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Huge Undersea Wall Dating From 5000 BC Found in France

French marine archaeologists have discovered a massive undersea wall off the coast of Brittany, dating from around 5,000 BC.They think it could be from a stone age society whose disappearance under rising seas was the origin of a local sunken city myth.The 120-metre (394ft) wall - the biggest underwater construction ever found in France - was either a fish-trap or a dyke for protection against rising sea-levels, the archaeologists believe.When it was built on the Ile de Sein at Brittany's western tip, the wall would have been on the shore-line - between the high and low tide marks. Today it is under nine metres of water as the island has shrunk to a fraction of its former size.The wall is on average 20 metres wide and two metres high. At regular intervals divers found large granite standing stones - or monoliths - protruding above the wall in two parallel lines.It is believed these were originally placed on the bedrock and then the wall built around them out of slabs and smaller stones. If the fish-trap hypothesis is the right one, then the lines of protruding monoliths would have also supported a "net" made of sticks and branches to catch fish as the tide retreated.With an overall mass of 3,300 tonnes, the wall must have been the work of a substantial settled community. And to have lasted 7,000 years, it was clearly an extremely solid structure."It was built by a very structured society of hunter-gatherers, of a kind that became sedentary when resources permitted. That or it was made by one of the Neolithic populations that arrived here around 5,000 BC," said archaeologist Yvan Pailler.The monoliths that form the basis of the wall are similar to - but predate - the famous menhirs that dot the Brittany countryside and are associated with the Neolithic culture.According to Pailler, there could have been a transmission of know-how on extracting, cutting and transporting the stones between older Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and incoming Neolithic agriculturists.The wall was discovered after local geologist Yves Fouquet studied undersea depth charts drawn up using the latest radar technology. "Just off Sein I saw this 120-metre line blocking off an undersea valley. It couldn't be natural," he told Le Monde newspaper.Archaeologists made their first exploration in summer 2022, but had to wait till the following winter - when the seaweed had died back - before they could map the wall properly.In a paper in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, the writers conjecture that sites such as this may lie at the origin of local Breton legends of sunken cities. One such lost city - Ys - was believed to lie in the Bay of Douarnenez, just a few kilometres to the east."It is likely that the abandonment of a territory developed by a highly structured society has become deeply rooted in people's memories," the paper says."The submersion caused by the rapid rise in sea level, followed by the abandonment of fishing structures, protective works, and habitation sites, must have left a lasting impression."

12/11/2025 7:49:41 PM

Italy to open Europe's first marine sanctuary for dolphins

"We must develop a new model for managing dolphins in a natural but supervised environment," Carmelo Fanizza, head of the San Paolo Dolphin Refuge, told AFP.Located off the coast of Taranto in the southern Italian region of Puglia, the sanctuary still needs a final green light from the government.But the site will be ready by the end of this month and the first dolphins are expected to arrive "no later than May or June 2026", Fanizza said.Animal rights concerns have driven countries such as Canada and France to ban the capture of dolphins, porpoises and whales, while growing numbers of marine parks are shutting.That has created a burning question: what to do with the cetaceans, which can live for decades and have mostly only known life in captivity, so cannot be released into the wild?The San Paolo Dolphin Refuge got permission from the Italian government in 2023 to use a seven-hectare (2.5-acre) area in the Gulf of Taranto, near the island of San Paolo.The spot is "sheltered and protected from the sea, winds and prevailing ocean currents", said Fanizza, brushing off concerns the site was near the industrial coastal city of Taranto.The city is home to one of Europe's largest steelworks, which has been embroiled in a pollution scandal, but is currently operating at reduced capacity."Improvements have been made to the facilities, so that the quality of the breathable air, the water column and the sediments in the area currently pose no risk to animal health," Fanizza said.SanctuaryLocated around four kilometres (nearly 2.5 miles) off the coast, the facility has a main 1,600-square-metre (17,200-square-foot) enclosure, a smaller one for potential transfers and a veterinary one for quarantine cases.It has a floating laboratory, accommodation so staff can be on site overnight, and a food preparation area.It is also equipped with a video surveillance system -- both above and under water -- as well as a series of sensors at sea, which transmit data to a control room in Taranto.The sanctuary's construction has been largely paid for by Jonian Dolphin Conservation -- the research organisation behind the initiative -- with support from private donors and European public funds.The site's operating costs are estimated at between 350,000 and 500,000 euros ($408,000 and $584,000) per year.It could legally accommodate up to 17 dolphins, but "the number will absolutely not be that", said Fanizza, who stressed the importance of their well-being."Our goal at this stage is not to take in a large number of animals but to identify a group that, given its medical condition, behaviour and social structure, could be ideal for initiating such a project," he said.Muriel Arnal, head of French animal rights group One Voice, which has long campaigned for marine sanctuaries, told AFP that Europe currently has around 60 dolphins in captivity."Once you have a model that works well, you can replicate it," she said, adding that she hoped San Paolo would give a home to French dolphins too.

12/5/2025 12:36:00 PM

Ancient Carved Faces in Turkey Shed New Light on Neolithic Society

On the windswept hills overlooking Turkey’s vast southeastern plains, new archaeological discoveries are revealing how life might have looked 11,000 years ago when the world’s earliest communities began to emerge.The latest finds -- a stone figurine with stitched lips, carved stone faces and a black serpentinite bead with expressive faces on both sides -- offer clues about Neolithic beliefs and rituals.“The growing number of human sculptures can be read as a direct outcome of settled life,” Necmi Karul, the archaeologist leading the dig at Karahan Tepe, told AFP.“As communities became more sedentary, people gradually distanced themselves from nature and placed the human figure and the human experience at the centre of the universe,” he said, pointing to a human face carved onto a T-shaped pillar.The excavation is part of Turkey’s “Stone Hills” project, a government-backed initiative launched in 2020 across 12 sites in Sanliurfa province, which Culture Minister Nuri Ersoy has described as “the world’s Neolithic capital”.The project includes the UNESCO heritage site Gobekli Tepe -- “Potbelly Hill” in Turkish -- which is home to the oldest known megalithic structures in Upper Mesopotamia, where the late German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt began excavations in 1995.Explaining some of the new finds on display at Karahan Tepe’s visitor centre, Lee Clare of the German Archaeology Institute says they challenge long-held narratives about humanity’s shift from nomadic hunter-gatherer life to early settlements.“Every building we study gives us a small glimpse into someone’s life. Every layer we excavate brings us closer to an individual -- we can almost touch that person, through their bones. We’re gaining insights into their belief systems,” he said.The past five years have yielded “a wonderful amount of data coming out of all these new sites,” the archaeologist told AFP.But it was impossible to know everything. “We don’t have any written records, obviously, because it’s prehistory,” said Clare, who has worked at Gobekli Tepe since 2013.Identifying who the statues or figurines represented was probably impossible, given they dated back to “a period before writing, around 10,000 years ago”, said Karul, who is also leading the dig at Gobekli Tepe and coordinator of the Stone Hills project.“But as the number of such finds increases and as we learn more about the contexts in which they appear, we gain the opportunity to conduct statistical analyses and make meaningful comparisons.”The settlements began to appear after the last Ice Age, he said.“The changing environment created fertile conditions, allowing people to feed themselves without constantly going hunting. This, in turn, supported population growth and encouraged the development and expansion of permanent settlements in the area.”As communities started to settle, new social dynamics emerged, Clare said.“Once people produced surplus, they got rich and poor,” he said, indicating the first hints of social hierarchy.“What we see here is the beginning of that process. In many ways, we are on a slippery slope that leads toward the modern world.”As the excavations progress, they will transform understanding of the Neolithic, with each site earning its own place in scientific history, says Emre Guldogan of Istanbul University, lead archaeologist at the nearby Sefer Tepe site.“Karahan Tepe and the wider Stone Hills project show a highly organised society with its own symbolic world and belief structures” overturning earlier ideas of a “primitive” Neolithic world, he said.“These communities shared traits but also developed clear cultural differences,” he said.At Karahan Tepe, human symbolism is widely seen whereas in Gobekli Tepe, animal imagery is more dominant.Archaeologists say findings at both sites show each community depicting their living environments in different ways.“Each new discovery raises fresh questions aimed at understanding the people behind these creations,” Guldogan said.The recent archaeological discoveries have also broadened the appeal of a region known primarily as the place where Abraham once settled, a figure revered in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.“Before the excavations began at Karahan Tepe and other sites, the area mainly attracted religious tour groups, drawn largely by its association with the prophet Abraham,” tourist guide Yakup Bedlek said.“With the emergence of new archaeological zones, a more varied mix of tourists are visiting the region.”

12/4/2025 12:15:00 PM

'Rage bait' wins Oxford's Word Of 2025

"Rage bait", the slang term describing online content designed to elicit anger and drive internet traffic, has been crowned 2025 word of the year, Oxford University Press (OUP) announced Monday.

12/1/2025 2:27:00 PM

Five Things To Keep An Eye On In 2026

It's a year set to hold lunar trips, footballing spectacles and a battle for control of the US Congress, among others.Here are five big events to watch out for in 2026.The world is already experiencing record heat -- and things are likely to get hotter in 2026.Last year was the warmest on record, but the UN says there is an 80 percent chance that at least one year will be even hotter by 2029.How will nations react? COP30 in Brazil recently showed that multilateralism in climate action is not dead, despite the US boycott and geopolitical conflicts."2026 must be the year in which international climate diplomacy reinvents itself," said Rebecca Thissen, from Climate Action Network."COPs are not an end in themselves but a high point in an international political agenda that desperately needs to get on the same page," she added.A close eye will be kept on how many countries respond to Colombia's invitation to the first international conference on phasing out fossil fuels in April.Aleksandar Rankovic, director of The Common Initiative think tank, was disappointed by COP30's outcome and wondered if the "Gen Z-led rebellions that have emerged worldwide will start fighting for climate as well" in 2026.The biggest World Cup in history will see 48 countries competing in the United States, Canada and Mexico, under the gaze of Donald Trump.The most-watched sports event in the world will unfold over nearly six weeks, from June 11 to July 19, with the US providing 11 of the 16 venues.Trump's tensions with the co-hosts over tariffs and immigration could make for a politically charged competition.On the pitch, a richly talented French squad led by Kylian Mbappe will be determined to make up for their defeat to Lionel Messi's Argentina in the 2022 final in Qatar, but Spain also has high hopes.Cristiano Ronaldo, who will be 41 when the tournament kicks off, has said his sixth World Cup final will be his last, and he would dearly like to crown his career with a first global title for Portugal.Cape Verde, Uzbekistan and the tiny island nation of Curacao are among the countries appearing for the first time.Fans could face eye-watering costs for the most popular games due to FIFA's use of dynamic ticket pricing.US pressure led to a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that came into force on October 10, after two years of war.The truce is proving fragile, and Trump's peace plan for the Gaza Strip leaves many points unresolved, such as future stages of the Israeli army's withdrawal, reconstruction of the Palestinian territory and its future governance.By formally endorsing Trump's plan, the UN Security Council laid the groundwork for the deployment of an international force in Gaza that, fundamentally, neither Israel nor Hamas wants.The Palestinian Islamist movement refuses to disarm under the conditions set by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is threatening to resume fighting if the Gaza Strip cannot be demilitarised through diplomacy.Now 76, Likud leader Netanyahu intends to run again in the elections due to be held no later than November 2026.His multi-party coalition, which now holds just 60 of 120 seats in parliament, remains fragile.He might therefore be tempted to pursue the military option against Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon to keep his far-right allies on board, and secure the total victory he has promised Israelis.That is, unless Trump -- seeking the Nobel Prize and eager to transform the precarious Gaza truce into a wider regional peace deal -- can offer Netanyahu a giant prize of his own: the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.As voters brace for the 2026 US midterm elections, the stakes could hardly be higher -- for Trump, Congress and the nation.Trump isn't on the ballot, but a strong Republican showing would validate his sway, proving his grip on power beyond the White House.Underperformance would undercut his kingmaker role, expose cracks in his movement and complicate the path for his chosen successor.For Republicans, control of Congress hangs by a thread.Their razor-thin House majority and slim Senate margin hinge on defending swing districts and vulnerable incumbents in battlegrounds like Michigan, North Carolina and Ohio.Trump's strategy -- steering primaries, endorsing loyalists and announcing a midterm convention -- reflects concerns about turnout without a "Trump" box to check.Democrats see opportunity. The president's party historically loses midterm seats, and forecasts suggest Republicans could struggle to hold the House. Democrats are also targeting four Senate flips needed to seize control.For Americans, the election is about more than Congress; it's a referendum on Trump's executive reach, economic policy and the direction of democracy.Full Republican control would let him cement his legacy; Democratic control in either chamber would slow his agenda and likely entangle his administration in investigations.Could 2026 be the year astronauts return to the Moon?NASA's crewed Artemis 2 mission, undertaken with private partners like SpaceX, has been repeatedly postponed but is scheduled for lift-off early next year, in April at the latest.It would be a key step towards Americans once again setting foot on the lunar surface, a goal announced by US President Donald Trump during his first term.China aims to land on the moon by 2030 and is also making progress.Its Chang'e 7 mission is expected to be launched in 2026 for an exploration of the Moon's south pole, and testing of its crewed spacecraft, Mengzhou, is also set to go ahead next year.India, which landed a robot on the Moon in 2023, is another country with emerging space exploration ambitions.The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to send an astronaut into orbit in 2027.The moon will be an essential stepping stone on any journey to Mars. It will likely be used to install relay bases, test suits, vehicles and energy sources, and to learn how to live in deep space.

11/26/2025 10:40:00 AM

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Huge Undersea Wall Dating From 5000 BC Found in France

French marine archaeologists have discovered a massive undersea wall off the coast of Brittany, dating from around 5,000 BC.They think it could be from a stone age society whose disappearance under rising seas was the origin of a local sunken city myth.The 120-metre (394ft) wall - the biggest underwater construction ever found in France - was either a fish-trap or a dyke for protection against rising sea-levels, the archaeologists believe.When it was built on the Ile de Sein at Brittany's western tip, the wall would have been on the shore-line - between the high and low tide marks. Today it is under nine metres of water as the island has shrunk to a fraction of its former size.The wall is on average 20 metres wide and two metres high. At regular intervals divers found large granite standing stones - or monoliths - protruding above the wall in two parallel lines.It is believed these were originally placed on the bedrock and then the wall built around them out of slabs and smaller stones. If the fish-trap hypothesis is the right one, then the lines of protruding monoliths would have also supported a "net" made of sticks and branches to catch fish as the tide retreated.With an overall mass of 3,300 tonnes, the wall must have been the work of a substantial settled community. And to have lasted 7,000 years, it was clearly an extremely solid structure."It was built by a very structured society of hunter-gatherers, of a kind that became sedentary when resources permitted. That or it was made by one of the Neolithic populations that arrived here around 5,000 BC," said archaeologist Yvan Pailler.The monoliths that form the basis of the wall are similar to - but predate - the famous menhirs that dot the Brittany countryside and are associated with the Neolithic culture.According to Pailler, there could have been a transmission of know-how on extracting, cutting and transporting the stones between older Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and incoming Neolithic agriculturists.The wall was discovered after local geologist Yves Fouquet studied undersea depth charts drawn up using the latest radar technology. "Just off Sein I saw this 120-metre line blocking off an undersea valley. It couldn't be natural," he told Le Monde newspaper.Archaeologists made their first exploration in summer 2022, but had to wait till the following winter - when the seaweed had died back - before they could map the wall properly.In a paper in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, the writers conjecture that sites such as this may lie at the origin of local Breton legends of sunken cities. One such lost city - Ys - was believed to lie in the Bay of Douarnenez, just a few kilometres to the east."It is likely that the abandonment of a territory developed by a highly structured society has become deeply rooted in people's memories," the paper says."The submersion caused by the rapid rise in sea level, followed by the abandonment of fishing structures, protective works, and habitation sites, must have left a lasting impression."

12/11/2025 7:49:41 PM

Italy to open Europe's first marine sanctuary for dolphins

"We must develop a new model for managing dolphins in a natural but supervised environment," Carmelo Fanizza, head of the San Paolo Dolphin Refuge, told AFP.Located off the coast of Taranto in the southern Italian region of Puglia, the sanctuary still needs a final green light from the government.But the site will be ready by the end of this month and the first dolphins are expected to arrive "no later than May or June 2026", Fanizza said.Animal rights concerns have driven countries such as Canada and France to ban the capture of dolphins, porpoises and whales, while growing numbers of marine parks are shutting.That has created a burning question: what to do with the cetaceans, which can live for decades and have mostly only known life in captivity, so cannot be released into the wild?The San Paolo Dolphin Refuge got permission from the Italian government in 2023 to use a seven-hectare (2.5-acre) area in the Gulf of Taranto, near the island of San Paolo.The spot is "sheltered and protected from the sea, winds and prevailing ocean currents", said Fanizza, brushing off concerns the site was near the industrial coastal city of Taranto.The city is home to one of Europe's largest steelworks, which has been embroiled in a pollution scandal, but is currently operating at reduced capacity."Improvements have been made to the facilities, so that the quality of the breathable air, the water column and the sediments in the area currently pose no risk to animal health," Fanizza said.SanctuaryLocated around four kilometres (nearly 2.5 miles) off the coast, the facility has a main 1,600-square-metre (17,200-square-foot) enclosure, a smaller one for potential transfers and a veterinary one for quarantine cases.It has a floating laboratory, accommodation so staff can be on site overnight, and a food preparation area.It is also equipped with a video surveillance system -- both above and under water -- as well as a series of sensors at sea, which transmit data to a control room in Taranto.The sanctuary's construction has been largely paid for by Jonian Dolphin Conservation -- the research organisation behind the initiative -- with support from private donors and European public funds.The site's operating costs are estimated at between 350,000 and 500,000 euros ($408,000 and $584,000) per year.It could legally accommodate up to 17 dolphins, but "the number will absolutely not be that", said Fanizza, who stressed the importance of their well-being."Our goal at this stage is not to take in a large number of animals but to identify a group that, given its medical condition, behaviour and social structure, could be ideal for initiating such a project," he said.Muriel Arnal, head of French animal rights group One Voice, which has long campaigned for marine sanctuaries, told AFP that Europe currently has around 60 dolphins in captivity."Once you have a model that works well, you can replicate it," she said, adding that she hoped San Paolo would give a home to French dolphins too.

12/5/2025 12:36:00 PM

Ancient Carved Faces in Turkey Shed New Light on Neolithic Society

On the windswept hills overlooking Turkey’s vast southeastern plains, new archaeological discoveries are revealing how life might have looked 11,000 years ago when the world’s earliest communities began to emerge.The latest finds -- a stone figurine with stitched lips, carved stone faces and a black serpentinite bead with expressive faces on both sides -- offer clues about Neolithic beliefs and rituals.“The growing number of human sculptures can be read as a direct outcome of settled life,” Necmi Karul, the archaeologist leading the dig at Karahan Tepe, told AFP.“As communities became more sedentary, people gradually distanced themselves from nature and placed the human figure and the human experience at the centre of the universe,” he said, pointing to a human face carved onto a T-shaped pillar.The excavation is part of Turkey’s “Stone Hills” project, a government-backed initiative launched in 2020 across 12 sites in Sanliurfa province, which Culture Minister Nuri Ersoy has described as “the world’s Neolithic capital”.The project includes the UNESCO heritage site Gobekli Tepe -- “Potbelly Hill” in Turkish -- which is home to the oldest known megalithic structures in Upper Mesopotamia, where the late German archaeologist Klaus Schmidt began excavations in 1995.Explaining some of the new finds on display at Karahan Tepe’s visitor centre, Lee Clare of the German Archaeology Institute says they challenge long-held narratives about humanity’s shift from nomadic hunter-gatherer life to early settlements.“Every building we study gives us a small glimpse into someone’s life. Every layer we excavate brings us closer to an individual -- we can almost touch that person, through their bones. We’re gaining insights into their belief systems,” he said.The past five years have yielded “a wonderful amount of data coming out of all these new sites,” the archaeologist told AFP.But it was impossible to know everything. “We don’t have any written records, obviously, because it’s prehistory,” said Clare, who has worked at Gobekli Tepe since 2013.Identifying who the statues or figurines represented was probably impossible, given they dated back to “a period before writing, around 10,000 years ago”, said Karul, who is also leading the dig at Gobekli Tepe and coordinator of the Stone Hills project.“But as the number of such finds increases and as we learn more about the contexts in which they appear, we gain the opportunity to conduct statistical analyses and make meaningful comparisons.”The settlements began to appear after the last Ice Age, he said.“The changing environment created fertile conditions, allowing people to feed themselves without constantly going hunting. This, in turn, supported population growth and encouraged the development and expansion of permanent settlements in the area.”As communities started to settle, new social dynamics emerged, Clare said.“Once people produced surplus, they got rich and poor,” he said, indicating the first hints of social hierarchy.“What we see here is the beginning of that process. In many ways, we are on a slippery slope that leads toward the modern world.”As the excavations progress, they will transform understanding of the Neolithic, with each site earning its own place in scientific history, says Emre Guldogan of Istanbul University, lead archaeologist at the nearby Sefer Tepe site.“Karahan Tepe and the wider Stone Hills project show a highly organised society with its own symbolic world and belief structures” overturning earlier ideas of a “primitive” Neolithic world, he said.“These communities shared traits but also developed clear cultural differences,” he said.At Karahan Tepe, human symbolism is widely seen whereas in Gobekli Tepe, animal imagery is more dominant.Archaeologists say findings at both sites show each community depicting their living environments in different ways.“Each new discovery raises fresh questions aimed at understanding the people behind these creations,” Guldogan said.The recent archaeological discoveries have also broadened the appeal of a region known primarily as the place where Abraham once settled, a figure revered in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.“Before the excavations began at Karahan Tepe and other sites, the area mainly attracted religious tour groups, drawn largely by its association with the prophet Abraham,” tourist guide Yakup Bedlek said.“With the emergence of new archaeological zones, a more varied mix of tourists are visiting the region.”

12/4/2025 12:15:00 PM

'Rage bait' wins Oxford's Word Of 2025

"Rage bait", the slang term describing online content designed to elicit anger and drive internet traffic, has been crowned 2025 word of the year, Oxford University Press (OUP) announced Monday.

12/1/2025 2:27:00 PM

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