A farmer excavating a field to plant trees has found something he did not expect: 84 square meters of exquisite Roman mosaic floor which may be as old as the Late Roman Period. This would place it between the 4th and 6th centuries AD, created either by the Romans in the period before the fall
Roman emperors are perhaps remembered for their notoriety more than anything else. We remember Julius Caesar, after whom all the subsequent rulers took their name, as a brilliant commander (and because he wrote an awful lot of histories about himself) but he is most famous for his actions against the dying Roman Republic, for which
Cure-alls are, generally speaking, never what they claim. Most medical wonder drugs are nothing of the sort, and snake oil salesmen have existed throughout history, prospering as long as there are people out there who are prepared to believe them. But this is not to say that all such medical supplements are fraud. Some have
For those with a mind to search for them, there are many rumoured lost treasures out there. Some are certainly waiting to be find, sunken ships loaded with valuables or hidden caches. Others are more fanciful. The sad truth is that most “lost” treasures were simply disappeared into the pockets of whoever happened to be
The Book of Revelations is a total trip. It is hard to read its apocalyptic foretellings and warnings of chaos and catastrophe without feeling that someone, somewhere, was smoking something pretty strong. Perhaps the most strange thing in all this strange psychic fantasy is its inclusion at all. There have been weirder books and writings
Burnswark Hill in Scotland dominates the local landscape. A prominent mound in the south of the country, atop its commanding slopes sits an iron age hill fort and a surrounding community, spread across some seven hectares. Such arrangements are not uncommon across the British Isles and indeed continental Europe. These hill forts can tell us