Tag: lost civilizations

The Mysterious Disease That Wiped Out the Aztecs 

The Aztecs, a once-flourishing civilization in central Mexico, faced a devastating onslaught in the mid-16th century. While initially attributed to European diseases like smallpox, recent DNA analysis sheds new light on the mysterious illness that nearly obliterated them. Living amidst a cultural tapestry of nobility and commoners, the Aztecs thrived until the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, heralding a cascade of calamities.

Between 1545 and 1550, the Aztecs were besieged by a deadly outbreak of disease known as cocoliztli, claiming millions of lives in a matter of days. Characterized by fever and profuse bleeding, the epidemic left an indelible mark on Aztec history. Researchers identified a strain of salmonella, Paratyphi C, as a probable culprit, potentially introduced by European colonizers.

The devastation was compounded by climatic upheavals, with a prolonged drought exacerbating the death toll. Human sacrifice, a ritualistic practice, further depleted their ranks. Francisco Hernandez’s detailed accounts depict a myriad of symptoms, yet no single disease aligns precisely with his descriptions.

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Discoveries at Mt Ellanio Reveal Mycenean Refuge from the Bronze Age Collapse

An interdisciplinary team of archaeologists has been investigating the tallest mountain on the Greek island of Aegina since 2021: Mount Ellanio. Overlooking the Saronic Gulf, the peak holds the remnants of a 4th century Temple of Zeus Hellanios.

The mission, a Greek-Swiss partnership (EFAPN), is investigating the mountain’s prehistoric occupation, and have found a building measuring 4.5 by 3 meters (15 by 10 feet), containing an assortment of 30 ceramic vessels. What makes the building so special is that it is Mycenean.

Zeus on Ellanio: A Sanctuary and Safe Haven

The presence of Zeus worship on Mount Ellanio is documented in ancient texts like those of Pausanias. A chapel now stands atop these ancient foundations, but Corinthian clay tiles suggest an earlier structure beneath, likely a small temple.

North of the chapel, sacrificial remnants in a black layer, along with countless charred animal bone fragments, unveil ancient rituals. The discovery of pottery spanning from the Geometric era to Roman times also underscore the sacred site’s continuity.

An analysis of the vessels’ form and style helps trace their origins to the twilight and dying embers of the Mycenaean palatial era (the Late Bronze Age in Greece). This was a tumultuous epoch characterized by upheaval and disintegration of much of the ancient world, spanning the years from 1200 to 1050 BC, according to a press release by the Greek Ministry of Culture.

In the wake of this upheaval, mainland Greece witnessed a mass exodus, as waves of Mycenaean refugees sought solace in faraway lands, including Cyprus, the Levant, and neighboring Aegean islands. It was the end of Bronze Age Greece, and led to a Greek Dark Age lasting hundreds of years.

Aegina emerged as a sanctuary of respite amongst its mountainous contours, with survivors of the chaos seeking refuge amidst the sacred peaks. The fortified enclosure, consisting of retaining walls, ancient towers, and rock inscriptions, along with the dwellings at the summit, indicate the use of the hill as this refuge.

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Prehistoric henge reveals centuries-old sacred site in Lincolnshire

Archaeologists from Newcastle University have unearthed evidence for an evolving sacred landscape spanning centuries in Crowland, Lincolnshire. The study is published in the Journal of Field Archaeology.

Crowland today is dominated by the ruins of its medieval abbey. However, local tradition holds that the area was the site of an Anglo-Saxon hermitage belonging to Saint Guthlac, who died in the year 714 and was famed for his life of solitude, having given up a life of riches as the son of a nobleman.

When his uncorrupted body was discovered 12 months after his death, Guthlac was venerated by a small monastic community dedicated to his memory. Guthlac’s popularity while he was alive, and the success of this cult and the pilgrimage it inspired, were key factors in the establishment of Crowland Abbey in the 10th century to honor the saint.

Early historical sources for Guthlac’s life exist, mainly through the Vita Sancti Guthlaci (Life of Saint Guthlac) written shortly after his death by a monk called Felix. Although there is little other evidence about his life, it was believed that Guthlac created his hermitage from a previously plundered barrow, or burial mound.

For years, archaeologists have tried to find its location, and while Anchor Church Field was widely held to be the most likely site, the lack of excavation and the increasing impact of agricultural activity in the area have prevented a comprehensive understanding of the area.

The team, which also included experts from the University of Sheffield, excavated Anchor Church Field and, to their surprise, found a much more complex and older history than they expected.

The first discovery they made was a previously unknown Late Neolithic or early Bronze Age henge, a type of circular earthwork and one of the largest ever discovered in eastern England.

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Genetic Analysis Bolsters Blackfoot People’s Land Claims

The advancement of DNA collection-and-analysis technology has had significant consequences for anthropology and archaeology, resulting in surprising revelations about genetic connections between modern populations and ancient peoples. In the latest example of this fascinating phenomenon, a team of genetic scientists, in collaboration with representatives of the indigenous Blackfoot nation, have just completed a study that establishes an unexpected relationship between modern Blackfoot people and some of the earliest inhabitants of the Americas.

“We show that the genomics of sampled individuals from the Blackfoot Confederacy belong to a previously undescribed ancient lineage that diverged from other genomic lineages in the Americas in Late Pleistocene times,” the scientists and their Native American colleagues wrote in an article published in the journal Science Advances. “Using multiple complementary forms of knowledge, we provide a scenario for Blackfoot population history that fits with oral tradition and provides a plausible model for the evolutionary process of the peopling of the Americas.”

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The Remains of a Circular Iron Age Village Revealed in France

A major archaeological discovery has just been made at Cap d’Erquy, in the Côtes d’Armor. The remains of a circular Iron Age village have been unearthed using revolutionary satellite imaging technology.

Developed by INRAE (National Institute for e-realistic Archaeological Research) and called “LiDAR”, this technology uses lasers to scan the ground and create volume reconstructions of unrivaled precision. This process makes it possible to detect buried structures invisible to the naked eye and without resorting to invasive excavations.

A Forgotten Gallic Village

The village discovered at Cap d’Erquy is made up of around twenty circular huts arranged around a central square. Archaeologists estimate that this village was occupied between the 8th and 5th centuries BC by a Gallic community.

“This is an exceptional discovery which allows us to better understand the daily life of the Gauls at the time of the First Iron Age,” explains Jean-Yves Peskebrel, archaeologist at INRAE. These technologies open up a new imagination, it’s very moving.”

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Lost in Time and Out of Place: Trypillia Copper Axe is Poland’s Oldest

A remarkable discovery has been made in eastern Poland. Archaeologists have unearthed a copper axe in Poland’s Hrubieszów district which looks for all the world like it belongs to the ancient Trypillia culture.

This would date the find to a period between the 4th and 3rd millennium BC and make the axe the oldest copper artifact ever discovered in Poland. There is however a problem: the Trypillia culture was never in Poland.

A Lost Axe, Found

The axe itself is only small, and we can only guess as to what its exact purpose was. The Lublin Provincial Conservator of Monuments describes it as being made of copper and 7.4cm (3”) in length with a wide fan-shaped blade 4.1cm (1.6”) wide, and a rectangular convex head measuring 0.9cm x 0.6cm (0.3” x 0.2”), reports Heritage Daily.

When it was initially uncovered it was a complete mystery to the archaeologists, who had never seen anything like it before. The axe did not look like anything known from the Bronze Age in that region, and its simplicity and shape suggested it could be Neolithic. This would make it an extremely early example of metalworking.

“Our axe was made in a quite simple ‘primitive’ casting method in a flat-convex form, no longer used in the developed metallurgy of the Bronze Age. Therefore, it was necessary to pay attention to the earlier Neolithic era. Unfortunately, in the inventories of Neolithic cultures from Poland there is no such equivalent,” the Lublin conservator noted as reported in Arkeonews.

Given it did not resemble anything known from Neolithic cultures in Poland, either, it seemed to defy our understanding. It would take another discovery, in the neighboring Ukraine, to finally provide an answer.

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Scientists Make A Great Step Forward in the ‘Where After Africa?’ Question

A growing body of evidence indicates that our ancestors left Africa between approximately 70 to 60 thousand years ago. Yet, it wasn’t until around 45,000 years ago that they spread across Eurasia. The mystery of where these early humans resided in the intervening period has long puzzled scientists. By integrating genetic evidence with paleoecological models, researchers have pinpointed the Persian Plateau as a crucial hub during the initial phases of Eurasian colonization.

Exploring the Dawn of Populating the World

All present day non-African human populations are the result of subdivisions that took place after their ancestors left Africa at least 60,000 years ago.

“How long did it take for these separations to take place? Almost 20,000 years, during which they were all part of a single population. Where did they live for all this time? We don’t know, yet.”

This is a conversation that could have taken place one year ago. Now it is possible to give clearer answers to these questions thanks to the study recently published in  Nature Communications led by the researchers from the University of Padova, in collaboration with the University of Bologna (Department of Cultural Heritage), the Griffith University of Brisbane, the Max Planck Institute of Jena and the University of Turin.

The ancestors of all present-day Eurasians, Americans and Oceanians, moved Out of Africa between 70 and 60 thousand years ago. After reaching Eurasia these early settlers idled for some millennia as a homogeneous population, in a presumably localized area, before expanding their range across the whole continent and beyond.

This event set the basis for the genetic divergence between present day Europeans and East Asians and can be dated to around 45 thousand years ago. On the one hand, the dynamics that led to the broader colonization of Eurasia have been already reconstructed by some of the authors in a previous publication in 2022, and occurred through a series of chronologically, genetically and culturally distinct expansions.

On the other hand, the geographic area where the ancestors of all non Africans lived after the Out of Africa, and that acted as a “Hub” for the subsequent movements of Homo sapiens has been the matter of a long standing debate, with most of West Asia, North Africa, South Asia or even South East Asia having been listed as potentially suitable locations.

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Scientists Have Traced the Lost Journey of Stonehenge’s Mysterious Megaliths

Stonehenge hasn’t given up all its mysteries just yet, even though scientists are working to cut them away one by one. The latest scientific effort has been pointed towards identifying the origin of a pair of unidentified sarsen stones—numbers 26 and 160—that don’t neatly fall into past identification efforts.

The results may stretch our understanding of Stonehenge a bit—76 miles southeast, to be more precise.

In a new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, researchers employed X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to analyze the chemical composition of 54 sarsen stone fragments culled from the 5,000-year-old site. This allowed the team to show that stones located at England’s Stonehenge have a more diverse provenance than previously believed.

Over the past few years, scientists have traced the origins of many of the remaining 52 stones at the site. These stones fall into a variety of differing categories, some grouped together and others standing solitary. The bluestones of the inner circle come from the Preseli Hills in Wales, and a variety of the sarsen stones (made of silcrete sandstone) were traced in 2020 to roughly 19 miles from Stonehenge. That site, known as West Woods and located in the southeast Marlborough Downs, was a key source of stone for Neolithic people—both because of the widely available supply and natural access points.

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New Aztec Codices Discovered: The Codices of San Andrés Tetepilco

Yesterday, a team of specialists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico, led by the historians Baltazar Brito Guadarrama and María Castañeda de la Paz, the philologist Michel Oudijk, and the Nahuatl specialist Rafael Tena, presented to the public the discovery of three new Aztec codices, collectively known as the Codices of San Andrés Tetepilco, formerly a part of the Culhuacan polity of Central Mexico, and nowadays located within the Iztapalapa borough in Mexico City. This is one of the most exciting and spectacular discoveries regarding codical sources in recent years, and is no doubt closely related to the topic of this blog. The discovery has been already covered by the Mexican press and explained in detail in yesterday’s presentation at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, which can be seen in Youtube. However, an English summary will be presented for the readers of this blog.

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The wild psychedelic origins of indigenous mystical rites — as revealed by archaeology

We’ll never know when and where humans first discovered the mind-altering power of psychedelics. But it seems fair to state three things about our relationship with visionary drugs: it’s incalculably old, globally pervasive, and rich with meaning. Our ancestors likely began their long journey with naturally occurring psychotropic substances tens or even hundreds of thousands of years ago.

The nascent field of archaeochemistry has convincingly demonstrated Neanderthal use of psychoactive plants like yarrow and chamomile going back 50,000 years. Anthropologist Scott M. Fitzpatrick envisions the early hunter-gatherers of our own species encountering, consuming and experimenting “with a wide array of plants” and fungi — just like their Neanderthal cousins.

A generation ago, Terence McKenna famously introduced the Stoned Ape Theory, proposing an evolutionary advantage for a diet of psilocybin-containing mushrooms across the African savannas — not merely hundreds of thousands, but millions of years in our hominin past, prompting the development of proto-language, creativity, and religious insight well before the Neanderthals. Only now are scholars, like paleoanthropologist Lee Berger in South Africa, seriously investigating the bold claim.

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