Tag: archaeology

The Amazon may contain thousands of undiscovered ancient structures

There are probably more than 10,000 undiscovered pre-Columbian archaeological sites hidden in the Amazon, researchers have concluded after surveying a fraction of the sprawling rainforest.

The study adds to growing evidence suggesting that the region isn’t a pristine tropical forest, but has been significantly altered by Indigenous societies that have inhabited it for more than 12,000 years.

Luiz Eduardo Oliveira e Cruz de Aragão at the National Institute for Space Research in Brazil and his colleagues surveyed 5315 square kilometres of the Amazon using lidar, a technology that uses reflected laser light to create a 3D representation of a landscape.

By beaming pulses of light into the rainforest, usually from planes or drones, lidar records slight variations in topography and has uncovered numerous archaeological sites in recent years.

The team discovered 24 previously unknown earthworks in the areas it surveyed, which are thought to be the remnants of civilisations that lived between 1500 and 500 years ago.

The discoveries include a fortified village in the southern Amazon, a region known to have been densely populated due to the high concentration of earthworks that were connected by ancient roads.

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

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. 

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

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.

Keep reading

Ancient-human fossils sent to space: scientists slam ‘publicity stunt’

On a bright Friday morning last week, a Virgin Galactic spacecraft travelled 88 kilometres above Earth to the edge of space. On board were two Virgin Galactic pilots, an instructor and three passengers — and the remains of two ancient-human relatives that lived hundreds of thousands of years ago in southern Africa.

Everyone aboard VSS Unity — including the hominin remains — landed safely an hour after take-off. But the fossils’ journey has drawn extraordinary rebuke from archaeologists, palaeoanthropologists and other researchers. They say that it was an unethical publicity stunt that put priceless hominin fossils at risk, raising questions about the protection of cultural heritage in South Africa, as a government agency signed off on the mission.

“To treat ancestral remains in such a callous, unethical way — to blast them into space just because you can — there’s no scientific merit in this,” says Robyn Pickering, a geologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Precious bones

Other fossils — including dinosaur bones — have been taken into space on various missions since the 1980s, but these are the first ancient-hominin remains to leave Earth. They belong to Australopithecus sediba, which lived around 2 million years ago1, and the roughly 250,000-year-old Homo naledi. Both species were found near Johannesburg in South Africa by teams led by Lee Berger, a palaeoanthropologist now at the National Geographic Society in Washington DC.

In July, the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) in Cape Town granted Berger an export permit to transport an A. sediba shoulder bone and a H. naledi finger bone to New Mexico, where Virgin Galactic’s spaceport is located, and aboard the company’s craft. The fossils were carried on the flight by Tim Nash, a South African businessman who was one of the passengers.

Berger’s application said that scientific studies might be conducted on the fossils, but that this was not the main aim of the request. “Major media partners will assist in using this once in a lifetime opportunity to bring awareness to science, exploration, human origins and South Africa and its role in understanding Humankind’s shared African ancestry,” it said.

Keep reading

Placement of ancient hidden lamps, skulls in cave in Israel suggests Roman-era practice of necromancy

A pair of archaeologists, one with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the other from Bar-Ilan University, has found evidence of Roman-era necromancy practices in a cave in Israel. In their study, reported in the journal Harvard Theological Review, Eitan Klein and Boaz Zissu analyzed artifacts excavated from the Te’omim Cave over the past 14 years.

The Te’omim Cave has played a role in the history of what is now the Jerusalem hills region west of the famous city. During the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, for example, it served as a hideout for Jewish rebels. In this new effort, the researchers studied artifacts that multiple groups have removed from the cave since 2009 as part of a collaboration between several entities in Israel. Such artifacts have been dated to approximately 2,000 years ago, during the Roman era.

Researchers have found more than 120 oil lamps, various weapons, vessels, coins and even three human skulls. Many of the artifacts were found wedged into tight spaces. In this new effort, the researchers analyzed the artifacts and the places where they were found and hypothesize that at least some of them were used in attempts to speak with dead people, a practice called necromancy.

Necromancy is the practice of enchanted conjuring, involving attempts to communicate with the dead by calling forth their spirits or visualizations of them for the purpose of divination or revealing future events, or to discover secrets. It is also generally associated with black magic or witchcraft. Klein and Zissu suggest that the placement of many of the lamps, for example, is indicative of behavior associated with necromancy—mostly because of the presence of the skulls.

Keep reading

When Did Humans Start Settling Down?

Twelve thousand years ago, long before the beginning of recorded history, a group of perhaps 200 people lived in a small village by a stream flowing into the Sea of Galilee, in what today is northern Israel. The villagers hunted gazelle and hares, fished for carp, built stone houses, and buried their dead in a cemetery next to their homes. When I hiked to the site early one morning, it was easy to imagine them: A few figures setting off with nets to the lakeshore, others walking toward the hills with bows and arrows to look for game, and more down by the riverbank, spinning thread or crushing barley, shooing children out of the way—a community waking up together and getting to work, unaware of their position at the dawn of a new age.

I came to the village with Leore Grosman, an archaeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We turned up a dirt track off the two-lane road that circles the Sea of Galilee. On the far shore, across five miles of placid water, lights in the city of Tiberias were blinking off. The sun wasn’t quite up, but the caffeine was kicking in. Grosman lit a cigarette and told me about herself in a gravelly voice. She started out studying math, then moved to Egyptology. She loved hieroglyphics. “But it’s a lot of sitting in libraries, and it’s a matter of personality,” she said. “I need to be outside.” She began digging here in 2010 with a feeling that the site, known as Nahal Ein Gev II, had something to say about a great change in the human story. She has returned each summer since.

Keep reading

Pendants made from giant sloths suggest earlier arrival of people in the Americas

New research suggests humans lived in South America at the same time as now extinct giant sloths, bolstering evidence that people arrived in the Americas earlier than once thought.

Scientists analyzed triangular and teardrop-shaped pendants made of bony material from the sloths. They concluded that the carved and polished shapes and drilled holes were the work of deliberate craftsmanship.

Dating of the ornaments and sediment at the Brazil site where they were found point to an age of 25,000 to 27,000 years ago, the researchers reported. That’s several thousand years before some earlier theories had suggested the first people arrived in the Americas, after migrating out from Africa and then Eurasia.

“We now have good evidence — together with other sites from South and North America — that we have to rethink our ideas about the migration of humans to the Americas,” said Mirian Liza Alves Forancelli Pacheco, a study co-author and archaeologist at the Federal University of Sao Carlos in Brazil.

In the past decade, other research has challenged the conventional wisdom that people didn’t reach the Americas until a few thousand years before rising sea levels covered the Bering land bridge between Russia and Alaska, perhaps around 15,000 years ago.

The ornaments were discovered about 30 years ago at a rock shelter called Santa Elina in central Brazil. The new study is the first to analyze them extensively and rule out the possibility that humans had found and carved them thousands of years after the animals perished.

The team of researchers from Brazil, France and the United States said their analysis shows this handiwork was done within days to a few years after the animals had died, and before the materials had fossilized. The researchers also ruled out natural abrasion and other things that might explain the shapes and holes. They reported their findings Wednesday in Britain’s Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal.

“We think they were personal objects, possibly for personal adornment,” said Thais Rabito Pansani, a co-author and paleontologist at the Federal University of Sao Carlos in Brazil.

Keep reading