"The restoration of a soot-filled ancient Egyptian temple [the Temple of Esna] has revealed the previously unknown names of ancient Egyptian constellations, according to experts in Germany and Egypt." Source: Live Science.
"The restoration has also uncovered the gorgeous original colors the ancient Egyptians painted the 2,000-year-old temple."
The shadow stick compass is sometimes referred to as the "Indian Circle."
"The pyramids of Egypt are some of the most impressive ancient monuments, and several are oriented with high precision. Egyptologist Flinders Petrie carried out the first high-precision survey of the Giza pyramids in the 19th century. He found that each of the four edges of the pyramids’ bases point towards a cardinal direction to within a quarter of a degree." Source: Archaeology News Network (2018).
"But how did the Egyptians know that? Just recently, Glen Dash, an engineer who studies the Giza pyramids, proposed a theory. He draws upon the ancient method of the 'Indian circle', which only requires a shadow casting stick and string to construct an east-west direction. He outlined how this method could have been used for the pyramids based on its simplicity alone."
Note: The quote above is from a longer article on ancient astronomy which points out that Dash's shadow-stick theory is mostly speculation.
Comment: The shadow-stick or Indian-circle method is about as primitive as it gets. If the ancient Egyptians used it to align the pyramids, they were operating at a very basic level of technology. They may have used some other technique, of course, but this is the kind of tool you'd expect engineers to employ in the third millennium BC.
The Ancient Aliens crowd, however, argue the exact opposite (next video). According to them, the pyramids encode all sorts of advanced information, proving that the Egyptians were not only extremely sophisticated but probably used alien technology to build these structures, assuming they weren't aliens themselves. I particularly like the idea that the north coordinate of the Great Pyramid exactly matches the speed of light traveling through space in meters per second. If this is true it's an improbable coincidence, to say the least. (I seem to be wandering off topic here, but never mind that.)
I don't believe that the ancient Egyptians were aliens or that they used alien technology to build the pyramids, but there's no doubt that ancient horrors lie buried under the Great Sphinx of Giza. In his article Imprisoned With The Pharoahs, aka Under the Pyramids, the journalist H.P. Lovecraft described an encounter that Harry Houdini, the famous magician, had with "an army of half-man, half-animal mummies, led by the ancient Egyptian pharaohs Khephren and Nitokris" who were making offerings to a "hippopotamus-sized, five-headed, tentacled beast" in a cavern deep under the Sphinx back in 1910. Most people dismiss this story as fiction, but I know for a fact that it actually happened. I have documentary proof but it would be worth my life to publish it in an open forum.
"Egypt announced Saturday the discovery of an ancient treasure trove of more than a 100 intact sarcophagi, dating back more than 2,500 years ago, the largest such find this year." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"The sealed wooden coffins, unveiled on site amid much fanfare, belonged to top officials of the Late Period and the Ptolemaic period of ancient Egypt.
"They were found in three burial shafts at depths of 12 metres (40 feet) in the sweeping Saqqara necropolis south of Cairo."
"A team from the Tunisian National Heritage Institute (INP) has discovered a series of underwater archaeological sites of great historical value in the sea stretching along the outskirts of Tunis. The sites are characterised by the presence of various types of artefacts dating to different historical periods, from prehistoric times to the modern era." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"Two ancient mummies discovered in a rock-cut tomb in Egypt more than 400 years ago are finally spilling their secrets, now that scientists have CT scanned their remains, a new study finds." Source: Live Science.
"Both mummies, as well as a third on display in Egypt, represent the only known surviving 'stucco-shrouded portrait mummies,' from Saqqara, an ancient Egyptian necropolis. Unlike other mummies, who were buried in coffins, these individuals were placed on wooden boards, wrapped in a textile and a 'beautiful mummy shroud,' and decorated with 3D plaster, gold and a whole-body portrait ...
"Now, CT (computed tomography) scans reveal that at least one of these three stucco-shrouded portrait mummies was buried with organs (even the brain) and that the two females were interred with beautiful necklaces, the researchers found."
Note: The use of CT scans has become increasingly common in a new field known as paleoradiology, "the study of archaeological remains through the use of radiographic techniques, such as X-ray, CT (computer tomography) and micro-CT scans. It is predominately used by archaeologists and anthropologists to examine mummified remains due to its non-invasive nature. Paleoradiologists can discover post-mortem damage to the body, or any artefacts buried with them, while still keeping the remains intact. Radiological images can also contribute evidence about the person's life, such as their age and cause of death." (Wikipedia)
"Archaeologists have long wondered exactly how the ancient Egyptians constructed the world's biggest pyramid, the Great Pyramid. Now, they may have discovered the system used to haul massive stone blocks into place some 4,500 years ago." Source: Live Science (2018).
"They discovered the remains of this system at the site of Hatnub, an ancient quarry in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. The contraption would have been used to transport heavy alabaster stones up a steep ramp, according to the archaeologists working at the site ... And it was possibly how Egyptians built the Great Pyramid..."
According to one Egyptologist, "'The quarry preserves large numbers of inscriptions left by ancient quarrying expeditions from 4500-4000 years ago. These enable us to better understand the personnel and logistics of organising expeditions to these desert quarry sites.'" (Phys.org, 2018)
I haven't been able to find any more information about this staircase (assuming that it actually exists). The website of "French writer, researcher and explorer" Antoine Gigal, mentioned in the video, can be found here, but it doesn't have a search function as far as I can tell and I could only find one brief mention of the staircase on her site.
If this staircase isn't some kind of hoax, it could have been built (by the Romans?) to provide access to groundwater. It's also possible, I suppose, that it leads into a system of tunnels or natural caves. While trying to track down something about the staircase, I ran across a 2009 Discovery Channel article describing an "ancient cave complex" under the Giza plateau:
"An enormous system of caves, chambers and tunnels lies hidden beneath the Pyramids of Giza, according to a British explorer who claims to have found the lost underworld of the pharaohs.
"Populated by bats and venomous spiders, the underground complex was found in the limestone bedrock beneath the pyramid field at Giza.
"'There is untouched archaeology down there, as well as a delicate ecosystem that includes colonies of bats and a species of spider which we have tentatively identified as the white widow,' British explorer Andrew Collins said." Collins is a regular contributor to Ancient Origins and I guess he could be described as an "alternate history" writer in general. That doesn't mean the caves don't exist, of course.
I don't know what to make of any of this, but I'll post more information if I can find it.
"Males of the extinct human species Paranthropus robustus were thought to be substantially larger than females -- much like the size differences seen in modern-day primates such as gorillas, orangutans and baboons. But a new fossil discovery in South Africa instead suggests that P. robustus evolved rapidly during a turbulent period of local climate change about 2 million years ago, resulting in anatomical changes that previously were attributed to sex." Source: Science Daily.
Note: The evolutionary history here is kind of confusing. According to Science Daily, Paranthropus robustus is thought to have appeared in South Africa around the same time that Australopithecus disappeared from the fossil record and early Homo specimens arrived on the scene. Paranthropus robustus, however, is a type of Australopithecus and "it is argued that Paranthropus is an invalid grouping and synonymous with Australopithecus, so the species is also often classified as Australopithecus robustus." (Wikipedia)
It appears that Paranthropus was a more advanced species than your run-of-the-mill Australopithecus and went through some very rapid evolutionary changes brought on by climate change. The interesting thing about this find is that it's apparently one of the rare cases where evolutionary change in a human ancestor has been found in the fossil record. Whatever the case, the picture that continues to emerge is of a variety of humanlike animals engaged in a struggle for survival that eventually led to the emergence of Homo Sapiens.
Note: "The 'robust' australopiths are a group of fossil hominins that existed in East and southern Africa between approximately 2.5 and 1.4 million years ago (Ma). They are referred to here as members of the genus Paranthropus, though considerable disagreement about their proper taxonomy persists ... They are characterized by several features of the skull that give them a 'robust' appearance when compared to other, more gracile [slender, slight] hominins." Source: Nature.
"The first analysis of a sedimentary drill core representing 1 million years of environmental history in the East African Rift Valley shows that at the same time early humans were abandoning old tools in favor of more sophisticated technology and broadening their trade, their landscape was experiencing frequent fluctuations in vegetation and water supply that made resources less reliably available. The findings suggest that instability in their landscape was a key driver of human adaptability." Source: Science Daily.
Note: These environmental changes were apparently caused by tectonic activity and changes in rainfall patterns around 400,000 years ago. Existing lakes dried up in some areas and new lakes formed in others during a "prolonged" period of instability that effected the entire ecosystem in which early humans were living:
"With the fluctuations, a broader set of ecological changes also took place. The team found that vegetation in the region also changed repeatedly, shifting between grassy plains and wooded areas. Meanwhile, large grazing herbivores, which no longer had large tracts of grass to feed on, began to die out and were replaced by smaller mammals with more diverse diets.
"'There was a massive change in the animal fauna during the time period when we see early human behavior changing,' [according to Richard Potts, director of the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History]. "'The animals also influenced the landscape through the kinds of plants that they ate. Then with humans in the mix, and some of their innovations like projectile weapons, they also may have affected the fauna. It's a whole ecosystem changing, with humans as part of it.'"
It's to be expected that environmental changes would lead to changes in human behavior. The same thing happened to prehistoric Europeans forced to adapt to the harsher conditions of the Ice Age.