Tag: lost civilizations

In England, Bar Hill’s ‘Skull Comb’ Is an Iron Age Mystery

FENS AND FARMLAND DOMINATE ENGLAND’S Cambridgeshire. The A14 motorway runs the length of the entire county and, just a few miles northwest of the ancient university town of Cambridge, it passes by the small village of Bar Hill. There, during excavations a few years ago, archaeologist Michael Marshall and his team found something extraordinary: a piece of ancient human skull, carved to resemble—almost, but not quite—a comb.

It’s not unusual to find artifacts in this corner of England, which has been inhabited for millennia. In particular, Cambridgeshire was home to several Iron Age settlements, dating from around 350 BC to the arrival of the Romans about 400 years later. Marshall and his colleagues knew they would turn up some interesting things when they began digging in 2016 ahead of a planned A14 expansion. Two years later, after excavations at about 40 sites, they had collected more than 280,000 artifacts.

Of all the tools and bits of bone unearthed, the skull comb stood out. It’s one of only three ever found, worldwide—the other two were discovered at nearby sites decades ago—and was a career first for Marshall, the prehistoric and Roman finds specialist at the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA). It was also an item of intrigue: something that could easily fit in the palm of one’s hand, but which clearly carried great value. Someone had carefully carved nearly a dozen teeth along one edge, and then drilled a hole at the top. Was it a tool? An amulet? Something else entirely? Figuring out the comb’s purpose required understanding how it might have fit into Iron Age Britain.

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Boncuklu Tarla: A megalithic site predating Göbekli Tepe

The uncovering of the stunning megalithic architecture of Göbekli Tepe in modern day Türkiye less than three decades ago turned our view of pre-history upside down, with the massive t-shaped pillars of the site pre-dating the pyramids and Stonehenge by some six or seven thousand years. But while it took the spotlight, archaeologists in the area continued finding other, similar sites with impressive architecture and dating back the same mind-boggling stretch in time, some 10,000 years before present.

One of the sites that has become well-known recently is Karahan Tepe (perhaps most notably after it was covered in Graham Hancock’s Netflix series Ancient Apocalypse). But another, lesser known site that lies further to the east may end up being even more important: Boncuklu Tarla. Discovered during construction work on the Ilısu Dam in 2008, it has undergone excavation over the last 11 years and has already turned up many things of note.

Like the other ancient sites of that time in Turkey, Boncuklu Tarla features a walled ‘temple’ with rock pillars – but they appear to predate Göbekli Tepe by a thousand years or so (though the pillars don’t appear to be as impressive), with the earliest layer of the site dating back a staggering 13,000 years. What’s more, the excavation over the past eleven years has worked through multiple layers of the site, with dating of those layers suggesting that it was occupied for around 4,000 years – from around 11,000 BCE to 7,000BCE!

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Eight-Year-Old Norwegian Girl Discovers Neolithic Dagger at School Playground

For Elise, a student at Our Children’s School in Osøyro, Norway, a recent trip to the playground brought a special surprise—and international attention.

The 8-year-old girl was outside with her classmates when she bent down to pick up a stray shard of glass. Instead, she says in a statement, what appeared to be a small rock caught her eye. Realizing the item’s potential significance, Elise’s teacher, Karen Drange, notified the Vestland County Council of the discovery.

The almost five-inch-long object turned out to be a flint dagger dated to the Neolithic era, which began in the region around 2400 B.C.E., when humans started shifting from hunting and gathering to farming, according to the educational website Talk Norway. Live Science’s Laura Geggel notes that this specific type of dagger “is often found with sacrificial finds.”

Because flint isn’t a resource native to Norway, researchers suspect the roughly 3,700-year-old dagger originated elsewhere, perhaps in Denmark. An excavation of the school’s grounds following Elise’s discovery unearthed no related artifacts, strengthening the theory that the tool was brought to Norway after its creation.

In the statement, Louise Bjerre Petersen, an archaeologist who assessed the tool, calls it a beautiful, incredibly rare find. The dagger is now in the possession of experts at the University Museum of Bergen, who will study it for clues on life in Neolithic Norway.

Elise is far from the only schoolchild to happen upon an astonishing ancient artifact in the past few years. In July 2018, another 8-year-old girl, Saga Vanecek, uncovered an Iron Age sword in a Swedish lake, leading locals and news outlets alike to dub her the “Queen of Sweden” in reference to the Arthurian legend of the Sword in the Stone.

“I held it up in the air and I said, ‘Daddy, I found a sword!’” Vanecek told the Local’s Catherine Edwards. “When he saw that it bent and was rusty, he came running up and took it.”

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Enigmatic human fossil jawbone may be evidence of an early Homo sapiens presence in Europe – and adds mystery about who those humans were

Homo sapiens, our own species, evolved in Africa sometime between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago. Anthropologists are pretty confident in that estimate, based on fossil, genetic and archaeological evidence.

Then what happened? How modern humans spread throughout the rest of the world is one of the most active areas of research in human evolutionary studies.

The earliest fossil evidence of our species outside of Africa is found at a site called Misliya cave, in the Middle East, and dates to around 185,000 years ago. While additional H. sapiens fossils are found from around 120,000 years ago in this same region, it seems modern humans reached Europe much later.

Understanding when our species migrated out of Africa can reveal insights into present-day biological, behavioral and cultural diversity. While we Homo sapiens are the only humans alive today, our species coexisted with different human lineages in the past, including Neandertals and Denisovans. Scientists are interested in when and where H. sapiens encountered these other kinds of humans.

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Psychedelic drugs were used by ancient man, new study shows

Researchers have found evidence of drug use during Bronze Age ceremonies.

Analysis of strands of human hair from a burial site on the Spanish island of Menorca indicates ancient human civilisations used hallucinogenic drugs derived from plants.

The findings are the first direct evidence of ancient drug use in Europe, which may have been used as part of ritualistic ceremonies, researchers say.

Researchers detected scopolamine, ephedrine and atropine in three replicated hair samples.

Atropine and scopolamine are naturally found in the nightshade plant family and can induce delirium, hallucinations and altered sensory perception.

Ephedrine is a stimulant derived from certain species of shrubs and pines which can increase excitement, alertness and physical activity.

Elisa Guerra-Doce, from the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain, and colleagues examined hair from the Es Carritx cave, which was first occupied around 3,600 years ago.

Writing in the Scientific Reports journal, the authors said: “Interestingly, the psychoactive substances detected in this study are not suitable for alleviating the pain involved in severe palaeopathological conditions attested in the population buried in the cave of Es Carritx, such as periapical abscesses, severe caries and arthropathies.

“Considering the potential toxicity of the alkaloids found in the hair, their handling, use and applications represented highly specialised knowledge. This knowledge was typically possessed by shamans, who were capable of controlling the side-effects of the plant drugs through an ecstasy that made diagnosis or divination possible.”

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Study Suggests Bronze Age Ice Skates Discovered In China Were Imported From Europe

A 3,500-year-old pair of ice skates were discovered in a mountainous area of China, archaeologists claimed in late February.

Researchers investigating the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region discovered the oldest-known skates in a tomb in the Gaotai Ruins, according LiveScience. The skates are made out of the bones of oxen and horse, but it is unclear whether they were used for sport, hunting, or regular travel throughout the region.

The design is unique, made of a very flat blade that forms a cutting edge allowing users to glide over ice, LiveScience continued. Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology researcher Ruan Qiurong said the newly-discovered skates are almost exactly the same as some found in prehistoric Europe.

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Man Stumbles On Vast Underground City Behind Wall During Home Reno—And Tunnels Go On Forever

Amid the strange fairy chimney stacks of eroded rock that litter the landscape of Cappadocia in central Turkey, little more than an inkling suggests that a sprawling subterranean city lies under the arid ground beneath one’s feet.

For centuries, the inhabitants of the Anatolian plateau have been carving dwellings, monasteries, and troglodyte villages out of the local soft volcanic rock, conjuring what look like scenes from a Tolkien novel today. There’s plenty enough to stir imaginations aboveground, luring tourists to hike and hot-air balloon in Cappadocia; meanwhile, an underground world with hundreds of miles of chambers and passages rests unseen below.

Called Elengubu in ancient times, after its recent rediscovery this cavernous city borrowed the namesake of its overlying district, Derinkuyu, in Nevşehir province. Abandoned centuries ago, the intricate tunnel network of Derinkuyu once offered safety and concealment for those seeking refuge amid persecution.

Yet the city was—and still is—intertwined with stone structures and dwellings overland. After it was abandoned, and after fading from public knowledge in the early 20th century, Derinkuyu’s accidental rediscovery in 1963 was credited to a home renovation. According to locals, a Turkish man who was expanding his domicile tore down a wall only to discover an abysmal passageway that seemed to go on forever, which led to the underground city’s prompt excavation. This was the first of some 600 entry points found connecting Derinkuyu with structures above.

Gargantuan in size, Derinkuyu spans some 275 square miles (445 square kilometers), descending 279 feet (85 meters) underground with some 18 levels. Once a bustling sub-terrestrial city, Derinkuyu is beset with living quarters for some 20,000 inhabitants, stables for livestock, wine and oil presses, cellars, chapels, schools, wells, and other amenities. This made the underground metropolis a fully self-sustaining community whose inhabitants could sever themselves from an outside world that was often fraught with danger in times of invasion or occupation.

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Previously Unknown Group Of People In Prehistoric Siberia Found By DNA

Genetic analysis has unveiled a previously unknown group of people who lived in Siberia during the last Ice Age around the borders of modern-day Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. It appears this mysterious group of people also had links to the multiple waves of humans who made the daring journey to North America. 

By the looks of things, some people actually migrated back in the “opposite” direction from North America to North Asia via the Bering Sea. This ancient legacy of the Americas still lives on in some people currently living in northeastern Siberia.

To reach their findings, scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology analyzed the genomes of ten individuals who lived in the Altai region of southern Siberia around 7,500 years ago. Paired with this, they looked at the genetic makeup of Eurasian and Native American populations in the present day. 

Their data revealed the Altai hunter-gatherers had a “unique gene pool” that indicates they were descendants of two key groups that lived in this part of Eurasia at the time: the paleo-Siberians and the Ancient North Eurasian (ANE) people. 

“We describe a previously unknown hunter-gatherer population in the Altai as early as 7,500 years old, which is a mixture between two distinct groups that lived in Siberia during the last Ice Age,” Cosimo Posth, senior study author from the University of Tübingen in Germany, said in a statement. 

“The Altai hunter-gatherer group contributed to many contemporaneous and subsequent populations across North Asia, showing how great the mobility of those foraging communities was,” he added.

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Enigmatic ‘writing system’ in ice age cave art deciphered

Hunter-gatherers who painted on cave walls 20,000 years ago also left behind something quite unexpected.For years, archaeologists have worked to understand the hidden meanings in the thousands of examples of prehistoric art found on cave walls across Europe.

These artistic works often featured animals such as bison, fish, reindeer and (the now extinct) aurochs, but some of them also included a sequence of dots and marks that seemed to be some form of writing system – one which experts had long struggled to fully interpret.

Now, though, a new collaboration between researcher Ben Bacon and experts from Durham University and University College London has finally lifted the lid on exactly what these symbols meant.

It turns out that the marks were actually part of an ancient writing system – a lunar calendar which was used to document the timing of the reproductive cycles of the animals.This type of information would have been highly relevant to the hunter-gatherers of the time.

“The results show that ice age hunter-gatherers were the first to use a systemic calendar and marks to record information about major ecological events within that calendar,” said archaeologist Prof Paul Pettitt of Durham University.

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OLDEST KNOWN PROJECTILE POINTS UNCOVERED IN THE AMERICAS

ARCHAEOLOGISTS FROM THE OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY HAVE UNCOVERED A COLLECTION OF PROJECTILE POINTS THAT DATE FROM ROUGHLY 15,700 YEARS AGO.

The researchers found 13 full and numerous fragmentary projectile points at the Cooper’s Ferry site along the Salmon River in present-day Idaho. They are 2,300 years older than the points previously found at the same site, and 3,000 years older than the Clovis fluted points found throughout North America.

The Salmon River site is on traditional Nez Perce land, known to the tribe as the ancient village of Nipéhe. The land is currently held in public ownership by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

The points are revelatory not just in their age, but in their similarity to projectile points found in Hokkaido, Japan, dating to 16,000-20,000 years ago. Their presence in Idaho adds more detail to the hypothesis that there are early genetic and cultural connections between the ice age peoples of Northeast Asia and North America.

Loren Davis, an anthropology professor at OSU said: “The earliest peoples of North America possessed cultural knowledge that they used to survive and thrive over time. Some of this knowledge can be seen in the way people made stone tools, such as the projectile points found at the Cooper’s Ferry site.”

“By comparing these points with other sites of the same age and older, we can infer the spatial extents of social networks where this technological knowledge was shared between peoples,” added Davis.

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