The 3,500-year-old remains of a settlement have been found by an oasis in Egypt, revealing evidence of desert trade routes during the early days of the Egyptian civilization.

The settlement at Umm el-Mawagir in Egypt’s Kharga Oasis, more than 300 miles (500 kilometres) south of Cairo, has been excavated for the past year by a Yale University expedition, whose initial findings suggest it was an administrative post with massive baking facilities, possibly to feed local troops.

“The amount of bread production was pretty amazing,” said John Darnell, head of the expedition, citing discoveries of ovens, bread moulds and storerooms at the site, far out of proportion to its size.

“It’s probably a good bet they were basically baking enough bread to feed an army, literally,” he said.

The site was home to a few thousand inhabitants and also includes remnants of mudbrick buildings, similar to those used for administrative purposes in the Nile Valley to the east, suggesting close contact between the two regions.

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A new study is suggesting that two meteorite impacts killed off the dinosaurs, not one.

Previously, scientists had identified a huge impact crater in the Gulf of Mexico as the event that spelled doom for the dinosaurs.

Now evidence for a second impact in Ukraine has been uncovered.

This raises the possibility that the Earth may have been bombarded by a whole shower of meteorites.

The new findings are published in the journal Geology by a team lead by Professor David Jolley of Aberdeen University.

When first proposed in 1980, the idea that a meteorite impact had killed the dinosaurs proved hugely controversial. Later, the discovery of the Chicxulub Crater in the Gulf of Mexico, US, was hailed as “the smoking gun” that confirmed the theory.

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A long-lost piano believed to have been played by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been found in Germany.

Public broadcaster SWR said the instrument was built in 1775 and acquired in the 1980s by piano manufacturer Martin Becker in the southern German city of Baden-Baden from an antiques dealer in Strasbourg, eastern France.

When Mr Becker decided to auction off the fortepiano, a music historian noticed the offer and “had a hunch that it could be the same long-lost instrument that Mozart played whenever he was in Strasbourg,” SWR said.

“I had the idea to offer it on (online auction site) eBay and maybe get between 30,000 and 40,000 euros for it,” Mr Becker told the radio station.

A historic oil painting in Vienna shows the composer Joseph Haydn, a Mozart contemporary, playing what may be the same instrument.

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Archaeologists working in the Mayan city of Uxul have found two giant resevoirs which were capabale of holding the water of 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

An analysis of the so-called “aguadas” revealed the ancient Mayans lined these huge reservoirs of drinking water with ceramic shards, similar to outdoor pools today.

The lakes would have held enough water to support a population of 2,000 living in the Mayan city of Uxul during the three-month dry season, the researchers say.

“We found that the bottom, which is at a depth of 2 meters [6.6 feet], was covered with ceramic shards — probably from plates — practically without any gaps,” said Nicolaus Seefeld, a member of the German-Mexican archaeological team that made the discovery.

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The remains of two slave cabins have been uncovered at L’Hermitage in Frederick Country, Maryland.

Last week, in the midst of a summer-long archaeological dig, experts using surface-penetrating radar found what are believed to be remnants of two cabins that once made up the small slave village that served L’Hermitage.

And the National Park Service says the find adds another page to the story of the mysterious plantation, whose tropical-influenced main house still stands, an unlikely witness near the banks of the Monocacy, more than 200 years after it was built.

“It’s a huge deal,” said National Park Service archaeologist Joy Beasley, cultural resources program manager for Monocacy National Battlefield, outside Frederick, where the plantation is located. “It’s an extraordinary site and very unusual, and I do not know of anything like it anywhere else.”

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