Tag: lost civilizations

Ancient ‘megastructure’ submerged under the sea discovered by archaeologists

Historians and archaeologists know that human civilisations have existed for thousands of years before us, and their latest discovery is a huge step forward.

Scientists now believe they have found a groundbreaking discovery with an ancient ‘megastructure’ that is thought to date back 11,000 years.

A stonewall found beneath the Baltic Sea is thought to have unlocked secrets of the Stone Age, and researchers believe they may have once used the wall for hunting reindeers.

Archaeologists explained their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, having made their discovery in the surface of the Bay of Mecklenburg, on the northern coast of Germany.

The area is known for historical discoveries, and people in the Stone Age are thought to have settled in the area on and off due to the sea’s high and low rising tides.

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Scientists may have solved mystery behind Egypt’s pyramids

Scientists believe they may have solved the mystery of how 31 pyramids, including the world-famous Giza complex, were built in Egypt more than 4,000 years ago.

A research team from the University of North Carolina Wilmington has discovered that the pyramids are likely to have been built along a long-lost, ancient branch of the River Nile – which is now hidden under desert and farmland.

For many years, archaeologists have thought that ancient Egyptians must have used a nearby waterway to transport materials such as the stone blocks needed to build the pyramids on the river.

But up until now, “nobody was certain of the location, the shape, the size or proximity of this mega waterway to the actual pyramids site”, according to one of the study’s authors, Prof Eman Ghoneim.

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7,000-Year-Old Native American ‘Bog Burial’ Found Off The Coast of Florida

Archaeologists have uncovered a Native American burial site dating back 7,000 years off the coast of Florida. The site was found by an amateur diver in 2016 who was looking for shark teeth but stumbled on an ancient jawbone.

The 167 bodies discovered in a pond in Windover, Florida started to stir up excitement in the archaeological world only after the bones were declared very old, and not the product of mass murder. Researchers from Florida State University came to the site, believing that in the swampland some more Native American bones had been found.

They believed the bones were between 500 and 600 years old. But then the bones were dated with radiocarbon. It turns out that these corpses were between 6,990 and 8,120 years old. The academic community was then incredibly excited. Windover Bog has proved to be one of the United States’ most significant archaeological discoveries.

In 1982, Steve Vanderjagt, the man who made the discovered, was using a backhoe to demolish the pond to create a new subdivision between Disney World and Cape Canaveral. A large number of rocks in the pond confused Vanderjagt since the region of Florida was not considered to be particularly rocky.

Getting out of his backhoe, Vanderjagt went to investigate and almost immediately realized that he had unearthed a huge pile of bones. He called the authorities right away. It was only thanks to his natural curiosity that the site was preserved. After the medical examiners declared them ancient, the specialists from Florida State University were summoned (another brilliant move by Vanderjagt- too often sites are ruined because experts are not called).

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130,000-year-old Neanderthal-carved bear bone is symbolic art, study argues

A nearly 130,000-year-old bear bone was deliberately marked with cuts and might be one of the oldest art pieces in Eurasia crafted by the Neanderthals, researchers say. 

The roughly cylindrical bone, which is about 4 inches long (10.6 centimeters), is adorned with 17 irregularly spaced parallel cuts. A right-handed person most likely crafted the piece, probably in one sitting, a new study finds. 

The carved bone is the oldest known symbolic art made by Neanderthals in Europe north of the Carpathian Mountains. It gives scientists a glimpse into the behavior, cognition and culture of modern humans’ long-dead cousins, who lived in Eurasia from about 400,000 to 40,000 years ago, when they disappeared. 

“It is one of the quite rare Neanderthal objects of symbolic nature,” Tomasz Płonka, professor of archaeology at the University of Wrocław, told Live Science. “These incisions have no utilitarian reason.” For instance, the bone does not appear to be a tool or an object of ritual importance, the study found.

Researchers discovered the bone in 1953 in Dziadowa Skała Cave in southern Poland and initially believed it was the rib of a bear. They excavated the bone from a layer dating to the Eemian period (130,000 to 115,000 years ago), one of the warmer periods of the last ice age. However, Płonka’s team found that the bone is an arm bone (radius) that came from the left forelimb of a juvenile bear, most likely a brown bear (Ursus arctos).

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Scientists discover ancient HERPES in 50,000-year-old Neanderthal bones found in a Russian cave… and they want to bring virus back to life

The oldest human viruses, including herpes, have been uncovered in 50,000-year-old Neanderthal bones – and experts could soon recreate them. 

Researchers at Brazil‘s Federal University of São Paulo identified remnants of the herpesviruses, which causes cold sores, the sexually transmitted papillomavirus and adenovirus, also known as the common cold, in two male Neanderthals’ DNA found in a Russian cave.

Previous theories suggested that Neanderthals may have gone extinct because of viruses and the latest study may be the first to provide evidence for this idea.

Now, the team hopes to synthesize the viruses and infect human cells in a lab to see how they compare to their modern-day counterparts.

‘These Jurassic Park-like viruses could then be studied for their reproductive and pathogenic traits and compared to present-day counterparts,’ Marcelo Briones, the study’s lead author told NewScientist.

‘I am skeptical that this could be achieved given the lack of full understanding of how the viruses’ DNA is damaged and how to reconstruct the recovered pieces into a full viral genome,’ he added. 

‘Also, the host-virus interaction, especially in a completely different environment, is something to consider.’ 

The team found the Neanderthals’ remains in Siberia’s Chagyrskaya cave in the Altai mountains, which they used to sequence genome data of the ancient beings. 

The results determined that the remnants of the viruses were not contracted from possible predators that fed on Neanderthals or from modern humans who might have handled the bones. 

Adenovirus causes cold symptoms in modern humans and can cause infections in the tonsils, adenoids and other mucosal tissues while they could develop genital warts and cancer from the sexually transmitted papillomavirus.

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Potential Bronze Age Burial Chamber Discovered on Dartmoor

What appears to be a Bronze Age burial chamber has been unearthed on Dartmoor, promising to deepen our understanding of Devon’s ancient history. This discovery, potentially dating back 4,000 years, echoes the importance of the 2011 find at Whitehorse Hill (shown), which provided unprecedented insights into the early Bronze Age lifestyle.

Excited Anticipation of What Has Been Found

According to a Devon Live report, the latest find on Dartmoor has captivated historians and archaeologists alike. Found in a secluded area to prevent tampering, the site’s exact location remains undisclosed. The discovery was made possible due to peat erosion, revealing what appears to be a cist—a type of ancient coffin used during the Bronze Age.

Dr. Lee Bray, a leading archaeologist involved in the excavation commented, “We have every potential for this to be something quite special,…. We don’t know for certain if this is a cist, but it certainly looks like one. All the evidence we have points to it being a cist from the early Bronze Age,” reports Devon Live.

Bray highlighted the cist’s potential significance, likening it to the Whitehorse Hill find, which was identified as the resting place of a young woman from around 1700 BC. Also discovered on Dartmoor, that find attracted international attention for the insights it provided into Bronze Age life, and a video depicting how the woman’s life might have been gained much interest.

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Curious L-Shaped Structure Found near Giza Pyramids is 4,500-Years-Old

An international team of archaeologists has stumbled upon a mysterious L-shaped structure buried within a cemetery adjacent to the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Giza. The structure is 4,500 years and would have been built around the same time as the pyramid.

The discovery of this ‘blank area’ and ‘anomaly’ came about through the scanning of the surface of Giza’s prestigious Western Cemetery using ground-penetrating technology. This burial site was designated for members of King Khufu’s royal family and esteemed officials, interred in mastabas, funerary tombs typical of the era.

The newfound structure is encompassed by these mastabas, all meticulously arranged in uniform alignment. Yet, curiously, no notable excavations have previously taken place within this peculiar vacant space.

Mastabas, serving as burial structures for the royal family and esteemed officers, are distinguished by their flat roofs and rectangular designs typically crafted from limestone or mudbricks. Central to their architecture is a vertical shaft connecting to an underground chamber, essential for the burial rituals and eternal resting place of the deceased.

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THE MOST SHOCKING STORIES OF HUMAN SACRIFICE IN HISTORY

To many of us in the modern world, the idea of human sacrifice seems so strange and distant that it may as well be part of some half-remembered myth. Yet, there’s no ignoring the evidence left by societies across time and the globe: human sacrifice really did happen. Whether it’s physical clues excavated by archaeologists or written records from alleged eyewitnesses to sacrificial rituals, the sheer volume of it all means that we simply have to acknowledge that human sacrifice has happened.

That great number of cases also means that some sacrificial practices stand out for a variety of shocking reasons. A few are notable for the confounding number of people who may have been subjected to life-ending rituals, while others garner attention for the unique and protracted sequence of events that got people to a sacrificial site. For instance, the Incan children who were subject to mountaintop sacrifices now known as capacocha often went through months of good treatment and ritual preparation after they were selected for the rite, followed by a long hike to a cold and distant peak. Yet more cases of sacrifice have gone down in history for the striking ways in which remains were treated during or after the rite, leaving future humans to uncover the results centuries after the sacrifice was over and archaeologists to puzzle over their findings for generations.

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2,700-Year-Old Iron Age Pit Tomb Necropolis Unearthed in Italy

During excavations launched ahead of an upcoming electric power plant construction project, archaeologists unearthed an approximately 2,700-year-old necropolis about 31 miles (50 kilometers) northeast of Naples, Italy. The fascinating discovery was announced in a press release issued by the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Landscapes for the provinces of Caserta and Benevento, which has been managing the archaeological work at the construction site.

“Although the excavation of the site has brought to light various levels of occupation, from prehistoric times to late antiquity, the best-preserved archaeological evidence concerns the large funerary area, which was used between the final phases of the Iron Age and the advanced Orientalizing period (third quarter of the eighth – second half/end of the seventh century BC),” the Superintendency press release (translated from Italian) stated.

Interestingly, the installation and use of the large cemetery coincides with the founding of the city of Rome, which according to legend occurred in 753 BC. But the Iron Age culture responsible for this burial ground had no direct connection with the Romans or with Rome, which was located 120 miles (200 kilometers) away.

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Unknown Assyrian Symbols Solved as ‘Tag’ of Sargon II

Ancient symbols on a 2,700-year-old temple which have baffled experts for over a century have been explained by Trinity Assyriologist Dr Martin Worthington. The sequence of ‘mystery symbols’ were on view on temples at various locations in ancient city of Dūr-Šarrukīn, present day Khorsabad, Iraq, which was ruled by Sargon II, king of Assyria (721-704 BC).

The sequence of five symbols – a lion, eagle, bull, fig-tree and plough – were first made known to the modern world through drawings published by French excavators in the late nineteenth century. Since then, there has been a spate of ideas about what the symbols might mean.

They have been compared to Egyptian hieroglyphs, understood as reflections of imperial might, and suspected to represent the king’s name – but how?

Deciphering the Assyrian Symbols

Dr Martin Worthington of Trinity’s School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies has proposed a new solution in a paper published this month [April 26th] in the  Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research. He argues the Assyrian words for the five symbols (lion, eagle, bull, fig-tree and plough) contain, in the right sequence, the sounds that spell out the Assyrian form of the name ‘Sargon’ (šargīnu)

Sometimes, the same archaeological site uses only  three of the symbols (lion, tree, plough), which Dr Worthington argues again write the name ‘Sargon’, following similar principles.

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