Rome subway work reveals artifacts

Construction of the subway in Rome in 2017 resulted in scores of treasures from ancient times. Ancient Roman objects featured amphora, marble panels, coins and peach pits. Officials created a permanent exhibit of the excavated articles at the San Giovanni metro station.

Human bones at ancient Roman ruins of former barracks. 13 skeletons were found.

The barracks were for Roman Praetorian guards dating back to the period of Emperor Hadrian. (117 to 138). The Praetorian Guard were elite military troops. They were household troops of Roman emperors and acted as bodyguards. Notable finds included a three-pronged iron pitchfork, storage baskets, leather fragments possibly from a farmhand's glove or shoe, and traces carved into stone by a waterwheel's repeated turning. Peach pits, presumably from the farm's orchard, also were found. Peaches were still a novelty, first imported from the Middle East. Ancient Romans recycled. Amphorae, the jars they favored to transport and store food, were lined up with their ends cut open to double as water conduits. Other, older signs of life were carriage ruts from as long ago as the 6th century B.C.

Treasures of Ancient Greece: Life, Myth and Heroes

An exhibit of 150 ancient Greek artifacts was on display at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis in 2019. The exhibition featured bronze and marble statues, gold jewelry and funerary objects.

Cancer found in ancient Egyptians

This ancient woman died of breast cancer.

Archaeologists found six cases of cancer while studying the bodies of ancient Egyptians who were buried in the Dakhleh Oasis. The finds include a toddler with leukemia, a mummified man with rectal cancer and individuals with cancer possibly caused by human papillomavirus (HPV).

In five of the six cases, scientists determined that they had cancer by studying lesions (holes and bone damage) on their skeletons.

Those holes were left when cancer spread throughout their bodies. Researchers cannot be certain where the cancers originated in many of the cases.

Researchers believe the risk of cancer was considerably lower in ancient Egypt than it is today.

UK gold quarter stater

A Celtic quarter stater was found in Ulverston in 2017. It is from around 115 to 100 BC and could have been lost or buried at a time of approaching military turmoil. Julius Ceasar was the first to bring a Roman army to Britain in 55 and 54 BC but he got no further than Kent and the Thames Valley. A permanent conquest began by Cladius from 43 AD led to the building of forts, ports, towns and farms which were to last for hundreds of years. The Guildhall Museum at Rochester in Kent has a hoard of 11 gold staters found packed inside a hollow fossil flint sponge which had been buried in Kent.

The museum display noted: "Staters can be described as coins but are not currency - they do not have a uniform, recognized monetary value. They were a way of storing treasure and of rewarding people."

Jurassic-era piranha is world's earliest flesh-eating fish

The creature, found in South Germany, lived about 150 mya and had the distinctive teeth of modern-day piranhas. The Jurassic marauders used their razor teeth to tear chunks of flesh and fins off other fish; a renewable resource as fins grew back.