To those who believe William Shakespeare did author his plays, Fulke Greville has always been a top choice for who truly did. It was rumoured that all the original manuscripts were buried with him. Now an endoscope will be used to probe the tomb and determine if this is true. Exciting!

A prominent 17th-century nobleman, Greville was a renowned scholar, soldier, statesman and spy.

Like his dearest friend Sir Philip Sidney, he was also an accomplished author.

So talented, indeed, that some believe he was the true author of several of Shakespeare’s works.

For years this has been little more than conjecture; fuel for the lively and often hostile debate between Anti-Stratfordians – those who deny that an ill- educated grain merchant and actor such as William Shakespeare could possibly have produced such a stunning oeuvre – and outraged traditionalists.

Now, however, the tantalising prospect of a definitive answer has been raised. More intriguingly still, the explanation, hidden in a series of clues scattered throughout his work and on the Warwick monument, is said to come from Fulke Greville himself.

[Full story]

Heavy rains in Greece have unearthed eight tombs, only one of which was intact.

Eight tombs dating to the Hellenist Period were partially revealed recently in the region of Gonous, Larissa prefecture, after flooding caused by heavy rainfall swept away a rural dirt road.

The Archaeological Service subsequently conducted an excavation, which brought to light the tombs which, according to initial assessment, date back to between the end of the 4th century BC and the beginning of the 3rd century BC.

[Full story] [Photo source]

A 2,000-year-old tomb found in eastern Mongolia contains the remains of a man of multi-ethnic heritage.

Dead men can indeed tell tales, but they speak in a whispered double helix.

Consider an older gentleman whose skeleton lay in one of more than 200 tombs recently excavated at a 2,000-year-old cemetery in eastern Mongolia, near China’s northern border. DNA extracted from this man’s bones pegs him as a descendant of Europeans or western Asians. Yet he still assumed a prominent position in ancient Mongolia’s Xiongnu Empire, say geneticist Kyung-Yong Kim of Chung-Ang University in Seoul, South Korea, and his colleagues.

On the basis of previous excavations and descriptions in ancient Chinese texts, researchers suspect that the Xiongnu Empire — which ruled a vast territory in and around Mongolia from 209 B.C. to A.D. 93 — included ethnically and linguistically diverse nomadic tribes. The Xiongnu Empire once ruled the major trading route known as the Asian Silk Road, opening it to both Western and Chinese influences.

[Full story]

A large Han Dynasty tomb found in the Chang’an district of Xi’an, China has been determined to have belonged to a high-ranking general: Zhang Anshi.

The main tomb is more than 60 meters long with a coffin chamber that covers an area of more than 35 meters in length, 24.5 meters in width and is 15 meters deep.

The main tomb is surrounded by six pits of different sizes, which are filled with mortuary objects such as pottery and wood figurines.

The pottery figurines, approximately 60 centimeters tall, were all naked, with some fragments of helmets, bronze arrowheads, and swords scattered around them. The organs on their faces were clear, with red lips and thick eyebrows.

“Although there are hundreds of pottery figurines, you could hardly find two identical faces,” said Shi Quanping, a local archeologist in Shaanxi.

The location of the tomb is consistent with the records of Zhang’s burial site, and giant stamps engraved “Zhang,” and “Military Nobel Stamp” were also unearthed, both of which helped proved his identify, said Zhang Zhongli, deputy chief of the Shaanxi archeologist institute.

[Full story] [Photo source]

A 1,100-year-old tomb discovered discovered in Tonina, Mexico, may shed some light on why the Mayan civilization collapsed.

Archeologist Juan Yadeun said the tomb, and ceramics from another culture found in it, may reveal who occupied the Mayan site of Tonina in southern Chiapas state after the culture’s classic period began fading.

Many experts have pointed to internal warfare between Mayan city states, or environmental degradation, as possible causes of the Maya’s downfall starting around AD 820.

But Yadeun, who oversees the Tonina site for Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, said artifacts from the Toltec culture found in the tomb may point to another explanation. He said the tomb dates to between the years 840 and 900.

“It is clear that this is a new wave of occupation, the people who built this grave of the Toltec type,” Yadeun said Wednesday. “This is very interesting, because we are going to see from the bones who these people are, after the Maya empire.”

[Full story]