digging up the past

Syria:
French Archaeologists have found an 11 thousand year old building near Ja'de on the banks of the Euphrates river. The large size of the building suggests it was some kind of community building. There are multicolored geometrical paintings on the walls. Exactly what went on in this large hall is lost forever.
Cyprus:
British archaeologists have found 120 ancient stone anchors off the coast of Paphosin the eastern Mediterrainean Sea, originating from the bronze age (ie, 2500-1125BC). The most likely explanation is that the anchors are at a location where there was once a port. It seems that all that remains of the hopes, dreams, achievements and failures of an ancient society is a pile of anchors at the bottom of the sea.
Bulgaria:
A 4000 year old skull has been found in Bulgaria... with a perfectly shaped hole, leading to the conclusion that primitive brain surgery was conducted on the skull's owner. Sometime between the 3rd century BC and the twentieth century, the ability to conduct brain surgery was lost and rediscovered, as if for the first time.
Mexico:
Mexican archaeologists excavating in Mexico city hit a massive buried stone slab. As they unearthed it, they realised that it was a giant idol to the Aztec earth god, Tlaltecuhtli. While digging continues, speculation has risen that the slab may actually be a doorway to a long-forgotten chamber beneath an ancient temple.

These things remind me of that chilling poem by Percy Shelley, Ozymandias.

OZYMANDIAS of EGYPT
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- Percy Shelly, 1818