Happy New Year folks! 2022 was a monumental year for archaeology. As it was a hectic news year, you might have missed some of these stories so here's a summary of the significant archaelogical discoveries over the last 12 months:
February 2022: Twenty new warriors from a Chinese emperor’s massive terracotta army were uncovered in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi Province. The statues found outside the emperor's secret tomb are well-preserved and the excavation is expected to yield more than 6000 pottery figures.
March 2022: 7000-year old sarcophagi were discovered beneath Notre Dame Cathedral. The discoveries were made during excavation works inside the church following the 2019 blaze. The sarcophagi hold the remains of a high-ranking clergyman and a young nobleman.
April 2022: In Guatemala, the oldest known Mayan calendar was discovered in a complex of pyramids. In the hieroglyphic texts adorning the murals of the pyramid known as Las Pinturas comes a single date: 7 Deer. This hieroglyphic is the earliest known evidence of the Mayan calendar.
April 2022: In Northamptonshire, a 1300-year old female grave was unearthed containing an ornate necklace, gold Roman coins, precious stones and a face mask. Dubbed 'The Harpole Treasure', the necklace has been described as "the most ornate of its kind ever found". The woman buried at the site may have been an early Christian leader.
May 2022: Archaeologists unearthed thousands of pits below Stonehenge that are believed to have been used by prehistoric hunters. The ancient pits have revealed some of the earliest activity of hunter-gatherers around Stonehenge from the Mesolithic period, which followed the last Ice Age.
October 2022: The huge granite sarcophagus of King Ramses II’s treasurer, Ptah-em-wia, was discovered by archaelogists at Saqqara, an ancient necropolis roughly 20 miles south of Cairo, Eqypt.
November 2022: The pyramid of an undocumented ancient Egyptian queen, along with a cache of coffins, mummies, and artifacts and a series of interconnected tunnels was unearthed in Saqqara. The trove is thought to have belonged to some of King Tut’s closest generals and advisors.
December 2022: 168 Nazca geoglyphs were discovered in Peru by archaeologists using high-resolution aerial photography and drone images. The geoglyphs, which date between 100BC and 300AD, depict humans, camelids, birds, orcas, felines, and snakes.
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Time to make your own discovery now and unearth some lost treasure! Now....
Archaeologists do not follow maps to buried treasure, and X never, ever marks the spot.
They also say if you want to be a good archaeologist you gotta get out of the library!
What was the main treasure discovered in the following years:
1) July 1981 (ABCD)
2) June 1984 (EF)
3) June 1989 (GH)
4) May 2008 (IJ)
5) June 2023 (KL)
Count up the letters in your answers and substitute the numbers in the formula below:
N51 ((K x C) - E) (((I + F) x D x L) - J)
W02 ((L x A) + H) (((E x H x B) - K) x G)
