Tag: lost civilizations

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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Saharan remains may be evidence of first race war, 13,000 years ago

Scientists are investigating what may be the oldest identified race war 13,000 years after it raged on the fringes of the Sahara.

French scientists working in collaboration with the British Museum have been examining dozens of skeletons, a majority of whom appear to have been killed by archers using flint-tipped arrows.

The bones – from Jebel Sahaba on the east bank of the Nile in northern Sudan – are from victims of the world’s oldest known relatively large-scale human armed conflict.

Over the past two years anthropologists from Bordeaux University have discovered literally dozens of previously undetected arrow impact marks and flint arrow head fragments on and around the bones of the victims.

This is in addition to many arrow heads and impact marks already found embedded in some of the bones during an earlier examination of the skeletons back in the 1960s. The remains – the contents of an entire early cemetery – were found in 1964 by the prominent American archaeologist, Fred Wendorf, but, until the current investigations, had never been examined using more modern, 21 century, technology.

Some of the skeletal material has just gone on permanent display as part of the British Museum’s new Early Egypt gallery which opens officially today. The bones – from Jebel Sahaba on the east bank of the River Nile in northern Sudan – are from victims of the world’s oldest known relatively large-scale human armed conflict.

Now British Museum scientists are planning to learn more about the victims themselves – everything from gender to disease and from diet to age at death. The discovery of dozens of previously undetected arrow impact marks and flint arrow fragments suggests that the majority of the individuals – men, women and children – in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery were killed by enemy archers, and then buried by their own people. What’s more, the new research demonstrates that the attacks – in effect a prolonged low-level war – took place over many months or years.

Parallel research over recent years has also been shedding new light as to who, in ethnic and racial terms, these victims were.

Work carried out at Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Alaska and New Orleans’ Tulane University indicates that they were part of the general sub-Saharan originating population – the ancestors of modern Black Africans.

The identity of their killers is however less easy to determine. But it is conceivable that they were people from a totally different racial and ethnic group – part of a North African/ Levantine/European people who lived around much of the Mediterranean Basin.

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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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35,000 Years Ago, Ancient Humans Entered a Deep Cavern to Worship this Enigmatic ‘Reptilian God’

Scientists exploring a deep cavern in Galilee, Israel, have discovered evidence that ancient humans used the location to worship a symbolic object seemingly representing a turtle god more than 35,000 years ago.

In a release announcing the unusual discovery, the prominently placed “touchstone” found within the cavern “is an engraved rock, deliberately placed in a niche in the cavern, with a turtle-shell design carved into its surface.” The researchers say that this three-dimensional representation of a turtle “is contemporaneous with some of the oldest cave paintings in France.”

The culmination of over a decade of excavations by archaeologists at the site, the team says this discovery represents the oldest example of ritualistic group behavior on the Asian continent. The research also offers rare insight into the spiritual thoughts and behaviors of archaic human societies from this period.

In their published study, the research team noted that the cavern’s deep, dark location far from the domestic areas of the enclosure, which were all near the entrance, indicated it was a special location and not part of the inhabitants’ everyday activities. This also suggests that the turtle god object carefully placed within the cavern was similarly significant.

“Its special location, far from the daily activities near the cave entrance, suggests that it was an object of worship,” explained team leader Omry Barzilai, Head of Material Culture PaleoLab at the University of Haifa and the Israel Antiquities Authority. “It may have represented a totem or spiritual figure.”

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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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Insights into Early Modern Human Activity in the Jungles of Southeast Asia

Studying microscopic layers of dirt dug from the Tam Pà Ling cave site in northeastern Laos has provided a team of Flinders University archaeologists and their international colleagues further insights into some of the earliest evidence of  Homo sapiens in mainland Southeast Asia.

The site, which has been studied for the past 14 years by a team of Laotian, French, American and Australian scientists, has produced some of the earliest fossil evidence of our direct ancestors in Southeast Asia.

Now a new study, led by PhD candidate Vito Hernandez and Associate Professor Mike Morley from the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, has reconstructed the ground conditions in the cave between 52,000 and 10,000 years ago.

“Using a technique known as microstratigraphy at the Flinders Microarchaeology Laboratory, we were able to reconstruct the cave conditions in the past and identify traces of human activities in and around Tam Pà Ling,” says Hernandez. “This also helped us to determine the precise circumstances by which some of the earliest modern human fossils found in Southeast Asia were deposited deep inside.”

Microstratigraphy allows scientists to study dirt in its smallest detail, enabling them to observe structures and features that preserve information about past environments and even traces of human and animal activity that may have been overlooked during the excavation process due to their minuscule size.

The human fossils discovered at Tam Pà Ling were deposited in the cave between 86,000–30,000 years ago but until now, researchers had not conducted a detailed analysis of the sediments surrounding these fossils to gain an understanding of how they were deposited in the cave or the environmental conditions at the time.

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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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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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‘Knife-wielding orca’ and alien-looking figures among 300 Nazca Lines discovered in groundbreaking AI study

Scientists have discovered more than 300 never-before-seen Nazca Lines in Peru — including alien-looking humanoid figures, decapitated heads, potential historic ceremonies and a surprisingly well-armed orca.

The staggering new haul was unearthed in just six months with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) and almost doubles the number of known geoglyphs in the region.

The Nazca Lines are a group of large human-carved geoglyphs located in a roughly 170-square-mile (440 square kilometers) area of Peru’s Nazca Desert. The ancient artworks were likely created between 200 B.C. to A.D. 500 by members of the pre-Incan civilization, known as the Nazca (or Nasca), who removed the upper layers of the desert’s red-tinged surface pebbles to reveal sections of lighter soil in a wide range of different shapes and sizes.

Researchers had already found around 430 Nazca Lines since the mysterious shapes were rediscovered by airplane passengers in the 1920s. Most of these geoglyphs were identified in the last 20 years thanks to advancements in satellite imagery. However, the rate at which new lines are being discovered has started to slow, and researchers suspect that any remaining shapes are too faint to be easily spotted by the human eye.

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