Tag: archaeology

Archaeologists Found 115,000-Year-Old Human Footprints Where They Shouldn’t Be

A uniquely preserved prehistoric mudhole could hold the oldest-ever human footprints on the Arabian Peninsula, scientists say. The seven footprints, found amidst a clutter of hundreds of prehistoric animal prints, are estimated to be 115,000 years old.

Many fossil and artifact windfalls have come from situations like this special lakebed in northern Saudi Arabia. Archaeologists uncovered the site, deep in the Nefud Desert at a location nicknamed “the trace” in Arabic, in 2017, after time and weather wiped the overlying sediment away. It’s easy to imagine that a muddy lakebed was a high-traffic area in the Arabian Peninsula over 100,000 years ago.

When populations move on, these prints are left behind until they’re covered over. In the far, far older Burgess Shale event, some of the oldest organisms ever found were preserved intact because they likely fell into a mudslide and were killed instantly. An entire armored nodosaur was found in unprecedentedly good shape because it was encased in mud and in the cold of the ocean floor. If there were a finder’s fee for incredible archaeology, a lot of it would be paid to mud.

In their paper, the scientists actually examine why that ancient mud was so special at all:

“An experimental study of modern human footprints in mud flats found that fine details were lost within 2 days and prints were rendered unrecognizable within four, and similar observations have been made for other non-hominin mammal tracks.”

That means their special, tiny batch of preserved footprints were made in unique conditions that also form a kind of “fingerprint” for pinning them all to the same timeframe. From there, scientists started to look at who made the footprints. Homo sapiens weren’t the only upright humanoid primate in the game, but the evidence, the scientists say, suggests we were the ones traipsing through the drying lakebed:

“Seven hominin footprints were confidently identified, and given the fossil and archeological evidence for the spread of H. sapiens into the Levant and Arabia during [the era 130,000 to 80,000 years ago] and absence of Homo neanderthalensis from the Levant at that time, we argue that H. sapiens was responsible for the tracks at Alathar. In addition, the size of the Alathar footprints is more consistent with those of early H. sapiens than H. neanderthalensis.”

The lake that forms Alathar today was likely part of a prehistoric highway that drew all the large animals in the area, forming a corridor dotted by freshwater rest areas that living things could travel on as they migrated with the weather or the changing climate. In this case, scientists found very little of the other factors that accompany prehistoric human travel, like knife or tool marks on animal bones indicating hunting.

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The real-life Raiders of the Lost Ark: How Hitler collected thousands of mystical tomes and ordered archaeological digs to discover fabled ‘divine’ civilisation

In the eighty years since the Second World War, few topics have been as carefully and as closely studied by popular historians as the rise of the Nazi Party.

Adolf Hitler preyed on prejudices and exploited the fears of ordinary people to assume power and force through his fascistic vision for Europe.

Fascism and the crude origins of ‘race science’ have been broken down to better understand, and avoid, their conditions.

But less well understood is how the party traces its beginnings to esoteric, cultish traditions – and how they, in turn, would come to guide the Nazis towards expensive digs around the world in search of evidence of a lost Aryan race of superhumans, once supposedly imbued with the gift of psychic powers.While Nazi engagement with the occult has largely been a footnote of history, reserved for quick allusions in the Indiana Jones films and cartoonish video games, research shows the Nazis did, in fact, lean into ‘magic’ and sponsor huge efforts to reclaim a fabled ancient folk history.

The Nazis harnessed distrust in science and ‘truth’ to rally voters and undermine traditional authorities.

But their willingness to hinge vital war operations on blind faith in tarot readers, death rays and astrology, collecting thousands of mystical tomes and financing excavations in pursuit of a lost ‘divine’ civilisation, suggests they may have also let superstition play a key role in the forming of the Third Reich.

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Bronze Age British Ate Their Enemies According to Gruesome Discovery

A study of early Bronze Age bones in Britain has revealed a shockingly violent and barbaric end for dozens of unfortunate individuals.

The remains, excavated from the Charterhouse Warren site in southwest England, show evidence of close quarters blunt force trauma, dismemberment, and cannibalism, all of which took place before the bodies were thrown down a 15-meter (49-foot) shaft.

It’s evidence of “a level and scale of violence that is unprecedented in British prehistory,” according to the international team of researchers behind the study – and raises plenty of questions about what actually went on here.

“We actually find more evidence for injuries to skeletons dating to the Neolithic period in Britain than the Early Bronze Age, so Charterhouse Warren stands out as something very unusual,” says archaeologist Rick Schulting, from the University of Oxford in the UK.

“It paints a considerably darker picture of the period than many would have expected.”

The team studied more than 3,000 bone fragments in total, making up the skeletons of at least 37 individuals. It’s thought the bones are all from one single violent event, dated somewhere between 2210 and 2010 BCE.

Together with skulls showing cracks and holes, the researchers also found signs of cuts and breaks made at the time of death – with those cuts in particular suggesting that some body parts made have been eaten by the killers.

These are not bodies that were treated with respect and carefully laid out in graves. Chemical analysis suggests these were all local people rather than outsiders, while there’s little evidence that these people were involved in a fight – pointing to them being caught by surprise in some kind of horrible massacre.

Plenty of cattle bones can be found at the same site, which suggests these victims weren’t executed out of a desperate need for food. The researchers think eating the flesh of the dead may have been a way to ‘other’ them – to dehumanize and treat them like animals.

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Humans originated in Europe, not Africa, according to fossil discovery

A recent discovery in Türkiye is shaking up our understanding of human evolution. Scientists have identified a new fossil ape, Anadoluvius turkae, from an 8.7-million-year-old site near Çankırı.

This find challenges the long-held belief that human ancestors evolved solely in Africa, suggesting instead that Europe played a significant role in our evolutionary history.

The fossil, uncovered at the Çorakyerler site with support from Türkiye’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism, reveals that Mediterranean fossil apes were more diverse than previously thought.

These apes are part of the earliest known group of hominins, which includes not only African apes like chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas but also humans and their fossil ancestors.

Out of Africa? Maybe not

This discovery adds weight to the theory that the ancestors of African apes and humans may have evolved in Europe before migrating to Africa between nine and seven million years ago.

Professor David Begun from the University of Toronto and Professor Ayla Sevim Erol from Ankara University led the international team of researchers who conducted the study.

“Our findings further suggest that hominines not only evolved in western and central Europe but spent over five million years evolving there and spreading to the eastern Mediterranean before eventually dispersing into Africa, probably as a consequence of changing environments and diminishing forests,” explained Professor Begun.

“The members of this radiation to which Anadoluvius turkae belongs are currently only identified in Europe and Anatolia.”

Partial skull of Anadoluvius turkae

The conclusion drawn from the study is based on the analysis of a well-preserved partial cranium discovered in 2015.

This fossil includes most of the facial structure and the front part of the braincase, providing valuable insights into the ape’s anatomy.

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Archaeologists found a mysterious stone tablet in Georgia that contains an unknown language

Archaeologists have unearthed a basalt tablet with inscriptions in an unknown language near Lake Bashplemi, in the Dmanisi region of Georgia. Although the tablet’s exact age is uncertain, researchers believe it was created in the Late Bronze or Early Iron Ages (first millennium BCE) based on related artifacts such as stone mortar and pottery fragments.

Made of local vesicular basalt, it measures 24.1 x 20.1 cm and records 60 different symbols, 39 of which have no exact equivalent in other known ancient writing systems. The symbols, created using a conical drill and smoothed with rounded tools, reflect a high degree of craftsmanship.

Lake Bashplemi is located on a volcanic plateau surrounded by hills and fed by small tributaries of the Mashavera River. The region is known for its wealth of archaeological discoveries, especially in relation to human remains dating back as far as 1.8 million years.

Researchers discovered ceramic fragments, a mortar stone, and pieces of obsidian on the surface, indicating that the area may have had substantial human activity even though it had not been thoroughly investigated from an archaeological standpoint.

The basalt tablet contains 39 unique symbols arranged in seven horizontal lines or registers. Some of these symbols repeat, allowing for a total of 60 characters on the stone’s surface. The arrangement and frequency of some of the characters suggest that they may have been used to denote numbers or punctuation marks.

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‘King Arthur’s Hall’ is five times older than thought, researchers discover

A historic site in Cornwall linked to King Arthur has been found to be 4,000 years older than previously thought after a new survey was carried out by a team of researchers, including experts from the University of St Andrews.

The team, including Dr. Tim Kinnaird from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, carried out a survey of the mound on Bodmin Moor, named King Arthur’s Hall, confirming the site dates back to prehistoric times.

The monument was previously listed as dating back to the medieval period, but it is now believed to date back 4,000 years earlier to the Neolithic period, thanks to a team of specialists from the universities of St Andrews, Reading, and Newcastle.

The site consists of a rectangular bank of earth and stone formed with 56 standing stones, some measuring up to 1.8 m, which are either leaning, recumbent or partially buried. It’s protected by Historic England, which listed it as an early medieval animal pen from around 1000AD. However, there had been some speculation that due to integrated standing stones, the mound was much older.

Dr. Kinnaird and his team used a technique called optically stimulated luminescence, or OSL—the date the mound to the neolithic period making it around 5,500 years old—4,000 years earlier than previously thought. OSL is used to date when sediment was last exposed to light, prior to burial.

Dr. Kinnaird said the findings were a “major revelation.”

“It’s extremely exciting that we’ve finally been able to date construction of this enigmatic monument, previously grounded in myths and legends.”

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Ancient Construction Technology Discovered Under a Neolithic House

A groundbreaking discovery in Denmark has revealed evidence of an advanced technological structure dating back 5,000 years. While excavating a Neolithic site on the island of Falster, archaeologists uncovered a stone-paved root cellar for storing produce beneath an ancient dwelling. This significant find has challenged existing understandings of Neolithic life in Scandinavia, where early agricultural communities were thought to have employed simpler preservation methods.

The excavation, led by researchers from the Museum Lolland-Falster and Aarhus University, has been documented in a detailed study published in Radiocarbon.

The site at Nygårdsvej 3, was uncovered during construction work for a railway. It has proven to be an archaeological gold mine, well, as regards ancient architecture is concerned. Archaeologists identified two phases of house construction, both attributed to the Funnel Beaker Culture (also known as TRB or Trichterbecherkultur). This culture, which emerged around 4000 BC, marked the region’s shift from a hunter-gatherer society to a more sedentary lifestyle centered on agriculture and animal husbandry.

The houses discovered at the site followed a common architectural design of the period, known as the Mossby-type, which featured large double-span roofs supported by posts. The first house phase, made between 3080 and 2780 BC, had 38 postholes, while the second phase contained 35.

The floors of the houses were made from compacted loam, a mixture of sand and clay that provided a durable and stable surface. This is a construction material still in use in various parts of the world today.

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Orichalcum: Legendary Metal of Atlantis, Or Just A Common Ore?

At the beginning of 2015, several world news organizations reported that archaeologists had recovered 39 ingots of orichalcum from a 2,600-year-old shipwreck, found ten feet underwater off the coast of Sicily, near the town of Gela. (For those not familiar with the name, according to Plato, orichalcum was a type of copper alloy broadly used by the legendary Atlantians.)

Not surprisingly, while the ancient cargo provided the basis to every news report, unfortunately, none of the stories exposed anything new on Atlantis, or on the “mystical” ore, as one reporter called it. Essentially, every editorial capitalized on repeating the same familiar story, raising the usual questions, and sadly arriving at the same past conclusions. Nothing new! As for the particular freight, most reporters connected it to Atlantis, as if Atlantis was around during the Bronze Age (thus, misleading everyone not so familiar with the story) and ignoring the fact that according to Plato, the story of Atlantis took place around 9,600 BC.

In 2017, a further 47 ingots were retrieved, along with a couple of Corinthian helmets, and just this week, the recovery of all the timbers of the ship has been reported as well underway.

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Archaeologists dig up huge burial site that could change what we know about Vikings

Archaeologists have dug up a huge burial site that could change what the world knows about the Viking times.

The excavation of a large Viking-era burial site in Denmark has unearthed 50 unusually well-preserved skeletons that archaeologists expect will help shed light on the lives of the Nordic people best known for their seafaring exploits in the Middle Ages.

The skeletons, discovered near Denmark’s third-largest city Odense, were kept intact by high water levels and favorable soil conditions that prevented them from decomposing, according to Michael Borre Lundoe, the excavation leader from Museum Odense.

“Normally when we excavate Viking graves, we’d be lucky if there were two teeth left in the grave besides the grave goods. But here we have the skeletons fully preserved,” said Lundoe.

“The skeletons are so amazing. They are so well preserved. There are five fingers, five toes. And that opens up a whole new set of possibilities for discoveries,” he said.

Rare artifacts such as knives, glass pearls and brooches dated between year 850 to 970 were also found at the excavation, which began six months ago.

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Archaeologists unlock 3,000-year-old secrets about creation of universe and monsters after deciphering oldest known map of the world

Researchers have finally decoded a Babylonian tablet thought to be the oldest map of the world.

Created between 2,600 and 2,900 years ago, the Imago Mundi provided researchers with a unique glimpse into the beliefs and practices of the ancient civilization.

The Babylonian tablet has a circular map with pieces of text written in cuneiform – an ancient writing system that used wedge-shaped symbols – which describes the early creation of the world. 

The map depicted Mesopotamia – or the land ‘between the rivers’ – a historical area of the Middle East that was thought to be the entire ‘known world’ at the time.

The tablet’s map also confirmed their belief in the mighty God of Creation, Marduk, and mythical creatures and monsters like scorpion-man and Anzu – the lion-headed bird.

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