The "toy car" is on display alongside toy dolls and whistles - all made out of stone - at the Mardin Museum [map]. Archaeologist Mesut Alp reports that the toy car is at least 7,500 years old - dating back to the late Stone Age.

When speaking with the Cihan news agency and reporters with Todays Zaman, Alp insisted that the item is a toy car.

Culture and Tourism Director of Mardin, Davut Beliktay, confirmed that the exhibit piece as a 7,500-year-old toy car.

Beliktay said that the car is "like a copy" of cars today; adding that it also resembles a tractor. However, he didn't explain how a toy car could be 7,500 years old.

A joint British, Danish, American and Jordanian team of archaeologists has discovered 20,000-year-old hut structures at the archaeological site of Kharaneh IV in eastern Jordan.

According to the University of Cambridge, the discovery suggests that the area was once intensively occupied and that the origins of architecture in the region date back twenty millennia, before the emergence of agriculture.

A paper, published in the journal PLoS-ONE, describes huts that hunter-gatherers used as long-term residences and suggests that many behaviors that have been associated with later cultures and communities, such as a growing attachment to a location and a far-reaching social network, existed up to 10,000 years earlier.

"What we witness at the site of Kharaneh IV in the Jordanian desert is an enormous concentration of people in one place," said Dr. Jay Stock from the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, a co-author on the paper.

"People lived here for considerable periods of time when these huts were built. They exchanged objects with other groups in the region and even buried their dead at the site. These activities precede the settlements associated with the emergence of agriculture, which replaced hunting and gathering later on. At Kharaneh IV we have been able to document similar behavior a full 10,000 years before agriculture appears on the scene."

Cairo - Archaeologists on Monday began restoration on a 4,500-year-old wooden boat found next to the pyramids, one of Egypt's main tourist attractions. The boat is one of two that were buried next to the Pharaoh Khufu, spokesmen for a joint Egyptian-Japanese team of archeologists said. The boats are believed to have been intended to carry pharaohs into the afterlife.

Khufu, also known as Cheops, is credited with building the Great Pyramid of Giza, the largest of the pyramids. Khufu, son of Snefru, was the second ruler of the 4th Dynasty around 2680 B.C. and ruled Egypt for 23 years. Both boats, made from Lebanese cedar and Egyptian acacia trees, were originally discovered in 1954. One of the boats is on display at a museum near the pyramids.

The second boat, which is now undergoing the restoration, remained buried. It is thought to be smaller than its sister ship, which is about 140 feet (43 meters) long. The head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mustafa Amin, said Egyptologists began taking samples of the wood for restoration on Monday. "The boat was found in a complete shape, intact and in place," he said, adding that the focus now is on taking samples of the wood.

A total of 23 pre-Columbian stone plaques dating back approximately 550 years, with carvings illustrating such Aztec myths as the birth of the god of war Huitzilopochtli, were discovered by archaeologists in front of the Great Temple of Tinochtitlan in downtown Mexico City, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said.

Bas-relief sculptures on slabs of tezontle (volcanic rock) relate the mythological origins of the ancient Mexica culture through representations of serpents, captives, ornaments, warriors and other figures, the INAH said in a statement.

The pre-Columbian remains are of great archaeological value because this is the first time such pieces have been found within the sacred grounds of Tenochtitlan and can be read "as an iconographic document narrating certain myths of that ancient civilization," archaeologist Raul Barrera said.

Around 200 AD Indians in Florida and Georgia began the construction of enormous earthen pyramids. At the same time corn also arrived in Florida. Corn is a native crop of Mexico and archaeologist William Sears, who first discovered this evidence of corn agriculture in Florida, argued in his book that it must have come from Mexico or Central America.

One such earthen pyramid was constructed in the Florida panhandle at a site known today as the Letchworth-Love Mounds. This "mound," or more accurately "earthen pyramid," is the tallest such earthwork in Florida at over 46 feet high. Pottery collected from this site was mostly of a variety known as Weeden Island. Weeden Island pottery contains many designs and motifs which appear Mesoamerican in orign. Weeden Island pottery likely evolved from another type of pottery known as Swift Creek which was also decorated with a series of designs and symbols which several researchers have noted have a Mesoamerican-appearance.

Across the border in Georgia another huge earthen pyramid was also constructed at the same time as Letchworth. The site, known as Kolomoki Mounds, also features large collections of both Swift Creek and Weeden Island pottery. The archaeologist who recently studied the site noted in his book, Kolomoki: Settlement, Ceremony & Status in the Deep South, that Kolomoki was the most populated settlement north of Mexico during its time period. The large pyramid at Kolomoki has a base larger than a football field and rises 57 feet high.

The real name and birthplace of legendary silent-film star Charlie Chaplin is shrouded in mystery, Britain's domestic spy agency concluded after a probe into U.S. claims he was a communist sympathizer, documents released on Friday revealed.

British MI5 agents were asked in 1952 to investigate Chaplin's background by the FBI, which believed he was using an alias and that his real name was Israel Thornstein, over long-running U.S. suspicions about the actor's left-wing leanings.

Chaplin, one of Hollywood's first and greatest stars famed for his Little Tramp character, believed he was born on April 16, 1889, in south London.

But, an exhaustive search by MI5 found no record of his birth anywhere, nor anything to suggest he was any kind of security risk, declassified files from the spy agency revealed.

"It's very unusual, particularly after investigation by MI5, for the date and place of birth for such a well-known celebrity as Charlie Chaplin to remain so mysterious," said Professor Christopher Andrew, the official historian of MI5.

Adolf Hitler had a son with a French teenager while serving as a soldier during the First World War, according to new evidence.

Jean-Marie Loret, who died in 1985 aged 67, never met his father, but went on to fight Nazi forces during the Second World War.

His extraordinary story has now been backed up by a range of compelling evidence, both in France and in Germany, which is published in the latest edition of Paris's Le Point magazine.

Hitler is said to have had an affair with Mr Loret's mother, Charlotte Lobjoie, 16, as he took a break from the trenches in June 1917.

Although he was fighting the French near Seboncourt, in the northern Picardy region, Hitler made his way to Fournes-in-Weppe, a small town west of Lille, for regular leave.

There he met Miss Lobjoie, who later told their son: "One day I was cutting hay with other women, when we saw a German soldier on the other side of the street.

A collection of private photographs showing Adolf Hitler in a series of bizarre poses to rehearse his public speeches has been published.

The album features black and white images of the Nazi leader using expressive hand gestures and unusual poses taken by his personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann.

In one, he is seen raising his fist in the air while in another, he appears to be pointing to an imaginary audience. He is also seen leaning against a tree wearing lederhosen.

The photographs, taken in the late 1920s to show the dictator how he appeared to the German public, were later banned from being published by Hitler for being "beneath one's dignity".

His barnstorming performances in court rewrote the law books. But it was 18th-century barrister William Garrow's shocking love life that caused the biggest rumpus in Georgian society

It was 1791, and chaos reigned in the Old Bailey courtroom. Men and women spat their abuse from the public gallery, the faces of bewigged legal officials remained impassive and in the dock, wringing his hands in abject misery, stood 23-year-old Rhynwick Williams.

The search for the notorious London Monster - who had slashed and stabbed women in vicious, unprovoked attacks, thus striking fear throughout the capital - was apparently over.

Corrupt and inept police, under intense pressure to find a man, had done just that.

Williams, a drunken reprobate, had found himself hauled before court. It didn't matter that two honourable witnesses could testify that he had been with them when several of the attacks had occurred. All that mattered was that the baying crowd were about to get their blood.

In these times of swift trials - many court hearings lasted just eight minutes - and death penalties meted out without hesitation, Williams' future looked bleak indeed - and everyone in court knew it. Suddenly, out of the chaos, stepped a young barrister.

Grasping the attention of the court and the rabble in the gallery, he turned on those giving evidence and launched a savage verbal attack.

Vancouver - More than three millennia ago, ancient people flocked to Chavín de Huantar, a village in a high valley in the Peruvian Andes, to hear the oracles speak. And indeed they spoke - in the voice of resonant conch shell trumpets, and with the help of some clever architectural design, according to findings presented here today at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes ScienceNOW). The research suggests that the Chavín culture - and perhaps other ancient cultures - knew acoustic tricks that might be the envy of a modern concert hall engineer.

Chavín de Huantar consists of terraces, squares, ornate megaliths, and a temple, and there's abundant evidence that it was used for religious ceremonies. The site also contains bas-relief sculptures sporting powerful animal imagery, including jaguars, condors, and snakes; images of hallucinogenic plants; and artifacts of the tools used to prepare them for consumption.

Chavín de Huantar is particularly well suited to the study of ancient uses of sound, says Miriam Kolar, an archeoacoustics researcher at Stanford University. That's because the interior architecture contains elaborate, multilevel mazes with long corridors and staircases that affect acoustics today and are well enough preserved to detect what the original residents must have heard. What's more, ancient conch shell trumpets have been excavated in the village; when blown into, the shells make a haunting, warbling sound, and fossil conch shells are embedded in stones on the floor of the temple. Kolar played a recording of the conch shell trumpet at the meeting. "It's not very imposing over loudspeakers," she said. "But in person it rattles your bones."