Tag: ancient history

The Remains of This Recently Found Ancient Structure Are Even Older Than The Pyramids

Archaeologists digging near Prague have discovered the remains of a Stone Age structure that’s older than Stonehenge and even the Egyptian pyramids: an enigmatic complex known as a roundel.

Nearly 7,000 years ago during the late Neolithic, or New Stone Age, a local farming community may have gathered in this circular building, although its true purpose is unknown.

The excavated roundel is large – about 180 feet (55 meters) in diameter, or about as long as the Leaning Tower of Pisa is tall, Radio Prague International reported.

And while “it is too early to say anything about the people building this roundel”, it’s clear that they were part of the Stroked Pottery culture, which flourished between 4900 BCE and 4400 BCE, Jaroslav Řídký, a spokesperson for the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IAP) and an expert on the Czech Republic’s roundels, told Live Science in an email.

Miroslav Kraus, director of the roundel excavation in the district of Vinoř on behalf of the IAP, said that revealing the structure could give them a clue about the use of the building.

Researchers first learned about the Vinoř roundel’s existence in the 1980s, when construction workers were laying gas and water pipelines, according to Radio Prague International, but the current dig has revealed the structure’s entirety for the first time.

So far, his team has recovered pottery fragments, animal bones, and stone tools in the ditch fill, according to Řídký.

Carbon-dating organic remains from this roundel excavation could help the team pinpoint the date of the structure’s construction and possibly link it with a Neolithic settlement discovered nearby.

Keep reading

Brochs: The mysterious circular symbols of Scotland

Travel north through Scotland’s deep glens, its mist and mountains and its velvety moorland and you’ll eventually see them: crumbling stone towers rising against the Highland peaks like ancient crag-top castles. These mysterious Iron Age monuments are known as brochs and they exist nowhere else but here. Yet, while these circular dry-walled structures are as symbolic a feature as any in the Scottish Highlands, their purpose remains unknown.

What is known is that around 2,000 years ago, local tribes started harvesting local stone to build massive prehistoric buildings with walls 5m thick and stretching 13m high. To date, anywhere from 100 to 500 broch sites have been identified, with the densest concentration centred in Scotland’s northern Caithness and Sutherland counties, as well as the Northern Isles.

While early archaeologists thought that brochs (whose name derives from the Lowland Scottish word for “fort”) were the citadels of local chieftains, more recent excavations suggest that the structures were more likely used for residential rather than defensive purposes.

Keep reading

The Mayan Calendar Is Strikingly Like the Chinese Zodiac; Could This Be Ancient Cross-Cultural Exchange?

Ancient Mayan and Chinese calendar systems share so many similarities, it is unlikely they developed independently, according to the late David H. Kelley, whose paper on the subject was published posthumously in August 2016.

Kelley was a Harvard-educated archaeologist and epigrapher at the University of Calgary in Canada. He earned fame in the 1960s for major contributions toward deciphering the Mayan script. His article, titled “Asian Components in the Invention of the Mayan Calendar,” was written 30 years ago, but was only recently unearthed and published for the first time in the journal Pre-Columbiana.

In 1980, a major science journal had solicited the article, said Pre-Columbiana’s editor Dr. Stephen Jett. But, Jett said, “the editors rejected it as being overly documented for the journal’s spare format; understandably for so revolutionary an effort, Dave did not wish to weaken the documentation, and he never published the piece elsewhere.” Jett obtained Kelley’s permission to publish it before he died.

The hypothesis Kelley presented is controversial. He said that the calendars indicate contact between Eurasia and Mesoamerica more than 1,000 years ago, contradicting mainstream archaeology’s understanding that such contact occurred for the first time only a few hundred years ago.

Kelley supported the controversial theory of early transoceanic contact in general. It is a theory that has many other academic proponents and that Pre-Columbiana specializes in exploring. The similarities in the calendar systems is only part of a growing body of evidence for early contact.

Keep reading

Archeologists Discover Evidence Of Oldest Surgical Amputation In One-Legged Skeleton

Archeologists discovered what they believe to be evidence of the oldest known surgical amputation: a 31,000-year-old one-legged skeleton, according to a paper published Wednesday. 

Australian and Indonesian researchers excavated the skeleton in 2020 from a limestone cave in the Indonesian section of Borneo, an island divided between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. The skeleton, missing its lower left leg, is the oldest known example of surgical amputation, according to a report published in Nature. 

“It was a huge surprise that this ancient forager survived a very serious and life threatening childhood operation,” University of Sydney bioarchaeologist Melandri Vlok said, adding “that the wound healed to form a stump, and that they lived for years in mountainous terrain with altered mobility – suggesting a high degree of community care.” 

Researchers say the amputation was successfully performed on a child, who likely lived between 6 and 9 years after the procedure. The report called the discovery “unexpectedly early evidence” of a successful operation of its kind, leading researchers to believe people of the time, at least in tropical Asia, had medical knowledge and skills not previously attributed to the time period. 

The body’s remains were placed in the Liang Tebo cave on Indonesian Borneo, the third largest island in the world, in the Indonesian province of East Kalimantan. The area is also known for having some of the earliest-dated rock art in the world. 

Prior to this discovery, the earliest known evidence of an amputation “operation” was a 7,000-year-old skeleton of a European farmer’s left forearm, just above the elbow, which was found in France. According to the report, this amputation partially healed and would have required technical skills and knowledge of human anatomy. 

Keep reading

Huge megalithic complex of more than 500 standing stones discovered in Spain

A huge megalithic complex of more than 500 standing stones has been discovered in southern Spain that could be one of the largest in Europe, archaeologists have said.

The stones were discovered on a plot of land in Huelva, a province flanking the southernmost part of Spain’s border with Portugal, near the Guadiana River.

Spanning about 600 hectares (1,500 acres), the land had been earmarked for an avocado plantation. Before granting the permit the regional authorities requested a survey in light of the site’s possible archaeological significance. The survey revealed the presence of the stones.

“This is the biggest and most diverse collection of standing stones grouped together in the Iberian peninsula,” said José Antonio Linares, a researcher at Huelva University and one of the project’s three directors. It was probable that the oldest standing stones at the La Torre-La Janera site were erected during the second half of the sixth or fifth millennium BC, he said. “It is a major megalithic site in Europe.”

At the site they found a large number of various types of megaliths, including standing stones, dolmens, mounds, coffin-like stone boxes called cists, and enclosures.

“Standing stones were the most common finding, with 526 of them still standing or lying on the ground,” said the researchers in an article published in Trabajos de Prehistoria, a prehistoric archaeology journal. The height of the stones was between one and three metres.

Keep reading

Gender activists push to bar anthropologists from identifying human remains as ‘male’ or ‘female’

As soon as ancient human remains are excavated, archaeologists begin the work of determining a number of traits about the individual, including age, race and gender.

But a new school of thought within archaeology is pushing scientists to think twice about assigning gender to ancient human remains.

It is possible to determine whether a skeleton is from a biological male or female using objective observations based on the size and shape of the bones. Criminal forensic detectives, for example, do it frequently in their line of work.

But gender activists argue scientists cannot know how an ancient individual identified themselves.

“You might know the argument that the archaeologists who find your bones one day will assign you the same gender as you had at birth, so regardless of whether you transition, you can’t escape your assigned sex,” tweeted Canadian Master’s degree candidate Emma Palladino last week.

Palladino, who is seeking an advanced degree in archaeology, called assigning gender to an ancient human “bullshit.”

“Labelling remains ‘male’ or ‘female’ is rarely the end goal of any excavation, anyway,” wrote Palladino. “The ‘bioarchaeology of the individual’ is what we aim for, factoring in absolutely everything we discover about a person into a nuanced and open-ended biography of their life.”

She is not alone. Gender activists have formed a group called the Trans Doe Task Force to “explore ways in which current standards in forensic human identification do a disservice to people who do not clearly fit the gender binary.”

“We propose a gender-expansive approach to human identification by combing missing and unidentified databases looking for contextual clues such as decedents wearing clothing culturally coded to a gender other than their assigned sex,” the group’s mission statement reads.

Keep reading

9,000-year-old ritual complex found in Jordan desert

Archaeologists deep in the Jordanian desert have discovered a 9,000-year-old ritualistic complex near what is thought to be the earliest known large human-built structure worldwide.

The Stone Age shrine site, excavated last year, was used by gazelle hunters and features carved stone figures, an altar and a miniature model of a large-scale hunting trap.

The giant game traps the model represents — so-called “desert kites” — were made of long walls that converge to corral running gazelles into enclosures or holes for slaughter.

Similar structures of two or more stone walls, some several kilometres (miles) long, have been found in deserts across Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and Kazakhstan.

The Neolithic-era ritual site was discovered inside a larger campsite last October by a joint French-Jordanian team called the South Eastern Badia Archaeological Project.

The nearby desert kites in Jibal al-Khashabiyeh are “the earliest large-scale human built structures worldwide known to date,” said a statement by the SEBA Project.

It hailed the “spectacular and unprecedented discovery” of the ritualistic site, believed to date to about 7000 BC.

It featured two steles with anthropomorphic features, the taller one 1.12 metres high, other artefacts including animal figurines, flints, and some 150 arranged marine fossils.

The wider, decade-old research project aims to study “the first pastoral nomadic societies, as well as the evolution of specialised subsistence strategies”.

The desert kites suggest “extremely sophisticated mass hunting strategies, unexpected in such an early timeframe,” said the project’s statement.

Keep reading

Scientists ‘Virtually Unwrap’ Exceptional 3,500-Year-Old Mummy of Amenhotep I With CT Scans, Revealing Ancient Mystery

A wrapped mummy of novel quality and exceptional appearance, whose burial rites were preserved from ages ago, has now been unwrapped—not by hand but virtually, using cutting-edge CT scans and 3D modeling software—revealing mysteries of the ancient kings of Egypt.

In 1902, among the royal mummies moved to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo was Amenhotep I, who reigned from 1525 to 1504 B.C. during the 18th Dynasty, whose remains were found in Luxor tomb Deir el-Bahari Royal Cache—where New Kingdom royalty were placed, so as to protect them from tomb robbers, some 3,000 years ago.

One of the few mummies found fully wrapped in modern times, Amenhotep I was marveled upon by then director of antiquities in Egypt Gaston Maspero. Having been desecrated by tomb raiders long ago, the mummy was reburied by priests of the 21st Dynasty. The beautiful reburial features garlands of yellow, red, and blue flowers, as well as an intact mask of cartonnage and painted wood with obsidian eyes and a cobra adorning the forehead. When the coffin of Amenhotep I was opened, a preserved wasp, possibly attracted by the smell of garlands and trapped, was also found inside. Preserving the novelty of this ritual, Maspero left Amenhotep I undisturbed.

Yet, recent technological advances have made possible a virtual “unwrapping” of the mummy, revealing more of the story hidden within.

Keep reading

National Geographic Published Book Falsely Claiming Kyle Rittenhouse Killed Two Black Men

National Geographic published a book about ancient Egypt that mentioned Kyle Rittenhouse, and wildly mischaracterized the self defense shooting he was involved in nearly two years ago.

In the book “The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World” by Kara Cooney, published by National Geographic, the author falsely claims that Rittenhouse killed “two Black men” in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Rittenhouse never stood accused of murdering two black men, or one black man.

All of the men he shot in self defense had white skin.

Regardless, Cooney wrote:

“Or consider 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who used his semiautomatic weapon to kill two Black men in Kenosha, Wisconsin, while waging a glorious race war on behalf of his inherited White power.”

“That’s not to mention the White people who rallied behind him to post his bail. Fear has gripped the patriarchy, and the threat of righteous violence—or the lethal use of it—is the patriarchy’s response.”

National File obtained a digital copy of the book and verified the claim exists in the text.

The claim is in the last chapter of the book, which is titled “Smashing The Patriarchy.”

This remark was written in the context of how ancient Egyptian authoritarian power structures are still seen in the 21st century.

It seems likely that National Geographic published Cooney because of her status as an academic. She is an Egyptology Professor at UCLA.

Keep reading

The human brain doubled in power, very suddenly, 200,000 years ago. Why?

There seems to have been a profound difference in cognitive abilities between early Homo sapiens and our immediate predecessor, Homo erectus. Sure, erectus stood upright — a big, um, step forward — but with the emergence of Homo sapiens, we see traces of art, pictography, and tool usage, and we believe humankind made its first forays into language.

In the early 1990s, psychedelic advocate and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna published his book Food of the Gods in which he surmised that homo sapiens’ cognitive leap forward was due to their discovery of magic mushrooms. The scientific community never took McKenna’s theory very seriously, considering it mostly trippy speculation — these days, his ideas have largely been relegated to the spacier corners of Reddit. Now, however, the idea has acquired a new advocate, psilocybin mycologist Paul Stamets, who’s suggesting McKenna was right all along.

In McKenna’s Stoned Ape hypothesis,” he posited that as humans began to migrate to new areas, at some point they came upon psychedelic mushrooms growing in cow droppings, as is their wont, and then ate them. After ingesting them, and more specifically the psilocybin they contained, their brains kicked into overdrive, acquiring new information-processing capabilities, and a mind-blowing expansion of our imaginations in the bargain. Many modern users of psychedelics claim the world never looks the same again after such an experience. As McKenna put it, “Homo sapiens ate our way to a higher consciousness,” and, “It was at this time that religious ritual, calendar making, and natural magic came into their own.”

Keep reading