Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew, and I bring you our four top news stories from this past week of Archaeologica.  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

Archaeologists in Mexico have located the lost Maya city of Sak-Bahlán, the last place where the Maya remained independent of the Spanish.  Human burials found in Israel’s Tinshemet Cave surprisingly appear to show funerary ritual behavior as old as 100,000 years.  Analysis of a folded metallic object from the Late Bronze Age in the Czech Republic shows that it is a very rare piece of bronze armor.   And rock-cut features at a remote site in Madagascar from the Medieval period appear to be Zoroastrian, and therefore Persian.

Thanks to everyone for supporting our subscription platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service, available at heritagetac.org.  We now have hundreds of titles you can binge upon on Roku, including our recent video about finding the lost aircraft of Amelia Earhart.  Please help us spread the word!  Again, that link is heritagetac.org.

Our tour program, TAC Tours, will continue in October 2025 with our tour of spectacular sites in northern Peru spanning many thousands of years.  Please join us for that!  The link to our tour program is at archaeologychannel.org/tours.

And now, here’s Laura Kennedy with the Audio News from Archaeologica!  We hope you find this to be a valuable part of your day!  

Welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica!  I’m Laura Kennedy, and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news for the week of July 20th through the 26th, 2025.

Our first story takes us to Mexico, where archaeologists have rediscovered Sak-Bahlán, which was the last known city of the Lacandon Ch’ol rebels. 

As reported by Heritage Daily, an archaeological team led by Joshué Lozada Toledo used historical sources and Geographic Information Systems to track the lost city to the modern state of Chiapas, Mexico.  

The Lakandon Ch’ol, who were a group of Maya rebels, lived in the Laguna Miramar region until the Spanish conquest destroyed their capital, Lakam-Tun, near the end of the sixteenth century.  Survivors established a new city, Sak-Bahlán, deep in the Lacandon jungle, where they remained independent for over a century.  

Friar Pedro de la Concepción first recorded the city in the seventeenth century, which he renamed Nuestra Señora de los Dolores.  By 1721, the Lakandon Ch’ol had abandoned Sak-Bahlán, and the jungle eventually overtook it. 

Lozada Toledo, a researcher at the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology, reconstructed the pre-Hispanic and historical communication routes of Maya groups by layering various geographic and historical data.  He based his analysis on a 1698 account by Friar De Rivas.  By considering terrain, vegetation, water bodies, and cargo weight, Lozada Toledo created a map that estimated the likely location of the Sak-Bahlán site.

Lozada Toledo and his team, including Mexican archaeologists Rubén Núñez Ocampo and Socorro del Pilar Jiménez Álvarez, endured a challenging field trip, but ultimately found archaeological evidence at the predicted location near the Jataté and Ixcán rivers.  This discovery links several chronicles with new material discoveries, and it returns Sak-Bahlán to the map after nearly three centuries.  The development follows the last known historical account of the final survivors of the Dolores people, which was recorded in 1769.

The archaeological project is funded by the Discovery Channel and featured in the documentary, Discovering the Hidden Mayan City: Sac Balam.  The study, including Lozada Toledo’s predictive model, will soon appear in Chicomoztoc Magazine.  

Our next story takes us to central Israel, where researchers have discovered a well-preserved cave burial site that dates back 100,000 years. 

As reported by Phys.org, archaeologists excavating the Tinshemet Cave have identified what they believe to be one of the world’s oldest burial sites, where they have found several skeletons and artifacts that point to ceremonial rituals.

According to researchers, the burials are from the Middle Paleolithic era.  The cave has already yielded multiple significant discoveries, including five early human remains, two of which are complete skeletons, while the other three are skulls with associated bones. 

Researchers also uncovered over 500 fragments of red and orange ochre, indicating that early humans had the knowledge to produce pigments for symbolic or decorative purposes.  These findings, published in March 2025 in Nature Human Behavior, reveal complex behaviors, which go beyond basic survival. 

The local climate, combined with a unique blend of fire ash, rainfall and acidic limestone within the cave, created ideal conditions for preserving human remains and artifacts, including details such as interwoven fingers beneath one of the skulls.  At the cave’s entrance, archaeologists are slowly unearthing one early human skull from the sediment, and they say a full excavation may take years.

These discoveries at Tinshemet suggest that burial practices were becoming more widespread during this period.  This practice marks a shift in how early humans honored their dead and supports earlier discoveries from northern Israel.  However, some archaeologists continue to debate when the earliest intentional burials actually began.

The Paleolithic eastern Mediterranean served as a crossroads between Neanderthals from Europe and modern humans from Africa, where different early human groups likely interacted and interbred.  While researchers continue to study the two complete skeletons from Tinshemet, it is still uncertain whether they belonged to Neanderthals, modern humans, or a hybrid group. 

Archaeologists hypothesize that these encounters may have sparked the exchange of cultural practices, such as jewelry making or body painting.  Some researchers claim that burial sites such as these may have been thought of as territorial markers, which is a concept that still resonates in the region today.

We now turn to Brno, Czech Republic, where archaeologists have revealed the results of their analysis of a 3,200-year-old bronze armor piece. 

As reported by LiveScience, researchers have been analyzing a cache of intentionally damaged copper objects, originally discovered in 2023 by metal detectorists.  According to the Brno City Museum, among the artifacts was a mysterious folded metal piece that took archaeologists two years to study fully.

Using 3D scanning, researchers digitally examined the folded sheet metal and, through microscopic analysis of its ornamentation, confirmed it was part of a piece of body armor.  At the site, archaeologists also unearthed artifacts such as a spearhead, sickle, needle, and fragments of copper.  They claim that these objects were likely buried as part of a ritual.  

The armor dates to the Late Bronze Age, around 1600 to 1200 BC.  The period is associated with the Trojan War and widespread societal decline in the Mediterranean.  Archaeologists say that bronze armor was typically reserved for elite warriors, while others likely wore armor made of organic materials that have decomposed over time.

The Brno City Museum describes the bronze chest plate as a rare discovery, since it is only the second piece of ancient bronze armor ever unearthed within the country.  For this reason, the museum plans to keep the exact location of the excavation confidential for now. 

Museum director Zbyněk Šolc [SHOLTZ] emphasized the importance of collaboration between experts and the public in uncovering and preserving such artifacts.  The museum is now preparing an exhibit to showcase the armor and explore Bronze Age military culture in Central Europe.

We end our week in southwestern Madagascar, where Heritage Daily reports that archaeologists have unearthed a collection of stone-cut formations. 

A study led by Guido Schreurs of the University of Bern uncovered several carved stone structures, including sandstone niches, artificial terraces and stone basins.  The discoveries come from Teniky, in Madagascar’s southwestern Ihorombe region. 

Archaeologists used radiocarbon dating to determine that the age of these structures is between the late 10th and early 12th centuries AD.  According to researchers, this type of structure is not normally associated with traditional Malagasy architecture.  The stone carvings instead look more like funeral sites in Iran, which come from Zoroastrian traditions and practices.

The research team claims that the stone structures in Teniky are similar to what are called Zoroastrian “towers of silence,” where bodies were left exposed according to ancient Persian funerary customs.  This comparison suggests a possible Persian influence in Madagascar during that time. 

To support their hypothesis, researchers point to the discovery of Chinese and South Asian ceramic fragments at the site.  They claim that Madagascar may have had a role in the broader Indian Ocean trade network, which is likely how these ideas and practices would have arrived in the region.

Based on the teachings of Zoroaster and the Avesta scriptures, Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s oldest religions, as it originated in ancient Iran roughly 3,500 years ago.  The religion, though, had not been historically associated with Madagascar.  

Teniky is more than 200 miles from the coast, which adds to the mystery of these structures.  Archaeologists suggest that the appearance of these foreign practices indicates its inhabitants must have been linked to a large network of long-distance trade and cultural exchange. 

The researchers argue that this finding challenges the long-held view that Madagascar’s early population was shaped mainly by migrations from the African mainland and Southeast Asia.  Instead, it points to a more complex history involving broader influences across the Indian Ocean world.

The team has published their results in the journal Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa.

That wraps up the news for this week!

For more stories and daily news updates, visit Archaeologica on the World Wide Web at www.archaeologica.org where all the news is history! Also, be sure to check out our growing subscription platform, Heritage Broadcasting Service, at heritagetac.org!

I’m Laura Kennedy and I’ll see you next week!