Additional terracotta warriors found

It looks like the world has not seen the last of it yet.

Am talking about the life size terracotta warriors discovered by accident when farmers drilled a well near the vast tomb of Qin Shihuang, China’s first emperor, in northeastern Shaanxi Province.

Recently, Chinese archaeologists have unearthed additional number of new clay warriors and clay horses in their latest round of excavations.

Prior to the new discovery, there have been over 1000 of these terracottas unearthed between 1978 and 1984, and it is estimated that there around 8000 of these life size figures surrounding the ancient tomb of the emperor.

China’s terracotta army is considered the “eighth wonder of the world.” They were created over 2,000 years ago,supposedly, to protect the tomb of Emperor Shihuang (259-210 BC).

Worker tombs suggest Egyptian pyramids not built by slaves

The discovery of workers’ tombs on the Giza plateau on the western edge of Cairo and at the entrance of a one kilometer-long necropolis is now debunking the belief that the Great Pyramids were built by slaves.

What made this belief even more realistic are the films shown to the public where slaves toiled to build the mammoth pyramids and in their struggle some meet horrifying end to their lives.

“These tombs were built beside the king’s pyramid, which indicates that these people were not by any means slaves,” Zahi Hawass, the chief archaeologist heading the Egyptian excavation team, said in a statement.

“If they were slaves, they would not have been able to build their tombs beside their king’s.”

According to Hawass, the group of workers’ tombs found in the 1990s belonged to workers who helped built the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre. This was indicated by the graffiti found on the walls of the tomb site, saying, “ friends of Khufu,” which simply implied that they were not slaves.

Burial shroud from ‘Jesus’ time’ found in Jerusalem

A team of archaeologists from Hebrew University, in association with American and Canadian institution, have announced their discovery of parts of a burial shroud believed to be from ‘Jesus-era’ in a tomb in Jerusalem.

The tomb belongs to a section of a cemetery called the Field of Blood, the supposed site where the traitor, Judas Iscariot, hanged himself.

The researchers said the shroud was used to wrap the body of a man, who they think was a Jewish high priest or a member of the noble class, at his burial.

The newly found cloth, which the researchers says typifies the burial cloths during the time of Jesus, could be used to debunked the authenticity claimed by many about the Turin shroud that bears the imprint of Christ’s face.

ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNEARTH GIGANTIC WALL IN JERUSALEM

A PRE-HERODIAN RELIC

Archaeologists digging inside the City of David, an archaeological excavation site outside the old city of East Jerusalem unearthed what seems to be a gigantic fortification based from the standpoint of the structure’s dimensions, the thickness of its walls and the size of the stones that were incorporated in its construction.

The discovered section is 24 meters (79 feet) long, standing at 8 meters (26 feet) high, made up of huge cut boulders and deemed to be a 3,700-year-old wall. It is theorized that it could be part of a massive wall construction protecting a fortified passage.

The appearance of the wall continues to be a marvel to the excavation’s director, Ronny Reich who said, “To build straight walls up 8 meters … I don’t know how to do it today without mechanical equipment. I don’t think that any engineer today without electrical power [could] do it.”

Reich, who is a professor at the University of Haifa, together with Archaeologist Eli Shukron of the Israel Antiquities Authority came out with a joint statement confirming that the find is the most massive wall that has ever been uncovered in the City of David, predating the Herodian period.