The ancient Roman city, which was covered in ash after the sudden eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, now has competition from a buried town that has been unearthed in Norway.
Archaeologists discovered the mini-Pompeii while digging in the headland formed by the Topdalselva River and the North Sea near southern Norway.
Under three feet of sand, they found a settlement that has been undisturbed for 5,500 years.
"This is an archaeological sensation," said Håkon Glørstad, a spokesman for the dig, according to the Norwegian website News in English.
So far, they've determined that the settlement contains stone structures, and found pottery and arrowheads preserved by the sand.
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"We expected to find an 'ordinary' Scandinavian Stone Age site, badly preserved and small. Instead, we discovered a unique site, buried under a thick sand layer," lead archaeologist Lars Sundström, of the University of Oslo, told Discovery News.Signs indicate that the settlement wasn't simply deserted over time. Instead, a sudden event caused it to be encased in sand, leaving it hidden for centuries.
"Most probably the site was suddenly flooded, and covered with sand by the nearby river," Sundström said.
The Norwegian settlement was likely built by people of the Funnel Beaker Culture -- a late Neolithic culture that thrived in northern Europe and Scandinavia between 4,000 B.C. and 2,400 B.C., according to Digital Journal.
So far, the archaeologists have excavated more than 300 square yards, though it appears the settlement extends much further.
The eruption of Vesuvius froze the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum for more than a thousand years. Buried in ash, they were nothing more than a vague legend until the 18th century, when an Italian peasant stumbled upon Herculaneum while digging a well.