'Sensational' discovery in Denisova Cave is at least 50,000 years old BUT it wasn't made by Homo sapiens.
The 7 centimetre (2 3/4 inch) needle was made and used by our long extinct Denisovan ancestors, a recently-discovered hominin species or subspecies.

Scientists found the sewing implement - complete with a hole for thread - during the annual summer archeological dig at an Altai Mountains cave widely believed to hold the secrets of man's origins. It appears to be still useable after 50,000 years.

Professor Mikhail Shunkov, head of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, said: 'It is the most unique find of this season, which can even be called sensational.
'It is a needle made of bone. As of today it is the most ancient needle in the word. It is about 50,000 years old.'

Archaeological works in Alacahöyük, one of the most important centers of the Hittite Empire and considered Turkey's first "national excavation field," have unearthed a 2,300-year-old secret tunnel known as a potern.

"This tunnel is a big discovery in terms of Hittite architecture. This is my 55th year in professional life. I never thought I would find a potern but I did," said Ankara University Professor Aykut Çınaroğlu, the head of the excavations.

Çınaroğlu said they opened the season one month ago with a team of 24 people, including eight archaeologists, and were set to continue until the end of September.

While focusing on a sanctuary that was unearthed in 2014, they discovered a secret tunnel, he said.

Stating that more than one secret tunnel existed in the capital of the Hittites, Hattuşa, Çınaroğlu said:

"This new potern proves the existence of other poterns in Alacahöyük. We are carrying out excavations right now; we have not finished yet. We started from the gate opening to the sanctuary, trying to open it. This is a potern from nearly 2,300 years ago. We have dug 23 meters so far but think that it is longer. Cleaning work is continuing, too. We will see what we will find in the end. Poterns were placed under the castle, extending into the city. We have previously found a cuneiform tablet here, featuring a king who explains to priests what to do during ceremonies. This secret tunnel might have had a sacred function."

British historian, F. W. Maitland wrote:

We study the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today, and that today may not paralyze tomorrow.

Which is a fancy way of saying, what really happened does matter.[1] In a similar vein, John Dominic Crossan said something like, if we get yesterday right, we have a chance of getting today better. So, let's look at yesterday.

Back in 1956, David Ben-Gurion, possibly struggling with his conscience, confessed:

If I were an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural, we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We came from Israel, it's true, but that was two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? [2]

"God promised it to us"?

Not so fast. More and more scholars, Jewish and humanist, are questioning the exodus story and that "promise". Rabbi David Wolpe raised just that provocative question before his congregation of 2,200 at Sinai Temple in Westwood, California back in 2001, saying:

After a century of excavations trying to prove the ancient accounts true, archeologists say there is no conclusive evidence that the Israelites were ever in Egypt, were ever enslaved, ever wandered in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years or ever conquered the land of Canaan under Joshua's leadership.[3]

Teresa Watanbe continues:

The modern archeological consensus over the Exodus is just beginning to reach the public. In 1999, an Israeli archeologist, Ze'ev Herzog of Tel Aviv University set off a furor in Israel by writing in a popular magazine that stories of the patriarchs were myths and that neither the Exodus nor Joshua's conquest ever occurred.[4]

An ancient Mayan text captured the moment when a royal astronomer made a scientific discovery about the movement of Venus across the night sky.

The text, called the Dresden Codex, contains laborious measurements of the rising and setting of Venus. Based on these recordings, historians can now place this astronomer within a 25-year span within the first half of the 10th century.

"We can see the moment when this person puts it all together," said Gerardo Aldana, a science historian in the Department of Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a co-author of a new study describing the findings.

Several years ago, my articles advocating a large hike in the minimum wage caught the attention of James Galbraith, the prominent liberal economist, and we became a little friendly. As president of Economists for Peace and Security, he invited me to speak on those issues at his DC conference in late 2013. And after the presentations, he arranged a meeting with a friend of his, influential in DC political circles, at which the two of us could present my minimum wage proposals.

While we were waiting for the taxi to take us to that meeting, I heard him quietly discussing a few other matters with a friend standing next to him. Phrases such as "attacking Russia," "a nuclear first strike," and "Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs" came to my ears. I can't recall the exact words, but the conversation stuck in my mind both at the time and on my later flight home that evening, and although I hadn't mentioned anything, I wondered what remarkable historical facts he had been discussing. His father, the legendary economist John Kenneth Galbraith, had spent decades as one of America's most prominent public intellectuals and was a very influential figure in the Kennedy Administration, so I assumed that he was not merely engaging in casual speculation.

Finally, a week or two later, my curiosity got the better of me, and I dropped him a note, gingerly raising the topic I'd accidentally overheard. I suggested that if he possessed any private information regarding so astonishing a possibility—that the Kennedy Administration might have considered a nuclear first strike against the USSR—perhaps he had a duty to bring the facts to public awareness lest they be lost to history.

He replied that he'd indeed found persuasive evidence that the US military had carefully planned a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union in the early 1960s, and agreed about the historical importance. But he'd already published an article laying out the case. Twenty years earlier. In The American Prospect, a very respectable though liberal-leaning magazine.

A mysterious Renaissance-era manuscript filled with an unknown coded language is due to be reproduced and distributed by a Spanish publisher following the company's 10-year campaign to secure the deal.

No cryptographer in the world has managed to decipher the Voynich Manuscript, which is an eclectic mix of intricate writing and bizarre drawings of nude women, flowers, herbs and constellations.

The book's author, origin, date and language remains a mystery, although it's thought to have been written in Central Europe between the 15th and 16th century - it's named after the Polish-American bookseller, Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912.

Speculation as to who or what could have written the book varies from the extraterrestrial to the magical, with some wondering if it's nothing more than the work of jokester who scrolled some jibberish. Whatever their views on its origins, many have craved the chance to get their hands on the priceless piece of literature and study it in detail.

Her treasures include an incense burner decorated by solar symbols, 1,500 beads that once adorned her costume, and 100 pendants made from animal teeth.

The intriguing find of the remains of a 'noblewoman' from the ancient Okunev Culture was made in the Republic of Khakassia.

The Okunev people are seen as the Siberian ethnic grouping most closely related to Native Americans. In other words, it was ancestors of the Okunevs who populated America, evidently using primitive boats to venture to the ice-covered Beringia land bridge some 12,600 years ago.

The mysterious ancient culture was 'unparalleled' in Siberia in terms of its artistic richness and diversity, according to experts.

Undisturbed by pillaging grave robbers, the burial site of the woman, also containing the remains of a child, offers a wealth of clues about the life of these ancient people.

The junta that tried to seize power in the Soviet Union on August 18-21, 1991, is one of the most inept in the history of palace coups. Not only did it fail to take power, but it also brought about the opposite of its aims - the collapse of the USSR.

The coup was triggered by the New Union Treaty, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's stillborn, last-ditch attempt to save the USSR. The union was in the midst of an uncontrollable collapse of its command economy and being torn apart by its increasingly-nationalist minorities. With six Soviet republics, led by the Baltic States, already virtually seceding over the previous year, and upstart Boris Yeltsin threatening to marginalize Gorbachev in Moscow, the perestroika ideologist attempted to consolidate the remaining nine members into a new, looser confederacy of autonomous states.

"I thought that the worst instability was behind us at the time," Gorbachev said on the eve of the anniversary of the attempted coup, insisting that he still has no regrets over the plan. "There would have been difficult times ahead, but nothing like the momentous suffering caused by the economic reforms undertaken after the breakup of the country."

Yet while Gorbachev drew up new borders, destined to remain only as historical curios, his hard-line opponents saw a different picture - that he was simply paving the way for the dissolution of the country, not striking the workable compromise that he intended. "The treaty was an act of treason," Vasily Starodubtsev, one of the plotters, said simply when interviewed years later.

A surprising find of an ancient submarine loaded with weaponry on the seabed of the North Sea prompted Danish Maritime Authority to issue a prohibition on fishing and diving in the area.

The ban on fishing, diving or dropping anchor anywhere within a radius of 1,000 meters from the old wreckage came after Danish Maritime Authority and Defense Ministry received a warning from a team of divers, who found a WW1 submarine with unexploded mines and torpedoes on board.

On board the wreck there are 18 fully-intact mines and six torpedoes, Gert Normann Andersen, director of Sea War Museum Jutland and diving company JD-Contractor, which carried out the expedition, told the Danish tabloid newspaper BT. According to him, this is a rare find.

A trio of senior 'shipwreck hunters' have found a superbly-preserved trading boat which sank some 213 years ago at the bottom of Lake Ontario.

The 16-meter (53ft) Washington is believed to be the oldest commercial vessel ever discovered in one of the Great Lakes. It has remained in good condition because the deep, cold waters which surround it contain low oxygen levels, so its wood hasn't rotted to any great extent.

Built in 1797 in Pennsylvania, it was the first known boat to sail on both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and would typically transport furs.

The ship's final voyage was a November 1803 attempt to travel from from Kingston in Ontario to Niagara. A violent storm sank the vessel and killed all five men on board.