Dec 26, 2025 | 15:09

Dec 26, 2025 | 15:09

We humans surprise ourselves. The earliest boomerang was made 40,000 years ago. In Poland. The agricultural revolution was eagerly embraced. Except when it wasn't. Moses wasn't the first to seek his god on a mountain, and the longest papyrus ever found in the Judean Desert – wait 'til you hear what it says. Here are those stories and many more from the world of archaeology in 2025!

'Phoenicians'

Will the real Carthaginians please stand up

From its heyday: Mosaic showing the Carthage Circus.Credit: University of Chicago, Wikimedia Commons

The fury of the struggle between ancient Rome and the Carthaginians over control of the Mediterranean basin has resonated over the ages, as has the hideous massacre of Carthage's people by the victorious Romans. It was surprising to many to learn in 2025 from genetic analysis who exactly the defeated Carthaginians were.

Eye and fears of the beholder

Why doesn't Israel have cave art?

Prehistoric panel at Marsoulas Cave, France: Israel has NOTHING.Credit: Gilles Tosello

Only our species, Homo sapiens, has produced figurative art, going back to our earliest successful exit from Africa. Narrative art adorns cave in Indonesia going back some 54,000 years and the Aurignacian art in Europe is legendary. Now a team proposes a new theory for why we find no parallel artistic whispers in Israel.

North Africa says no

Hunter-gatherers of Maghreb resisted the Neolithic

Doukanet el Khoutifa, Tunisia, a rock shelter in the Neolithic eastern MaghrebCredit: Giulio Lucarini

In our part of the planet, the Neolithic revolution starting about 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent spread in all directions as of 7,500 years ago with farmers migrating out of Anatolia. It seems their innovations were not universally welcomed.

Made of mammoth

Earliest boomerang found, not in Australia

Boomerang from the Obłazowa Cave. ca. 30000 BC, Obłazowa Cave, PolandCredit: Cafe Wiedza, 2021

Boomerangs are so associated with Australian aborigines that it's cliché but this particular weapon apparently emerged more than once, and the very earliest one, from over 30,000 years ago, wasn't found where one might expect.

Mayan mystery solved

What reduced their cities to collapse?

Reproduction of a Mayan fresco that may explain a lot, Bonampak, Mexico.Credit: El Comandante

A fox in Bethsaida

Midnight prowler in Byzantine el-Araj is identified

Fox tracks on Bethsaida wallCredit: Mordechai Aviam

Paw-prints on a church wall freshly mortared 1,700 years ago at a site by the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee were initially identified as a cat's, the ultimate commensal wall-walker. Enter the experts.

In flagrante delicto?

'Helpless against his great power'

![The prosecutor's papyrus: 'If he says - then you say"](https://img.haarets.co.il/bs/00000194-b774-d69b-a3b7-b7763f990001/43/1a/75118f3c45a0a279bdc0d0d6a7cc/papyrus3.png?height=647&width=647 "The prosecutor's papyrus: 'If he says - then you say", Credit: Israel Antiquities Authority")

The prosecutor's papyrus: 'If he says - then you say"Credit: Israel Antiquities Authority

A papyrus found in the Judean Desert in the 1950s isn't a Nabataean text, as assumed; the longest Greek papyrus ever discovered in this desert contains the Roman prosecutor's scribbles ahead of a fraud trial against Jewish 'scoundrels' (tax evaders).

Dear Judah

We are not amused

Ayala Zilberstein, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, holding the rare sealingCredit: Emil Aladjem, Israel Antiquities Authority

An Assyrian cuneiform seal is found in Jerusalem, for the first time. What could it be from? Who knows, but archaeologists suspect it sealed a letter of complaint from the overlords in the eighth century B.C.E. after the King of Judah welshed on tax. This surmise is based on the nature of their communiques to other vassal regions that have actually been found.

The smoking pyrite

Somebody made fire in Suffolk 400,000 years ago

An artistic rendition of sparks flying from the flint and pyrite.Credit: Craig Williams/The Trustees of the British Museum

Is Rujm el Hiri turning?

Israel's 'Stonehenge' just got weirder

Rujm al-Hiri, or Galgal Refaim in the Golan Heights. Credit: Assaf Tzadik

There is a conundrum in the Land of Israel. Is the ancient site of Rujm el Hiri rotating, in geological terms? And if it is, at what speed is it doing so? The answer could determine whether the mysterious prehistoric stone circles in Israel, called Rujm el Hiri, was an observatory or not.

Those were just some of the stories making headlines in 2025,

ICYMI