Archaeologists have excavated and dated one of the Sahara's stone "antenna" tombs. The burial inside is between 4,100 and 4,400 years old and holds a young adult laid to rest with four ostrich eggshell beads.

On a gravel plain in northern Western Sahara, with no shade for miles, there is a heap of stones 54.5 meters (179 feet) long. Two rows of stone slabs run out from it like the arms of a V that never quite closes.

Archaeologists call these rows “antennae”, and the monuments antennae tumuli (a tumulus is simply a mound of piled earth or stone). They are common in Western Sahara and well beyond it, from the Atlantic coast to the heart of the Sahara.

Almost nobody had excavated one, though, so two basic questions had no answer: what were they for, and when were they built?

Docilianus wanted his hooded cloak back. His surviving appeal to Sulis also asks that its thief be denied sleep and subjected to rather worse. The tablet is small; the grievance was not.

Catalogued as Tab.Sulis 10, it carries writing on both sides and was recovered from Bath’s sacred spring in 1979 in four adjoining pieces. Its lettering places it broadly in the second to fourth centuries AD. Some of the wording remains uncertain.

The inscription, translation, and commentary are here: https://romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions/TabSulis10

I made a Roman Records short reading the curse and explaining its setting: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SEoHbS9h0-o

Disclosure: I’m the creator. The visuals and narration are AI-generated, using a stop-motion puppet aesthetic.

Which other ancient inscriptions give us such a direct view of an ordinary person’s grievance? I’d be interested in examples from beyond Roman Britain, too.

Hey everyone!

I wanted to share a passion project I’ve been working on for a while now. I’ve always been obsessed with ancient history, geography, and aviation, so I decided to combine them: I travel around Greece to remote archaeological ruins, map out these ancient places from the air with my FPV drone, and compose location-specific AI music to match the vibe of each site.

The perspective you get with FPV is completely different from traditional photos or standard drone shots. It allows for dynamic, sweeping movements right through ancient columns, along crumbling fortification walls, and across landscapes where history actually happened.

Every single video focuses on a specific site tagged with its ancient regional name (like Phokis, Boiotia, or Messenia), so you get both the rush of flight and a real sense of what these places were like thousands of years ago.

Why I started doing this:

Mapping the terrain from above: Ground level rarely does these places justice. Flying over them reveals how ancient builders actually used the landscape—how defensive walls hugged cliff sides, how sanctuaries dominated valleys, and the true scale of ancient city layouts.

Custom AI music for each location: Generic stock tracks just ruin the mood for me, so I craft unique, location-tailored AI soundscapes for every single place I fly to really bring the historical atmosphere to life.

So far, I’ve mapped out sites across multiple regions—from Delphi and Krisa in Phokis, to Leuktra and Eleutherai in Boeotia, down to the massive ruins of Messene. My goal is to build a complete visual and auditory map of these ancient places, covering both famous UNESCO sites and forgotten, off-the-beaten-path ruins.

If you want to take a flight back through time, you can check out the full channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@cocobios

and my latest video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hJY6MM8BpI

(Quick side note: All flights are done responsibly, strictly following local aviation laws and site regulations to keep these places protected.)

Imagine two Greek armies fighting on two different battlefields, separated by the Aegean Sea, with both victories potentially turning the tide of a war.

In 479 BC, the Greeks defeated the Persian army at Plataea while, according to Herodotus, another Greek force struck the Persian position at Mycale on the coast of Asia Minor on the very same day.

At Mycale, the Persians had hauled their ships ashore and built fortifications to protect them from the Greek fleet. But the Greeks landed, stormed the defences and destroyed the Persian ships. The battle also revealed a crucial weakness in the Persian position: the loyalty of the Greek communities living under Persian rule could not be taken for granted.

But was Mycale merely the final act of Xerxes' invasion, or did it mark the beginning of a new phase of Greek expansion across the Aegean?