In December of last year I reported about the discovery of a tomb in China which belonged to Cao Cao, the third century politician and general. Now a newspaper in China is reporting that more than 20 experts have declared the tomb to be a fake.

Today’s Modern Express reports that a tomb in Anyang, Henan Province excavated late last year that was claimed to contain the remains of legendary warrior Cao Cao is fake.

Cao Cao was one of the three warlords competing for control of China after the downfall of the mighty Han empire (BC206 – AD 220 CE). Cao’s life was popularized in The Legend of Three Kingdoms, a novelized history which has been revered as one of the four Chinese literature classics.

According to the Modern Express, 23 experts at an academic forum in Suzhou have declared that the tomb is a fake, citing anachronistic styles of engraving Chinese characters as one of the sources of their suspicion. The reports says that Chinese historians are now divided into “pro-Cao” and “anti-Cao” factions.

The article also notes that soon after the announcement, the excavation site was opened to the public, with a ticket price of 60 yuan a person.

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A 1,200-year-old tomb belonging to a high-ranking official of the Sican culture has been unearthed in Peru.

A team co-led by Peruvian archaeologist Carlos del Carpio found the tomb, along with many burial artifacts, about 1,500 meters west of the Lord of Sican’s tomb in Huaca Las Ventanas archaeological site, near the Pomac Forest Historical Sanctuary, in the northern Lambayeque region.

According to Peruvian daily El Comercio, the ancient nobleman was buried in lotus posture (sitting with his legs half-crossed) and the finds included a winged eye mask, a ceremonial knife and a metal cup.

The tomb also contained a breastplate of coral colored Spondylus shell beads, seven ceramics and a gold tweezer, representing a bird image of the Sican or Lambayeque cultures.

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The 1,600-year-old tomb of a Mayan king has been found in Guatemala.

The 1,600-year-old tomb was discovered on May 29 beneath the El Diablo pyramid in the city of El Zotz. It is packed with of carvings, ceramics, textiles, and the bones of six children, who might have been sacrificed at the time of the king’s death.

However, much more work is needed before the scientists can piece together all the clues about the tomb’s owner.

“We still have a great deal of work to do,” said Stephen Houston an archaeologist at Brown University in Rhode Island. “We’ve only been out of the field for a few weeks, and we’re still catching our breath after a very difficult, technical excavation. Royal tombs are hugely dense with information and require years of study to understand.”

Before making the actual discovery, Houston said the team thought “something odd” was happening in the deposit where they were digging. They knew a small temple had been built in front of a sprawling structure dedicated to the sun god, an emblem of Maya rulership.

“When we sunk a pit into the small chamber of the temple, we hit almost immediately a series of ‘caches’ — blood-red bowls containing human fingers and teeth, all wrapped in some kind of organic substance that left an impression in the plaster. We then dug through layer after layer of flat stones, alternating with mud, which probably is what kept the tomb so intact and airtight.”

Eventually the scientists unearthed the final layer to reveal a small hole.

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A “spectacular” Neolithic tomb on the Channel Island of Guernsey has yielded 4,500-year-old pottery and flints and a greenstone ax head.

He said: “We’ve found some quite significant archaeology. We’ve started to find structures that come away from the main gallery grave and we also have artefacts.

“So far the results have been quite spectacular.”

The Delancey Park structure is Guernsey’s only gallery grave, while there are two to be found in Jersey and more along the Atlantic coast of northern Europe.

Gallery graves belong to the late Neolithic period and are therefore more recently built than the more prevalent ‘passage’ graves, such as Les Fouillages and Dehus in the Vale.

Dr Nash explained: “The earlier constructions feature passages leading to an inner space, often with partitioned areas that may denote ‘engendering’ – the separate burial of males and females.

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The 3,300-year-old tomb of Ptahmes, the mayof ot Memphis, has been found.

Archaeologists have discovered the 3,300-year-old tomb of the ancient Egyptian capital’s mayor, whose resting place had been lost under the desert sand since 19th-century treasure hunters first carted off some of its decorative wall panels, officials announced Sunday.

Ptahmes, the mayor of Memphis, also served as army chief, overseer of the treasury and royal scribe under Seti I and his son and successor, Ramses II, in the 13th century B.C.

The discovery of his tomb earlier this year in a New Kingdom necropolis at Saqqara, south of Cairo, solves a riddle dating back to 1885, when foreign expeditions made off with pieces of the tomb, whose location was soon after forgotten.

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