Two weeks ago I wrote about the new issue of the local history journal Calatria and used a photograph of the famous Roman coin hoard discovered in the 1930s. Several people have been in touch to ask for more information on this subject which I first wrote about in this column five years ago. It certainly bears repeating because the discovery was probably the greatest ever Roman find in the district.

Today we are familiar with the amazing discoveries made by archaeologists and their new friends the metal detectorists but back in August 1933 it was not careful excavation but the accidental swing of a workman's spade that unearthed the biggest hoard of Roman coins ever found in Scotland.

Council workmen were digging foundations at the north end of Bells Meadow where the bingo hall is today. Robert Wallace who lived in Bank Street was one of the men involved and when his spade hit something solid he investigated and found the rim of an earthenware pot.

As he tried to lift it up it shattered and out popped a mass of silver coins held together in a big lump by the verdigris of the centuries. Later on Robert told the Herald reporter: "Some of my workmates made a rush for the coins which broke away from the main cluster but I wrapped my jacket over them and carried them to the tool shed where I put them under lock and key."

The elongated skulls of Paracas in Peru caused a stir in 2014 when a geneticist that carried out preliminary DNA testing reported that they have mitochondrial DNA "with mutations unknown in any human, primate, or animal known so far". Now a second round of DNA testing has been completed and the results are just as controversial - the skulls tested, which date back as far as 2,000 years, were shown to have European and Middle Eastern Origin. These surprising results change the known history about how the Americas were populated.

Paracas is a desert peninsula located within Pisco Province on the south coast of Peru. It is here where Peruvian archaeologist, Julio Tello, made an amazing discovery in 1928 - a massive and elaborate graveyard containing tombs filled with the remains of individuals with the largest elongated skulls found anywhere in the world. These have come to be known as the 'Paracas skulls'. In total, Tello found more than 300 of these elongated skulls, some of which date back around 3,000 years.

In 1961, an Israeli archaeologist named Pessah Bar-Adon accidentally stumbled upon a marvelous hoard of ancient archaeological relics, including the oldest crown known to man.

While Pessah was rappelling down a sheer cliff in Nahal Mishmar, he discovered what has been dubbed by some as the "Cave of Treasures."

This discovery consisted of 442 prized artifacts that were made out of ivory, stone and more significantly, copper and bronze.

The world's oldest mummies have just had an unusual check-up.

More than 7,000 years after they were embalmed by the Chinchorro people, an ancient civilization in modern-day Chile and Peru, 15 mummies were taken to a Santiago clinic last week to undergo DNA analysis and computerized tomography scans.

The Chinchorro were a hunting and fishing people who lived from 10,000 to 3,400 BC on the Pacific coast of South America, at the edge of the Atacama desert. They were among the first people in the world to mummify their dead. Their mummies date back some 7,400 years -- at least 2,000 years older than Egypt's.

Now, researchers are hoping to use modern medical technology to reconstruct what they looked like in life, decode their genes and better understand the mysteries of this ancient civilization.

Archaeologists from the University of Birmingham have found "compelling evidence" of new pharaonic tombs at Qubbet el-Hawa in Aswan, Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities has revealed.

A two-metre high ancient encroachment wall has been discovered below a visitors' pathway in the northern part of the West Aswan cemetery at Qubbet el-Hawa.
It follows and archaeological mission by the University of Birmingham and the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) Qubbet el-Hawa Research Project Group (QHRP), directed by Dr Martin Bommas of the University of Birmingham.

The newly discovered wall is thought to indicate the architectural support for the known tombs of the first upper terrace, including those of Harkhuf and Heqaib, who were governors of Elephantine Island during the Old Kingdom.

Owing to the landscape of Qubbet el-Hawa, the support wall helped to secure the hillside, and thus lower lying tombs, which were accessible by a causeway leading to a second terrace.

New Orleans experienced a rare white Christmas in 1916, but few residents were rejoicing. That's because the city was peppered with damaging chunks of hail, as well as torrential rain that flooded sidewalks and streets. As far as the local newspapers could tell, it was the first time hail had fallen in the city on Christmas.

Severe weather hadn't been in the forecast, according to The Times-Picayune. The paper's reporter seemed downright miffed by that fact, judging by a Dec. 26, 1916, story that was probably a lot for readers to process if they had celebrated hard on the holiday.

"'Partly cloudy' was the Weather Bureau forecast for Christmas Day," the paper wrote. "It was partly cloudy, but the bureau failed to say which part would be cloudy. It was cloudy, not only partly cloudy, but cloudy was the biggest part of the day. But it was more than cloudy. Hail, rain, fog, dampness, thunder and lightning and almost every kind of weather. Even snow, but the snow was on the whiskers of Old Santa Claus on the Christmas trees, on the Christmas calendars, and in the specially decorated holiday show windows."

Intense flooding in the low countries of Europe became "darkly repetitive" during the Little Ice Age, writes McKillop. The cooling period lasted 450 years.

For the Dutch, the Grote Mandrake is nothing to do with Linux software, but means "The Great Drowning" and is named for the epic and massive flooding that occurred, more and more frequently in the Low Countries of Europe's North Sea region as Europe's Little Ice Age intensified.

Grote Mandrake flood killed at least 100,000

Normal or predictable spring and autumn flooding was increasingly replaced by large-area and intense flooding, sometimes outside spring and autumn from about 1300, in recurring crises which lasted into the 18th century. In the Low Countries and across Europe, but also elsewhere, the cooling trend starting in the late 13th century became more intense. It brought long cold winters, heavy storms and floods, loss of coastal farmlands, and huge summer sandstorms in coastal areas further damaging agriculture. Climate historians estimate that major flooding on an unpredictable but increasingly frequent basis started as early as 1250. Extreme events like the Grote Mandrake flood of 1362 which killed at least 100,000 people became darkly repetitive.

To understand today's crises in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere, one must grasp their shared Lebanese connection. This assertion may seem odd. After all, what is the big deal about Lebanon? That little country hasn't had top headlines since Israel deigned to bomb and invade it in 2006. Yet, to a large extent, the roots of the bloody tangle now enmeshing the Middle East lie in Lebanon: or to be more precise, in the Lebanon policy of Israel.

Rewind to the era before the War on Terror. In 1995, Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's "dovish" Prime Minister, was assassinated by a right-wing zealot. This precipitated an early election in which Rabin's Labor Party was defeated by the ultra-hawkish Likud, lifting hardliner Benjamin Netanyahu to his first Premiership in 1996.

Italian researchers have discovered what might be the oldest nativity scene ever found — 5,000-year-old rock art that depicts a star in the east, a newborn between parents and two animals.

The scene, painted in reddish-brown ochre, was found on the ceiling of a small cavity in the Egyptian Sahara desert, during an expedition to sites between the Nile valley and the Gilf Kebir Plateau.

"It's a very evocative scene which indeed resembles the Christmas nativity. But it predates it by some 3,000 years," geologist Marco Morelli, director of the Museum of Planetary Sciences in Prato, near Florence, Italy, told Seeker.

Morelli found the cave drawing in 2005, but only now his team has decided to reveal the amazing find.

"The discovery has several implications as it raises new questions on the iconography of one of the more powerful Christian symbols," Morelli said.

Researchers from the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities (Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports) and the University of Copenhagen are continuing to make important discoveries at Lechaion, the main harbour town of ancient Corinth.

Among them structures that join the Inner and Outer Harbours, and a unique wooden bulwark that made up part of a mole flanking the entrance to the Inner Harbour.

Greek and Danish archaeologists investigating Lechaion's harbour areas are finding that the town appears to have been much more important than previously thought. In the course of three excavation seasons, they have delineated major offshore structures, a monumental entrance canal and several inland canals connecting at least four harbour basins. In total, the area is greater than 500.000 m2 - bringing it on par with other major harbour towns of the age, such as Athens' harbours in the Piraeus and Roman Portus.

"This season topographical and geophysical surveys have made it possible for us to successfully delineate the canal zone between the inner and outer harbours. In the process we discovered that the entrance canal connecting the Inner and Outer Harbours was up to 30 m wide in the 4th and 3rd century BC, then grew narrower in later centuries.

The precise reason why remains to be discovered," says c o-director of the Lechaion Harbour Project Bjørn Lovén.

The team mapped the full extent of the mole flanking the eastern side of the entrance canal as far as 46 meters offshore in 1 - 3 meters of water. Working carefully and methodically for 35 days, divers defined the eastern side of the canal. At the harbour entrance, and interconnected with this mole, they discovered strong stone foundations, perhaps for a tower that would protect the entrance. Nearby were found two column drums. Their precise purpose remains unknown, but such drums found at other excavated Roman harbours supported porticoes on the harbour front. Future explorations promise more discoveries.

"The extremely rare wooden structures we've found in the early stages at Lechaion give us hope that we'll find other organic materials, such as wooden tools, furniture, wooden parts of buildings and shipwrecks - the potential is immense and it is important to stress that we almost never find organic material on land in the central Mediterranean region", says Bjørn Lovén.