A Bronze Age settlement hidden on the Arabian Peninsula reveals secrets about the slow growth of urbanization in the region.
A small 4,400-year-old town in the Khaybar Oasis of Saudi Arabia hints that Bronze Age people in this region were slow to urbanize, unlike their contemporaries in Egypt and Mesopotamia, a new study finds.

Archaeologists discovered the site near the city of Al-'Ula in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia and called it "al-Natah." The settlement covered about 3.7 acres (1.5 hectares), "including a central district and nearby residential district surrounded by protective ramparts," the researchers said in a statement. But the town, which was occupied starting around 2400 B.C., was small, with a population of only around 500 people, the team noted in a study, published Wednesday (Oct. 30) in the journal PLOS One.

The residential area had a large amount of pottery and grinding stones, as well as the remains of at least 50 dwellings that may have been made of earthen materials. The central area had two buildings that may have been used as administrative areas, the team wrote in the paper. In the western part of the central area, a necropolis was found. It has large and high circular tombs that archaeologists call "stepped tower tombs."

No examples of writing have been found so far at the site, study lead author Guillaume Charloux, an archaeologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), told Live Science in an email. Researchers have unearthed only a few traces of cereals, but based on finds at other sites it's likely that al-Natah's people grew crops near the site, Charloux said.

The town and its nearby areas were surrounded by a 9-mile-long (14.5 kilometers) wall, which would have provided defense from raids carried out by nomads, the team wrote in an earlier paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The town was abandoned sometime between 1500 and 1300 B.C., but researchers aren't sure why this happened. "It's a pertinent question that I can't really answer at the moment," Charloux said, noting that "we have very few clues about the last phase of occupation."

The geopolitics of rare earths and precious metals require constant observation in order to understand some global events in greater detail.

Why lithium attracts so much attention

There are moments in History that are characterized by a strong economic component, so predominant that we are said to be facing a revolution, passing through the ever dramatically present moment of war. Since the end of the 19th century that the world has been witnessing wars over oil; now, however, we have been a few years into those over rare earths, among which lithium, a mineral indispensable for smartphones and especially electric cars, plays a privileged role.

Foreign Office documents, examined by a British historian and journalist, show that the UK organized from top to bottom the overthrow of President Evo Morales in order to seize Bolivia's lithium reserves. Nothing new under the sun: the U.S.-Great Britain axis has been dirty business for centuries already, and this is hardly the first planned subversion or export of democracy by bombs and coups.

A recent British Museum video reveals that the "oldest map of the world in the world" on a clay tablet from Babylon was deciphered to reveal a surprisingly familiar story.

The oldest globe ever found is the Imago Mundi, a Babylonian map of the world. This map is a Babylonian clay tablet with a schematic world map and two inscriptions written in the Akkadian language. The probably seventh century BC is when this map was created. It shows a small part of the world as the ancient Babylonians knew it, and it was found in the southern Iraqi city of Abu Habba (Sippar).

The ancient artifact was acquired by the British Museum in 1882 but remained a mystery for centuries until curators found a missing part and transcribed its cuneiform.

The cuneiform tablet from the 6th century BC shows an aerial view map of Mesopotamia — the land "between the rivers" in modern-day Iraq — and what the Babylonians believed lay beyond the known world at the time.

After centuries of deciphering, the ancient tablet provides insight into the Babylonians' beliefs about the known world at the time.

The tablet has several paragraphs of the cuneiform on its backside and above the map diagram describing the creation of the Earth and what its writer believed existed beyond it.

Researchers confirm the circle around Mesopotamia suggests that Babylonians believed the area was the center of the world. There also shows the river Euphrates cutting through ancient Mesopotamia.

Archaeologists have discovered two lost medieval cities in the eastern mountains of Uzbekistan that were important hubs on the ancient Silk Road. More importantly, these lost twin cities may have sustained themselves in a frightening landscape of metallurgy and trade.

The settlements, which are thought to have flourished between the sixth and the eleventh centuries, were discovered using remote sensing with lasers mounted on drones at an elevation of over 2 km above sea level. Merely 3% of the global populace currently resides above this elevation. Cusco, Peru, and Lhasa, Tibet, are two uncommon examples.

One of the cities - Tugunbulak, sat more than 2,000m (6,600 ft) above sea level. The Tugunbulak was about 120 hectares in area and was estimated to have been home to tens of thousands of people, making it comparable in size to Samarkand at the time.

The second city, Tashbulak, was smaller. It did, however, attract researchers due to its large cemetery, which contained 400 graves of men, women, and children. Among them are some of the oldest Muslim burial sites in the region.

The researchers team believes Tugunbulak and the smaller city, Tashbulak, were bustling settlements between the 8th and 11th centuries, during the Middle Ages when the area was controlled by a powerful Turkic dynasty.

Though Fethullah Gulen is gone, his movement is likely to remain a tool of Western influence on Türkiye.

Turkish Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, whom Ankara's authorities accused of orchestrating the failed 2016 coup attempt, has passed away at the age of 83 in the United States, where he had spent the final years of his life. His death was reported by Turkish media and Herkul, a website associated with the preacher and his movement.

According to Herkul, which had published Gülen's sermons and speeches for many years, he passed away on Sunday evening in a hospital where he had been receiving treatment. In his final years, Gülen struggled with a series of serious health issues, including kidney failure and diabetes, which significantly weakened him.

Residing in Pennsylvania for many years, Gülen was a figure of immense interest not only in religious circles but also in Türkiye's political landscape, where his movement was seen as a national security threat after the attempted coup. The Turkish government had repeatedly demanded his extradition, accusing him of creating a "parallel state" and engaging in subversive activities against the Turkish leadership.

The Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage (SBAH) announced that 478 artifacts were uncovered during an excavation expedition in the historic province of Babylon.

The Director of the Excavations Department accompanied the Missions Follow-up Committee to site 19/3 in Sector 38 of Al-Fayyadiya district to examine the work of the archaeological mission in the Babil governorate, according to a statement released by SBAH.

Under the direction of archaeologist Quhtan Abbas Hassan Aboud, the mission has uncovered information that provides fresh insights into ancient Mesopotamian life and culture.

During the visit, the head of the committee received a detailed explanation from the mission leader regarding the findings of the excavation. The Al-Fayadiya district's 19/3 excavation site is separated into two sectors, A and B. There are two layers of archaeological stratification in Sector A, which is 6 dunums (roughly 6,000 square meters) in size.

Railroad construction through a farm on the Danish island of Falster has revealed a 5,000-year-old Neolithic site hiding an advanced technology — a stone paved root cellar.

Archaeology researchers from the Museum Lolland-Falster, along with Aarhus University, Denmark, have analyzed the site in a paper, "Stone-Paved Cellars in the Stone Age? Archaeological Evidence for a Neolithic Subterranean Construction from Nygårdsvej 3, Falster, Denmark," published online in the journal Radiocarbon.

The emergence of the Funnel Beaker Culture around 6,000 years ago brought the Scandinavian region's first switch to agriculture and domesticated animals (sheep, goats, cattle), leading to a more sedentary lifestyle. With the new way of life came the region's first construction of houses, megalithic tombs (dolmens), and landscape-altering structures, a huge shift away from the highly mobile hunter-gatherer strategy of the Late Mesolithic.

Excavations at the site, Nygårdsvej 3, uncovered two phases of house construction. Both structures were built using a common Funnel Beaker Culture design (the Mossby-type), where interior posts provide support for a large double-span roof. Phase one included 38 post holes, while phase two had 35, indicating that a significant amount of architectural planning was involved.

Archaeologists unearthed ancient ovens and hearths, thought to be belonging to Phrygian who inhabited the region around the seventh century BC, during excavations at Midas Castle in Eskisehir in northwestern Türkiye.

It was determined that the hearths and ovens unearthed were used by the Phrygians to bake bread with the meat of cattle and sheep sacrificed for religious rituals.

Archaeological excavations at the Midas Castle in Yazılıkaya Midas Valley in the Han district of Eskişehir started again after 71 years with the cooperation of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Anadolu University.

Since 2022, important findings were reached in the 26-hectare (88-acre) Midas Castle area during the excavations carried out under the direction of associate professor Yusuf Polat, a faculty member of the Department of Archaeology at Anadolu University.

Head of the excavation Assoc. Prof. Dr. Polat said that this year they mainly worked in the area called 'Agdistis sanctuary' in the upper part of the rocky plateau.

Explaining that they obtained important results in the study around the rock altar dated to the Phrygian period, Polat gave the following information:

'For the first time, thanks to the extensive excavations carried out in front of a Phrygian altar, we have determined the existence of places where the preparations for the rituals performed in front of the altar were carried out, where there were hearths, with a simple stone foundation and wooden construction. According to the first determinations we made, in the sanctuary dated to the 8th-7th century BC, that is, the Middle Phrygian Period, at the same time, Lydian ceramics of the 7th-6th century BC, and ceramics and finds belonging to the Roman Period dated to the 1st and 2nd centuries in the upper layers were found.'

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the colonial system started to collapse. Many countries in Asia and Africa gained independence in accordance with the principles of self-determination stated in the UN Charter of 1945 and a UN declaration adopted in 1960. However, decades of dependence on European powers and their policies had significantly altered the destinies of Afro-Asian peoples and disrupted historical processes that had existed prior to the colonial era.

This is particularly evident in Arab-African relations, which thrived throughout the Middle Ages. Arabic language, culture, and traditions had begun spreading on the African continent in the 7th century AD, shortly after the emergence of Islam.

France's war against the Arabic language

In the 19th century, many European powers, including France, colonized Africa. From the outset, France waged a fierce campaign against Islamic culture and the Arabic language, striving to eliminate it from social and academic life and replace it with French. Colonial administrator Colonel Paul Marty, who served in Tunisia and Morocco and was an expert in the Arabic language, wrote about this in his book Le Maroc de Demain (The Morocco of Tomorrow), published in 1927.

"We must rigorously combat any attempt to provide education in Arabic, any intervention from Sharia scholars, and any manifestation of Islam. Only this way will we attract children, only through our own schools."

French authorities even prohibited their compatriots in the occupied territories from communicating with the locals in any language other than French. This policy aligned with Paris's broader educational and linguistic agenda. Following the fall of the Second French Empire in 1870, the Third Republic implemented free, compulsory, secular education under reforms carried out by French Prime Minister Jules Ferry (known as the Jules Ferry Laws). Expanding the use of the language throughout the territories was also French colonial policy.

In July 2018, India's state-owned Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) team unearthed war chariots, swords, and helmets more than 4,000 years old at Sinauli in the state of Uttar Pradesh.

Researchers have recently dated the discovery, which comprises royal burials along with chariots, weapons, and ritual artifacts, to approximately 4,000 years before the present, or 2000 BCE.

The discovery of chariots in the Indian subcontinent is a first, according to the researchers. Researchers say that similar weapons were also possessed by people in this subcontinent when the Mesopotamians used chariots, swords, and even helmets in battle in 2000 BC.

The archaeological site of Sinauli has been subject to archaeological excavations since 2005 and has revealed the existence of a necropolis with more than 120 burials, some of which belonged to high-status individuals, probably warriors or leaders.

The most striking aspect of the excavation was the discovery of three complete war chariots. The archaeologists also found a slew of, a torch, an antenna sword, highly decorated coffins, helmets, and an impressive variety of copper artifacts The astonishingly well-preserved remains are similar to those found in the late Harappan phase.

Studies have shown that the artifacts from Sinauli are associated with the Ochre-Colored Pottery (OCP) Culture, which flourished between 2000 and 1500 BCE in the area where the Yamuna and Ganges rivers converged. This period roughly corresponds with the late phase of the Indus Valley Civilization.