7 of the Most Fascinating Archaeological Finds of 2025

The tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose II was unearthed in the Valley of the Kings, a vast royal necropolis near ancient Thebes and modern Luxor. Thutmose ruled about 3,500 years ago, and was the great-great-great-great-great grandfather of Tutankhamun. His was the first pharaonic tomb found at the Valley of the Kings since Tut's. Researchers first thought it was the tomb of a minor royal.

“The discovery that the burial chamber had been decorated with scenes from the Amduat, a religious text which is reserved for kings, was immensely exciting and the first indication that this was a king's tomb,” says University of Cambridge archaeologist Piers Litherland.

A "spacious banqueting room" decorated with almost life-sized paintings of sacred revelers was unearthed in a central part of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, which which was destroyed by an eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

The newfound "megalography" of painted figures portrays a divine procession of dancers, hunters and satyrs for Dionysus, the Greek god of wine who was equated with the Roman party god Bacchus. Archaeologists think the paintings represented secret initiation rituals into his mystery cult. The paintings ran around three sides of the room, while the fourth side opened onto a garden.

The oldest-known art, or at least the oldest-known fingerprint, appears on a 43,000-year-old stone from a rock shelter in central Spain, made when Neanderthal humans lived there. One side of the roughly potato-shaped stone has an ancient fingerprint in the middle that was made with red ochre.

The discoverers say it was placed there on purpose so that the rest of the stone looked like a face—a phenomenon called pareidolia. The researchers say that the stone is "one of the oldest known abstractions of a human face in the prehistoric record."

In July, archaeologists announced their discovery of the 1,700-year-old tomb of Te K’ab Chaak ("Tree Branch Rain God")—the founding Maya king of the ancient city of Caracol, which is now in Belize.

The identification isn't certain yet, but researchers think the large size of the tomb and the riches in the dead man's grave indicate that he was a ruler. Radiocarbon dates of the site match the chronology of the city's founding in about A.D. 330.

Artifacts found in the grave include an ornate death mask made from dozens of pieces of jade (image at top of article), carved bones, jade jewelry and rare Spondylus (spiny oyster) shells from the Pacific Ocean. “Everything about it says ruler,” says University of Houston archaeologist Diane Chase, who has worked at Caracol with her husband, University of Houston archaeologist Arlen Chase, for more than 30 years.

New analysis of ancient remains in Asia determined that the world's oldest mummies were made by smoke-drying the dead about 14,000 years ago. The researchers studied dozens of ancient "crouching" burials from southern China, Vietnam and Sumatra, where the dead had been preserved by drying out their bodies at a low heat over long periods of time. They were then tightly folded into a squatting position and buried.

"We believe that the tradition reflects a timeless human impulse—the enduring hope, from ancient times to the present, that families and loved ones might remain ‘together’ forever, in whatever form that togetherness may take,” the researchers say.

Researchers found the first evidence that prehistoric people in Europe used vast stone walls to drive panicked herds of wild animals into traps or over cliffs. The ancient structures had until now been thought limited to Arabia and Asia as "desert kites."

The long walls were spotted in Slovenia's wild Karst region and are thought to be between 10,000 and 4,000 years old. Similar walls and traps have been documented at hundreds of desert sites, and some were recently discovered in the Peruvian Andes, but these are the first found in Europe.

"We believe these were large-scale hunting structures designed to guide and capture herds of wild animals, most likely red deer," say the researchers.

Just in time for the festive season, archaeologists announced the discovery of an underwater wreck of a giant pleasure barge or "floating palace" in the harbor near the Egyptian city of Alexandria. The remains had been lying only about 23 feet under the water and about 5 feet under the sediment. This was the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt from about 300 B.C. and a major city under the Roman Empire from about 30 B.C.

Ancient writers describe Ptolemaic pleasure barges carrying the feasting elite between choice spots along the leafy shores and lotus beds of Egypt's canals. "Every day and every night is crowded with people on the boats who play the flute and dance without restraint and with extreme licentiousness,” noted the ancient Greek geographer Strabo.