number of large stones from the wall of the Great Hall at Launceston Castle.

English Heritage, which maintains and runs the castle on behalf of the Duchy of Cornwall, said the stones were smashed and impossible to repair.

The construction of a road in Northern Afghanistan threatens a site occupied by humans as far back as the sixth century BC.

The picturesque Cheshma-e-Shafa gorge in the northern province of Balkh is just one of several ancient sites faced with destruction by a post-Taliban push for development, they say.

This is despite laws in place to protect the country’s heritage.

Traces of ancient human habitation were discovered in 2007 at Cheshma-e-Shafa, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) southwest of the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, says the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (DAFA).

Archaeologists at Stirling Castle in Scotland believe they may have found the bones of a knight killed during the early 1400s.

Archaeologists believe that bones found in an ancient chapel on the site are those of an English knight named Robert Morley who died in a tournament there in 1388.

Radio carbon dating has confirmed that the skeleton is from that period, and detailed analysis suggests that he was in his mid-20s, was heavily muscled and had suffered several serious wounds in earlier contests.

He appears to have survived for some time with a large arrowhead lodged in his chest, while the re-growth of bone around a dent in the front of his skull indicates that he had also recovered from a severe blow from an axe.