Tag: ancient history

A ‘landmark finding’: Homo naledi buried their dead 250,000 years ago, according to newly updated research

Homo naledi, an extinct relative of modern humans whose brain was one-third the size of ours, buried their dead and engraved cave walls about 250,000 years ago, according to new research.

The findings are overturning long-held theories that only modern humans and our Neanderthal cousins could do these complex activities.

Evidence of burial practices in this early hominin would be a “landmark finding,” according to a team of researchers who published their hypothesis in the journal eLife in 2023. But their theory became controversial, with numerous experts saying the evidence wasn’t enough to conclude that H. naledi buried or memorialized their dead.

In a revised study published Friday (March 28) in eLife, the researchers laid out 250 pages’ worth of proof of purposeful burial that they say has convinced more people.

Archaeologists first discovered the remains of H. naledi in South Africa’s Rising Star cave system in 2013. Since then, over 1,500 bones from multiple individuals have been found throughout the 2.5-mile-long (4 kilometers) system.

The anatomy of H. naledi is well known due to the remarkable preservation of the remains. They were bipedal, stood around 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall and weighed about 100 pounds (45 kilograms). They had dexterous hands and small-but-complex brains — traits that have led to a debate about the complexity of their behavior.

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Experts now even more confident a ‘vast city’ exists under Giza Pyramids in Egypt after new discovery

Scientists on a mission to prove a ‘vast city’ sits more than 4,000 feet below Egypt‘s Giza Pyramids have released a new analysis they say proves the findings to be true.

Last week, the team in Italy presented bombshell research that claimed to have discovered multi-thousand-foot-tall wells and chambers under the Khafre Pyramid.

If true, it would turn Egyptian – and human – history on its head, though independent experts have said the discovery is ‘completely wrong’ and lacked any scientific basis.

Researchers said they determined ‘a confidence level well above 85 percent’ that the ‘structures identified beneath the Pyramid of Khafre, as well as those beneath other pyramids on the Giza Plateau,’ exist.

The wells and chambers were identified by sending ‘high-frequency electromagnetic waves’ into the subsurface, and the way signals bounced back allowed researchers to map structures beneath the pyramid.

The team used ‘a specialized algorithm’ to process the data and create the images that showed what looked like wells with spiral formations leading to enormous chambers.

They cross checked the structures with known architectural forms, ‘specifically those accessible to us today, such as the Pozzo di San Patrizio in Italy,’ Niccole Ciccole, the project’s spokesperson, shared with Dailymail.com.

Professor Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver who focuses on archaeology and was not involved in the study, said: ‘To make correlation confidence levels there needs to be something to correlate to or compare to. 

‘What could that be here? Without that, these percentages are meaningless scientifically.’

However, Professor Conyers suggested that it is conceivable that small structures, such as shafts and chambers, may exist beneath the pyramids, having been there before the pyramids were built, because the site was ‘special to ancient people.’

He highlighted how ‘the Mayans and other peoples in ancient Mesoamerica often built pyramids on top of the entrances to caves or caverns that had ceremonial significance to them.’

The team claimed they found eight wells and two enormous enclosures more than 2,000 feet below the base of the Khafre pyramid and ‘an entire hidden world of many structures’ another 2,000 feet below those

‘I am skeptical of the deeper claims. If their ‘algorithms’ can do what they say (I can’t comment on those), then perhaps this will hold up,’ Professor Conyers said.

‘A ‘well’ or ‘tunnel’ is what I would expect under a pyramid.’

The work by Corrado Malanga from Italy’s University of Pisa, Filippo Biondi with the University of Strathclyde in Scotland and Egyptologist Armando Mei has not yet been published in a scientific journal for the review of independent experts. 

The team sent the analysis to DailyMail.com, where they admitted ‘further validation is recommended through additional tomographic scans and in-situ verification.’

To determine if anything was hiding below the Pyramid of Khafre, they sent high-frequency waves (similar to how radar works) into the ground beneath the pyramid.

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Scientists who made ‘vast city’ discovery beneath Egypt’s Giza pyramid claim it was built by a long-lost advanced civilization

A purported ‘vast underground city’ in Egypt is tens of thousands of years older than the Giza pyramids, scientists have shockingly claimed.

If true, it would turn Egyptian – and human – history on its head, though independent experts have called it ‘outlandish’ and ‘crazy talk.’

Last week, researchers in Italy presented bombshell research which claimed to have discovered multi-thousand-foot tall wells and chambers underground beneath the Khafre Pyramid. 

The Giza pyramids are believed to have been built around 4,500 years ago and considered a remarkable feat given their immense scale and the precision of their construction, which remains a mystery for the time period.

However, researchers behind the new study claim that the hidden structures, spanning 4,000 feet, are approximately 38,000 years old — which predates the oldest known man-made structure of its kind by tens of thousands of years.

The team has based these claims on ancient Egyptian text that they interpreted as historical records of a pre-existing civilization that was destroyed during a cataclysmic event.

Professor Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver who focuses on archaeology and was not involved in the study, told DailyMail.com: ‘That is a really outlandish idea.’

He added that at that time in human history people ‘were mostly living in caves’ 38,000 years ago. ‘People did not start living in what we now call cities until about 9,000 years ago,’ he said. ‘There were a few large villages before that but those only go back a few thousand years from that time.’

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Archaeologists Claim They Have Found a ‘Vast Underground City’ Underneath Egypt’s Giza Pyramids

Archaeologists believe they have uncovered evidence of a massive underground city lying beneath Egypt’s famous Giza pyramids.

Researchers from Italy and Scotland used advanced radar technology to produce detailed images from deep below the surface, revealing possible hidden structures 10 times the size of the pyramids themselves.

The report highlights eight distinct vertical, cylinder-shaped formations stretching over 2,100 feet beneath the pyramids, along with a series of additional unidentified structures located another 4,000 feet further down.

However, some experts remain skeptical of the claim, insisting that such a feat would be structurally impossible.

Mail Online reported:

Professor Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver who focuses on archaeology, told DailyMail.com that it is not possible for the technology to penetrate that deeply into the ground, making the idea of an underground city ‘a huge exaggeration.’

Professor Conyers said it is conceivable there are small structures, such as shafts and chambers, beneath the pyramids that existed before they were built because the site was ‘special to ancient people.’

He highlighted how ‘the Mayans and other people in ancient Mesoamerica often built pyramids on top of the entrances of caves or caverns that had ceremonial meaning to them.’

The work by Corrado Malanga, from Italy’s University of Pisa, and Filippo Biondi with the University of Strathclyde in Scotland has only been released during an in-person  briefing in Italy this week and is yet to be published in a scientific journal, where it would need to be analyzed by independent experts.

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Genetic Study Reveals Hidden Chapter in Story of Human Evolution

Modern humans descended from not one, but at least two ancestral populations that drifted apart and later reconnected, long before modern humans spread across the globe.

Using advanced analysis based on full genome sequences, researchers from the University of Cambridge have found evidence that modern humans are the result of a genetic mixing event between two ancient populations that diverged around 1.5 million years ago. About 300,000 years ago, these groups came back together, with one group contributing 80% of the genetic makeup of modern humans and the other contributing 20%.

For the last two decades, the prevailing view in human evolutionary genetics has been that Homo sapiens first appeared in Africa around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, and descended from a single lineage. However, these latest results, reported in the journal  Nature Genetics, suggest a more complex story.

“The question of where we come from is one that has fascinated humans for centuries,” said first author Dr Trevor Cousins from Cambridge’s Department of Genetics. “For a long time, it’s been assumed that we evolved from a single continuous ancestral lineage, but the exact details of our origins are uncertain.”

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Oldest Rock Art: 200,000-Year-Old Carvings Found on Stone in Marbella, Spain

Archaeologists have made a groundbreaking discovery in Marbella, Spain, unearthing a stone with ancient engravings on its face that could rewrite the history of prehistoric art. The find suggests that early humans may have been engaging in symbolic expression far earlier than previously believed, as this ancient rock art may predate the previous oldest samples in Europe by more than 100,000 years.

The stone was discovered at the Coto Correa site in the Las Chapas neighborhood of Marbella, which is located in the southern Spanish region of Andalusia. Researchers currently estimate that the engravings are more than 200,000 years old, a timeframe that places them deep within the Lower Paleolithic era. The maker of the engravings would have been part of an early wave of human migrants to leave Africa and move into Europe, with much larger waves destined to duplicate this journey later on.

If these estimates are confirmed, this could be one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in Spain’s history, as it will literally require the rewriting of textbooks and other official resources that discuss the development of art as a form of human self-expression.

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Did an Advanced Civilization Thrive 10,000 Years Ago? Mind-Blowing Evidence Is Stacking Up

What if everything we’ve been taught about the dawn of civilization is a lie—or at least a half-truth? Picture this: more than 10,000 years ago, while the last Ice Age glaciers retreated, a sophisticated society flourished—cities of stone rising from the earth, astronomers charting the heavens, engineers bending nature to their will. Not a ragtag band of hunter-gatherers fumbling with flint, but a lost civilization rivalling Egypt or Mesopotamia, erased by time and catastrophe.

Mainstream archaeology has long scoffed at the notion, relegating it to the realm of crackpot fantasy. Yet a cascade of recent discoveries—monuments older than history itself, submerged ruins whispering of drowned worlds, artifacts that defy explanation—is prying open the coffin of conventional wisdom. Could an advanced civilization have thrived millennia before we dared to dream? The evidence is growing, and it’s turning our past into a tantalizing enigma.

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Humans in Africa’s wet tropical forests 150 thousand years ago

Humans emerged across Africa shortly before 300 thousand years ago (ka)1,2,3. Although this pan-African evolutionary process implicates diverse environments in the human story, the role of tropical forests remains poorly understood. Here we report a clear association between late Middle Pleistocene material culture and a wet tropical forest in southern Côte d’Ivoire, a region of present-day rainforest. Twinned optically stimulated luminescence and electron spin resonance dating methods constrain the onset of human occupations at Bété I to around 150 ka, linking them with Homo sapiens. Plant wax biomarker, stable isotope, phytolith and pollen analyses of associated sediments all point to a wet forest environment. The results represent the oldest yet known clear association between humans and this habitat type. The secure attribution of stone tool assemblages with the wet forest environment demonstrates that Africa’s forests were not a major ecological barrier for H. sapiens as early as around 150 ka.

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2,700-Year-Old Meteorite Jewelry Unearthed in Poland Reveals Ancient Connection to the Cosmos

New research has revealed early Iron Age artifacts recovered from ancient Polish burial sites include metal pieces forged from rare extraterrestrial iron.

Culturally, this use may have contributed to a shift in how the value of this otherworldly or off-world material was perceived between the Bronze and Iron Ages, the new findings suggest.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, a team of Polish and French scientists analyzed artifacts from the Częstochowa-Raków and Częstochowa-Mirów burial sites, revealing incredible insights into our past. The discovery connects the cosmos and our ancient ancestors to craftsmanship skills they were previously unknown to possess.  

“During the Bronze Age, the price of iron was about ten times that of gold; in the early Iron Age, it sank drastically to less than copper,” study lead Dr. Albert Jambon notes.

Jambon and his colleagues think the random placement of meteoric iron in graves suggests there were no social or age restrictions on who was able to wear it. 

The study was mainly focused on understanding the origin of iron smelting. “The point of my research is to find out who, when, and where the iron smelting was discovered,” Jambon said. ‘To that end, we need to analyze archaeological irons and check whether they are meteoritic or smelted.”

Although only a modest amount of the material was found, the new findings still represent one of the largest collections recovered from a single archaeological site outside of Egypt. The discovery included 26 iron artifacts, an ankle ring, three bracelets, and a pin—all showing traces of nickel in the iron. Researchers believe this indicates the presence of meteoritic iron, offering a fascinating glimpse into ancient human connections with the cosmos.

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The origins of cannabis smoking: Chemical residue evidence from the first millennium BCE in the Pamirs

Mind-altering plants can produce various altered states of consciousness and have thus played important roles in ritual and/or religious activities in various areas of the world (1–4). In prehistoric and early historic Central Eurasia, many plants were used for their secondary compounds, and several are still in prominent use today, notably the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum), ephedra (Ephedra spp.), and cannabis (Cannabis sativa). Plants in the Cannabis genus represent a hybrid complex, with ongoing controversy relating to taxonomy; the lack of taxonomic clarity combined with continual gene flow between wild and domesticated populations has hampered attempts to study the origins and dispersal of this plant (5, 6). Wild cannabis grows across many of the cooler mountain foothills from the Caucasus to western China, especially in the well-watered habitats of Central Asia. However, cannabinol (CBN) levels in most wild cannabis plant populations are low, and it remains a largely unanswered question as to when, where, and how the plant was first cultivated for higher psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) production (6). Little is known about the prehistoric use of cannabis outside eastern China, where it was domesticated as an oil-seed crop (7, 8). While recent well-reported and photographed cannabis macroremains have been recovered from burials in the Turpan Basin (ca. 800 to 400 BCE) in northwest China, suggesting shamanic or medicinal uses (9, 10), these discoveries do not adequately reveal how the cannabis plant was used.

Historically, cannabis plants used for ritual and medicinal purposes involved oral ingestion or inhaling the smoke or vapors produced by burning the dried plant. Smoking is defined as the act of inhaling and exhaling the fumes of burning plant material (11) and is today often associated with cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. However, smoking pipes were likely introduced to Eurasia from the New World (12), and no clear evidence exists for them in Central Asia before the modern era. The practice of smoking or inhaling cannabis fumes in ritual and recreational activities was documented in Herodotus’ fifth-century BCE The Histories (13) and was supported by the discovery of carbonized hemp seeds in burials from a handful of sites in Eurasia (1, 14, 15). However, most of the archaeological reports of ancient drug remains were published several decades ago, and re-examination of some of these reports has led to the claims being refuted (discussed below). Modern scientific studies are thus needed to corroborate the remaining reports. Here, we investigated residues from archaeological artifacts recovered in the Pamir Mountains (Fig. 1Opens in image viewer), a region that served as an important culture communication channel through Eurasia, linking ancient populations in the modern regions of China, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan. The chemical analysis reveals ancient cannabis burning and suggests high levels of psychoactive chemicals, indicating that people may have been cultivating cannabis and possibly actively selecting for stronger specimens or choosing plant populations with naturally high terpenophenolic secondary metabolites (6). Alternatively, a process of domestication through hybridization between wild and cultivated subspecies may have inadvertently led to stronger chemical-producing plants through human dispersal and subsequent selection (7).

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