Tag: archaeology

Archeologists Unearth ‘Vampire’ Buried in Poland Pinned By Sickle in Her Grave

The local population has believed that some of their neighbors could be vampires and return from the dead to feast on the living for centuries. The superstition led to some unusual burial techniques for those suspected to be a vampire. How locals determined if a person was undead, however, remains unclear.

Archeologists from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland have unearthed an unusual, if not unique, grave of a “vampire” – at least so thought to be by relatives or those who buried her near the city of Pień, Poland in the 17th century.

Was it the pale skin, nasty temperament, midnight shenanigans or distaste for garlic and silverware? Researchers do not know what led locals to believe that the woman was a vampire, but they sure did try to make sure she never rose from the grave again. The deceased was pinned in her tomb by a sickle, with the sharp edge touching her neck so that if she had second thoughts about dying, she would cut her head off trying to escape the coffin.

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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.

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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.

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Archaeologists Claim They’ve Discovered the Trojan Horse in Turkey

Turkish archaeologists claim they have found what they believe are pieces of the Trojan Horse. According to a report by newsit.gr, Turkish archaeologists excavating the site of the historical city of Troy on the hills of Hisarlik have unearthed a large wooden structure. Historians and archaeologists think what they have discovered are remains of the legendary Trojan Horse.

The excavations brought to light dozens of fir planks and beams up to 15 meters (49 feet) long. The remnants were assembled in a strange form, that led the experts to suspect they belong to the Trojan Horse. The wooden structure was inside the walls of the ancient city of Troy.

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Sensational archaeological find uncovers “Ukrainian Stonehenge” in eastern Ukraine

A team of Ukrainian archaeologists has almost completed excavations of an ancient kurgan (burial mound, sacred hill) which historians claim is older than the Egyptian pyramids.

The archaeologists state that this “Ukrainian Stonehenge”, an ancient burial ground, is more than 5,300-5,500 years old, dating back to the Bronze Age.

There are numerous kurgans scattered throughout eastern and southern Ukraine and archaeologists and historians are worried that, in many cases, urban sprawl will lead to the destruction of these ancient burial mounds. Thus, they are rushing to excavate as many of them as possible in order to save and preserve priceless items from bulldozers and rapid urbanization.

Such a mound was found near the village of Novooleksandrivka, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Items and artefacts discovered in this almost eight-meter hill bear witness to the flourishing of Indo-Aryan tribes who developed an elaborate burial tradition used by the entire population. These tombs illustrate unique characteristics, not only in terms of their number, density and scale, but also in terms of details such as burial chambers, burial gifts and mummified bodies.

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Archaeologist Solves Mystery of the Phaistos Disc in Greece

The mystery of the Phaistos Disc has been “solved by 99 percent” says linguist, archaeologist and coordinator of the program Erasmus of Crete Technological Institute; Gareth Owens.

Owens has devoted 30 years in trying to solve the puzzle. The Minoan goddess of love, Astarte, who is linked to the Eastern goddess Ashtart, is the key figure that unlocks the mystery of the Phaistos Disc, Owen argues.

The Phaistos Disc is a disk of fired clay from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the island of Crete, possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (second millennium B.C.).

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2,800-Year-Old Castle From Urartu Civilization Found in Turkey

A 2,800-year-old castle built by an enigmatic ancient civilization known as the Urartu, or people of Ararat, was recently unearthed by Turkish archaeologists from Van Yuzuncu Yil University.

The structures date back to the time of Urartu, a kingdom that clashed with the Assyrians in the first millennium B.C. Located in the age-old heartland of the Armenian people, it is considered the place where the ethnic Armenian identity was born.

The ancient kingdom of the Urartu spanned what is now modern-day Armenia, eastern Turkey and northwestern Iran.

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13 discoveries in the last year have fundamentally altered our understanding of human history

Even amid the pandemic, anthropologists and archaeologists around the world have continued to make mind-boggling discoveries about our human ancestors this year.

One analysis revealed that the earliest known example of interbreeding between different human populations was 700,000 years ago — more than 600,000 years before modern humans interbred with Neanderthals. Findings from a Mexican cave, meanwhile, offered evidence that the earliest humans came to the Americas via boat, not land bridge. And researchers also found new reason to believe climate change was responsible for the extinction of many of our ancestors.

Taken together, these discoveries and others bolster and complicate our understanding of human history — the story of who our ancestors were, where they came from, and how they lived.

Here are some of the most eye-raising anthropological findings of 2020.

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Surprise cave discoveries may double the time people lived in the Americas

According to a paper published today in the journal Nature, the site, known as Chiquihuite Cave, may contain evidence of human occupation that places people in North America around 30,000 years ago—roughly twice as early as most current estimates for when the first humans arrived on the continent.

The question of when people first arrived in the Americas has been debated for more than a century. For much of that time the reigning theory put the arrival around 13,500 years ago. But archaeologists are now exploring sites that keep pushing the date farther back, including some who have reported finding signs of human presence beyond 30,000 years ago. The evidence supporting those claims is hotly contested, and this latest discovery is already stirring more controversy.

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