In what is shaping up to be an incredible find, neolithic stone circles, alignments and possible tombs have been discovered in the Syrian Desert. [Thx Saturn]

Dr. Mason explains that he “went for a walk” into the eastern perimeter of the site – an area that hasn’t been explored by archaeologists. What he discovered is an ancient landscape of stone circles, stone alignments and what appear to be corbelled roof tombs. From stone tools found at the site, it’s likely that the features date to some point in the Middle East’s Neolithic Period – a broad stretch of time between roughly 8500 BC – 4300 BC.

It is thought that in Western Europe megalithic construction involving the use of stone only dates back as far as ca. 4500 BC. This means that the Syrian site could well be older than anything seen in Europe.

At a recent colloquium in Toronto, Canada, Mason described his shock at discovering the apparent tombs, stone circles and stone alignments: “I was standing up there thinking, oh dear me, I’ve wandered onto Salisbury Plain,”

At the southern end of the landscape there are three apparent tombs. They are about eight metres in diameter and each of them “actually has a chamber in the middle”. The roof is corbelled which suggests that beneath them is “something you would want to seal in.” Each of these corbelled structures had a stone circle beside it, which is about two meters in diameter.

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Tomb raiders in china used bulldozers to tear into 10 ancient tombs, stealing most of the artifacts they unearthed.

The incident came almost a month after the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences claimed a major discovery of the tomb of Cao Cao, a renowned warlord and politician in the 3rd century AD, in central China.

Although the authenticity of Cao Cao’s tomb in Anyang, Henan, remains in question, the discovery seems to have reactivated interest in archaeology across the nation, with television programs about antiquities attracting enthusiasts.

Pieces of coffins made of valuable and rare Nanmu wood, as well as pottery and iron items, were seen scattered across an area of 1,000 square meters at the ravaged tomb site, located in Gucheng town in Gaochun county of Nanjing, the provincial capital, adjacent to the construction site of an expressway.

Judging from some of the items left by the robbers, Puyang Kangjing, a history scholar at the local museum, said Wednesday that the tombs date from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD).

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Three unfinished Byzantine tombs have been found in a recently discovered a cave in Wadi al-Zahab, Syria.

Head of the Department Farid Jabbour said the cemetery was discovered during the excavations carried out by the General Establishment for Water studies to keep off floods.

The expedition also surveyed the areas of Tal al-Safa, Tal Marah and Jaftlik, which date back to prehistoric ages. The expedition studied, documented and photographed the area, collecting samples of pottery fragments and making drawings of stone sculptures.

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Ancient Egyptians learned to exploit cracks in the Earth to make tomb-digging easier. Those cracks, however, allow the tombs to flood during heavy rainfall.

“We have seen evidence of seven separate flood events in four tombs so far,” said Penn State researcher Katarin A. Parizek.

Parizek had noticed that some tombs in the Valley of Kings, in Luxor, Egypt, were aligned with surface fractures that can be between 5 and 40 feet wide and up to a mile long. The fractured rock would have made for easier tomb digging, she figures. Of the 63 tombs in the area, 30 have so far been found to lie on fractures, while two lie diagonal to a trace and one is not on a fracture.

“From my observations, it seems that tomb builders may have intentionally exploited these avenues of less resistant limestone when creating tombs,” Parizek said.

Archaeologists have found two 5,000-year-old tombs at Kercem, Malta.

The rock-cut tombs lay undisturbed for almost 5,000 years. They may have been first encountered during the construction of the Kercem parish church, between 1846–51, which involved extensive quarrying. However the tombs did not draw any further attention and went unnoticed for another 163 years and the present development.

As the site was being cleared of debris in 2008, the tombs were exposed again. The Superintendence immediately took steps to protect the site. A temporary cover was installed to provide shelter from the rain, which came early in the autumn. The site was monitored and allowed to dry for an entire year.