Stone Age artists used‭ ‬cartoon-like techniques to give the impression that wild beasts were trotting or running across cave walls,‭ ‬a new study‭ has suggested.

‭Reporting in ‬ the June issue of Antiquity, archaeologist Marc Azéma of the University of Toulouse - Le Mirail in France and independent French artist Florent Rivère, argued that by about‭ ‬30,000‭ ‬years ago Paleolithic artists used "animation effects" in their paintings. To render the movement, they deconstructed it in successive images.

According to the researchers, this would explain multiple heads or limbs on some cave paintings.

"Prehistoric man foreshadowed one of the fundamental characteristics of visual perception, retinal persistence," Azéma and Rivère wrote.

Azéma, who spent ‭ ‬20‭ ‬years researching Stone Age animation techniques,‭ isolated 53 ‬figures in‭ ‬12‭ ‬French caves which superimpose two or more images to represent trot or gallop,‭ ‬head tossing and tail shaking.‭

"Lascaux is the cave with the greatest number of cases of split-action movement by superimposition of successive images. Some 20 animals, principally horses, have the head, legs or tail multiplied," Azéma said.

When the paintings are viewed by flickering torchlight, the animated effect "achieves its full impact," said Azéma.

"That such animation was intentional is endorsed by the likely use of incised disks as thaumatropes," he added.

Leonardo da Vinci may have left behind sketches of helicopters, tanks and submarines but it is rare that we find actual artifacts that seem so way ahead of their time. Almost like a science fiction tale of archaeologists finding a wristwatch buried deep in an Egyptian pyramid or motorcar under the foundations of Stonehenge, we do have an example of a scientific computer that was built between 150 and 100 BC. It was so advanced, nothing as complex would be developed again until the 14th century.

The Antikythera mechanism was lost to the world for centuries. The device was salvaged in 1900 from a ship that sank en route to Rome, in the 1st century BC, between Crete and the island of Antikythera in the Mediterranean. When one of the fragments was discovered to contain a bronze gear wheel, the idea that this was some kind of astronomical clock was dismissed as too fantastic an anachronism. It was not until 1951 that the investigation was picked up by a British science historian Derek J. de Solla Price. So far 82 fragments have been recovered of what is now considered the oldest known astronomical computer.

The device is made of bronze and contains 30 gears though it may have had as many as 72 originally. Each gear was meticulously hand cut with between 15 and 223 triangular teeth, which were the key to discovering the mechanism's various functions. It was based on theories of astronomy and mathematics developed by Greek astronomers who may have drawn from earlier Babylonian astronomical theories and its construction could be attributed to the astronomer Hipparchus or, more likely, Archimedes the famous Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer. Why it was built, or for whom is unknown.

A small cosmetic jar offers more circumstantial evidence that the legendary aviator, Amelia Earhart, died on an uninhabited island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati.

The jar was found on a remote island where Amelia Earhart may have lived as a castaway.

• A small cosmetic jar found on a remote island in the Pacific offers new clues in the Amelia Earhart mystery.
• The artifact could have been a jar of Dr. Berry's Freckle Ointment, a concoction once used to fade freckles.
• It's well documented Amelia had freckles and disliked having them.

The Great Wall of China is more than twice as long as originally believed, according to the first definitive archaeological survey of the iconic ancient defensive structure.

Released by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH), the survey began in 2007, mapping every trace of the wall across 15 Chinese provinces.

It emerged that the wall is much longer than previously thought. Indeed, it measures 13,170.6956 miles, or 21,196.18 km. A preliminary study released in 2009 estimated the wall to snake 5,500 miles, or 8,850 km across the country.

A total of 43,721 heritage sites were identified during the survey, "including stretches of the wall, defense works and passes, as well as other related Great Wall facilities and ruins," Tongo Mingkang, SACH deputy chief, said.

Known to the Chinese as the "Long Wall of 10,000 Li", the Great Wall is the world's largest human-made structure -- a series often overlapping fortifications made of stone, bricks and earthen works whose construction begun as early as the 7th century BC.

The defensive structure was first linked up under Emperor Qin Shi Huang in about 220BC. to protect the ancient Chinese empire from marauding tribes from the north.

Since then, many dynasties have maintained and renovated the wall. The majority of the existing structure was reconstructed during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

A warship submerged for two centuries in a river near Washington, D.C., could provide new insight into the relatively obscure War of 1812, say archaeologists who are preparing to excavate the wreck.

The war started because the British, who had been fighting with France since 1803, imposed restrictions on U.S. trade with the French, infuriating Americans. Relations worsened when British ships began intercepting U.S. vessels on the high seas, removing any British-born sailors, and forcing them to serve in the British navy.

The U.S. Congress declared war on the British - including their Canadian colonists - in June 1812.

Archaeologists have unearthed what they believe are the oldest known fish traps that date back to at least 9,000 years.

The remains of seven basket traps were discovered in the Baltic Sea off Sweden by a team of marine archaeologists from Stockholm's Sodertorn University.

The ancient finger-thick hazel rods are thought to be the remains of stationary basket traps, the researchers said.

"This is the world's oldest find when it comes to fishing," Johan Ronnby, a professor in marine archaeology, was quoted as saying by British media.

Arne Sjostrom, a fellow archaeologist who worked on the Sodertorn project, said the sticks seemed to have been used as a "sort of fence to lead the fish into a creel or they were part of the actual creel".

Underneath the thick, virgin rainforest cover in the Mosquitia region of Honduras, archaeologists have discovered ruins they think may be the lost city of Ciudad Blanca. Legends say the "White City" is full of gold, which is why conquistador Hernando Cortes was among the first Ciudad Blanca seekers in the 1500s. But the method the modern researchers used was a little different from previous explorers' techniques. The modern-day researchers flew over the area in a small plane and shot billions of laser pulses at the ground, creating a 3D digital map of the topology underneath the trees.

Archaeologists in London have discovered the remains of an early playhouse used by William Shakespeare's company where Henry V and possibly Romeo and Juliet were first performed.

The Curtain theater, north of the river Thames in Shoreditch, was home to Shakespeare's company - the Lord Chamberlain's Men - before the riverside Globe theater was built.
Remains of walls forming the gallery and the yard within the venue were discovered by archaeologists from Museum of London Archaeology, or MOLA. "This is a fantastic site which gives us unique insight into early Shakespearean theaters," MOLA's Chris Thomas, who is leading the archaeological work, said Wednesday.

The theater was immortalized as "this wooden O" in the prologue of Henry V with the lines: "Can this cock-pit hold within this wooden O, the very caskes that did affright the Ayre at Agincourt?"

Mexican cultural authorities have preserved an archaeological area with several Maya buildings more than 1,500 years old that were buried under a highway in the Yucatan peninsula.

The archaeological zone, comprised of the remains of five Maya buildings, was part of the ancient city of Oxkintok and is located on both sides of the highway, where a roadside stop has been set up so that visitors or travelers can look around, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said.

In the ruins of a Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan, archaeologists have uncovered a stone statue that seems to depict the prince Siddhartha before he founded Buddhism.

The stone statue, or stele, was discovered at the Mes Aynak site in a ruined monastery in 2010, but it wasn't until now that it was analyzed and described. Gérard Fussman, a professor at the Collège de France in Paris, details his study in The Early Iconography of Avalokitesvara (Collège de France, 2012).

Standing 11 inches (28 centimeters) high and carved from schist - a stone not found in the area - the stele depicts a prince alongside a monk. Based on a bronze coin found nearby, Fussman estimates the statue dates back at least 1,600 years. Siddhartha lived 25 centuries ago.

The prince is shown sitting on a round wicker stool, his eyes looking down and with his right foot against his left knee. He is "clad in a dhoti (a garment), with a turban, wearing necklaces, earrings and bracelets, sitting under a pipal tree foliage. On the back of the turban, two large rubans [are] flowing from the head to the shoulders," writes Fussman in his new book. "The turban is decorated by a rich front-ornament, without any human figure in it."

The monk stands at the prince's right side, his right forearm shown upright. In his right hand the monk holds a lotus flower or palm (now broken), and in his left is a round object of some kind.

Based on the iconography of the stele, particularly the pipal leaves, Fussman believes the prince is Gautama Siddhartha Sakyamuni, who is said to have achieved enlightenment, become a Buddha - someone of divine wisdom and virtue - and founded the religion of Buddhism. This stele shows him at an early moment in his life, when he has yet to start his fateful journey of enlightenment.