Tag: lost civilizations

Mysterious 2,500-Year-Old Graveyard Found Filled With Young Children

Ancient archaeological discoveries can be confusing, exciting, intriguing, educational – and occasionally just a little creepy, as a new excavation of a 2,500-year-old graveyard site in Norway has proved.

Here’s the creepy part: the main cluster of graves, comprising 39 individual bodies, were all for children under the age of six – based on a close study of the fragments of bones that had escaped being cremated.

There were two other graves containing adult bodies but these were separate from the main group.

However, it’s not certain that anything sinister has gone on. This would’ve been a time when the infant mortality rate was relatively high – though questions remain about why the graves were separate, rather than communal.

“There was something special about the whole site,” excavation leader Guro Fossum, an archaeologist from the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, told Mette Estep of Science Norway.

“Cooking pits and fireplaces around the site suggest that gatherings and ceremonies were held in connection with burials.”

The graves span a long time in history, across the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

When the excavation in Østfold county first began – to clear the ground for the expansion of a local quarry – archaeologists were expecting to find artifacts from the Stone Age, rather than graves from two millennia later.

Most of the burials would’ve happened between 800 and 200 BCE, the researchers say, and were placed close to thoroughfares in terms of their location – so it’s something the whole community would’ve known about. It doesn’t look like these were secret burials.

“Additionally, all the graves were so nice and meticulously crafted,” Fossum told Science Norway. “Each stone was sourced from a different location and placed precisely in the formation. We wondered who put in so much effort.”

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Ancient Egyptians used a hydraulic lift to build their 1st pyramid, controversial study claims

The ancient Egyptians may have used an elaborate hydraulic system to construct the world’s first pyramid, a controversial new study claims.

Known as the Pyramid of Djoser, the six-tiered, four-sided step pyramid was built around 4,700 years ago on the Saqqara plateau, an archaeological site in northern Egypt, according to research posted to ResearchGate on July 24. The research has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Archaeologists have long wondered how ancient workers accomplished such an architectural feat — the structure contains 11.7 million cubic feet (330,400 cubic meters) of stone and clay — before the advent of large machinery like bulldozers and cranes.

Because the pyramid sits near a long-gone branch of the Nile River, researchers hypothesize that the ancient Egyptians utilized the water source to build the 204-foot-tall (62 m) pyramid by designing a “modern hydraulic system” comprising a dam, a water treatment plant and a hydraulic freight elevator, all of which were powered by the river, according to a translated statement from the CEA Paleotechnic Institute, a research center in France. They posit that the mysterious Gisr el-Mudir enclosure near the pyramid worked as a structure that captured sediment and water.

“This is a watershed discovery,” lead author Xavier Landreau, CEO of Paleotechnic, told Live Science. “Our research could completely change the status quo [of how the pyramid was built]. Before this study, there was no real consensus about what the structures were used for, with one possible explanation being that it was used for funerary purposes. We know that this is already subject to debate.”

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Archaeologists Uncovered a Mysterious Ancient Tablet With Major Historical Implications

Most of us can do all of our shopping with the click of a few buttons, and while that’s certainly convenient, it can make it difficult to keep track when exactly that new armoire or bookshelf will show up at your doorstep. If you’re really struggling, it might help to take a page out of ancient Turkey’s proverbial book and keep the details written down—on a palm-sized piece of clay.

An excavation at the Aççana Mound—the site of the ancient Anatolian city of Alalah, which served as the capital of the Mukis Kingdom and lives on in ruins that date as far back as 4,000 years ago—recently unearthed a small clay tablet covered in inscribed cuneiform, according to a statement by Mehmet Ersoy, Turkey’s minister of culture and tourism. Researchers studying the tablet have narrowed its origins to some time in the 15th century B.C., during the Late Bronze Age.

Representatives from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism are conducting the research on the find, along with Johns Hopkins University associate professor Jacob Lauinger and doctoral student Zeynep Türker.

The initial readings of the tablet’s Akkadian cuneiform include details of a major furniture purchase. Linguists are still working through the writing, according to the ministry’s statement, but the deciphered lines detail purchases of an ample number of wooden tables, chairs, and stools. The experts are slowly putting together more information about the buyers and sellers involved with the exchange, making headway towards deciphering a window into the city’s economic processes.

The small piece of clay measures only 4.2 centimeters by 3.5 centimeters, it’s just 1.6 centimeters thick, and it weighs 28 grams. But despite its diminutive size, the tablet will help paint a much larger picture of Bronze Age Turkey as it undergoes more study, providing helpful insight into “the economic structure and state system of the Late Bronze Age,” according to Ersoy.

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Plato’s Dialogs at Edfu?

Did Plato lie about the Egyptian origin of the Atlantis story when he composed his famous dialogs Timaeus and Critias? Classicists say he had good reasons to make up a persuasive tale to prove an important point about ancient Greek society and politics. This, so-called, Noble Lie Thesis is the lens through which scholars of ancient Greece look when they read what Plato has Socrates, Critias, Timaeus, and Hermocrates say to each other about divine law and human corruption, cosmos and soul, Atlantis and Athens, and the rise and fall at the hands of the gods of these once mighty city states. In this article, I put the Noble Lie Thesis to a test by examining Egyptian cosmogonical texts for substantial congruences with Plato’s dialogs.

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New Dating Places the First European Hominids in Southern Iberia

One of the most significant controversies in the study of human evolution and migration is determining when and by what route the first hominids arrived in Europe from Africa. Recent geological dating techniques applied to the Orce sites in the Baza basin, Granada, Spain, have discovered human remains that are approximately 1.3 million years old. This finding supports the hypothesis that humans may have entered Europe through the southern Iberian Peninsula via the Strait of Gibraltar, rather than returning to the Mediterranean through Asia. 

New Dating Techniques Reveal Ancient Hominids 

According to a report by the University of Barcelona, the study, led by Luís Gibert of the University of Barcelona’s Faculty of Earth Sciences, in collaboration with researchers from the Berkeley Geochronology Centre and Murray State University in the United States, utilized paleomagnetism to date the Orce region. Paleomagnetism studies the inversion of the Earth’s magnetic poles, recorded in minerals, to establish time periods. The new dating involved an area of Orce that had never been sampled before and was protected from erosion. 

“The uniqueness of these sites is that they are stratified and within a very long sedimentary sequence, more than eighty meters (262 feet) long,” explained Gibert. 

This extensive sequence allowed the identification of a magnetic polarity sequence with five magnetic events, placing the Orce sites between the Olduvai and Jaramillo subchron, approximately between 1.77 and 1.07 million years ago. Through a statistical age model, the researchers refined the chronology to a margin of error of only 70,000 years. 

The oldest site, Venta Micena, dates back to 1.32 million years ago, followed by Barranco León at 1.28 million years, and Fuente Nueva 3 at 1.23 million years. 

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Psychedelic Mushrooms May Have Contributed To Early Development Of Human Consciousness, Study Concludes

A new paper exploring the role of psilocybin mushrooms in the evolution of human consciousness says the psychedelic has the “potential to trigger significant neurological and psychological effects” that could have influenced the development of our species over time.

The literature review, which authors said draws on “a multidisciplinary approach spanning biology, ethnobotany and neuroscience,” examined studies involving psilocybin and human consciousness published in multiple journals in different fields. Their 12-page report highlights views that mushrooms played a crucial role in getting humans to where we are today.

“The hypothesis that psilocybin mushrooms may have intervened as a factor in the evolution of human consciousness, either as catalysts of mystical experiences or as drivers of cognitive processes, raises profound reflections on the ancestral interaction between human beings and their environment,” the authors wrote, according to a translation from the original Spanish. “The origin of human consciousness is one of the great questions facing man, and the material collected indicates that psilocybin may have contributed to its early development.”

As humans’ ancestors moved from forested environments into grasslands, they encountered more hoofed animals—and their excrement. In that excrement, they likely found mushrooms, including psilocybin mushrooms, says the study, citing researchers such as Terrence McKenna, who explored the so-called “stoned ape” theory that psychedelics helped spur human development.

Consuming mushrooms may have subsequently influenced pre-human hominids’ brains in all sorts of ways, authors wrote, such as improving hunting and food-gathering as well as increasing sexual stimulation and mating opportunities.

Changes like those, combined with the effects of psilocybin on human consciousness and brain function, could have expanded the human mind, “allowing us to transcend our basic perception and embrace creativity, introspection and abstract thinking” and potentially influencing language development, the study, published last month by the Miguel Lillo Foundation, a research organization in Argentina, says.

“Considering the importance of psilocybin mushrooms in the interaction with human consciousness, it is crucial to explore both their brain and evolutionary implications,” the authors—Jehoshua Macedo-Bedoya of the University Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, in Lima, Peru, and Fatima Calvo-Bellido of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru—concluded.

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EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT HUMAN INTERACTIONS WITH INTELLIGENT “LOST” SPECIES OFFERS CLUES TO THEIR MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE

New investigations into humanity’s ancient interactions with an enigmatic “lost” species are revealing the complex world our early ancestors once shared.

The recent research conducted by an international team of geneticists and AI experts has revealed that the lives of early modern humans and Neanderthals were more interconnected than previously thought. Significantly, the study points to waves of interbreeding over time that fundamentally shaped the genetic makeup of modern humans and offers new insights into the mysterious disappearance of the Neanderthals.

Led by Joshua Akey from Princeton University, the team says it has discovered evidence of such genetic exchanges dating back as far as 250,000 years. This data challenges existing theories about human migrations in the ancient world and what factors may have steered human evolution over time.

The new findings point to a far deeper level of interaction that once occurred between ancient humans and our Neanderthal cousins.

THE NEANDERTHAL ENIGMA

First discovered in 1856, what eventually came to be recognized as the first known Neanderthal bones were found in a limestone quarry in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, Germany. The discovery introduced these mysterious archaic hominins to the paleoanthropological record and prompted serious scientific interest in what factors shaped human evolution over time.

Once mischaracterized as slow and lacking intelligence, mounting evidence of traits exhibited by Neanderthals, including advanced stone toolmaking and the possibility that they may have treated each other’s injuries, is continually reshaping our ideas about their intelligence levels.

While similar to us in many ways, the differences between Neanderthal remains and those of modern humans have long remained intriguing to scientists, raising questions that have deepened in recent years with the discovery of another hominin group, known as the Denisovans, that once also populated parts of Asia and South Asia as recently as the latter part of the last Ice Age.

Now, Akey and his team at Princeton’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics are uncovering deeper insights than ever before into the genetic history modern humans share with the Neanderthals, who mysteriously vanished from the fossil record around 40,000 years ago.

According to Akey and his team, multiple different waves of interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans appear to have taken place.

“We now know that for the vast majority of human history, we’ve had a history of contact between modern humans and Neanderthals,” Akey recently said.

Liming Li, a professor at Southeast University in China who was also a contributor to the study, called the team’s findings “the first time that geneticists have identified multiple waves of modern human-Neanderthal admixture.”

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Unveiling 1,200 years of Human Occupation in Canada’s Arctic

A recent study provides new insights into ancient cultures in Canada’s Arctic, focusing on Paleo-Inuit and Thule-Inuit peoples over thousands of years. Jules Blais, professor of biology at the University of Ottawa, and a team of researchers detected human presence and settlements on Somerset Island, Nunavut, by analyzing sediment samples.

The Arctic has been home to various cultures, such as the Paleo-Inuit (2500 BC to 1250 AD) and the Thule-Inuit (1200 to 1500 AD). Although historical evidence is scarce, this recent study provides valuable insight into their presence.

The study discovered evidence of Paleo-Inuit presence on Somerset Island in Nunavut, Canada, where it was lacking.

The innovative research methodologies revealed detailed information about past human history without traditional artifacts.

Professor Jules Blais says,

“By analyzing pond sediment samples, we were able to construct detailed histories of site occupation. This includes clear evidence of Paleo-Inuit presence and indications that the Thule-Inuit arrived earlier than previously estimated.”

The research used archeological evidence and sedimentary biomarkers to study prehistoric settlement on Somerset Island.

Sediment cores from island ponds were analyzed for trace elements and organic compounds.

Results showed that the Thule-Inuit population increased from the 13th to 15th centuries.

The researchers also showed high levels of metals like lead, copper, zinc and nickel in twentieth-century sediment, suggesting air pollution during that time.

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At Least 30 Egyptian Tombs Have Reappeared—and Archaeologists Are Astounded

There are a few questions coming from an archaeological dig on a hillside along the Nile River near the ancient Egyptian city of Aswan. The biggest, though, is exactly why two mummies were glued together inside the same stone coffin.

During a joint Italian and Egyptian archaeological mission working in the vicinity of the Aghakhan Shrine west of Aswan, the team explored the multi-level structure crafted into the hillside. Originally discovered outside of official channels—read: during illegal excavations—the government stepped in and took control.

The joint group dated the site to from 332 B.C. to 395 A.D., somewhere in the late Greek and Roman periods. Ayman Ashmawi—head of the Egyptian archaeological sector of the Supreme Council—said in a news release that the group found what equates to 33 graves, and as many as 40 percent of the remains were from those who died either as newborns or within their first couple of years. They also started discovering some more incredible things, such as the 10-level tomb still containing oil lamps that were potentially left behind by mourners.

“We can imagine how spectacular it was when, for example, during the [mourners’] feast, all these tombs were illuminated,” Patrizia Piacentini—Egyptologist and archaeologist at the University of Milan who led the effort at the site—told Live Science.

Believed to be family graves based on the range of ages of the deceased, the site was likely in use for around 900 years, Piacentini said.

The team discovered several mummies, including two bodies glued to each other inside a stone coffin. The team plans to study the pair to find out their relationship, said Abdul Moneim Saeed, the director of the archaeological mission for the Egyptians.

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New study reveals comet airburst evidence from 12,800 years ago

Researchers continue to expand the case for the Younger Dryas Impact hypothesis. The idea proposes that a fragmented comet smashed into the Earth’s atmosphere 12,800 years ago, causing a widespread climatic shift that, among other things, led to the abrupt reversal of the Earth’s warming trend and into an anomalous near-glacial period called the Younger Dryas.

Now, UC Santa Barbara emeritus professor James Kennett and colleagues report the presence of proxies associated with the cosmic airburst distributed over several separate sites in the eastern United States (New Jersey, Maryland and South Carolina), materials indicative of the force and temperature involved in such an event, including platinum, microspherules, meltglass and shock-fractured quartz. The study appears in the journal Airbursts and Cratering.

“What we’ve found is that the pressures and temperatures were not characteristic of major crater-forming impacts but were consistent with so-called ‘touchdown’ airbursts that don’t form much in the way of craters,” Kennett said.

The Earth is bombarded every day by tons of celestial debris, in the form of tiny dust particles. On the other end of the scale are the extremely rare and cataclysmic impacts like the Chicxulub event that 65 million years ago caused the extinction of dinosaurs and other species. Its 150-kilometer-wide (93 miles) impact crater can be found in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

Somewhere in between are the impacts that don’t leave craters on the Earth’s surface but are nevertheless destructive. The shockwave from the 1908 Tunguska event knocked down 2,150 square kilometers (830 square miles) of forest, as the roughly 40-meter (130 ft) diameter asteroid collided with the atmosphere almost 10 kilometers (6 miles) above the Siberian taiga.

The comet thought to be responsible for the Younger Dryas cooling episode is estimated to have been 100 kilometers wide (62 miles)—much larger than the Tunguska object, and fragmented into thousands of pieces. The sediment layer associated with the airburst stretches across much of the northern hemisphere, but can also be found in locations south of the equator. This layer contains unusually high levels of rare materials associated with cosmic impacts, such as iridium and platinum, and materials formed under high pressures and temperatures, such as magnetic microspherules (cooled-down metallic droplets), meltglass and nanodiamonds.

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