Tag: ancient history

35,000 Years Ago, Ancient Humans Entered a Deep Cavern to Worship this Enigmatic ‘Reptilian God’

Scientists exploring a deep cavern in Galilee, Israel, have discovered evidence that ancient humans used the location to worship a symbolic object seemingly representing a turtle god more than 35,000 years ago.

In a release announcing the unusual discovery, the prominently placed “touchstone” found within the cavern “is an engraved rock, deliberately placed in a niche in the cavern, with a turtle-shell design carved into its surface.” The researchers say that this three-dimensional representation of a turtle “is contemporaneous with some of the oldest cave paintings in France.”

The culmination of over a decade of excavations by archaeologists at the site, the team says this discovery represents the oldest example of ritualistic group behavior on the Asian continent. The research also offers rare insight into the spiritual thoughts and behaviors of archaic human societies from this period.

In their published study, the research team noted that the cavern’s deep, dark location far from the domestic areas of the enclosure, which were all near the entrance, indicated it was a special location and not part of the inhabitants’ everyday activities. This also suggests that the turtle god object carefully placed within the cavern was similarly significant.

“Its special location, far from the daily activities near the cave entrance, suggests that it was an object of worship,” explained team leader Omry Barzilai, Head of Material Culture PaleoLab at the University of Haifa and the Israel Antiquities Authority. “It may have represented a totem or spiritual figure.”

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Archaeologists found a mysterious stone tablet in Georgia that contains an unknown language

Archaeologists have unearthed a basalt tablet with inscriptions in an unknown language near Lake Bashplemi, in the Dmanisi region of Georgia. Although the tablet’s exact age is uncertain, researchers believe it was created in the Late Bronze or Early Iron Ages (first millennium BCE) based on related artifacts such as stone mortar and pottery fragments.

Made of local vesicular basalt, it measures 24.1 x 20.1 cm and records 60 different symbols, 39 of which have no exact equivalent in other known ancient writing systems. The symbols, created using a conical drill and smoothed with rounded tools, reflect a high degree of craftsmanship.

Lake Bashplemi is located on a volcanic plateau surrounded by hills and fed by small tributaries of the Mashavera River. The region is known for its wealth of archaeological discoveries, especially in relation to human remains dating back as far as 1.8 million years.

Researchers discovered ceramic fragments, a mortar stone, and pieces of obsidian on the surface, indicating that the area may have had substantial human activity even though it had not been thoroughly investigated from an archaeological standpoint.

The basalt tablet contains 39 unique symbols arranged in seven horizontal lines or registers. Some of these symbols repeat, allowing for a total of 60 characters on the stone’s surface. The arrangement and frequency of some of the characters suggest that they may have been used to denote numbers or punctuation marks.

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‘King Arthur’s Hall’ is five times older than thought, researchers discover

A historic site in Cornwall linked to King Arthur has been found to be 4,000 years older than previously thought after a new survey was carried out by a team of researchers, including experts from the University of St Andrews.

The team, including Dr. Tim Kinnaird from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, carried out a survey of the mound on Bodmin Moor, named King Arthur’s Hall, confirming the site dates back to prehistoric times.

The monument was previously listed as dating back to the medieval period, but it is now believed to date back 4,000 years earlier to the Neolithic period, thanks to a team of specialists from the universities of St Andrews, Reading, and Newcastle.

The site consists of a rectangular bank of earth and stone formed with 56 standing stones, some measuring up to 1.8 m, which are either leaning, recumbent or partially buried. It’s protected by Historic England, which listed it as an early medieval animal pen from around 1000AD. However, there had been some speculation that due to integrated standing stones, the mound was much older.

Dr. Kinnaird and his team used a technique called optically stimulated luminescence, or OSL—the date the mound to the neolithic period making it around 5,500 years old—4,000 years earlier than previously thought. OSL is used to date when sediment was last exposed to light, prior to burial.

Dr. Kinnaird said the findings were a “major revelation.”

“It’s extremely exciting that we’ve finally been able to date construction of this enigmatic monument, previously grounded in myths and legends.”

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Israeli evacuation orders hit entirety of Lebanon’s ancient city of Baalbek

The Israeli military issued on 30 October, for the first time, evacuation orders for the entirety of the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek, an ancient city with UNESCO World Heritage status.

The orders coincide with a surge in Israeli attacks on eastern Lebanon. 

“The IDF will act forcefully against Hezbollah assets inside your city and villages, and does not intend to harm you,” said the Israeli army’s Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee said via X. “For your safety, you must evacuate your homes immediately and move outside the city and villages.” 

Residents of the eastern city began pouring out of their homes in a panic on Wednesday morning, rushing to evacuate. Hundreds of thousands resided in Baalbek prior to the war, with around 40 percent of its inhabitants (over 100,000) currently remaining in the city. Baalbek has a history dating back at least 11,000 years, and is most famous for its Roman ruins.

Israel has escalated its attacks across eastern Lebanon indiscriminately. The Lebanese Health Ministry said on 29 October that at least 60 people were killed in the eastern Bekaa region since the previous day. 

Several massacres have been committed in the Bekaa, including an attack on civilians in the town of Al-Ram on Tuesday, which killed at least 11. 

Israeli attacks on the UNESCO World Heritage city of Tyre (Sour) have also increased recently. Israel carried out several violent attacks on Tyre on 28 October, days after intense bombardment on the city, which leveled several buildings. 

The Israeli army issues evacuation orders for the south and Bekaa daily, often with insufficient time for people to flee before starting the attacks. 

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Insights into Early Modern Human Activity in the Jungles of Southeast Asia

Studying microscopic layers of dirt dug from the Tam Pà Ling cave site in northeastern Laos has provided a team of Flinders University archaeologists and their international colleagues further insights into some of the earliest evidence of  Homo sapiens in mainland Southeast Asia.

The site, which has been studied for the past 14 years by a team of Laotian, French, American and Australian scientists, has produced some of the earliest fossil evidence of our direct ancestors in Southeast Asia.

Now a new study, led by PhD candidate Vito Hernandez and Associate Professor Mike Morley from the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, has reconstructed the ground conditions in the cave between 52,000 and 10,000 years ago.

“Using a technique known as microstratigraphy at the Flinders Microarchaeology Laboratory, we were able to reconstruct the cave conditions in the past and identify traces of human activities in and around Tam Pà Ling,” says Hernandez. “This also helped us to determine the precise circumstances by which some of the earliest modern human fossils found in Southeast Asia were deposited deep inside.”

Microstratigraphy allows scientists to study dirt in its smallest detail, enabling them to observe structures and features that preserve information about past environments and even traces of human and animal activity that may have been overlooked during the excavation process due to their minuscule size.

The human fossils discovered at Tam Pà Ling were deposited in the cave between 86,000–30,000 years ago but until now, researchers had not conducted a detailed analysis of the sediments surrounding these fossils to gain an understanding of how they were deposited in the cave or the environmental conditions at the time.

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Scientists Unveil Haunting Soundscape of Mysterious 41,000-Year-Old Magnetic Field Reversal Event

Close to 41,000 years ago, Earth underwent a magnetic field reversal where, for a short period, the planet’s natural magnetic protective shield diminished to just 5% of its current strength.

During this sudden and extreme magnetic field reversal event, the temporary weakness of Earth’s magnetic barrier allowed a significant influx of cosmic rays to penetrate Earth’s atmosphere. Now, for the first time, a team of scientists have produced a sound visualization of this mysterious ancient occurrence.

The Laschamp Event

Between 42,200 and 41,500 years ago, Earth’s magnetic field underwent a sudden and dramatic decrease in the intensity, along with a shift in pole orientation by about 45 degrees.

Known as the Laschamp event, this was a type of geomagnetic excursion—an anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field and the first of its kind to be identified. During geomagnetic excursions, the weakened magnetic field provides less protection from cosmic radiation, which researchers believe may have caused significant effects on Earth including extreme changes to Earth’s biosphere.

Scientists are able to identify periods of heightened cosmic ray bombardment by examining radionuclides found in places that include marine sediment cores and ancient ice deposits. The isotopes produced by the interaction between Earth’s atmosphere and cosmic radiation serve as markers for times when cosmic rays were able to penetrate more easily and reach the planet.

Now, scientists at the Technical University of Denmark and the German Research Centre for Geosciences have used Laschamp event data, including new information obtained by the ESA’s Swarm mission, to create the first visualization of the mysterious event with sound.

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Ancient Construction Technology Discovered Under a Neolithic House

A groundbreaking discovery in Denmark has revealed evidence of an advanced technological structure dating back 5,000 years. While excavating a Neolithic site on the island of Falster, archaeologists uncovered a stone-paved root cellar for storing produce beneath an ancient dwelling. This significant find has challenged existing understandings of Neolithic life in Scandinavia, where early agricultural communities were thought to have employed simpler preservation methods.

The excavation, led by researchers from the Museum Lolland-Falster and Aarhus University, has been documented in a detailed study published in Radiocarbon.

The site at Nygårdsvej 3, was uncovered during construction work for a railway. It has proven to be an archaeological gold mine, well, as regards ancient architecture is concerned. Archaeologists identified two phases of house construction, both attributed to the Funnel Beaker Culture (also known as TRB or Trichterbecherkultur). This culture, which emerged around 4000 BC, marked the region’s shift from a hunter-gatherer society to a more sedentary lifestyle centered on agriculture and animal husbandry.

The houses discovered at the site followed a common architectural design of the period, known as the Mossby-type, which featured large double-span roofs supported by posts. The first house phase, made between 3080 and 2780 BC, had 38 postholes, while the second phase contained 35.

The floors of the houses were made from compacted loam, a mixture of sand and clay that provided a durable and stable surface. This is a construction material still in use in various parts of the world today.

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Archaeologists dig up huge burial site that could change what we know about Vikings

Archaeologists have dug up a huge burial site that could change what the world knows about the Viking times.

The excavation of a large Viking-era burial site in Denmark has unearthed 50 unusually well-preserved skeletons that archaeologists expect will help shed light on the lives of the Nordic people best known for their seafaring exploits in the Middle Ages.

The skeletons, discovered near Denmark’s third-largest city Odense, were kept intact by high water levels and favorable soil conditions that prevented them from decomposing, according to Michael Borre Lundoe, the excavation leader from Museum Odense.

“Normally when we excavate Viking graves, we’d be lucky if there were two teeth left in the grave besides the grave goods. But here we have the skeletons fully preserved,” said Lundoe.

“The skeletons are so amazing. They are so well preserved. There are five fingers, five toes. And that opens up a whole new set of possibilities for discoveries,” he said.

Rare artifacts such as knives, glass pearls and brooches dated between year 850 to 970 were also found at the excavation, which began six months ago.

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‘Knife-wielding orca’ and alien-looking figures among 300 Nazca Lines discovered in groundbreaking AI study

Scientists have discovered more than 300 never-before-seen Nazca Lines in Peru — including alien-looking humanoid figures, decapitated heads, potential historic ceremonies and a surprisingly well-armed orca.

The staggering new haul was unearthed in just six months with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and almost doubles the number of known geoglyphs in the region.

The Nazca Lines are a group of large human-carved geoglyphs located in a roughly 170-square-mile (440 square kilometers) area of Peru’s Nazca Desert. The ancient artworks were likely created between 200 B.C. to A.D. 500 by members of the pre-Incan civilization, known as the Nazca (or Nasca), who removed the upper layers of the desert’s red-tinged surface pebbles to reveal sections of lighter soil in a wide range of different shapes and sizes.

Researchers had already found around 430 Nazca Lines since the mysterious shapes were rediscovered by airplane passengers in the 1920s. Most of these geoglyphs were identified in the last 20 years thanks to advancements in satellite imagery. However, the rate at which new lines are being discovered has started to slow, and researchers suspect that any remaining shapes are too faint to be easily spotted by the human eye.

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Psychedelic mushrooms may have played a role in development of human consciousness, study finds

Psychedelic fungi containing psilocybin may have played a role in the development of human consciousness a scientific review has suggested.

The study, published in the journal LILLOA, analysed multiple studies involving psilocybin, psilocin and human consciousness. Taking a multidisciplinary approach spanning studies from the fields of biology, ethnobotany, and neuroscience researchers found that psychedelic mushrooms, specifically the Psilocybe genus of the Hymenogastraceae family, had the “potential to trigger significant neurological and psychological effects” in humans.

The findings support the Stoned Ape Theory, a hypothesis proposed by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna in his 1992 book Food of the Gods. McKenna suggested that psychedelic mushrooms were the major evolutionary catalyst behind the rapid expansion of human consciousness.

“At the cerebral level, psilocybin affects various areas, such as the prefrontal cortex, the hippocampus, and the anterior cingulate cortex,” the study authors wrote. “The hypothesis that psilocybin mushrooms may have intervened as a factor in the evolution of human consciousness, either as catalysts for mystical experiences or as drivers of cognitive processes, raises profound reflections on the ancestral interaction between humans and their environment.”

The paper highlights how numerous ancient cultures across the world discovered and studied psilocybin-containing mushrooms, citing a prehistoric cave drawing of a shaman figure clutching mushrooms found in the Tassili caves in the Altas Mountains. This suggests, the authors said, that psychedelic mushrooms have played an important part in the evolutionary process of humans.

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