Easter Island is branded into popular consciousness as the home of the mysterious and towering moai statues, but these are not the only curiosity the South Pacific island holds. Where the moai are fascinating for their unknown purpose and mysterious craftsmen, the island's lost language of Rongorongo is equally perplexing. The unique written language seems to have appeared suddenly in the 1700s, but within just two centuries it was exiled to obscurity.

Known as Rapa Nui to the island's inhabitants, Rongorongo is a writing system comprised of pictographs. It has been found carved into many oblong wooden tablets and other artifacts from the island's history. The art of writing was not known in any nearby islands and the script's mere existence is sufficient to confound anthropologists. The most plausible explanation so far has been that the Easter Islanders were inspired by the writing they observed in 1770 when the Spanish claimed the island. However, despite its recency, no linguist or archaeologist has been able to successfully decipher the Rongorongo language.

Dig reveals thousands of stone items at portage on South Nation River

An Ottawa archeologist has discovered a rare site of human activity in Eastern Ontario from between 3,500 and 9,000 years ago. Paul Thibaudeau, an adjunct professor at Carleton University, has been leading a team of archeologists, students, and volunteers collecting artifacts from a dig near Casselman, east of Ottawa. It is only one of a half-dozen sites in Eastern Ontario that are considered reliable evidence of human presence during the period.

Thousands of stone items have been found at what Thibaudeau said was a portage around a waterfall and rapids on the South Nation River. The spot is believed to have been a temporary hunting and animal-skinning camp. Small stone tools used in skinning, remnants of tools, and waste from the toolmaking process have been found. "They were coming, staying briefly, and moving on, that's what we can tell right now," he said.

He knew he was onto something when one of his crew, Kelly Berckmans, of Ottawa and a Carleton student, found what appeared to be a piece of glass but turned out to be a crystal quartz "end scraper."

"When I saw that -that got me excited. When I started seeing a lot of quartz flakes, a lot of chipped stone in the other test pits I said something is going on here."

The end of the Norse settlements on Greenland likely will remain shrouded in mystery. While there is scant written evidence of the colony's demise in the 14th and early 15th centuries, archaeological remains can fill some of the blanks, but not all.

What climate scientists have been able to ascertain is that an extended cold snap, called the Little Ice Age, gripped Greenland beginning in the 1400s. This has been cited as a major cause of the Norse's disappearance. Now researchers led by Brown University show the climate turned colder in an earlier span of several decades, setting in motion the end of the Greenland Norse. Their findings appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Brown scientists' finding comes from the first reconstruction of 5,600 years of climate history from two lakes in Kangerlussuaq, near the Norse "Western Settlement." Unlike ice cores taken from the Greenland ice sheet hundreds of miles inland, the new lake core measurements reflect air temperatures where the Vikings lived, as well as those experienced by the Saqqaq and the Dorset, Stone Age cultures that preceded them.

"This is the first quantitative temperature record from the area they were living in," said William D'Andrea, the paper's first author, who earned his doctorate in geological sciences at Brown and is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst. "So we can say there is a definite cooling trend in the region right before the Norse disappear."

Archaeologists searching for the remains of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa have uncovered a skeleton that may belong to the mysterious woman.

The skeleton was unearthed in a Florence convent where researchers are searching for the remains of Lisa Gherardini Del Giocondo, the women believed to be the model for da Vinci's famous painting. Based on an early look at the cranium and pelvis, the skeleton appears to be female, Bologna University anthropologist Giorgio Gruppioni told news agencies Friday (May 27).

However, more study is needed to determine if the skeleton is, in fact, female, much less whether she lived and died around the same time as Del Giocondo.The researchers were led to the church by historical records, including Gherardini's death certificate discovered a few years ago. She reportedly spent her last two years (until her death in 1542) at St. Ursula in Florence after her husband's death. The documents note that there is a crypt beneath the church floor where Gherardini would have been buried.

Researchers plan to continue the excavation of the skeleton. If the bones do belong to a woman and are from the right time period, the archaeologists will attempt to extract DNA from the skeleton to compare it with the remains of two of Del Giocondo's children, buried in a separate cemetery. They also hope to reconstruct her face to compare it with that of the Mona Lisa painting.

A giant prehistoric shrimp-like monster which terrorised the oceans more than half a billion years ago has been discovered by scientists.

The fearsome-looking beasts, known as anomalocaridids, grew up to 6ft long and - unlike today's prawns - could bite back, using its razor-sharp teeth to crack open shellfish.

They were already believed to be the largest animals of the 'Cambrian' period which first spawned our complex ecosystem.

While scanning underneath the waters of Lake Michigan for shipwrecks, archeologists found something a lot more interesting than they bargained for, as they discovered a boulder with a prehistoric carving of a mastodon, as well as a series of stones arranged in a Stonehenge-like manner.

At a depth of about 40 feet into Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay, using sonar techniques to look for shipwrecks, archeologists discovered sunken boats and cars and even a Civil War-era pier, but among all these they found this prehistoric surprise, which a trained eye can guess by looking at the sonar scans photos in this article.

"When you see it in the water, you're tempted to say this is absolutely real," said Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University College who made the discovery, during a news conference with photos of the boulder on display in 2007. "But that's what we need the experts to come in and verify.

A robot explorer sent through the Great Pyramid of Giza has begun to unveil some of the secrets behind the 4,500-year-old pharaonic mausoleum as it transmitted the first images behind one of its mysterious doors.

The images revealed hieroglyphs written in red paint that have not been seen by human eyes since the construction of the pyramid. The pictures also unveiled new details about two puzzling copper pins embedded in one of the so called "secret doors."

Published in the Annales du Service Des Antiquities de l'Egypte (ASAE), the images of markings and graffiti could unlock the secrets of the monument's puzzling architecture.

"We believe that if these hieroglyphs could be deciphered they could help Egyptologists work out why these mysterious shafts were built," Rob Richardson, the engineer who designed the robot at the University of Leeds, said.

Built for the pharaoh Cheops, also known as Khufu, the Great Pyramid is the last remaining wonder of the ancient world.

The monument is the largest of a family of three pyramids on the Giza plateau, on the outskirts of Cairo, and has long been rumored to have hidden passageways leading to secret chambers.

Archaeologists have long puzzled over the purpose of four narrow shafts deep inside the pyramid since they were first discovered in 1872.

See how current flood compares with epic deluges of past two million years.

This story is part of a special National Geographic News series on global water issues.

As the crest of the Mississippi River flood moves through New Orleans and out to sea this week, peak river levels recorded during the month-long deluge threaten to top even the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

The most destructive river flood in U.S. history, the 1927 event moved about 2 million cubic feet (65,000 cubic meters) of water - enough to fill about 26 Olympic-size swimming pools - every second. (See pictures: "Mississippi River at Its Worst.")

"The numbers are still provisional, but [the current flood's peak water discharge] looks to be about the same" as the 1927 flood, said James O'Connor, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Still, the 1927 and 2011 Mississippi River floods remain just drops in the bucket compared to other known freshwater "megafloods" around the world, according to O'Connor.

The scientist co-authored a 2004 USGS report that ranked all freshwater floods known to have occurred during the past two million years. The list, which remains largely unchanged since its release, includes only floods that had peak discharges of 3.5 million cubic feet (100,000 cubic meters) a second or more.

The tradition of putting body parts on display is almost as old as religion itself. Reliquaries containing the hands, feet, teeth, and other parts of holy people have been touted around the globe for thousands of years. But 20th-century cultural icons and ancient historical figures? Yeah, those get around too.

While some are proudly on display, many are decidedly better hidden. But with careful planning and a discerning eye, there are some pretty incredible body parts to be seen out there. You just have to know where to look.

Einstein's Brain, University Medical Center, Princeton, New Jersey

All of us have one, some are a lot more developed than others, and Einstein's was incredible. Yep! We're talking about brains.

When Einstein died in 1955, his brain was removed by Thomas Harvey, a doctor working in the Princeton Hospital in New Jersey where the scientist passed away. Harvey thought that careful study of Einstein's brain would help him figure out what made the guy so gosh darn smart. Harvey was not granted permission to remove Einstein's brain, but he did it anyway, which landed him in some pretty hot water. And after Harvey became frighteningly obsessed with the brain and refused to relinquish possession of the specimen, he was fired from the Princeton Hospital and left in shame. But not before stealing the brain.

Harvey left New Jersey and went on a wild scientist goose chase. He traveled to any research facility or lab that agreed to perform tests on the brain. And here's where things really get weird: after a divorce and a downward spiral that brought him across the Midwest, Harvey ended up losing his medical license. His tragic tale ends with a cross-country road trip intended to return Einstein's brain to his granddaughter, only for her to tell him she didn't want it. 40 years later, Harvey returned the brain, in pieces, to the pathology lab in Princeton.

The bits of brain are somewhere in the Princeton Hospital, although we're not sure exactly where. Anyone got any insider info? We'd love to know.

Construction work on a new housing development in Runcorn has unearthed what are thought to be the final remains of the medieval village of Norton.

Around 80 archaeological features have been found at the site near Lodge Farm, off Highgate Close, Norton village, since excavation began at the end of April.

Archaeologists have unearthed shards of pottery they believe date from the 13th and 14th centuries, as well as the footings and post holes of former timber-framed houses close to site of the old village road.

Social landlord Riverside is currently developing the site to provide three new pairs of three-bedroom semi-detached homes. The homes, designed by Croft Goode Architects, will provide sustainable housing for local people and will be made affordable under a shared ownership scheme.