So much for Hagar the Horrible, with his stay-at-home wife, Helga. Viking women may have equaled men moving to England in medieval invasions, suggests a look at ancient burials.

Vikings famously invaded Eastern England around 900 A.D., notes Shane McLeod of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Western Australia in the Early Medieval Europe journal, starting with two army invasions in the 800's, recounted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. The Viking invaders founded their own medieval kingdom, 'the Danelaw', in Eastern England.

"There is some archaeological evidence for early Norse female settlement, most obviously oval brooches, but this evidence is minimal. The more difficult to date evidence of place names, personal names, and DNA samples derived from the modern population suggests that Norse women did migrate to England at some stage, but probably in far fewer numbers than Norse men," begins the study.

Head of the archeological dig on Tel Tzafit, Prof. Aren Maeir says the find indicates that the two peoples thought of as bitter enemies may have been closer than we think.

A stone altar from the 9th century BCE was found in an archeological dig on Tel Tzafit, a site identified with the biblical Philistine city of Gat. The altar is reminiscent of Jewish altars from the same period and sheds light on the cultural links between the two peoples, who fought each other for centuries.

The altar is approximately one meter tall, half a meter wide and half a meter long. It was found by a team of diggers led by Prof. Aren Maeir of the Land of Israel and Archaeology studies at Bar-Ilan University. The most outstanding features of the altar are a pair of horns on its front and a cornice in the middle. Its form is reminiscent of the descriptions of the Jewish altars in the scriptures, with the most noticeable difference being that the altar in the Temple was described as having four horns, while the Gat altar has only two.

Maeir said Monday the altar demonstrates the cultural proximity between the two nations, traditionally cast as the most bitter of enemies in the scriptures. "Every group continues defining itself distinctly, but there's intensive interaction. Think about Samson for a second," he said. "It doesn't matter if the story is real or not. It's true he kills them and they kill him, but on the other hand, he does marry a Philistine woman and take part in their weddings."

By three million years ago, the world of Lucy and Australopithecus afarensis had vanished. Hidden forces were transforming the Earth's climate, with devastating consequences for the African landscape.

Temperatures in Africa plummeted and the air became stripped of moisture. Humid woodland shrivelled away, leaving wide belts of open terrain in its place.

Spinning around

The cause of this environmental upheaval was to be found in space. The Earth orbits the Sun at a slight tilt, known as the axis of rotation. This means that as our planet spins, it points towards the Sun at some times and away from it at others. This is the origin of the seasons on Earth. Three million years ago, this axis was changing so that the Earth pointed away from the Sun for longer periods. This caused an overall cooling of the Earth, locking away moisture in ice at the North and South Poles. It also made the climate more seasonal.

Somerset was the site of the UK's oldest open-air cemetery, the county council says.

Recent radiocarbon dating of two skulls found at a sand quarry in Greylake nature reserve near Middlezoy in 1928 revealed them to be 10,000 years old.

The council said the find was made under its Lost Islands of Somerset project by a team investigating the archaeology of the Somerset Levels.

Since their discovery, the skulls have been held at Bridgwater's Blake Museum.

The new findings show that by around 8,300 BC, hunter-gatherers were burying their dead on what was once an island amid the Levels.

A war and inferno that apparently destroyed one ancient society while dramatically elevating another in Peru is now shedding light on how states emerge in the world.

Scientists investigated ruins in the Titicaca basin in southern Peru, home to a number of thriving ancient societies more than 2 millennia ago. They focused on two prominent states in the region - Taraco, based along the Ramis River, and Pukara, in the grassland pampas. At its height, Taraco was about 250 acres (1 square kilometer) in size with approximately 5,000 people, give or take 2,000, while Pukara peaked at about 500 acres (2 sq. km.) and had about 10,000 people, give or take 2,000.

Their results suggest Pukara waged a violent war against Taraco, possibly killing hundreds with their weapons before burning the state to the ground.

"In the century that Pukara peaked, the site of Taraco was attacked, and [it] ceased to be a political power in the region," researcher Charles Stanish, director of UCLA's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, told LiveScience. "The inference that Pukara was responsible for the raid is extremely strong."

An archaeologist believes a wall carving in a south Wales cave could be Britain's oldest example of rock art.

The faint scratchings of a speared reindeer are believed to have been carved by a hunter-gatherer in the Ice Age more than 14,000 years ago.

The archaeologist who found the carving on the Gower peninsula, Dr George Nash, called it "very, very exciting."

Experts are working to verify the discovery, although its exact location is being kept secret for now.

Dr Nash, a part-time academic for Bristol University, made the discovery while at the caves in September 2010.

He told BBC Wales: "It was a strange moment of being in the right place at the right time with the right kit.

Countless generations have relied on grandparents for childcare, emotional support and a helping hand.

Now a theory claims that the older generation may have played a key role in the evolution of mankind.

Fossil experts say the number of grandparents shot up dramatically 30,000 years ago as people started to live longer.

With older people able to look after children, pass on knowledge and share in food gathering, our ancestors were able to spread around the world and develop farming, tools and civilisation.

July 25, marks the 100th anniversary of the discovery of the "Lost City" of Machu Picchu.

Hiram Bingham III (1875-1956), historian, explorer, treasure hunter and politician "discovered" the city that the Incas had abandoned 400 years before and which the Spanish conquistadors were never able to find. (He was the inspiration behind Hollywood's Indiana Jones character.) About 1,000 people were living there at the time.

Although other explorers had "found" Machu Picchu years before, Bingham was the first to scientifically explore and publicize the place that had been covered in an overgrowth of jungle trees and vines. The entire April 1913 issue of National Geographic was devoted to his work there. Bingham also wrote about it, notably Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru (1922) and Lost City of the Incas, a 1948 best-seller.

Machu Picchu was revered as a sacred place at a time quite a bit before the Incas "adopted" it as their own. The five-square-mile complex of palaces, baths, temples, storage rooms and about 150 houses arranged around a central plaza was completely self-contained. It was surrounded by agricultural terraces and watered by natural springs that could accommodate the population that lived there. Here is an example of the stone cuttings that were fitted together without mortar. Their construction was well-suited for earthquakes because they could sustain tremors without collapsing.

There is great speculation about why the Incas built Machu Picchu. Some say it was an estate and retreat site for Pachacuti and his royal court to relax, hunt and entertain guests.

There are more than 700 curious tunnel networks in Bavaria, but their purpose remains a mystery. Were they built as graves for the souls of the dead, as ritual spaces or as hideaways from marauding bandits? Archeologists are now exploring the subterranean vaults to unravel their secrets.

Beate Greithanner, a dairy farmer, is barefoot as she walks up the lush meadows of the Doblberg, a mountain in Bavaria set against a backdrop of snow-capped Alpine peaks. She stops and points to a hole in the ground. "This is where the cow was grazing," she says. "Suddenly she fell in, up to her hips."

A crater had opened up beneath the unfortunate cow.

On the day after the bovine mishap, Greithanner's husband Rudi examined the hole. He was curious, so he poked his head inside and craned his neck to peer into the darkness. Could it be a hiding place for some sort of treasure, he wondered? As he climbed into the hole to investigate, it turned out to be a narrow, damp tunnel that led diagonally into the earth, like the bowels of some giant dinosaur.

Suddenly the farmer could no longer hear anything from above. He panicked when he realized that it was getting difficult to breathe the stifling air -- and quickly ended his brief exploration.

Archaeologists have found ancient artifacts in New Brunswick which suggests that First Nations people moved through the area more than 10,000 years ago.

"We have individual finds and that's how we knew people were here," CBCnews quoted head of the archeology team Brent Suttie as saying.

"We had individual spear points that we knew were that old," he added, saying "But it's just we never had the sites to give us contextual information - like what people were eating, how they were living, the structures they may have been living in, what the population size may have been."