Tag: ancient history

Study Finds Out Those Barbaric Vikings Had…Stained Glass Windows?!

It is no secret that the portrayal of Vikings in popular culture has done more than its fair share to distort our ideas of what and who the Vikings were. This distortion extends across various domains, including clothing, language, culinary choices and even habitation, to name but a few. Now, another myth-busting study, dating fragments of windows from Scandinavia, shows us that  Viking Age  windows were created using  stained glass  as the 9th century, contrary to popular belief that stained-glass windows only emerged during the construction of medieval churches and castles in Denmark.

In a new study published in the  Danish Journal of Archaeology , a conservation expert from the National Museum of Denmark and their research team arrived at this conclusion after conducting a thorough re-examination of 61 glass fragments recovered from six different Viking-age sites. This means that  Norse dignitaries likely sat in rooms lit up by Viking Age windows with colored  glass, and adds another nail in the coffin of a “savage” or “ barbaric” Viking who swings his sword around.

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Human Use Of Cannabis—For Food, Fiber And Psychoactive Effects—Stretches Back Millennia, New Report Says

A new paper in the European Journal for Chemistry traces the history of cannabis through “thousands of years of contact with mankind,” noting the plant’s legacy as a source of fiber, nutrition, medicine, spirituality and pleasure.

At the same time, it notes that cannabis “is perhaps one of the greatest controversies in contemporary humanity” and a key driver of the modern war on drugs.

The paper, “From ancient Asian relics to contemporaneity: A review of historical and chemical aspects of Cannabis,” was written by Gabriel Vitor de Lima Marques and Renata Barbosa de Olivera, of the pharmacy department at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil.

The cannabis plant appears to have first been used for its fiber, as a material for ropes and other manufactured goods, the authors wrote. Use of hemp fiber dates back to approximately 10,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia and to roughly 6,000 and 5,000 years ago in China and Kazakhstan, respectively.

Ancient peoples considered cannabis one of the five main grains, along with rice, soy, barley and millet, the paper continues. And once stalks were processed into hemp fibers, they became durable materials for ropes, sails and boat rigging, clothing, paper, animal husbandry and more.

“Used as a stunner to facilitate the capture of fish,” it says, “Cannabis is possibly the first plant to be cultivated for non-food purposes.”

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Further evidence points to footprints in New Mexico being the oldest sign of humans in Americas

New research confirms that fossil human footprints in New Mexico are likely the oldest direct evidence of human presence in the Americas, a finding that upends what many archaeologists thought they knew about when our ancestors arrived in the New World.

The footprints were discovered at the edge of an ancient lakebed in White Sands National Park and date back to between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago, according to research published Thursday in the journal Science.

The estimated age of the footprints was first reported in Science in 2021, but some researchers raised concerns about the dates. Questions focused on whether seeds of aquatic plants used for the original dating may have absorbed ancient carbon from the lake — which could, in theory, throw off radiocarbon dating by thousands of years.

The new study presents two additional lines of evidence for the older date range. It uses two entirely different materials found at the site, ancient conifer pollen and quartz grains.

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9 Mysterious Undeciphered Codes and Inscriptions in History

From Neolithic tablets containing the oldest known system of writing, to a series of letters scrawled on the back of a dead man’s book, some of the most legendary undeciphered codes and texts remain a challenge for even the world’s best cryptographers, code breakers and linguists. Yet unravelling these mysterious puzzles remains as important as ever, since many of these enigmatic inscriptions could hold the keys to understanding civilizations that have long since faded into historic oblivion. Here we feature nine of the most fascinating undeciphered codes and inscriptions throughout history.

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Previously Unknown Language Found on Ancient Hittite Tablets in Turkey

In the midst of artificial intelligence and cutting-edge language models, a significant archaeological discovery has unfolded in Boğazköy-Hattusha ( Hattusa), the old Hittite capital in Turkey. Archaeologists have unearthed a previously unknown ancient language in a cultic ritual text, adding a fresh dimension to our understanding of Late Bronze Age Anatolia.

The Hattusa archaeological site in north-central Turkey is an ancient Hittite rock sanctuary and open-air shrine. Boasting impressive rock reliefs depicting deities and mythological scenes, the earliest settlement dates back to the Late Bronze Age (1650 to 1200 BC), when the Hittite Empire dominated the region.

Hattusa was an ancient capital of the Hittite Empire , and until now, among the most impressive discoveries at this UNESCO World Heritage Site, was a representation of the Storm God “Tarhunt,” who symbolized the Hittite pantheon’s strength and power. However, a recent excavation has unearthed a hitherto unknown Indo-European language.

Excavations at Hattusa have been undertaken for over a century, mostly under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute . Under the watch of the current site director, Professor Andreas Schachner of the Istanbul Department of the German Archaeological Institute, numerous cuneiform tablets have been unearthed.

In total, around 30,000 clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform writing have been recovered from this site. While these tablets offer archaeologists insights into Hittite cultural traditions, Professor Daniel Schwemer, head of the Chair of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Germany, said the recent discovery of “a previously unknown Indo-European language,” reaches new archaeological heights.

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Biblical sin city Sodom destroyed by asteroid stronger than nuke – expert

An ancient city that met a fiery end in what could be described as an asteroid impact more powerful than an “atomic explosion” has been identified as the biblical city of Sodom, according to a biblical studies expert. Dr. John Bergsma, a prominent theologian, contends that excavations in Jordan provide substantial proof that one of the Bible’s most dramatic and improbable narratives may indeed be factual.

Bergsma asserts that archaeological findings in Jordan corroborate the existence of the biblical city of Sodom. Prior research had already indicated that the ancient city of Tell el-Hammam, located in the southern Jordan Valley, suffered a catastrophic fate—a revelation that Dr. John Bergsma, a theology professor at Ohio’s Franciscan University, believes aligns with the biblical account.

As per the Book of Genesis, God unleashed brimstone and fire upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in response to the sins of their inhabitants, resulting in their complete obliteration. Similar destruction patterns were uncovered at Tell el-Hammam, leading Bergsma to reevaluate the credibility of the biblical narrative. He pointed to signs of extreme heat detected on skeletons and pottery fragments unearthed by archaeologists, suggesting a possible impact from an asteroid. 

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These ancient whittled logs could be the earliest known wooden structure

Some 500,000 years ago in central Africa, ancient human relatives chopped down trees and transformed the wood into digging tools, wedges and what might just be the world’s earliest-known wooden structure.

Now, remnants of this ancient woodworking have been found at an archaeological site in Zambia called Kalambo Falls. Researchers can’t definitively identify the possible structure, which might have been a raised platform, a shelter or something else entirely. Whatever it was, it pre-dates the evolution of Homo sapiens by more than 100,000 years, hinting that hominins that lived long before our own species were already working wood.

Wood tends to decay quickly in the ground. If it was preserved at archaeological sites as faithfully as materials such as stone or bone, “we would probably use the term wood age rather than stone age”, says archaeologist Larry Barham at the University of Liverpool, UK. He and his colleagues describe the finds in Nature1 on 20 September.

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Manipulated Human Remains Found at Cave Site in Spain

The Iberian Peninsula witnessed a particular form of human burials in caves, which were later manipulated and modified, over thousands of years! In the southern Iberian Peninsula, this practice became common around the 4th millennium BC, though the cultural connotations for manipulating the dead are still not fully understood. A new study zeroed in on the manipulated human remains of 12 individuals from a cave called Cueva de los Marmoles, in southern Spain.

Cueva de los Marmoles: Dating and Understanding Contemporaneous Finds

Radiocarbon dating has pinpointed the burials within a fairly wide timeframe spanning from the 5th to the 2nd millennium BC. The research team meticulously recorded deliberate post-mortem alterations to the skeletal remains, which included evidence of fractures and abrasions, possibly indicating attempts to extract marrow and other tissues.

Among these modified human remains, a single tibia showed signs of adaptation for use as a tool, while an intriguing cranium appeared to have been fashioned into a ” skull cup ,” suggesting potential adaptations for dietary or practical purposes.

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The Mysterious Dodecahedrons of the Roman Empire

IN THE FIRST EPISODE OF Buck Rogers, the 1980s television series about an astronaut from the present marooned in the 25th century, our hero visits a museum of the future. A staff member brandishes a mid-20th-century hair dryer. “Early hand laser,” he opines. As an observation of how common knowledge gets lost over time, it’s both funny and poignant. Because our museums also stock items from the past that completely baffle the experts.

Few are as intriguing as the hundred or so Roman dodecahedrons that we have found. We know next to nothing about these mysterious objects—so little, in fact, that the various theories about their meaning and function are themselves a source of entertainment.

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Mysterious 3,800-Year-Old Canaanite Arch and Stairway Unearthed in Israel

Archaeologists have made a stunning—yet thoroughly puzzling—discovery in northern Israel: a 3,800-year-old Canaanite arch and stairway, perfectly preserved underground.

Researchers don’t know the purpose of the structure, which was unearthed at the Tel Shimron archaeological site. They also don’t understand why it was sealed off not long after its construction.

But its preservation is “breathtaking, especially since the building material is unfired (!) mud brick—a material that only rarely survives a long time,” says excavation co-director Mario A.S. Martin, an archaeologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, in an email to Live Science’s Sascha Pare.

Archaeologists haven’t historically paid much attention to Tel Shimron. Before the current dig began in 2017, the site had never been extensively excavated. Recently, the team stumbled upon a strange structure that appeared to be man-made.

“We kept digging down further, and it was preserved at a depth of one meter, then two meters, then three meters, then four meters,” excavation co-director Daniel Master, an archaeologist at Wheaton College, tells the Times of Israel’s Melanie Lidman. “This structure was totally intact, and suddenly we realized we were dealing with the foundation of a building or a superstructure that had been constructed at the top of the site.”

The team uncovered mud brick walls up to 13 feet (4 meters) thick, reports Ariel David of Haaretz. Strangely, no rooms were found within them. Instead, the inside was made up of a long corridor—which led to the mysterious arch. Beyond it, researchers found a staircase leading deeper underground.

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