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A Greek archaeologist announced Thursday he has located the tomb of Aristotle, the classical philosopher whose voluminous writings shaped the intellectual trajectory of Western civilization.

Konstantinos Sismanidis, the archaeologist who excavated the find, announced the discovery at a conference in Thessalonica. The site is located in Stagira, a village in Greek Macedonia where Aristotle was born.

    "We had found the tomb," he said. "We've now also found the altar referred to in ancient texts, as well as the road leading to the tomb, which was very close to the city's ancient marketplace within the city settlement."

    Although the evidence of whose tomb it was is circumstantial, several characteristics — its location and panoramic view; its positioning at the center of a square marble floor; and the time of its construction, estimated to be at the very beginning of the Hellenistic period, which started after the death of Aristotle's most famous student, Alexander the Great, in 323 B.C. — "all lead to the conclusion that the remains of the arched structure are part of what was once the tomb-shrine of Aristotle," Mr. Sismanidis said.

During his life, Aristotle wrote on subjects ranging from aesthetics to zoology, taught at Plato's Academy, and tutored Alexander the Great, whose conquest of the Persian Empire in the fourth century B.C. led to the spread of Hellenistic culture—and Aristotelian thought—from the Nile to the Ganges.

QuoteSpanish archaeologists say they have discovered an exceptional set of Paleolithic-era cave drawings that could rank among the best in a country that already boasts some of the world's most important cave art.

Chief site archaeologist Diego Garate said that an estimated 70 drawings were found on ledges 300m (1,000 ft) underground in the Atxurra cave in the northern Basque region. He described the site as being in "the Champions League" of cave art and among the top 10 sites in Europe. The engravings and paintings feature horses, buffalo, goats and deer, dating back 12,500-14,500 years.

But Garate said access to the area was so difficult and dangerous that it was unlikely to be open to the public.

The cave was discovered in 1929 and first explored in 1934-35, but it was not until 2014, when Garate and his team resumed their investigations, that the drawings were discovered.

Experts say it is too early to judge whether the discovery ranks alongside Spain's most prized prehistoric cave art site, but the Altamira caves – known as the Sistine chapel of Paleolithic art – Atxurra looks promising.

"No one expected a discovery of this magnitude," said Jose Yravedra, a prehistory professor at Madrid's Complutense University. "There a lot of caves with drawings but very few have this much art and this much variety and quality."

Altamira and other major sites in Spain and France have several hundred cave art images.

Garate highlighted one buffalo drawing, which he said must have the most hunting lances stuck in it of any such drawing in Europe. He said most hunting drawings have four or five lances but this had almost 20 and it was not clear why.

Yravedra said the cave's hidden location and the number, variety and quality of its drawings meant the site was being classified as a "sanctuary," or special Paleolithic meeting ritual place, like those at Altamira and Lascaux in France.

Regional officials hope to set up a 3D public display of the art.

QuoteFlores fossil discovery provides clues to 'hobbit' ancestors

Researchers find what appear to be predecessors of tiny humans whose bones were first unearthed on Indonesian island in 2004

More than a decade ago, researchers in a limestone cave on the Indonesian island of Flores unearthed the bones of an ancient race of tiny humans. Now, in sandstone laid down by a stream 700,000 years ago, they have found what appear to be the creatures' ancestors.

The new fossils are not extensive. A partial lower jaw and six teeth, belonging to at least one adult and two children, are all researchers have. But the importance of the remains outweighs their number. They suggest that dwarf humans roamed the island - hunting pygmy elephants and fending off komodo dragons - for more than half a million years.

The first bones belonging to the miniature humans were dug from the floor of the Liang Bua cave on Flores in 2004. The 50,000-year-old fossils pointed to a now-extinct group of humans that stood only a metre tall. Named Homo floresiensis, but swiftly nicknamed the "hobbits", they made simple stone tools and had desperately small brains, one third the size of ours.

For all that was known about the diminutive humans, countless questions remained. How the species arose was anyone's guess. Meanwhile, some experts argued they were not a new species at all, simply modern humans whose growth had been stunted by disease.

The newly discovered fossils from Mata Menge, a large basin overshadowed by volcanoes in central Flores about 50km east of Liang Bua, effectively rule out the modern human theory. The tiny individuals were alive and making stone tools on Flores half a million years before modern humans existed. "This is the final nail in the coffin for that hypothesis," said team leader Gert van den Bergh at the University of Wollongong in Australia. "700,000 years ago, there were no Homo sapiens."

But the fossils, described in two papers in Nature, lend weight to another explanation already favoured by some paleontologists. In this scenario, a founder population of Homo erectus, a forerunner of modern humans, washed up on Flores from a neighbouring island, perhaps clinging to plant debris uprooted by powerful tsunamis that crash through the region. Marooned on Flores with limited food at hand, evolution favoured the small. Over 300,000 years, the new arrivals rapidly lost stature.

Adam Brumm at Griffith University in Queensland, who co-led the excavations, said: "The island is small and it has limited food resources and few predators, other than komodo dragons, so large-bodied mammals that wound up on this rock would have been under immediate selective pressure to reduce their body mass. Being big is no longer an advantage when you're trying to survive in such an isolated and challenging environment."

The team from Australia, Indonesia and Japan worked with 140 locals on Flores to excavate the fossils. The jawbone is tiny, at least 20% smaller than that of the Liang Bua "hobbits", but CT scans showed the wisdom tooth had erupted, a sign that it came from an adult. The shape of the jawbone resembles a smaller version of that found in Homo erectus, as does a molar tooth.

Among the ancient remains were the bones of beasts. Pygmy elephants and komodo dragons were commonplace, but crocodiles, giant rats, frogs and birds shared the island with the "hobbits". Giant rats persist on the island today. The researchers have one, the size of a cat, at the house they rent in the nearby town of Mengeruda. "It's a really cute animal. If we can domesticate them, they can be kept as pets," said van den Bergh. "They would be a cheap source of meat for the people."

Simple stone tools, mostly sharp-edged flakes, were also found at the site, though no signs of butchery have been spotted on the animal bones. Curiously, the tools at Mata Menge are similar to those found at the Liang Bua cave, but simpler and smaller than others found at an older site on the island called Wolo Sege. These heftier, more advanced implements, including carefully shaped core tools known as picks, may be the million-year-old work of the island's large-bodied founding population, said Brumm, a technology later lost as the dwarfing process took its toll in the islanders' brains.

Still more fossils are needed to complete the picture. The researchers are eager to find long bones at Mata Menge that prove beyond doubt the site holds the remains of archaic dwarf humans. Elsewhere on the island, the search is on for the elusive first arrivals, perhaps full-sized Homo erectus, or maybe a smaller ancestor. Where they came from remains another open question. The trip from Java is 300 miles, a long way to cling to a bobbing mat of vegetation. Sulawesi to the north is more distant still, but strong currents could have done the job. "That's a reasonable chance," said Van den Bergh. "But we'll probably never know."

Dean Falk, an evolutionary anthropologist at Florida State University, said the new fossils will help to convince all but the most diehard sceptics that Homo floresiensis is a legitimate species. She said the 700,000 year-old date for the new finds, and the fact that they are at least as small as the Liang Bua individuals, is exciting. She added: "Although in my opinion one still cannot rule out the possibility that Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis may have shared a common ancestor that was an unknown small-bodied and small-brained hominin."

QuoteA huge monument has been discovered buried under the sands at the Petra World Heritage site in southern Jordan.
Archaeologists used satellite images, drone photography and ground surveys to locate the find, according to the study published in the American Schools of Oriental Research.

The large platform is about as long as an Olympic swimming pool and twice as wide.

Researchers say it is unlike any other structure at the ancient site.

The study, by Sarah Parcak of the University of Birmingham, and Christopher Tuttle, executive director of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, describes the find as "hiding in plain sight".

Petra dates back to the fourth century BC, when it was founded by the Nabataean civilization, who inhibited parts of what is now Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Surface pottery suggests the platform was built in the mid-second century BC, when Petra was at its peak.

It is thought the structure may have had a ceremonial purpose.

The survey also revealed a smaller platform was contained inside the larger one, which was once lined with columns on one side with a vast staircase on the other.

Ms Tuttle told National Geographic that someone in decades of excavation "had to know" the structure was there yet it had not been written up.

"I've worked in Petra for 20 years, and I knew that something was there, but it's certainly legitimate to call this a discovery."

Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Petra each year, although numbers have been hit by the conflict against so-called Islamic State.

The site is best-known for the Treasury Building, which is carved from sandstone and featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

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Published: 16 Jun 2016 10:34 GMT+02:00

Three amateur archaeologists have uncovered the largest ever trove of Viking gold in Denmark.

The three archaeologists, who call themselves Team Rainbow Power, found seven bracelets from the Viking Age in a field in Vejen Municipality in Jutland. The bracelets, six gold and one silver, date to around the year 900.

With a combined weight of around 900 grammes, the find is the largest ever discovery of Viking gold in Denmark.

Team Rainbow Power member Marie Aagaard Larsen said that she had only been on the field for around ten minutes before striking gold – literally.

"We really felt like we had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow when we found the first bracelet, but when others then appeared it was almost unreal," she said in a National Museum of Denmark press release.

After finding the first three rings, the amateur archaeologists called in professional back-up in the form of Lars Grundvad from Sønderskov Museum, who said he was blown away by the discovery.

"At the museum, we had talked about how interesting it could be to check out the area with metal detectors because there was a 67-gramme gold chain found there back in 1911. But I would have never in my wildest fantasies believed that amateur archaeologists could uncover seven bracelets from the Viking Age," Grundvad said, adding that the chain found over a century ago was likely part of the same treasure trove.

Two of the newly-founded bracelets were made in the so-called Jelling style that is associated with the elite members of society during the Viking Age. Peter Pentz, a Viking expert at the National Museum, said the bracelets could have been used by a Viking leader to form alliances or to reward his faithful followers.

"Just finding one of these bracelets would have been major so it is very special to find seven," Pentz said.

He said archaeologists may explore the site further to try to discover why the valuables ended up where they did.

"The treasure could have been buried in some sort of ritual at some point in the 900s. But it could have also been that the treasure was buried because someone wanted to take care of it but then was never able to retrieve it again for whatever reason," he said.

Sønderskov Museum plans to display the find before it is sent to the National Museum in Copenhagen for further study.

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'Britain's Pompeii' was 'Bronze Age new build' site


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The beads found at Whittlesey show this Bronze Age village of the ancient Fens was nevertheless tied into a trade network that may have stretched to the Middle East.

An ancient village dubbed "Britain's Pompeii" was just a few months old when it burnt down, it has emerged.
Analysis of wood used to build the settlement suggests it was only lived in for a short time before it was destroyed.
Despite this, archaeologists said the site gives an "exquisitely detailed" insight into everyday Bronze Age life.
Evidence of fine fabric-making, varied diets and vast trading networks has been found during the 10-month dig.
The level of preservation at the site, in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, has been compared to that seen at Pompeii, a Roman city buried by ash when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.




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The stilts that held the houses can be seen, together with collapsed roof timbers

At least five circular houses raised on stilts above the East Anglian fens have been found.
David Gibson, of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, University of Cambridge, said the site allowed researchers to "visit in exquisite detail everyday life in the Bronze Age".
"Domestic activity within structures is demonstrated from clothing to household objects, to furniture and diet," he said.
"These dwellings have it all, the complete set, it's a 'full house'.

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'Pompeii of the Fens'

What the excavation reveals:
◾The people living here made their own high quality textiles, like linen. Some of the woven linen fabrics are made with threads as thin as the diameter of a coarse human hair and are among the finest Bronze Age examples found in Europe
◾Other fabrics and fibres found include balls of thread, twining, bundles of plant fibres and loom weights which were used to weave threads together. Textiles were common in the Bronze Age but it is very rare for them to survive today
◾Animal remains suggest they ate a diet of wild boar, red deer, calves, lambs and freshwater fish such as pike. The charred remains of porridge type foods, emmer wheat and barley grains have been found preserved in amazing detail, sometimes still inside the bowls they were served in
◾There were areas in each home for storing meat and a separate area for cooking
◾Even 3,000 years ago people seemed to have a lot of stuff. Each of the houses was fully equipped with pots of different sizes, wooden buckets and platters, metal tools, saddle querns (stone tools for grinding grains), weapons, textiles, loom weights and glass beads

After the fire, the buildings sank into a river which has helped preserve them.





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The charred remains of porridge type foods, emmer wheat and barley grains have been found preserved in amazing detail, sometimes still inside the bowls they were served in



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The tip of a spear

Evidence, including tree-ring analysis of the oak structures, has suggested the circular houses were still new and had only been lived in for a few months.
The homes were, however, well equipped with pots of different sizes, wooden buckets and platters, metal tools, saddle querns (stone tools for grinding grains), weapons, textiles, loom weights and glass beads.
Archaeologists say beads found at the site originally came from the Mediterranean or Middle East.



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An example of the types of fabric found at Whittlesey

Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, said: "This has transformed our knowledge of Bronze Age Britain.
"Over the past 10 months, Must Farm has given us an extraordinary window into how people lived 3,000 years ago.
"Now we know what this small but wealthy Bronze Age community ate, how they made their homes and where they traded.
"Archaeologists and scientists around the world are learning from Must Farm and it's already challenged a number of longstanding perceptions."
Must Farm was named best discovery at the 2016 British Archaeological Awards.

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China's great flood: tests on children's bones support 4,000-year-old legend

Carbon dating suggests landslide caused a Yellow river deluge matching the time China's civilisation was said to have begun

Reuters

Friday 5 August 2016 04.15 BST 
Analysis of the crushed skeletons of children have revealed that an earthquake 4,000 years ago could be the source of a legendary "great flood" at the dawn of Chinese civilisation.

A Chinese-led team found remnants of a vast landslide, caused by an earthquake, big enough to block the Yellow river in what is now Qinghai province, near Tibet.

Ancient sediments indicated the pent-up river formed a vast lake over several months that eventually breached the dam, unleashing a cataclysm powerful enough to flood land 2,000km (1,200 miles) downstream, the scientists wrote in the journal Science.

The authors put the Yellow river flood at about 1920 BC by carbon dating the skeletons of children in a group of 14 victims found crushed downstream, apparently when their home collapsed in the earthquake. Deep cracks in the ground opened by the quake were filled by mud typical of a flood and indicated that it struck less than a year after the quake.

The flood on Asia's third-longest river would have been among the worst anywhere in the world in the past 10,000 years and matches tales of a "great flood" that marks the start of Chinese civilisation with the Xia dynasty.

"No scientific evidence has been discovered before" for the legendary flood, lead author Wu Qinglong of Nanjing Normal University told a telephone news conference.

In traditional histories, a hero called Yu eventually tamed the waters by dredging, "earning him the divine mandate to establish the Xia dynasty, the first in Chinese history," the scientists wrote.

Their finds around the Jishi gorge from about 1900 BC would place the start of the Xia dynasty several centuries later than traditionally thought, around the time of a shift to the bronze age from the stone age along the Yellow river.

Some historians doubt the Xia dynasty existed, reckoning it part of myth-making centuries later to prop up imperial rule. Written records date only from 450 BC.

The evidence of a massive flood in line with the legend "provides us with a tantalising hint that the Xia dynasty might really have existed", said one of the authors, David Cohen of National Taiwan University.

Deluges feature in many traditions, from Hindu texts to the biblical story of Noah. In pre-history, floods were probably frequent as ice sheets melted after the last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago, raising sea levels.

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How Otzi the Iceman outfitted himself: Fur from brown bears and leather from roe deer

Iceman clotehs
A new analysis of 5.300-year-old garments worn by Europe's oldest mummy reveals they were made from the hides of both domesticated and wild animals. (Institute for Mummies and the Iceman)

Deborah Netburn

What does the 5,300-year-old man wear?

Brown bear hats, goat leather leggings, roe deer quivers and striped jackets made from an assortment of sheep hides, according to a study published Wednesday in Scientific Reports.

The new work presents the most detailed analysis yet of the many garments of Ötzi the Iceman, who was 45 years old when he died of an arrow wound in the Italian Alps more than 5,000 years ago.

Ötzi got his nickname because he was discovered in the Ötztal Alps. He is the oldest known human mummy in Europe, and the amazing preservation of his body, as well as his belongings, has given archaeologists a rare window into an ancient way of life.

Scientists believe that shortly after the Iceman's death his body was quickly buried in snow, protecting it from being ransacked by predators and keeping it from decomposing. He remained frozen in time for thousands of years until 1991, when he was discovered by a pair of German tourists, his body face down, emerging from the melting ice.

"The Iceman's preservation was a fluke," said Niall O'Sullivan, a researcher at the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman at the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano (EURAC) in Bolzano, Italy. "It required a very specific set of circumstances to preserve him."

Over the last 25 years, a wide range of studies have revealed all kinds of interesting details about Ötzi and his life. DNA analysis suggests that he was lactose intolerant and predisposed to cardiovascular disease.

An examination of his intestinal contents showed he enjoyed a meal of red deer and bread shortly before he died. The type of pollen in his stomach indicated that he ate that last meal in the summer.

At the time of his death, he was dressed in a coat, hat, loincloth, leggings, a quiver, a belt and shoes. Previous studies have looked at how these clothes were constructed and provided some vague insights on what materials were used to make them, but the authors of the new paper wanted to know more.

"Preserved leathers provide rare and valuable information into how ancient populations utilized the secondary products of animal husbandry," they wrote in the paper.

They added that in order to maximize the amount of information that can be gleaned from these ancient garments, a more complete characterization of the clothes was necessary.

It was a daunting task. The tanning processes used 5,300 years ago may have included scraping, exposure to fatty acids, and possibly intense heating, and they had stripped the leathers of their grain pattern and other obvious markers of their origins.

To determine what species the Iceman and his contemporaries used to make their clothes, the authors used a new sequencing approach that allowed them to reconstruct the mitochondrial DNA of most of the animal species that were used in the making of the clothes. Using this approach, they were able to identify all of the samples they tested.

Their research revealed that Ötzi's wardrobe came from five different animals. His shoelace was cow leather, his loincloth was made of sheep skin, and his leggings were made of goat leather. Both his hat and quiver were made from the hides of wild animals. The hat was bearskin with the furry part worn on the outside. The quiver was made of red roe deer. The Iceman's coat was the most complex piece of clothing, made from at least four hides of two species — goat and sheep.

The authors point out that a pair of 4,500-year-old leggings from Switzerland were also made of goat, suggesting that Copper Age individuals preferred goat skin on their legs — possibly because it was more flexible.

Albert Zinc, head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman and the senior author on the paper, said the work shows that both functionality and comfort were taken into consideration in the construction of clothes during the Copper Age.

Scientists have been studying Ötzi for 25 years now, but it seems that the mummy and his belongings still have more to teach us.

QuoteGiant 'Arrows' Seen From Space Point to a Vanished World


In the remote heart of Asia, ancient hunting traps hint at ghostly animal herds and boundless human appetites.


By Paul Salopek

PUBLISHED August 11, 2016


USTYURT PLATEAU, Uzbekistan—Few people have seen the desert kites of Central Asia. The sprawling archaeological structures, dating back at least to the Iron Age, are extremely remote. They lie forgotten by the hundreds atop the vast and desolate Ustyurt Plateau between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan: mysterious berms of piled rocks and earth that stretch in spidery geometric patterns across the grasslands for half a mile or more. You can walk past them without knowing it. I certainly did.


This summer, while traversing the region on foot for a global project retracing the first human diaspora out of Africa, I sometimes sat on the strange ruins without realizing it. Their crumbling walls, often consisting of rows of stones just a foot high, disappeared into the distance. They ran in straight lines. Or they curved gently. Or zigzagged at sharp angles. They appeared to have no apparent purpose. Yet scientists studying the sites today say these cryptic features are anything but haphazard: Instead they represent colossal monuments to human ingenuity—and avarice.


"They make more sense when looked at from above," says Shamil Amirov, an archaeologist who uses satellite imagery to map the colossal artifacts in western Uzbekistan. "Most are shaped like arrows. We have found them in chains across the migration trails of antelopes. They probably directed thousands of animals into killing pits."


In effect, Amirov says, Central Asia's desert kites—named after similar triangular or kite-shaped features discovered earlier in the Middle East—were massive protein pumps. Built over generations by nomadic pastoralists some 2,500 years ago, the structures siphoned vast numbers of animals from the environment. At the time, ungulates had swarmed in Serengeti-like numbers. By contrast, when I walked the Ustyurt Plateau, I spotted only six saiga—a once common steppe antelope—in two months. But as I would soon learn, if there was a lesson here about human appetites, it wasn't only an Iron Age one.

Cryptic Structures


Desert kites first came to the attention of science nearly a century ago, when World War I pilots reported low walls tracing gigantic polygons, funnels, and triangles across the sunbaked barrens of modern Jordan, Israel, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Experts have been debating the function of these cryptic structures ever since.

Some archaeologists, citing a baffling lack of associated artifacts such as tools or living quarters, say they were cultic sites. Others think they served as prehistoric rodeo corrals for the domestication of wild animals during the late Neolithic. The lonesome constructions even stumped as savvy a Middle East scholar as T.E. Lawrence, of "Lawrence of Arabia" fame. Conducting an archaeological survey of the Negev in 1914, Lawrence noticed "long and puzzling walls which, like those elsewhere in the Negeb, appear to start and go on and end so aimlessly." They could be camel fences, he lamely concluded.


Thanks to aerial photography and satellite data, desert kites have since been found across a vast arc of the Old World from the Near East to the Caucasus and Central Asia. Nearly 5,000 of the structures have been logged to date. The latest scientific consensus regarding their use, meanwhile, has inched steadily into the camp of experts like Amirov, the Uzbek archaeologist.


"We're sure they were hunting traps because herders still used them here until very recently, a century ago," says Amirov, a researcher at the regional Karakalpak branch of the Uzbekistan National Academy of Science.


In a report published last year, Amirov and his colleagues marveled at the shrewd design of Uzbekistan's desert kites. Though the sites appear to have been built over a span of more than a thousand years, even the earliest engineers, pastoral tribes related to the Scythians who roamed the steppes in the fifth century B.C., knew that high walls weren't needed to control the movements of the animals: Migrating antelopes, wild asses, and gazelles will avoid any unusual structures, including rows of stones and even shallow ditches. The nomads laid out two lines of such obstacles—hundreds of yards long—that converged at rock-walled pens with yard-deep pits for slaughter.


Equally striking, Amirov's team found dozens of desert kites arrayed like a giant net across a hundred miles of tablelands east of the Aral Sea. Such a huge construction project hints at a collective hunting effort by large numbers of ancient nomads. They could have harvested entire antelope herds, Amirov writes. The haul of meat must have far exceeded the needs of immediate consumption. The excess was probably traded away. Today these kites still stand with their V-shaped mouths gaping northward, awaiting a ghostly migration that never comes.


Funneling Herds


How drastically such massive animal traps affected ancient wildlife is an open question.


But a spectacular 5,500-year-old desert kite in Syria has yielded rare clues. From thousands of discarded foot bones of butchered antelopes unearthed at the site, called Tell Kuran, researchers have calculated that hunting traps in the Middle East—where one chain of desert kites extends for 40 miles through Jordan—could have decimated ungulates like the Persian gazelle. Remnant herds of that species were wiped out in the 19th century by the spread of firearms in the region.


"Desert kites can inform us about the past roads of migration," Olivier Barge, a French archaeologist who has analyzed more than 140 desert kites in western Kazakhstan, cautioned me in an email. "[But] we will probably never know how numerous were the animals."


Still, echoes of a vanished bounty linger in the unearthly silences of the Ustyurt Plateau.


Kazakh and Uzbek archaeologists say that tens of thousands of migrating saiga trundled across the shared Ustyurt wilderness only 25 years ago. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of poaching, plus the construction of new barbed-wire border fences and above-ground gas pipelines, the local antelope populations have crashed into the low thousands. Both countries are struggling to save their herds with urgent conservation efforts.


"The original hunters didn't kill that many animals," says Andrey Astafyev, a veteran archaeologist based in the western Kazakhstan city of Aktau. "Not compared to what we did in the 1990s. People were unemployed. There were no controls. They machine-gunned the saiga. They sold the horns as medicine to China."


Astafyev tells me this while standing in the shallow cell, or kill pit, of a desert kite atop the Ustyurt Plateau. He pretends to be a saiga, running into and out of the trap's hole to demonstrate how the glistening animals once were caught. Today the hunting trap captures nothing except the hot steppe wind.

National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek is walking across the world as part of the Out of Eden Walk, a multiyear foot journey in the wake of the first humans who migrated out of Africa in the Stone Age. Follow his trek on Twitter and Instagram at @outofedenwalk.

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Unearthing the World of Jesus

Surprising archaeological finds are breaking new ground in our understanding of Jesus's time—and the revolution he launched 2,000 years ago

By  Ariel Sabar 

Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe
January 2016

As he paced the dusty shoreline of the Sea of Galilee, Father Juan Solana had a less-than-charitable thought about the archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority: He wanted them to go away.

Everything else had fallen into place for the Christian retreat he planned to build here. Just up the road was the "evangelical triangle" of Capernaum, Chorazin and Bethsaida, the villages where, according to the Gospels, Jesus mesmerized crowds with his miraculous acts and teachings. Across the modern two-lane highway was a small town Israelis still call Migdal, because it was the presumed site of Magdala, the ancient fishing city that was home to Mary Magdalene, one of Jesus's most loyal followers.

Solana is an urbane, silver-haired priest with the Legionaries of Christ, a Catholic order founded in Mexico. By that summer of 2009, he'd already raised $20 million for his retreat, which he was calling the "Magdala Center." He'd bought four adjoining parcels of waterfront land. He'd gotten building permits for a chapel and a guesthouse with more than 100 rooms. Just three months earlier, Pope Benedict XVI had personally blessed the cornerstone. All that remained now was an irksome bit of red tape: a "salvage excavation," a routine dig by the Israeli government to ensure that no important ruins lay beneath the proposed building site.

The IAA archaeologists had mucked around on Solana's 20 acres for a month and found little. "Almost done?" he'd ask, emerging in his clerical robes from a shipping container that served as a makeshift office. "I have a budget! I have a timetable!"

In truth, the archaeologists didn't want to be there either. Summer temperatures had ticked into the 100s, and the site prickled with bees and mosquitoes. They'd say shalom, they assured the priest, as soon as they checked a final, remote corner of his land.

It was there, beneath a wing of the proposed guesthouse, that their picks clinked against the top of a buried wall.

Dina Avshalom-Gorni, an IAA official who oversaw digs in northern Israel, ordered all hands to this square of the excavation grid. The workers squatted in the mealy soil and dusted carefully with brushes. Soon, a series of rough-cut stone benches emerged around what looked like a sanctuary.

It can't be, Avshalom-Gorni thought.

The Gospels say that Jesus taught and "proclaimed the good news" in synagogues "throughout all Galilee." But despite decades of digging in the towns Jesus visited, no early first-century synagogue had ever been found.

**********

For historians, this was not a serious problem. Galilean Jews were a week's walk from Jerusalem, close enough for regular pilgrimages to Herod the Great's magnificent temple, Judaism's central house of worship. Galileans, mostly poor peasants and fishermen, had neither the need nor the funds for some local spinoff. Synagogues, as we understand them today, did not appear anywhere in great numbers until several hundred years later. If there were any in Galilee in Jesus's day, they were perhaps just ordinary houses that doubled as meeting places for local Jews. Some scholars argued that the "synagogues" in the New Testament were nothing more than anachronisms slipped in by the Gospels' authors, who were writing outside Galilee decades after Jesus's death.


But as Avshalom-Gorni stood at the edge of the pit, studying the arrangement of benches along the walls, she could no longer deny it: They'd found a synagogue from the time of Jesus, in the hometown of Mary Magdalene. Though big enough for just 200 people, it was, for its time and place, opulent. It had a mosaic floor; frescoes in pleasing geometries of red, yellow and blue; separate chambers for public Torah readings, private study and storage of the scrolls; a bowl outside for the ritual washing of hands.

In the center of the sanctuary, the archaeologists unearthed a mysterious stone block, the size of a toy chest, unlike anything anyone had seen before. Carved onto its faces were a seven-branched menorah, a chariot of fire and a hoard of symbols associated with the most hallowed precincts of the Jerusalem temple. The stone is already seen as one of the most important discoveries in biblical archaeology in decades. Though its imagery and function remain in the earliest stages of analysis, scholars say it could lead to new understandings of the forces that made Galilee such fertile ground for a Jewish carpenter with a world-changing message. It could help explain, in other words, how a backwater of northern Israel became the launching pad for Christianity.

But on that dusty afternoon, Solana had no way of knowing this. He was toweling off after a swim when an IAA archaeologist named Arfan Najar called his cellphone with what seemed like the worst possible news: They'd found something, and everything Solana had worked and prayed for these past five years was on hold.

"Father," Najar told him, "you have a big, big, big problem."

**********

The 19th-century French theologian and explorer Ernest Renan called the Galilean landscape the "fifth Gospel," a "torn, but still legible" tableau of grit and stone that gave "form" and "solidity" to the central texts about Jesus's life—the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Renan's somewhat romantic views were not unlike those of the tourists whose gleaming buses I got stuck behind last summer on the road to places like Nazareth and Capernaum; pilgrims have long come to these biblical lands hoping to find what Renan called "the striking agreement of the texts with the places."

Modern archaeologists working here, however, are less interested in "proving" the Bible than in uncovering facts and context absent from the texts. What religion did ordinary people practice? How did Galileans respond to the arrival of Greek culture and Roman rule? How close did they feel to the priestly elites in Jerusalem? What did they do for work? What, for that matter, did they eat?

The Gospels themselves provide only glancing answers; their purpose is spiritual inspiration, not historical documentation. As for actual firsthand accounts of Galilean life in the first century, only one survives, written by a Jewish military commander named Josephus. This has made archaeology the most fruitful source of new information about Jesus's world. Each layer of dirt, or stratum, is like a new page, and with much of Galilee still unexcavated, many chapters of this Fifth Gospel remain unread.


The ground, in both Galilee and Jerusalem, has disgorged a few stunners. In 1968, a skeletal heel nailed to a board by an iron spike was found in an ossuary, or bone box, inside a first-century tomb near Jerusalem. The heel, which belonged to a man named Yehochanan, helped settle a long-simmering debate about the plausibility of Gospel accounts of Jesus's tomb burial. Crucifixion was a punishment reserved for the dregs of society, and some experts had scoffed at the idea that Romans would accord anyone so dispatched the dignity of a proper interment. More likely, Jesus's remains, like those of other common criminals, would have been left to rot on the cross or tossed into a ditch, a fate that might have complicated the resurrection narrative. But Yehochanan's heel offered an example of a crucified man from Jesus's day for whom the Romans permitted Jewish burial.

In 1986, after a drought depleted water levels in the Sea of Galilee (which is actually a lake), two brothers walking alongshore found a submerged first-century fishing vessel with seats for 12 passengers and an oarsman. The wooden boat made headlines the world over as an example of the type Jesus and his disciples would have used to cross the lake—and from which, according to the Gospels, Jesus famously calmed a storm.

Such discoveries were thrilling, but limited: one boat, one heel. And many blockbusters—notably an ossuary inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus"—have been so fraught with questions of provenance and authenticity that they have produced more controversy than insight.

The ultimate find—physical proof of Jesus himself—has also been elusory. "The sorts of evidence other historical figures leave behind are not the sort we'd expect with Jesus," says Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University and a leading authority on Galilean history. "He wasn't a political leader, so we don't have coins, for example, that have his bust or name. He wasn't a sufficiently high-profile social leader to leave behind inscriptions. In his own lifetime, he was a marginal figure and he was active in marginalized circles."

What archaeologists have begun to recover is Jesus's world—the beat of everyday life in the fishing villages where he is said to have planted the seeds of a movement. The deepest insights have come from millions of "small finds" gathered over decades of painstaking excavation: pottery shards, coins, glassware, animal bones, fishing hooks, cobbled streets, courtyard houses and other simple structures.

Before such discoveries, a long line of (mostly Christian) theologians had sought to reinterpret the New Testament in a way that stripped Jesus of his Judaism. Depending on the writer, Jesus was either a man who, though nominally Jewish, wandered freely among pagans; or he was a secular gadfly inspired less by the Hebrews than by the Greek Cynics, shaggy-haired loners who roamed the countryside irritating the powers that be with biting one-liners.

Archaeology showed once and for all that the people and places closest to Jesus were deeply Jewish. To judge by the bone finds, Galileans didn't eat pig. To judge by the limestone jugs, they stored liquids in vessels that complied with the strictest Jewish purity laws. Their coins lacked likenesses of humans or animals, in keeping with the Second Commandment against graven images.

Craig A. Evans, an eminent New Testament scholar at Houston Baptist University, says that the "most important gain" of the last few decades of historical Jesus research is a "renewed appreciation of the Judaic character of Jesus, his mission and his world."

The discoveries solidified the portrait of Jesus as a Jew preaching to other Jews. He was not out to convert gentiles; the movement he launched would take that turn after his death, as it became clear that most Jews didn't accept him as the messiah. Nor was he a loner philosopher with an affinity for the Greek Cynics. Instead, his life drew on—or at least repurposed—bedrock Jewish traditions of prophecy, messianism and social justice critique as old as the Hebrew Bible.

What archaeology is still untangling, as the professors John Dominic Crossan and Jonathan L. Reed put it in their book Excavating Jesus, is "Why did Jesus happen when and where he happened?" For many of the devout, the most meaningful answer is that God willed it so. But archaeologists and historians are searching for the man of history as much as the figure of faith, and in the Fifth Gospel they're finding a clearer picture of how first-century Galilee may have set the stage for a messianic figure—and for a group of people who'd drop everything to follow him.

**********

The ruins of Bethsaida lie atop an oval-shaped, 20-acre mound of volcanic earth. Flowing all around are the hills of the Golan, which plunge through stands of eucalyptus and across plains of mango and palm groves to the Sea of Galilee.

Bethsaida was home to as many as five apostles—far more than any other New Testament town. It was where Jesus is said to have healed the blind man and multiplied the loaves and fishes. And it was the target of his notorious curse—the "Woe" saying—in which he lashes out at Bethsaida and two other towns for their failure to repent. And yet how could it be both the wellspring of devotion and the victim of curse? The Scriptures are silent.

A more practical problem for centuries of pilgrims and explorers was that no one knew where Bethsaida was. The Gospels allude to it as a "lonely place," "across the lake," "to the other side." Josephus said it was in the lower Golan, above where the Jordan River enters the Sea of Galilee. And after the third century, most likely because of a devastating earthquake, Bethsaida—Aramaic for "House of the Fisherman"—all but vanished from the historical record.

Its strange disappearance was part of the allure for Rami Arav, a Galilee-born archaeologist now at the University of Nebraska Omaha. When he returned home after getting his PhD from New York University, he told me, "I looked at a map and I said, What can I do that has not been done so far? There was one site with a big question mark next to it, and that was Bethsaida."

In 1987, Arav conducted digs at three mounds near the lake's northern shore. He concluded that only one, known as et-Tell, had ruins old enough to be biblical Bethsaida. (The State of Israel and many scholars accept his identification, though some controversy lingers.)

Arav's dig is now one of the longest ongoing excavations in all of Israel. Over 28 summers, he and his colleagues—including Carl Savage of Drew University and Richard Freund of the University of Hartford—have uncovered a fisherman's house used in Jesus's day, a winemaker's quarters from a century earlier and a city gate from Old Testament times.

What I had come to see, however, was a discovery that made Bethsaida an outlier among the stops on Jesus's Galilean ministry. At the apex of the mound, not long after he'd begun digging, Arav unearthed the basalt walls of a rectangular building.

Was it a synagogue? To judge by other finds, Bethsaida was a majority Jewish town. But the rudimentary structure had no benches or other hallmarks of early synagogue architecture.

Instead, the archaeologists discovered evidence of pagan worship: bronze incense shovels similar to those found in Roman temples; palm-size votive objects in the shape of boat anchors and grape clusters; terra-cotta figurines of a woman who resembled Livia (sometimes known as Julia), the wife of the Roman Emperor Augustus and mother of Tiberius, who succeeded Augustus in the year A.D. 14.

At first, it didn't make sense. Arav knew the Romans regarded their rulers as both human and divine, worshiping them as deities. But Herod the Great and his sons, who ruled the Land of Israel as Rome's client kings, had been sensitive to the region's Jews. They built no pagan structures in Galilee and kept the faces of rulers off local coins.

But Bethsaida, Arav realized, lay a hair over the Galilee border, in the Golan, a region just to the northeast that was home to gentile villages and was ruled by Herod's son Philip, the only Jew at the time to put his face on a coin. (Galilee was ruled by Philip's brother Antipas.) In the year 30, according to Josephus, Philip dedicated Bethsaida to Livia, who had died the year before. In his eagerness to endear himself to his Roman masters, might Philip have built a pagan temple to the emperor's mother? Might he have done so in precisely the period when Jesus was visiting Bethsaida?

On a sweltering morning, amid the buzz of cicadas, Arav led me past the fisherman's house to the temple site. It doesn't look like much now. Its waist-high walls enclose a 20- by 65-foot area, with small porches on either end. Strewn among the weeds inside were fragments of a limestone column that may have graced the temple's entrance.

As some scholars see it, the pagan temple may be a key to why so many of the apostles hailed from here—and why, all the same, Jesus winds up cursing the place. The early first century brought new hardships to the Land of Israel, as Rome's tightening grip fueled bitter debates about how best to be a Jew. But the Jews of Bethsaida—unlike those at other stops on Jesus's ministry—faced an additional indignity: Their ruler Philip, himself a Jew, had erected a temple to a Roman goddess in their very midst.

"It's ultimate chutzpah," Freund, a Judaic studies specialist who has co-edited four books with Arav about Bethsaida, said as we sat on a picnic bench beneath the temple ruins. "It cannot but affect your spiritual life to every day go out and do your fishing, come home and try to live as a Jew, eat your kosher food, pray inside your courtyard house and then at the same time you're seeing these plumes of smoke rising from the temple of Julia, and you're saying, 'Who are we? Who are we?'"

The city's accommodation to its pagan overlords may explain why Jesus damns the place. He'd performed some of his greatest miracles here, according to the Gospels: He'd healed a blind man; he'd fed thousands; from the top of Bethsaida, the site of the Roman temple itself, people would have been able to see him walk on water. And yet in the end, the better part of them did not repent.

"Woe unto thee, Bethsaida!" Jesus rails in Matthew 11:21. "For if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon"—gentile cities on the Phoenician coast that Jesus perhaps invokes for shaming purposes—"they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes."

Still, some of Bethsaida's fishermen—among them Peter, Andrew, Philip, James and John, soon to become apostles—may have gazed on that pagan temple and said, Enough. Perhaps, at just that time, a Jewish visionary came along, offering what looked like a clearer path back to the God they loved.

The discovery of Jewish and pagan relics in so important a stop on Jesus's ministry shows that "there was more diversity in Jewish life" than is sometimes acknowledged, says Savage, the author of Biblical Bethsaida, a 2011 book about the Jesus-era archaeological finds. The conventional view is that Jews had split into a small number of competing sects. "But it may be more complicated than just three or four poles."

On my last day at Bethsaida, Savage spent the morning grappling with a more practical question: how to hoist a quarter-ton boulder off the floor of an ancient villa so his team could start in on the stratum beneath. Dust-caked volunteers lassoed the rock in a canvas sling. When Savage yelled "Roll it!" they tugged on a tripod-mounted pulley, inching the boulder over the side of a low embankment.

**********

If Bethsaida is the outer bound of Jesus's Galilean world, Magdala, ten miles southwest, is in many ways its geographical center. A two-hour walk north of Magdala is Capernaum, where the Gospels say Jesus headquartered his ministry. It would have been nearly impossible for Jesus to travel between his boyhood home in Nazareth and the evangelical triangle without passing through Magdala.

But the Gospels reveal almost nothing about it. Was it mere chance that Mary Magdalene lived there? Or might something have been afoot in Magdala that helped turn her into one of Jesus's most devoted acolytes—a woman who funds his work out of her own wealth and follows him all the way to the cross, and the tomb, in Jerusalem, even as other disciples abandon him?

On a blazing morning in late June, I turned off Galilee's shoreline road into a dirt lot of wind-bent palms and tent-covered ruins. A small sign outside said, "Magdala. Open to Visitors."

I found Father Solana in the kitchen of a small rectory. As his assistant poured coffee, Solana told me that his interest in the site went back to 2004, when the Vatican sent him to the Holy Land to revive the Church's majestic 19th-century guesthouse near Jerusalem's Old City. On a road trip through Galilee soon after he arrived, he noticed that pilgrims there were badly underserved: There weren't enough hotels or even enough bathrooms. Thus his dream of a Galilean sister site, a place he called the "Magdala Center." (The name reflects both its location and one of its missions—women's spirituality.)

Solana told me he sees the showstopping archaeological finds now as "divine providence," a sign that God had bigger plans for the project.

In 2010, he brought in his own team of archaeologists from Mexico. He wanted to excavate even those parts of the church's property that he wasn't legally required to study—the 11 acres he had no plans to build on. Working with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Mexican archaeologists, who have been back nearly every year since, found a first-century treasure trove: a full-blown residential district, a marketplace, a fishing harbor, four Jewish ritual baths, and unusual plastered basins where residents appear to have salt-cured fish for export. The site, it turned out, had been home not just to a synagogue but to a flourishing community, one that was a near match for ancient descriptions of the bustling fishing port of Magdala.

The ruins were so well preserved that Marcela Zapata-Meza, the archaeologist now leading the dig, started calling Magdala "the Israeli Pompeii." Josephus, the first-century historian, wrote that the people of Magdala eagerly joined the Jewish revolt against Rome in A.D. 66. But the Roman legions crushed them, turning the lake "all bloody, and full of dead bodies." The city, it seems, was never rebuilt. (Three coins were found at the synagogue, from A.D. 29, 43 and 63, but no later.) Except for a mid-20th-century stint as a shabby Hawaiian-themed resort, Magdala appears to have lain undisturbed until IAA shovels hit the synagogue wall in 2009, less than a foot-and-a-half beneath the surface.

"It looked like it was waiting for us for 2,000 years," Avshalom-Gorni told me.


On an ancient street beside the synagogue ruins, Zapata-Meza pointed to a barricade that appeared to have been hastily assembled from fragments of the synagogue's interior columns. As the Romans descended on the city 2,000 years ago, the Magdalans seem to have scuttled parts of their own synagogue, piling the rubble into a chest-high roadblock. The purpose, Zapata-Meza says, was likely twofold: to impede the Roman troops and to protect the synagogue from defilement. (Magdala's Jewish ritual baths, or mikvaot, also appear to have been deliberately hidden, beneath a layer of shattered pottery.)

"In Mexico, it's very common: The Aztecs and Mayans did it at their holy sites when they expected to be attacked," says Zapata-Meza, who has excavated such areas in Mexico. "It's called 'killing' the space."

Another oddity is that although ancient synagogues are normally at the center of town, the one in Magdala clings to the northernmost corner, the spot closest to Jesus's headquarters in Capernaum. Measuring 36 by 36 feet, it is big enough for just 5 percent of the 4,000 people who might have lived in Magdala in Jesus's day.

"We know from the sources that Jesus wasn't in the mainstream of the Jewish community," Avshalom-Gorni told me. "Maybe it was comfortable for him to have this gathering house at the edge of Magdala, not in the middle."

Her hunch is that no synagogue so small and so finely decorated would have been built without some kind of charismatic leader. "It tells us something about these 200 people," she says. "It tells us this was a community for whom walking to the Temple in Jerusalem wasn't enough. They wanted more. They needed more."

The stone block found in the sanctuary is one-of-a-kind. In none of the world's other synagogues from this era—six of them in Israel, the other one in Greece—have archaeologists found a single Jewish symbol; yet the faces of this stone are a gallery of them. When I asked how this could be, Avshalom-Gorni told me to go to Hebrew University, in Jerusalem, and talk with an art historian named Rina Talgam.

I visited Talgam in her small campus office a few days later. On her desk was a stack of plastic-wrapped copies of her new book, Mosaics of Faith, a phonebook-thick study that spans five religions and a thousand years of history.

The IAA has given Talgam exclusive access to the stone, and she is at work on an exhaustive interpretation. The paper isn't likely to be published until later this year, but she agreed to speak with me about her preliminary conclusions.


The stone, she says, is a schematic, 3-D model of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem. Whoever carved it had likely seen the temple's highly restricted innermost sanctums, or at least had heard about them directly from someone who had been there. On one side of the stone is a menorah, or Jewish candelabrum, whose design matches other likenesses—on coins and graffiti—from before A.D. 70, when the Romans destroyed the temple. The menorah had stood behind golden doors in the temple's Holy Place, a sanctuary off-limits to all but the priests. On the other faces of the stone—appearing in the order a person walking front to back would have encountered them—are other furnishings from the temple's most sacrosanct areas: the Table of Showbread, where priests stacked 12 bread loaves representing the 12 tribes of Israel; and a rosette slung between two palm-shaped columns, which Talgam believes is the veil separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, a small chamber only the high priest could enter and only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.


On the side opposite the menorah—past reliefs of columned arches, altars and oil lamps—was an engraving that left Talgam dumbstruck: a pair of fire-spitting wheels. Talgam believes they represent the bottom half of the chariot of God, an object seen as one of the Old Testament's holiest—and most concrete—images of the divine.

"This is really shocking," Talgam told me. "One is not supposed to depict the chariot of God, even its lower portion." She believes the stone's designer etched it on the rear of the stone to symbolize the temple's backmost room, the Holy of Holies.

Most experts think the stone, which rests on four stubby legs, served in some fashion as a rest for Torah scrolls, but its precise function is still a matter of debate. Talgam's study will dispute earlier reports that it is made of limestone, in widespread use at the time for decorative objects. Though scientific tests are pending, Talgam suspects the Magdala stone is quartzite, an extremely hard rock shunned by most artisans because of how difficult it is to carve. The choice of material, she believes, is another sign of its importance to the community.

For Talgam, the stone suggests another fault line in Jewish life at the time of Jesus. After the Assyrians conquered Israel seven centuries earlier, Jews lived under a succession of foreign rulers: Babylonians, Persians, Greeks. They tasted self-rule again only in the second century B.C., when the Maccabees vanquished the Greeks in one of history's biggest military upsets. But autonomy was brief; in 63 B.C., Pompey the Great sacked Jerusalem, yoking the Land of Israel to Rome.

The Romans venerated idols, imposed heavy taxes and dealt ruthlessly with the meekest of Jewish rabble-rousers. (Antipas beheaded John the Baptist on the whim of his stepdaughter.) Even more galling, perhaps, was Rome's meddling in what had always been a Jewish perquisite: the appointment of the temple's high priests. Among those selected by Rome was Caiaphas, the high priest who would accuse Jesus of blasphemy and plot his execution.

A sense of siege deepened the divisions among the Jews, who decades earlier had splintered into sects. The Sadducees became collaborators with the Roman elites. The Pharisees, who clashed with Jesus, according to the Gospels, believed in to-the-letter observance of Jewish law. The Essenes, dissident separatists, withdrew into caves above the Dead Sea, where their writings—the Dead Sea Scrolls—would be discovered 2,000 years later. Another group, whose slogan was "No king but God," was known simply as "The Fourth Philosophy."

In Talgam's view, the Magdala stone expresses yet another response to a Judaism in crisis: an emerging belief that God doesn't reside in Jerusalem, that he is accessible to any Jew, anywhere, who commits to him. And that may explain why some of Magdala's Jews felt free to do the once-unthinkable. They appropriated the great temple, including its Holy of Holies, and they miniaturized it, setting it within the walls of their own provincial synagogue.

This shift, Talgam says, is in many ways a forerunner to New Testament themes of God's kingdom being not just in Heaven, but also on earth and inside the human heart. "We know that at that time people like Paul and the Jewish philosopher Philo started to say, God is not particularly in Jerusalem. He's everywhere. He's in Heaven, but he's also within the community and he's within each of us," Talgam told me. "That's also the basis for an approach that we see in the New Testament: That we should start to work God in a more spiritual way," tied more closely to individual devotion and less to where the temple is, who the high priests are, and who the emperor happens to be. It's not a rejection of Judaism or the temple, she says, but "a kind of democratization." In the Old Testament, as in the temple in Jerusalem, the divine is visible only to the elect. In Magdala, the stone offers "a concrete depiction," she says, "visible to the entire community."

Talgam believes that the leaders of the Magdala synagogue would have been predisposed to give a visitor like Jesus a sympathetic hearing—and maybe even, as Avshalom-Gorni suggests, a chance to preach to the congregation. They, too, were exploring new, more direct ways of relating to God.

But what of Mary Magdalene? The Gospels say that Jesus purged her of seven demons, an act of healing often interpreted as the spark for her intense devotion. But they leave out a key detail: how she and Jesus met. If Talgam is right about this synagogue's reformist leanings, Jesus may have found his most steadfast disciple within its very walls.

**********

The archaeological finds upended Solana's plans—and raised his costs—but they have not deterred him. He opened the spirituality center—an oasis of mosaics, intimate chapels and picture windows overlooking the Sea of Galilee—in May 2014. The guesthouse, with a new design that skirts the ancient synagogue site, could welcome pilgrims as early as 2018. But Solana has decided to set aside the better part of his property as a working archaeological park, open to the public. He sees the Magdala Center now in a new light, as a crossroads of Jewish and Christian history meaningful to people of every faith.

"We didn't find any evidence yet that says for sure Jesus was here," Solana acknowledges, taking a break from the heat on a bench inside the synagogue. But the sight of archaeologists fills him with hope now, where once there was only dread.

"To have scientific, archaeological evidence of Jesus's presence is not a small thing for a Christian," he tells me, looking up and thrusting his palms toward the sky. "We will keep digging." 

Quote from: Martinus on August 22, 2016, 01:09:36 AM
It seems to assume Jesus as a historical figure while mentioning throughout that there are no archeological evidence of his existence.

QuoteIt's like describing some findings from the Elizabethean era while mentioning throughout the sights Blackadder might have seen.

Quote from: Valmy on August 22, 2016, 08:37:00 AM

Quote from: Martinus on August 22, 2016, 01:09:36 AM
It seems to assume Jesus as a historical figure while mentioning throughout that there are no archeological evidence of his existence.

I don't think they are assuming that. They do explain pretty well why that might be.

QuoteIt's like describing some findings from the Elizabethean era while mentioning throughout the sights Blackadder might have seen.

No it is not like that at all. If we had tons of documents of people in the Stuart period talking about this super important guy named Blackadder in the Elizabethan period then sure then it might be comparable.

Quote from: Valmy on August 22, 2016, 09:16:38 AM
:lol: Awesome!

Quote from: Martinus on August 22, 2016, 09:24:19 AM
The thing is we don't have "tons of documents" from the Augustine period talking about this super important guy named Jesus. In fact I don't think there is a single contemporary document that does so. ;)

Quote from: Malthus on August 22, 2016, 09:27:07 AM

Quote from: Valmy on August 22, 2016, 09:16:38 AM
:lol: Awesome!

The best part is that his persona, at least as revealed in his writings and history, could not be more different from the character in the show - he's a dour, overtly religious Scottish Presbyterian, and apparently an extremely brave soldier. The fun was imagining that, beneath it all, he was "really" like the character in the show (for which there is of course not the slightest shred of evidence).  :D

Quote from: Valmy on August 22, 2016, 09:29:44 AM

Quote from: Malthus on August 22, 2016, 09:27:07 AM

Quote from: Valmy on August 22, 2016, 09:16:38 AM
:lol: Awesome!

The best part is that his persona, at least as revealed in his writings and history, could not be more different from the character in the show - he's a dour, overtly religious Scottish Presbyterian, and apparently an extremely brave soldier. The fun was imagining that, beneath it all, he was "really" like the character in the show (for which there is of course not the slightest shred of evidence).  :D

Actually that would be classic. Pity they never made that part of the show. But then having a Scottish Blackadder would be weird.

Quote from: Malthus on August 22, 2016, 09:30:54 AM

Quote from: Valmy on August 22, 2016, 09:29:44 AM

Quote from: Malthus on August 22, 2016, 09:27:07 AM

Quote from: Valmy on August 22, 2016, 09:16:38 AM
:lol: Awesome!

The best part is that his persona, at least as revealed in his writings and history, could not be more different from the character in the show - he's a dour, overtly religious Scottish Presbyterian, and apparently an extremely brave soldier. The fun was imagining that, beneath it all, he was "really" like the character in the show (for which there is of course not the slightest shred of evidence).  :D

Actually that would be classic. Pity they never made that part of the show. But then having a Scottish Blackadder would be weird.

Wasn't he visited at one point by a Scottish relation in the show?

Quote from: Agelastus on August 22, 2016, 09:37:22 AM

His "mad cousin MacAdder" in the final episode of season 3.

QuoteThe central panel features a Jewish adaptation of the Greco-Roman zodiac. The zodiac consists of two concentric circles, with the twelve zodiac signs appearing in the outer circle, and Helios, the Greco-Roman sun god, appearing in the inner circle.[16] The outer circle consists of twelve panels, each of which correspond to one of the twelve months of the year and contain the appropriate Greco-Roman zodiac sign. Female busts symbolizing the four seasons appear in the four corners immediately outside the zodiac.[17] In the center, Helios appears with his signature Greco-Roman iconographic elements such as the fiery crown of rays adorning his head and the highly stylized quadriga or four-horse-drawn chariot.[18] The background is decorated with a crescent shaped moon and stars. As in the "Binding of Isaac" panel, the zodiac symbols and seasonal busts are labeled with their corresponding Hebrew names.

This zodiac wheel, along with other similar examples found in contemporaneous synagogues throughout Israel such as Naaran, Susiya, Hamat Tiberias, Huseifa, and Sepphoris, rest at the center of a scholarly debate regarding the relationship between Judaism and general Greco-Roman culture in late-antiquity.[19] Some interpret the popularity that the zodiac maintains within synagogue floors as evidence for its Judaization and adaptation into the Jewish calendar and liturgy.[20] Others see it as representing the existence of a "non-Rabbinic" or a mystical and Hellenized form of Judaism that embraced the astral religion of Greco-Roman culture.

Quote from: Valmy on August 22, 2016, 10:19:47 AM
Yeah. The Christian Greeks made identical drawings. The association with the calendar lasted long beyond Greco-Roman paganism. I liked how they just casually had Helios at the center of the universe.

QuoteThe stone, she says, is a schematic, 3-D model of Herod's Temple in Jerusalem. Whoever carved it had likely seen the temple's highly restricted innermost sanctums, or at least had heard about them directly from someone who had been there. On one side of the stone is a menorah, or Jewish candelabrum, whose design matches other likenesses—on coins and graffiti—from before A.D. 70, when the Romans destroyed the temple. The menorah had stood behind golden doors in the temple's Holy Place, a sanctuary off-limits to all but the priests. On the other faces of the stone—appearing in the order a person walking front to back would have encountered them—are other furnishings from the temple's most sacrosanct areas: the Table of Showbread, where priests stacked 12 bread loaves representing the 12 tribes of Israel; and a rosette slung between two palm-shaped columns, which Talgam believes is the veil separating the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies, a small chamber only the high priest could enter and only once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

On the side opposite the menorah—past reliefs of columned arches, altars and oil lamps—was an engraving that left Talgam dumbstruck: a pair of fire-spitting wheels. Talgam believes they represent the bottom half of the chariot of God, an object seen as one of the Old Testament's holiest—and most concrete—images of the divine.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 22, 2016, 11:02:40 AM
M - The Torah does not discuss the Second Temple.  We only know about from the Mishnah and Josephus, and it appears this building predates those sources.

QuoteExod 25:23-30 "You shall also make a table of acacia wood; two cubits shall be its length, a cubit its width, and a cubit and a half its height. And you shall overlay it with pure gold, and make a molding of gold all around. You shall make for it a frame of a handbreadth all around, and you shall make a gold molding for the frame all around. And you shall make for it four rings of gold, and put the rings on the four corners that are at its four legs. The rings shall be close to the frame, as holders for the poles to bear the table. And you shall make the poles of acacia wood, and overlay them with gold, that the table may be carried with them. You shall make its  dishes, its pans, its pitchers, and its bowls for pouring. You shall make them of pure gold. And you shall set the showbread on the table before Me always."

QuoteLev 24:5-9 "And you shall take fine flour and bake twelve cakes with it. Two-tenths of an ephah shall be in each cake. You shall set them in two rows, six in a row, on the pure gold table before the LORD. And you shall put pure  frankincense on each row, that it may be on the bread for a memorial, an offering made by fire to the LORD. Every Sabbath he shall set it in order before the LORD continually, being taken from the children of Israel by an everlasting  covenant. And it shall be for  Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place; for it is most holy to him from the offerings of the LORD made by fire, by a perpetual statute."

QuoteMatthew 12:4English Standard Version (ESV)

4 how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests?

Quote from: Malthus on August 22, 2016, 10:11:40 AM
As for the "shocking" iconography found in the recent synagogue - you simply can't judge early synagogues by rabbinical "rules" that developed centuries later. Many early synagogues have oddities to them that surprise and baffle modern scholars. For example, I visited one which had a fully-formed zodiac wheel with what appears to be a picture of Helios in the centre of it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_Alpha

QuoteThe central panel features a Jewish adaptation of the Greco-Roman zodiac. The zodiac consists of two concentric circles, with the twelve zodiac signs appearing in the outer circle, and Helios, the Greco-Roman sun god, appearing in the inner circle.[16] The outer circle consists of twelve panels, each of which correspond to one of the twelve months of the year and contain the appropriate Greco-Roman zodiac sign. Female busts symbolizing the four seasons appear in the four corners immediately outside the zodiac.[17] In the center, Helios appears with his signature Greco-Roman iconographic elements such as the fiery crown of rays adorning his head and the highly stylized quadriga or four-horse-drawn chariot.[18] The background is decorated with a crescent shaped moon and stars. As in the "Binding of Isaac" panel, the zodiac symbols and seasonal busts are labeled with their corresponding Hebrew names.

This zodiac wheel, along with other similar examples found in contemporaneous synagogues throughout Israel such as Naaran, Susiya, Hamat Tiberias, Huseifa, and Sepphoris, rest at the center of a scholarly debate regarding the relationship between Judaism and general Greco-Roman culture in late-antiquity.[19] Some interpret the popularity that the zodiac maintains within synagogue floors as evidence for its Judaization and adaptation into the Jewish calendar and liturgy.[20] Others see it as representing the existence of a "non-Rabbinic" or a mystical and Hellenized form of Judaism that embraced the astral religion of Greco-Roman culture.

You certainly would not get that in a later synagogue! In my opinion, it just represents the symbology current at the time; I don't think it means they literally worshipped Helios (I think he's just there symbolizing "the sun").

Quote from: Razgovory on August 22, 2016, 02:12:47 PM
It was my understanding that Kabbalah came much later, a product of the middle ages.

Quote from: Malthus on August 22, 2016, 02:16:04 PM
We know that for centuries there was a tension between the desire of the Temple priesthood to maintain a central monopoly, and the reality that locals needed some sort of local outlet for worship and ceremonies.

I just don't think you can draw too much data from the way a synagogue was decorated. Survivals from that time period are so rare and incomplete that we can't know what was common in such places, and so it is difficult to draw firm conclusions. For all we know, drawing the symbols of the Temple was a sign of loyalty to the Priestly caste; that's  more or less as likely as that it demonstrated dissent from them.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on August 22, 2016, 02:38:15 PM
Sephirot and the like are much later.

Quote from: Razgovory on August 22, 2016, 02:12:47 PM
It was my understanding that Kabbalah came much later, a product of the middle ages.

Quote from: The Brain on August 22, 2016, 03:27:48 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on August 22, 2016, 02:12:47 PM
It was my understanding that Kabbalah came much later, a product of the middle ages.

The Madonna has been around a long time.

Quote from: Valmy on August 22, 2016, 09:56:56 AM
Yeah in Judaism the Pharisees are the good guys and the founders of "modern" Judaism. Though since we are talking about the last 2 thousand years or so I use that term loosely.

I would imagine Jesus, if he existed and my views on him are correct, would have originally been on their team before he joined the cult of John the Baptist. Whatever being a Pharisee would have meant to an extremely poor landless laborer anyway.

Quote
An Ancient, Brutal Massacre May Be the Earliest Evidence of War

Even nomadic hunter-gatherers engaged in deliberate mass killings 10,000 years ago


By  Brian Handwerk 

smithsonian.com
January 20, 2016


kulls smashed by blunt force, bodies pin-cushioned by projectile points and hapless victims—including a pregnant woman—abused with their hands bound before receiving the fatal coup de grâce.

This violent tableau resembles something from the darker side of modern warfare. But it instead describes the grizzly demise of a group of African hunter-gatherers some 10,000 years ago. They are the victims of the earliest scientifically dated evidence for human group conflict—a precursor to what we now know as war.

The battered skeletons at Nataruk, west of Kenya's Lake Turkana, serve as sobering evidence that such brutal behavior occurred among nomadic peoples, long before more settled human societies arose. They also provide poignant clues that could help answer questions that have long plagued humanity: Why do we go to war, and where did our all too common practice of group violence originate?

"The injuries suffered by the people of Nataruk—men and women, pregnant or not, young and old—shock for their mercilessness," says Marta Mirazon Lahr of the University of Cambridge, who co-authored the study published today in the journal Nature. Still, she notes, "what we see at the prehistoric site of Nataruk is no different from the fights, wars and conquests that shaped so much of our history, and indeed sadly continue to shape our lives."

Nataruk's prehistoric killers did not bury their victims' bodies. Instead their remains were preserved after being submerged in a now dried lagoon, near the lake shore where they lived their final, terrifying moments during the wetter period of the late Pleistocene to early Holocene.

Researchers discovered the bones in 2012, identifying at least 27 individuals on the edge of a depression. The fossilized bodies were dated by radiocarbon dating and other techniques, as well as from samples of the shells and sediment surrounding them, to approximately 9,500 to 10,500 years ago.

It's not clear that anyone was spared at the Nataruk massacre. Of the 27 individuals found, eight were male and eight female, with five adults of unknown gender. The site also contained the partial remains of six children. Twelve of the skeletons were in a relatively complete state, and ten of those showed very clear evidence that they had met a violent end.

In the paper, the researchers describe "extreme blunt-force trauma to crania and cheekbones, broken hands, knees and ribs, arrow lesions to the neck, and stone projectile tips lodged in the skull and thorax of two men." Four of them, including a late-term pregnant woman, appear to have had their hands bound.



The murderers' motives are lost in the mists of time, but there are some plausible interpretations that could challenge conventional ideas about why people go to war. 

Warfare has often been associated with more advanced, sedentary societies that control territory and resources, farm extensively, store the foods they produce and develop social structures in which people exercise power over group actions. Conflict erupts between such groups when one wants what the other possesses.

The bodies at Nataruk provide evidence that these conditions aren't necessary for warfare, because the hunter-gatherers of the time lived a far simpler lifestyle. Yet the killings have the hallmarks of a planned attack rather than a violent chance encounter.

The killers carried weapons they wouldn't have used for hunting and fishing, Mirazon Lahr notes, including clubs of various sizes and a combination of close-proximity weapons like knives and distance weapons, including the arrow projectiles she calls a hallmark of inter-group conflict.

"This suggests premeditation and planning," Mirazon Lahr notes. Other, isolated examples of period violence have previously been found in the area, and those featured projectiles crafted of obsidian, which is rare in the area but also seen in the Nataruk wounds. This suggests that the attackers may have been from another area, and that multiple attacks were likely a feature of life at the time.

"This implies that the resources the people of Nataruk had at the time were valuable and worth fighting for, whether it was water, dried meat or fish, gathered nuts or indeed women and children. This shows that two of the conditions associated with warfare among settled societies—control of territory and resources—were probably the same for these hunter-gatherers, and that we have underestimated their role in prehistory."

"This work is exciting and it suggests, at least to me, that this type behavior has deeper evolutionary roots," says Luke Glowacki, an anthropologist with Harvard University's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology.

We aren't the only species to engage in such behavior, he adds. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, regularly engage in lethal attacks. "To deliberately stalk and kill members of other groups, as the chimps do, that alone is very suggestive of an evolutionary basis for warfare," he says.


But evidence to support or refute such theories has been thin on the ground. The sparse previous examples of prehistoric violence can be interpreted as individual acts of aggression, like a 430,000-year-old murder victim found in Spain last year. That makes Nataruk a valuable data point in the fossil record.

More clues may be found among the behaviors of living peoples. Researchers can make inferences about conflict among early human hunter-gatherers by studying their closest living parallels, groups like the San of southern Africa. But such comparisons are tenuous, Glowacki notes.

"The San are very different from our ancestors. They live in nations, they are surrounded by pastoralists and they go to markets. That limits the utility of making inferences about our own past." Still there are other suggestions that resource competition isn't always at the root of human violence.

"In New Guinea for example, where there are abundant resources and land, you've traditionally seen very intense warfare driven by tribal and status dynamics," Glowacki says. "We don't have any way of knowing if that was involved at Nataruk."

And whatever its roots, warfare persists even in the same region of Africa: "This is still an area with a lot of intense violence in the 21st century," Glowacki notes. "It was eye-opening from my perspective that the first really good fossil evidence for warfare among ancient hunter-gatherers comes from a place where there is still, today, this ongoing intergroup violence."

But, the authors point out, there is another aspect of human behavior that has also stood the test of time.

"We should also not forget that humans, uniquely in the animal world, are also capable of extraordinary acts of altruism, compassion and caring," Mirazon Lahr says. "Clearly both are part of our nature."

Quote from: dps on August 22, 2016, 05:01:20 PM

Quote from: Valmy on August 22, 2016, 09:56:56 AM
Yeah in Judaism the Pharisees are the good guys and the founders of "modern" Judaism. Though since we are talking about the last 2 thousand years or so I use that term loosely.

I would imagine Jesus, if he existed and my views on him are correct, would have originally been on their team before he joined the cult of John the Baptist. Whatever being a Pharisee would have meant to an extremely poor landless laborer anyway.

From my reading of the Bible, my impression is that Jesus and his followers considered the many of the Pharisees overly rigid, sometimes corrupt, and a bit too concerned with politics and worldly affairs, but not fundamentally wrong on Jewish doctrine.  The Sadducees, OTOH, are pretty much stated to be wrong on certain doctrinal issues.

Quote from: Valmy on August 23, 2016, 08:05:01 AM
Huh. I thought it was a fundamental fact that ancient hunter/gatherer groups exterminated their enemies for control of their territory. It was, after all, a matter of life or death. My understanding was that slavery developed as a comparatively merciful way of handling defeated enemies.

But that may have just been a theory.

Quote
Face of 9,500-Year-Old Man Revealed for First Time

Digital tools help researchers reconstruct the Neolithic man inside the famed Jericho Skull.

By Kristin Romey

PUBLISHED January 5, 2017

Researchers have reverse-engineered the ancient ritual practice that created one of the British Museum's most important artifacts—the Jericho Skull—revealing the face of a man whose remains were decorated and venerated some 9,500 years ago.

The Jericho Skull is also considered the oldest portrait in the museum's collection, and, until recently, its most enigmatic: a truncated human skull covered in worn plaster, with eye sockets set with simple sea shells that stare out blindly from its display case.

Now, thanks to digital imaging, 3-D printing, and forensic reconstruction techniques, specialists have recreated the face of the individual inside the Jericho Skull—and it turns out to belong to a 40-something man with a broken nose.

An Unprecedented Discovery

The Jericho Skull is one of seven plastered and ornamented Neolithic skulls excavated by archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon in 1953 at the site of Tell es-Sultan, near the modern West Bank city of Jericho. The discovery—an archaeological sensation that brought Kenyon international fame—was first reported in National Geographic in December of that year.

"We realized with a thrill of discovery that we were looking at the portrait of a man who lived and died more than 7,000 years ago," Kenyon wrote, describing to Geographic readers the moment that the first skull was revealed. "No archeologist [sic] had even guessed at the existence of such a work of art."

While the seven skulls varied in detail, all had been originally stuffed with soil to support delicate facial bones before wet plaster was applied to create individualized facial features, such as ears, cheeks, and noses. Small marine shells represented eyes, and some skulls bore traces of paint.


Since Kenyon's discovery, more than 50 such ornamented skulls have been discovered in Neolithic sites from the Middle East to central Turkey. While researchers generally agree that the objects represent an early form of ancestor worship, very little is known about who was chosen to be immortalized in plaster thousands of years ago, and why.

Other Neolithic plaster skulls have been digitally examined, but the skeletal remains inside the British Museum's Jericho Skull are the first to be 3-D printed and forensically reconstructed.

Separating Plaster from Bone—Virtually

Kenyon's remarkable Neolithic portrait heads were dispersed to museums across the world for further study, and the British Museum's Jericho Skull arrived in London in 1954. But early attempts to coax more information out of the unusual artifact proved fruitless.

The passage of thousands of years had erased many physical details from the plaster covering the skull, and a traditional x-ray scan was unable to differentiate between the similar densities of bone and plaster. The result was "a white blob on an x-ray plate," says Alexandra Fletcher, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Curator for the Ancient Near East, who headed up the reconstruction project for the British Museum.

It wasn't until the Jericho Skull underwent a micro-CT scan in 2009 that researchers could finally visualize the human remains beneath the plaster. The scan revealed an adult cranium (the lower jaw had been removed), more likely male than female. The septum was broken, and rear molars were missing. A hole had been carved in the back of the cranium so it could be packed with soil, and the scans even illuminated 9,500-year-old thumbprints from where someone eventually sealed the hole with fine clay.

A New Face for the Museum's Oldest Portrait

In 2016, the British Museum created a digital 3-D model of the cranium from the CT scanning data and learned even more about the Neolithic man inside the Jericho Skull. While the scans suggested a broken nose, for instance, the 3-D model demonstrated the severity of the damage.

Fletcher's team decided to take things further and created a physical model of the skull using a 3-D printer. Then they enlisted the skills of the RN-DS Partnership, an expert forensic facial reconstruction firm.

Using the printed cranium and the model of a human male lower jaw from another Neolithic site near Jericho, the forensic experts were able to reconstruct the facial musculature onto the digitally created remains from inside the Jericho Skull, just as people had fashioned cheeks, ears, and lips from plaster onto the original human bone more than 9,000 years ago.

"It's as if we did the Neolithic process in reverse," says Fletcher, proud that the British Museum's oldest portrait finally has a new face.

Until February 19, 2017, the facial reconstruction and the original Jericho Skull will be displayed side-by-side in a British Museum exhibit entitled "Creating an ancestor: the Jericho Skull."

Quote from: Maladict on January 21, 2017, 03:28:55 PM
Old Sarum :wub:

Quote from: Maladict on January 21, 2017, 06:19:52 PM
What's that square structure next to the cathedral, a monastery? I don't recall seeing that.

Quote from: 11B4V on January 28, 2017, 02:15:32 PM
Neat

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/27/europe/charred-roman-scrolls-trnd/index.html

QuoteSo what do the scrolls say? It'll be a little while before the world knows.
The content from two of the scrolls -- written by the ancient philosopher Philodemus on the subject of political rhetoric -- is currently being translated from ancient Greek into English and will soon be published in a scientific journal.

Quote from: CountDeMoney on January 28, 2017, 04:11:46 PM

Quote from: 11B4V on January 28, 2017, 02:15:32 PM
Neat

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/27/europe/charred-roman-scrolls-trnd/index.html

QuoteSo what do the scrolls say? It'll be a little while before the world knows.
The content from two of the scrolls -- written by the ancient philosopher Philodemus on the subject of political rhetoric -- is currently being translated from ancient Greek into English and will soon be published in a scientific journal.

You'll shit if it's a treatise on business demagogues succeeding in politics by saying whatever they want without thinking first.

Quote from: Valmy on January 28, 2017, 09:25:21 PM
Ah. I figured it was the Herculaneum Scrolls. Fantastic. There may be a few more libraries buried in that town so if we do finally find a good way to read them that would be amazing.

Quote

Everyone was dead: When Europeans first came to B.C., they stepped into the aftermath of a holocaust

Tristin Hopper | February 21, 2017 4:34 PM ET

Everywhere they looked, there were corpses. Abandoned, overgrown villages were littered with skulls; whole sections of coastline strewn with bleached, decayed bodies.

"The skull, limbs, ribs and backbones, or some other vestiges of the human body, were found in many places, promiscuously scattered about the beach in great numbers," wrote explorer George Vancouver in what is now Port Discovery, Wash.

It was May 1792. The lush environs of the Georgia Strait had once been among the most densely populated corners of the land that is now Canada, with humming villages, harbours swarming with canoes and valleys so packed with cookfires that they had smog.

But the Vancouver Expedition experienced only eerie quiet.

They kept seeing rotting houses and massive clearings cut out of the Pacific forest — evidence that whoever lived here had been able to muster armies of labourers.

And yet the only locals the sailors encountered were small groups of desperately poor people, many of them horribly scarred and missing an eye.

"There are reasons to believe that (this land) has been infinitely more populous," wrote Vancouver in an account of the voyage published after his death.

But the 40-year-old Englishman seemed to have gone to his grave never grasping the full gravity of what he witnessed in British Columbia: The "docile" and "cordial" people he met were the shattered survivors of an apocalypse.

"News reached them from the east that a great sickness was travelling over the land, a sickness that no medicine could cure, and no person escape," said a man identified as Old Pierre, a member of what is now the Katzie First Nation in Pitt Meadows, B.C.

After an emergency meeting, the doomed forebears of the Katzie decided to face the coming catastrophe with as much grace as they could muster: Every adult returned to the home of their parents to wait for the end.

"Then the wind carried the smallpox sickness among them. Some crawled away into the woods to die; many died in their homes," Old Pierre told the anthropologist Diamond Jenness in 1936.

The tragedy played out very near to what is now the site of Golden Ears Provincial Park. And it all happened so quickly that when Old Pierre's great-grandfather returned to the village from the bush, he found nothing but houses stacked with corpses.

"Only in one house did there survive a baby boy, who was vainly sucking at its dead mother's breast," he told Jenness.

The people of the Pacific Northwest had just been hit with the tail end of one of the most devastating plagues in human history.

Just as the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, smallpox began sweeping through Patriot strongholds and encampments.

An American attempt to invade Quebec broke apart largely because the colonist soldiers were too ridden with smallpox to continue the attack.

The epidemic soon broke out of the war-torn coastal areas and began penetrating inland, surging across indigenous trading networks and passing between warring enemies.

Before the Revolutionary War was over, its epidemiological offshoot had surged as far as Mexico and was scything its way through the Canadian Prairies.

"Boy and Girl arrived from the Swampy River, having left one man behind, these is all that is alive out (of) 10 tents," reads the journals of Hudson's Bay Company traders in what is now Cumberland House, Sask.

For months, the largely Scottish-born traders were visited by wave after wave of doomed refugees bearing reports of whole villages wiped off the map.

The natives "chiefly Die within the third or fourth Night, and those that survive after that time are left to be devoured by the wild beasts," they wrote.

In 1782, smallpox finally surged into the region surrounding what is now Vancouver Island.

When the explorer David Thompson travelled overland to the West Coast in the early 19th century, he traversed whole regions ravaged by the 1782 epidemic. He met locals who had seen their villages die around them, and now lived in whatever post-apocalyptic societal structure survivors had been able to cobble together.

"Is it true that the white men ... have brought with them the Small Pox to destroy us?" Thompson was asked near the modern site of Spokane, Wash.

In the 1890s, Vancouver woman Ellen Webber found a massive midden in what is now Maple Ridge.

She asked an elder from what is now the Kwantlen First Nation what it was. Identified only as "an old Indian," the woman told Webber of a thriving, well-fortified village of fishermen, tanners, potters, canoe-makers, tailors and toy-makers.

That is, until a dragon "awoke and breathed upon the children."

"Where his breath touched them sores broke out and they burned with heat and they died to feed this monster," she said. "And so the village was deserted and never again would the Indians live on that spot."

When George Vancouver saw beaches strewn with bones, he was looking at a pattern of mass-death similar to what had struck thousands of European villages during the Black Death of the Middle Ages.

As the epidemic begins, communities hastily rush through back-to-back funerals. As the bodies pile up, communities start improvising mass graves. Finally, as society completely breaks down, the dead are left where they lie.

For generations afterwards, sites of mass death became taboo places for Indigenous people. As Old Pierre said in 1936, digging into the ground of any abandoned village would turn up the "countless" bones of past smallpox victims.

His great-grandfather, after saving the sole infant survivor of the epidemic, burned the whole village down and never looked back.

"How is it that the smallpox epidemic of 1782 is not part of the lore of modern British Columbia?" wrote the geographer Cole Harris in Voices of Disaster, a 1994 history of the disaster from which most of the information in this article is sourced.

The epidemic that burned itself out in the forests of British Columbia was the most significant event in North American history. Just as a settlement-minded people set up shop on the East Coast, a biological terror was depopulating far-away lands they could not even imagine.

From the Grand Canyon to the forests of northern Canada, thousands upon thousands died in the delirious throes of a European disease without ever having seen a European.

It's arguably why the continent is dominated by two giant, English-speaking countries whose western halves are divided by a horizontal line.

Europeans had colonized Asia and Africa, but only here and in the islands of Oceania did they have such ease in demographically supplanting the indigenous inhabitants.

It's possible that smallpox killed as many as 95 per cent of the population of the Georgia Strait. Given that estimate, as many as 100,000 people may have lived in the area at a time when the entire state of New York counted barely 200,000.

In British Columbia, as with depopulated regions across the continent, Europeans were literally stepping over the bones of the dead to find vast landscapes populated by small bands of traumatized survivors.

"Here was an almost empty land, so it seemed, for the taking," wrote Cole Harris.

As George Vancouver steered HMS Discovery north from the the Strait of Georgia in the spring of 1792, his eyes glimmered with what could be done with the seemingly empty forests surrounding him.

"The innumerable pleasing landscapes ... require only to be enriched by the industry of man with villages, mansions, cottages and other buildings, to render it the most lovely country that can be imagined," he wrote.

And indeed, that's exactly what happened.

The peoples of the West Coast were well-versed in war: Accustomed to raiding and invasion, they maintained Viking-like fleets of war canoes, lived in fortified cities and went to battle in terrifying suits of armour complemented with trade metals from Russian Alaska.

Against a well-prepared and well-coordinated native population, any invaders could have expected epic battles followed by years of guerrilla warfare. Before smallpox, West Coast oral history contained accounts of rivers being made "black" by the canoes of invaders.

Instead, as wave after wave of epidemic hit the area, the emptied landscape became one of the easiest conquests in British history.

In 1862, just as the colony of British Columbia was getting its footing, the indigenous descendants of the 1782 survivors were hit again. Another smallpox epidemic once again killed more than half of B.C.'s native population and peppered the landscape with mass graves and abandoned settlements.

George Vancouver's name got appended to a metropolis, an island larger than Wales, and his life-sized, gold-plated likeness was bolted to the top of a Westminster-style parliament in Victoria. "Mansions, cottages and other buildings" were not only built, but they are now counted among the most valuable in the world.

Rather than "Most Lovely Country That Can Be Imagined," however, the carriers of Vancouver's vision ultimately went with the slogan "Best Place on Earth."

QuoteHUNDREDS OF LIQUOR BOTTLES BELONGING TO BRITISH SOLDIERS FROM WWI UNEARTHED

'The discovery provides us with an opportunity for a glimpse of the unwritten part of history, and reconstruct for the first time the everyday life and leisure of the soldiers,' says IAA.

Despite fighting in World War I, the bottles containing their spirits were left intact.

Hundreds of 100-year-old liquor bottles belonging to British soldiers stationed in Israel during the war were recently unearthed by archeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority in central Israel's Ramla region, near a building where the troops were garrisoned.

According to the IAA, the excavation in the fields of Kibbutz Netzer Sereni was carried out as part of the construction of Highway 200, initiated and financed by the Netivei Israel Company.

Near the bottles, 250,000-year-old flint tools from the Middle Paleolithic period were also discovered.

The excavation's director, Ron Toueg, said on Wednesday that the historical evidence offers a rare glimpse into the soldiers' leisure activities.

"The discovery of this site and the finds in it provide us with an opportunity for a glimpse of the unwritten part of history, and to reconstruct for the first time the everyday life and leisure of the soldiers," said Toueg.

"We exposed a building whose upper part was not preserved, which was apparently the foundations of a barracks. This structure was used for agricultural purposes in the Ottoman period, and during World War I the British converted it for military use, and soldiers were housed in it."

Inside the building, Toueg said researchers also discovered dozens of uniform buttons, belt buckles, parts of riding equipment, and other artifacts that were the property of the British soldiers. He noted that the building caught fire and collapsed for unknown reasons.

A few meters away, he said the site where the soldiers discarded debris was found.

"We were surprised to discover that along with broken crockery and cutlery there was an enormous number of soft drink and liquor bottles," he said.

"In fact, about 70% of the waste that was discarded in the refuse pit were liquor bottles. It seems that the soldiers took advantage of the respite given them to release the tension by frequently drinking alcohol."

Brigitte Ouahnouna, a researcher in the glass department of the IAA, said that this is the first time in the history of archeology in Israel that an assemblage of hundreds of glass bottles from a British army camp from World War I was uncovered.

"Interestingly, the glass bottles, which contained mainly wine, beer, soda and alcoholic beverages such as gin, liqueur and whiskey, came from Europe to supply soldiers and officers in the camp," said Ouahnouna.

"It is a fascinating testimony of the everyday life of the British military camp a century ago."

Another interesting item unearthed in the excavation, with the help of archaeologist Shahar Crispin, was the tip of a swagger stick that belonged to a Royal Flying Corps officer.

"Swagger sticks such as these were usually carried by senior officers as a symbol of authority," explained Ouahnouna.

"Its tip is made of silver, and it is stamped with the symbol of the corps and the initials RFC."

Sary Mark, an architect, conservator and an authority on the British army's occupation of Palestine, said that on November 15, 1917 the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, under the command of General Allenby, conquered the area around the towns of Lod and Ramla.

"Before occupying Jerusalem, the army encamped in the area where the archaeological excavation took place: the headquarters at Bir Salam – Ramla Camp and Sarafand Camp," said Mark.

"The army was based there for about nine months, until a decision was made to continue the conquest of the country further north. The building that was discovered in the excavation was used by the British soldiers, and it is rare authentic evidence and the first of its kind of the day-to-day life of the expeditionary forces, for a very brief period during World War I."

QuoteMummy DNA unravels ancient Egyptians' ancestry

Genetic analysis reveals a close relationship with Middle Easterners, not central Africans.

    Traci Watson

30 May 2017

The tombs of ancient Egypt have yielded golden collars and ivory bracelets, but another treasure — human DNA — has proved elusive. Now, scientists have captured sweeping genomic information from Egyptian mummies. It reveals that mummies were closely related to ancient Middle Easterners, hinting that northern Africans might have different genetic roots from people south of the Sahara desert.

The study, published on 30 May in Nature Communications1, includes data from 90 mummies buried between 1380 bc, during Egypt's New Kingdom, and ad 425, in the Roman era. The findings show that the mummies' closest kin were ancient farmers from a region that includes present-day Israel and Jordan. Modern Egyptians, by contrast, have inherited more of their DNA from central Africans.

Archaeological discoveries and historical documents suggest close ties between Egypt and the Middle East, but "it is very nice that this study has now provided empirical evidence for this at the genetic level", says evolutionary anthropologist Omer Gokcumen of the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Egypt's searing climate and the ancient practice of embalming bodies has made the recovery of intact genetic material daunting. The first DNA sequences thought to be from a mummy2 were probably the result of modern contamination, and many scientists are sceptical3 of purported genetic information acquired from the mummy of King Tutankhamun4.

The latest analysis succeeded by bypassing soft tissue — often abundant in Egyptian mummies — to seek DNA from bone and teeth. Researchers carefully screened the DNA to rule out contamination from anyone who had handled the mummies since their excavation a century ago in the ancient town of Abusir el-Meleq.

"More than half of the mummies we studied had pretty decent DNA preservation," says co-author Johannes Krause, a palaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany.

The team "succeeds where previous studies on Egyptian mummies have failed or fallen short", says Hannes Schroeder, a palaeo­geneticist at the University of Copenhagen. Now, researchers can hope to answer questions such as whether immigration drove ancient-Egyptian population growth, adds Sonia Zakrzewski, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Southampton, UK.

The scientists obtained information about variations in mitochondrial DNA, which is passed from mother to child, from 90 mummies. Because of contamination, the team was able to acquire detailed nuclear DNA, which is inherited from both parents, from only three mummies.

Both types of genomic material showed that ancient Egyptians shared little DNA with modern sub-Saharan Africans. Instead, their closest relatives were people living during the Neolithic and Bronze ages in an area known as the Levant. Strikingly, the mummies were more closely related to ancient Europeans and Anatolians than to modern Egyptians.

The researchers say that there was probably a pulse of sub-Saharan African DNA into Egypt roughly 700 years ago. The mixing of ancient Egyptians and Africans from further south means that modern Egyptians can trace 8% more of their ancestry to sub-Saharan Africans than can the mummies from Abusir el-Meleq.

The new data can't explain why the ancient Egyptians were so tightly aligned with people from the Middle East. Was it the result of migration, or were the Stone Age hunter-gatherers of northern Africa genetically similar to those of the Levant? It's too early to tell, Krause says, but there's a better chance now of getting answers. "This is the first glimpse of the genetic history of Egypt," he says. "But it's really just the start."

    Nature
    546,
    17
    (28 June 2017)
    doi:10.1038/546017a

Quote from: Valmy on May 31, 2017, 09:08:20 AM
Wait so we can now make clones of Ancient Egyptians?

Quote from: Malthus on May 31, 2017, 09:34:31 AM

Quote from: Valmy on May 31, 2017, 09:08:20 AM
Wait so we can now make clones of Ancient Egyptians?

Sounds like a pyramid scheme to me.

Quote from: derspiess on May 31, 2017, 08:48:45 AM
Goddamned mummies got their DNA analyzed faster than I did.  Still waiting on my results.

Quote from: The Brain on May 31, 2017, 10:00:47 AM

Quote from: Malthus on May 31, 2017, 09:34:31 AM

Quote from: Valmy on May 31, 2017, 09:08:20 AM
Wait so we can now make clones of Ancient Egyptians?

Sounds like a pyramid scheme to me.

You talk the talk. Do you walk the walk?

Quote from: Syt on May 31, 2017, 10:59:22 AM

Quote from: The Brain on May 31, 2017, 10:00:47 AM

Quote from: Malthus on May 31, 2017, 09:34:31 AM

Quote from: Valmy on May 31, 2017, 09:08:20 AM
Wait so we can now make clones of Ancient Egyptians?

Sounds like a pyramid scheme to me.

You talk the talk. Do you walk the walk?

I think it's time to wrap this up.

Quote from: Valmy on May 31, 2017, 10:35:50 AM
Your DNA is 90% Democrat.

Quote from: Barrister on May 31, 2017, 12:27:50 PM
:frusty:

Quote from: Malthus on May 31, 2017, 12:50:53 PM

Quote from: Barrister on May 31, 2017, 12:27:50 PM
:frusty:

You are just in denial.

Quote from: Valmy on May 31, 2017, 10:35:50 AM
Your DNA is 90% Democrat.

QuoteAncient Babylonian Tablet May Hold Earliest Examples of Trigonometry
If true, it would mean the ancient culture figured out this mathematical field more than a millennia before its known creation

By Ben Panko
SMITHSONIAN.COM
AUGUST 28, 2017 10:35AM

A new analysis of a long-studied Babylonian tablet suggests that trigonometry, the subject so many of us struggled through in high school, may actually be a lot older than previously thought.

The small clay tablet, which dates back to the year 1800 B.C.E., is dubbed Plimpton 322 after George Arthur Plimpton, a New York publisher who purchased it in the 192o's.  He donated the tablet with its scrawled rows of numbers to Columbia University in 1936—where it still remains today, researchers of the new study Daniel Mansfield and Norman Wildberger write for The Conversation.

In the decades since its discovery, researchers have debated about the meaning of those numbers, reports Carl Engelking for Discover magazine. In his 1945 book, mathematician and historian Otto Neugebauer first suggested that Plimpton 322 represents a glimpse at early trigonometry, a field of math concerning the relationship of the sides and angles in triangles. The numbers on the tablet represented Pythagorean triples in Neugebauer's mind, which are sets of three numbers that can be used to solve the Pythagorean theorem (a2+b2=c2), writes Engelking.

Later researchers, such as mathematical historian Eleanor Robson, threw cold water on that idea, arguing that Plimpton 322 was more simply a teaching aid. Robson argued that the chosen numbers didn't seem to align with groundbreaking research.


Science historians have long regarded the creator of trigonometry to be the Greek astronomer Hipparchus and his contemporaries. They are believed to develop the system around the second century C.E. to precisely calculate the movement of the zodiac signs in the sky.

But in the new study, published in the journal Historia Mathematica, Mansfield and Wildberger lend some credence to Neugebauer's thinking, reports Ron Cowen for Science Magazine. The key is to get a new angle on the tablet's numbers.

Instead of the traditional method of trigonometry based on the angles of triangles, Cowen reports, Plimpton 322 actually uses calculations based on the ratios of the lengths of sides of right triangles, rather than relationships based on their angles. And instead of the base-10 system of numbers used today, the study suggests that the Babylonian tablet uses a base-60 system (similar to how we count time).

Using this tablet and its system of numbers, the Babylonians could precisely calculate figures to a whole number more accurately than we could today with traditional trigonometry, Mansfield and Wildberger argue. The write:

"The sexagesimal system is better suited for exact calculation. For example, if you divide one hour by three then you get exactly 20 minutes. But if you divide one dollar by three then you get 33 cents, with 1 cent left over. The fundamental difference is the convention to treat hours and dollars in different number systems: time is sexagesimal and dollars are decimal."

"It opens up new possibilities not just for modern mathematics research, but also for mathematics education," Wildberger says in a statement. "With Plimpton 322 we see a simpler, more accurate trigonometry that has clear advantages over our own."

The tablet could have had practical use in surveying or construction, writes Sarah Gibbens for National Geographic, allowing builders to take the heights and lengths of buildings and calculate the slope of a roof.

Other mathematicians urge caution in the latest Plimpton 322 interpretation, writes Cowen at Science. Babylonian mathematics expert Jöran Friberg is skeptical that the culture had any knowledge of ratios advanced enough to create this form of math, while mathematical historian Christine Proust says there is no evidence in other surviving texts that tablets like this could have been used in the way the authors suggest.

Meanwhile, mathematician Donald Allen tells Gibbens that it's hard to really know whether Mansfield and Wildberger's theory is right because they had to recreate a broken section of the tablet, making any conclusion "conjecture."

However, the Australian mathematicians hope to see more research done on the insights that the Babylonians might have for modern-day people, as they write for The Conversation.

"We are only beginning to understand this ancient civilization, which is likely to hold many more secrets waiting to be discovered."

Quote from: derspiess on August 29, 2017, 09:21:59 AM
Babylonians must have had 60 fingers & toes :o

Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SexagesimalIt is possible for people to count on their fingers to 12 using one hand only, with the thumb pointing to each finger bone on the four fingers in turn. A traditional counting system still in use in many regions of Asia works in this way, and could help to explain the occurrence of numeral systems based on 12 and 60 besides those based on 10, 20 and 5. In this system, one hand (usually right) counts repeatedly to 12, displaying the number of iterations on the other (usually left), until five dozens, i. e. the 60, are full.[1][2]

Quote from: The Brain on August 29, 2017, 10:16:36 AM
What insights for modern people do Babylonian mathematics have? People have tinkered with different bases for centuries.

QuotePompeii Hero Pliny the Elder May Have Been Found 2,000 Years Later

Pliny the Elder sailed into danger when Vesuvius erupted, and never returned, but a body found a century ago 'covered in jewelry like a cabaret ballerina' may really have been his.

By
Ariel David | 
Aug 31, 2017

Italian scientists are a few thousand euros and a test tube away from conclusively identifying the body of Pliny the Elder, the Roman polymath, writer and military leader who launched a naval rescue operation to save the people of Pompeii from the deadly eruption of Mt. Vesuvius 2,000 years ago.

If successful, the effort would mark the first positive identification of the remains of a high-ranking figure from ancient Rome, highlighting the work of a man who lost his life while leading history's first large-scale rescue operation, and who also wrote one of the world's earliest encyclopedias.

Given that Italian cultural and scientific institutions are mired in budget troubles, the Pliny project is seeking crowdfunding for the scientists, who also studied Oetzi the Iceman – the 5,300-year-old mummy found perfectly preserved in an alpine glacier.

The remains now believed to be Pliny's were found more than a century ago. But identifying the body has only recently become feasible, says Andrea Cionci, an art historian and journalist who last week reported the findings in the Italian daily La Stampa.

Gaius Plinius Secundus, better known as Pliny the Elder, was the admiral of the Roman imperial fleet moored at Misenum, north of Naples, on the day in 79 C.E. when Vesuvius erupted.

According to his nephew, Pliny the Younger, an author and lawyer in his own right who was also at Misenum and witnessed the eruption, Pliny the Elder's scientific curiosity was piqued by the dark, menacing clouds billowing from the volcano. Initially he intended to take a small, fast ship to observe the phenomenon. But when he received a desperate message (possibly by signal or pigeon) from a family he knew in Stabiae, a town near Pompeii, he set out with his best ships to bring aid not only to his friends "but to the many people who lived on that beautiful coast."

A deadly cloud

He would have had about a dozen quadriremes, warships with four banks of rowers, at his disposal, says Flavio Russo, who in 2014 wrote a book for the Italian Defense Ministry about Pliny's rescue mission and the tentative identification of his remains.

These ships were some of the most powerful units in the Roman naval arsenal, capable of carrying some 200 soldiers (or survivors) on deck while braving the stormy seas and strong winds stirred up by the eruption, Russo told Haaretz in an interview. "Before him, no one had imagined that machines built for war could be used to save people," he said.

The Roman fleet made the 30-kilometer journey across the Gulf of Naples at full speed, launching lifeboats to collect the hundreds of refugees who had made their way to the beaches.

According to Pliny the Younger, his uncle also disembarked and went looking for his friends in Stabiae. But as he was leading a group of survivors to safety, he was overtaken by a cloud of poisonous gas, and died on the beach.

We do not know how many people reached the safety of the ships before the cloud moved in. Russo estimates the fleet may have saved up to 2,000 people – a number roughly equal to the estimated number of those killed in the eruption, as the volcanic spew wiped out the towns of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae.

Pliny the Younger's description of the eruption is considered so accurate that experts today call similarly explosive volcanic events as "Plinian eruptions."

Indirect evidence confirming his story was found in the 1980s, when archaeologists digging at the ancient port of Herculaneum uncovered the remains of a legionnaire and a burnt boat, possibly one of the lifeboats and a crew member dispatched by Pliny's fleet. They also found the skeletons of some 300 people who had sought refuge in the covered boat sheds of the port, only to die instantly when the so-called pyroclastic surge, a superheated cloud of volcanic gas and rock typical of these kinds of eruptions, rolled down Vesuvius, killing everyone in its path.

Wouldn't prance like a ballerina

In the first years of the 20th century, amid a flurry of digs to uncover Pompeii and other sites preserved by the layers of volcanic ash that covered them, an engineer called Gennaro Matrone uncovered some 70 skeletons near the coast at Stabiae. One of the bodies carried a golden triple necklace chain, golden bracelets and a short sword decorated with ivory and seashells.

Matrone was quick to theorize that he had found Pliny's remains. Indeed, the he place and the circumstances were right, but archaeologists at the time laughed off the theory, believing that a Roman commander would not run around "covered in jewelry like a cabaret ballerina," Russo said.

Humiliated, Matrone sold off the jewels to unknown buyers (laws on conservation of archaeological treasures were more lax then) and reburied most of the bones, keeping only the supposed skull of Pliny and his sword, Russo said.

These artifacts were later donated to a small museum in Rome – the Museo di Storia dell'Arte Sanitaria (the Museum of the History of the Art of Medicine) – where they have been kept, mostly forgotten, until today.

Russo, who has been the main driving force behind efforts to confirm the identification, says that judging by Matrone's drawings, the jewelry found on the mysterious skeleton as well as the ornate sword are compatible with decorations common among high-ranking Roman navy officers and members of the equestrian class, the second-tier nobility to which Pliny belonged.

Furthermore, an anthropologist has concluded that the skull held in the museum belonged to a male in his fifties, Russo said. We know from Pliny the Younger that his uncle was 56 when he died.

With evidence mounting, Russo and Cionci turned to the Oetzi the Iceman team to have them perform more tests on the skeleton from Stabiae.

"We are not saying that this is Pliny, merely that there are many clues that suggest it, and we should test this theory scientifically," Cionci said. "This is something unique: it's not like we have the bones of Julius Caesar or Nero."

Tell-tale teeth

Researchers plan to carry out two tests: a comparison between the skull's morphology with known busts and images of Pliny, and, more importantly, an examination of the isotope signatures in his teeth.

"When we drink water or eat something, whether it's plants or animals, the minerals from the soil enter our body, and the soil has a different composition in every place," explains Isolina Marota, a molecular anthropologist from the University of Camerino, in central Italy.

By matching the isotopes in the tooth enamel, which is formed in childhood, with those in soil samples, scientists can determine where a person grew up. In the case of the Iceman, they managed to pinpoint the Alpine valley where he had spent his childhood. For Pliny, they would look for signatures from the northern Italian town of Como, where he was born and bred, Marota told Haaretz.

She estimated the tests would cost around 10,000 euros. Once the money is found, obtaining the necessary permits and performing the research will take some months, she said.

For its part, the museum hosting the skull would be happy to sacrifice a bit of a tooth to highlight the importance of their exhibit, said Pier Paolo Visentin, secretary general of the Accademia di Storia dell'Arte Sanitaria, which runs the museum.

Visentin noted that while we have names on Roman sarcophagi and burials in catacombs, there are no cases of major figures from ancient Rome whose remains have been positively identified – leaving aside traditions and legends linked to the relics of Christian saints and martyrs.

For one thing, Romans have favored cremation throughout much of  their history. And when they did bury their dead, they did not embalm them like the Egyptians, who have left us a multitude of neatly labeled mummies of pharaohs and officials.

Finally, the Italian climate isn't dry like the Egyptian desert and the looting of ancient monuments that was common during the Middle Ages would have done the rest, he says.

"This is quite a unique case, since these remains were preserved in the time capsule that is Pompeii," Visentin said.

You quote Pliny all the time

Besides his last, humanitarian gesture, Pliny is known for the books he wrote, ranging from military tactics, to history and rhetoric. His greatest and only surviving work was his Naturalis Historia (Of Natural History): 37 books filled with a summation of ancient knowledge on astronomy, mathematics, medicine, painting, sculpture and many other fields of the sciences and arts.

Pliny's work inspired later encyclopedias: most of us at some point have unknowingly cited him. Perhaps, looking at these experiments on his possible remains, he would be skeptical of any conclusions, telling us to take them "with a grain of salt" and reminding us that "the only certainty is that nothing is certain."

Or perhaps he would encourage scientists to forge on, repeating what, according to his nephew, he said when his helmsman suggested they return to port as scalding ash and fiery stones began raining on the fleet headed for Vesuvius. His response was: "Fortune favors the bold."

Quote

New Experiment Reveals Secret Behind 200,000-Year-Old Neanderthal Glue

George Dvorsky
Yesterday 9:00am

Over a hundred thousand years ago, Neanderthals used tar to bind objects together, yet scientists have struggled to understand how these ancient humans, with their limited knowledge and resources, were able to produce this sticky substance. A new experiment reveals the likely technique used by Neanderthals, and how they converted tree bark into an ancient form of glue.


Neanderthals were manufacturing their own adhesives as far back as 200,000 years ago, which is kind of mind blowing when you think about it. We typically think of fire, stone tools, and language as the "killer apps" of early human development, but the ability to glue stuff together was as much of a transformative technology as any of these.

New research published in Scientific Reports reveals the startling ingenuity and intellectual capacities of Neanderthals, and the likely method used to cook up this ancient adhesive.

Based on the archaeological evidence, we know that Neanderthals were manufacturing tar during the Middle Pleistocene Era. The oldest traces of this practice date back to a site in Italy during a time when only Neanderthals were present in Europe. Similar tar lumps and adhesive residues have also been found in Germany, the oldest of which dates back some 120,000 years ago. The Neanderthals used tar for hafting—the practice of attaching bones or stone to a wooden handle to create tools or weapons. It was a force multiplier in engineering, allowing these ancient humans to think outside the box and build completely new sets of tools.

What makes the presence of tar at this early stage in history such a mystery, however, is that Neanderthals had figured out a way to make the useful goo thousands of years before the invention of ceramics, which by the time of the ancient Mesopotamians was being used to produce tar in vast quantities. For years, archaeologists have suspected that Neanderthals performed dry distillation of birch bark to synthesize tar, but the exact method remained a mystery—particularly owing to the absence of durable containers that could be used to cook the stuff up from base materials. Attempts by scientists to replicate the suspected Neanderthal process produced tar in miniscule amounts and far short of what would be required for hafting.

To finally figure out how the Neanderthals did it, a research team led by Paul Kozowyk from Leiden University carried out a set of experiments. Tar is derived from the dry distillation of organic materials, typically birch bark or pine wood, so Kozowyk's team sought to reproduce tar with these substances and the cooking methods likely at the disposal of the Neanderthals. It's very likely that the Neanderthals stumbled upon the idea while sitting around the campfire.

"A tightly rolled piece of birch bark simply left in a fire and removed when partially burned, once opened, will sometimes contain small traces of tar inside the roll along the burned edge," explained the authors in the study. "Not enough to haft a tool, but enough to recognize a sticky substance."

With this in mind, the researchers applied three different methods, ranging from simple to complex, while recording the amount of fuel, materials, temperatures, and tar yield for each technique. Their results were compared to known archaeological relics to see if they were on the right (or wrong) track. By the end of the experiments, the researchers found that it was entirely possible to create tar in the required quantities using even the simplest method, which required minimal temperature control, an ash mound, and birch bark.


"A simple bark roll in hot ashes can produce enough tar to haft a small tool, and repeating this process several times (simultaneously) can produce the quantities known from the archaeological record," write the researchers. "Our experiments allowed us to develop a tentative framework on how the dry distillation of birch bark may have evolved, beginning with the recognition of small traces of birch bark tar in partially burned bark rolls." They added: "Our results indicate that it is possible to obtain useful amounts of tar by combining materials and technology already in use by Neandertals."

Indeed, by repeating even the simplest process, the researchers were able to obtain 15.9 grams of useable tar in a single experiment, which is far more than any tar remains found in Middle Paleolithic sites. What's more, temperature control doesn't need to be as precise as previously thought, and a durable container, such as a ceramic container, is not required. That said, the process did require a certain amount of acumen; for this process to come about, Neanderthals needed to recognize certain material properties, such as the degree of adhesiveness and viscosity. We'll never be certain this is exactly what Neanderthals were doing, but it's a possibility with important implications for early humans in general.

"What this paper reinforces is that all of the humans that were around 50,000 to 150,000 years ago roughly, were culturally similar and equally capable of these levels of imagination, invention and technology," explained Washington University anthropologist Erik Trinkaus, who wasn't involved in the study, in an interview with Gizmodo. "Anthropologists have been confusing anatomy and behavior, making the inference that archaic anatomy equals archaic behavior, and 'modern' behavior [is equivalent to] modern human anatomy. What is emerging from the human fossil and Paleolithic archeological records across the Eurasia and Africa is that, at any one slice in time during this period, they were all doing—and capable of doing—basically the same things, whatever they looked like."

Sabrina Sholts, an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural History, says this study is a nice example of how experimental archaeology can be used to supplement the material record and address questions about past hominid behavior.

"I think it's certainly worthwhile to test methods of tar production that could have been used by Neanderthals and early modern humans, if only to challenge our assumptions about the kind of technologies—and ideas—within their reach," she told Gizmodo.

Quote
Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

2 February 2018

Researchers have found more than 60,000 hidden Mayan ruins in Guatemala in a major archaeological breakthrough.

Laser technology was used to survey digitally beneath the forest canopy, revealing houses, palaces, elevated highways, and defensive fortifications.

The landscape, near already-known Mayan cities, is thought to have been home to millions more Mayans than other research had previously suggested.

The researchers mapped over 810 square miles (2,100 sq km) in northern Peten.

Results from the research using "revolutionary" Lidar technology, which is short for "light detection and ranging", suggest that Central America supported an advanced civilisation more akin to sophisticated cultures like ancient Greece or China, National Geographic reports.

"The Lidar images make it clear that this entire region was a settlement system whose scale and population density had been grossly underestimated," Thomas Garrison, an Ithaca College archaeologist, told the magazine.
...

Quote from: mongers on February 02, 2018, 09:05:21 AM
Something for Malthus:

Quote
Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

2 February 2018

Researchers have found more than 60,000 hidden Mayan ruins in Guatemala in a major archaeological breakthrough.

Laser technology was used to survey digitally beneath the forest canopy, revealing houses, palaces, elevated highways, and defensive fortifications.

The landscape, near already-known Mayan cities, is thought to have been home to millions more Mayans than other research had previously suggested.

The researchers mapped over 810 square miles (2,100 sq km) in northern Peten.

Results from the research using "revolutionary" Lidar technology, which is short for "light detection and ranging", suggest that Central America supported an advanced civilisation more akin to sophisticated cultures like ancient Greece or China, National Geographic reports.

"The Lidar images make it clear that this entire region was a settlement system whose scale and population density had been grossly underestimated," Thomas Garrison, an Ithaca College archaeologist, told the magazine.
...

Full item here with pictures:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42916261 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42916261)

Bye the way, I couldn't find his archeo thread or the one about his travels in South or Central America, probably a better place to post this in.

QuoteHunting for the ancient lost farms of North America
2,000 years ago, people domesticated these plants. Now they're wild weeds. What happened?
ANNALEE NEWITZ - 1/26/2018, 9:00 PM

Adventurers and archaeologists have spent centuries searching for lost cities in the Americas. But over the past decade, they've started finding something else: lost farms.

Over 2,000 years ago in North America, indigenous people domesticated plants that are now part of our everyday diets, such as squashes and sunflowers. But they also bred crops that have since returned to the wild. These include erect knotweed (not to be confused with its invasive cousin, Asian knotweed), goosefoot, little barley, marsh elder, and maygrass. We haven't simply lost a few plant strains: an entire cuisine with its own kinds of flavors and baked goods has simply disappeared.

By studying lost crops, archaeologists learn about everyday life in the ancient Woodland culture of the Americas, including how people ate plants that we call weeds today. But these plants also give us a window on social networks. Scientists can track the spread of cultivated seeds from one tiny settlement to the next in the vast region that would one day be known as the United States. This reveals which groups were connected culturally and how they formed alliances through food and farming.

Natalie Mueller is an archaeobotanist at Cornell University who has spent years hunting for erect knotweed across the southern US and up into Ohio and Illinois. She calls her quest the "Survey for Lost Crops," and admits cheerfully that its members consist of her and "whoever I can drag along." She's published papers about her work in Nature, but also she spins yarns about her hot, bug-infested summer expeditions for lost farms on her blog. There, photographs of the rare wild plants are interspersed with humorous musings on contemporary local food delicacies like pickle pops.

Native to the Americas, erect knotweed grows in the moist flood zones near rivers. It's a stalky plant with spoon-shaped leaves, and it produces achenes, or fruit with very hard shells to protect its rich, starchy seeds. Though rare today, the plant was common enough 2,000 years ago that indigenous Americans collected it from the shores of rivers and brought it with them to the uplands for cultivation. Archaeologists have found caches of knotweed seeds buried in caves, clearly stored for a later use that never came. And, in the remains of ancient fires, they've found burned erect knotweed fruits, popped like corn.

Mueller told Ars Technica that erect knotweed was likely domesticated on tiny farms on the western front of the Appalachians. There are clear differences between it and its feral cousins. After years of comparing the ancient seeds with wild types, Mueller has found two unmistakable signs of domestication: larger fruits and thinner fruit skins. We see a similar pattern in other domesticated plants like corn, whose wild version with tiny seeds is almost unrecognizable to people chomping on the juicy, large kernels of the domesticated plant.

Obviously, bigger seeds would make the erect knotweed a better food source, so farmers selected for that. And the thinner skin means the plants can germinate more quickly. Their wild cousins evolved to produce fruits tough enough to endure river floods and inhospitable conditions for over a year before sprouting. But farm life is cushy for plants, so these defenses weren't necessary for their survival under human care.

Still, even the domesticated fruits of the erect knotweed have skins so tough that Mueller has not been able to crack them using the stone tools typical of the Woodland era. Working with a team at Cornell, she's been trying to reverse engineer how they could have been eaten.

"The fruit coat is really hard, and it would have been necessary to break through it," she mused. "It's like buckwheat—the sprouts are nutritious. So maybe they ate the sprouted version."

As for whether early Americans ate popped knotweed like popcorn, she was less certain. "The only way to preserve it is to burn it, so [the remains we find] could have been accidents while cooking. It might have been for drying." But yes, people from long ago might have munched on popweed.

Another possibility is that the seeds were soaked in lime before being turned into a hominy-style porridge. Ancient Americans used lime—the chemical, not the fruit—to soften the hulls of maize before cooking it, in a technique called nixtamalization. It's very likely the Woodland peoples used this prehistoric form of culinary science on other plants, too. So people 2,000 years ago may have been eating a rich, knotweed mush.

Mueller is currently cultivating her own erect knotweed to test various forms of preparation, but she's not quite ready to go into the kitchen yet. "I'm trying to be a good farmer and put my seeds back first," she said. "In five years of looking, I've only found seven populations of this plant. I want to conserve the seeds as much I can." She's going to accumulate a sizable cache of seeds before wasting them on dinner.

A history of civilization in food
Because ancient people in North America built mostly with perishable materials, traces of their farms are all we have left of their civilizations. With a few exceptions, they didn't leave monumental pyramids behind or sprawling plazas. But their ability to domesticate plants is as much a testimony to their cultural sophistication as any stone temple.

In a recent paper for the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, Mueller describes finding the earliest known example of domesticated erect knotweed at a site called Walker-Noe in central Kentucky. She found it mostly by accident. She had assumed, based on previous studies, that knotweed was domesticated in Illinois, possibly about 1,200 years ago. But then she spoke with a Kentucky museum curator who told her about a mysterious grave from the 2,000-year-old Hopewell culture, found stuffed with seeds.

Examining the seeds, Mueller identified them as domesticated erect knotweed. This find makes the plant's domestication roughly a millennium older than previously thought. But given that these fruits probably came after generations of breeding by farmers, it hints at a much older date.

Mueller believes that the Hopewell shared their seeds throughout many communities where people tended farms along the skein of rivers that connect the American South with the Midwest. But it also seems likely that the erect knotweed was domesticated at least twice: once in the Kentucky region where she found her sample, and once about a thousand years later in Illinois when the great pyramid city of Cahokia stood at the center of the Mississippian culture.

Many of these early farmers appear to have counted crops among their greatest creations. Crops were valued trade goods and shared with allies in the same way jewelry, projectile points, and fine pottery were. And, of course, they were placed in graves alongside other precious funeral goods. Farming was a science and key to survival, but it was also an art. Food and feasting were central to indigenous cultures in the Americas, just as they were to civilizations in Europe and Asia. Serving guests a delightful meal with many kinds of grains, breads, and oils would have been a source of pride and pleasure.

Losing a crop

Perhaps the strangest part of this story is the fact that people simply stopped cultivating so many crops that were central to their diets. Imagine what would happen if we decided to abandon wheat to the wilderness. Suddenly, there would be no more baguettes and pastas—not to mention cakes. Sure, we could make delicious breads from corn and tasty noodles from rice or beans. But for many of us, it would feel like an incredible loss of a comforting staple. No doubt, that's how the loss of knotweed felt to aboriginal Americans, too.

It's likely that the Eastern Agricultural Complex (EAC)—a catch-all term for the lost crops of North America—faded away slowly. Though we can't be sure what triggered its decline, Mueller thinks it may have suffered its first blow from one of the most popular crops in the Americas: maize, which came north from Mexico about a millennium ago.

"Maize is an amazing crop," Mueller said. "All over the world, when it arrives, people give up their old crops and start growing it. It's productive and has lots of sugar so it gives you quick energy." By the time Cahokia was at its height in the 1000s, maize was already edging out crops like erect knotweed.

But the death knell for erect knotweed probably came from Europe. Archaeologists find no more examples of domesticated erect knotweed after colonists began to settle the Americas in the 1400s, destroying local civilizations as they went. "There was so much displacement, disease, and warfare over the next couple hundred years that a lot of knowledge was lost," Mueller explained.

Still, a lot can be learned from America's lost crops, and it's not just about finding the next quinoa for health-food nerds. Mueller has been working with Smithsonian Institute anthropologist Logan Kistler to sequence the genomes of lost domesticates. He's fascinated by how many of these crops went through an entire cycle of domestication and re-wilding in the past few thousand years. Most plants that we eat, from wheat and barley to dates and beans, were domesticated more than 10,000 years ago and never went back. The EAC offers an unprecedented glimpse at what happens to plants when we turn them into food crops. And these domestication events are recent enough that we can get good genomic material from samples.

We have a fairly good sense of how domestication affects animal species over time. Domesticated pigs, horses, dogs, and even humans have all undergone physical changes, often described as "paedomorphosis," which means retaining infantile body features (softer faces, smaller bodies) throughout life. But we're just starting to understand plant domestication. "These crops have a good archaeological record that's well preserved," Kistler said. "It gives us a chance to study domestication in real time, with a good record of what comes in between wild and domestic varieties."

The EAC is also exciting for Kistler because it represents a diverse group of plants. Until recently, archaeo-botanists looked mostly at domestic plants emerging in the Fertile Crescent over 10,000 years ago during the Neolithic—but these are just grasses and legumes. In the Americas, Kistler explained, "We've got five good domesticated species. They're taxonomically extremely diverse and yet grown in same fields and harvested at the same time. It builds in a little bit of control for looking at multiple species."

Once he's been able to sequence these crops, we may begin to see common domestication patterns across plant species. Likely they'll be things like fast germination and larger fruit size, but we may find some surprises, too.

For Mueller, the search for erect knotweed isn't just about understanding the mechanisms of domestication. It's also about coming to terms with everything we've lost.

"I want to identify as many populations of these species as possible before they go extinct, because they are all threatened," she said. She's learned about how ancient Americans encountered these plants and how they incorporated them into their lives. But she's also learned about how much the American landscape is still changing.

"I was out from October to November, driving around looking for populations of these plants. Partly it's based on records from botanists going back at least 100 years." Sometimes plants are still growing where they were a century ago, she said, but sometimes they aren't.

"You realize how much the land has changed even in 100 years," Mueller reflected. "There are so few places for native species to grow."

Quote from: Malthus on February 05, 2018, 10:16:18 AM

Quote from: mongers on February 02, 2018, 09:05:21 AM
Something for Malthus:

Quote
Sprawling Mayan network discovered under Guatemala jungle

2 February 2018

Researchers have found more than 60,000 hidden Mayan ruins in Guatemala in a major archaeological breakthrough.

Laser technology was used to survey digitally beneath the forest canopy, revealing houses, palaces, elevated highways, and defensive fortifications.

The landscape, near already-known Mayan cities, is thought to have been home to millions more Mayans than other research had previously suggested.

The researchers mapped over 810 square miles (2,100 sq km) in northern Peten.

Results from the research using "revolutionary" Lidar technology, which is short for "light detection and ranging", suggest that Central America supported an advanced civilisation more akin to sophisticated cultures like ancient Greece or China, National Geographic reports.

"The Lidar images make it clear that this entire region was a settlement system whose scale and population density had been grossly underestimated," Thomas Garrison, an Ithaca College archaeologist, told the magazine.
...

Full item here with pictures:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42916261 (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-42916261)

Bye the way, I couldn't find his archeo thread or the one about his travels in South or Central America, probably a better place to post this in.

Neat stuff!

Here's my Mexico thread: http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,12650.0.html

Damn Photobucket.  :mad:

As for the article - it isn't as much of a revelation as claimed - archaeologists have known for a long time that the Maya lands were densely populated (and indeed, overpopulation and environmental degradation often figure prominently in reasons why their civilization declined).

Knowing a thing and seeing the evidence with Lidar are, of course, two different things though - so more a case of confirming with good evidence what was already more or less known, than a new revelation.

Quote
Europe's first artists were Neandertals

Tim Appenzeller

+ See all authors and affiliations

Science  23 Feb 2018:
Vol. 359, Issue 6378, pp. 852-853
DOI: 10.1126/science.359.6378.852

For once, the fractious scientists who study the Neandertals agree about something: that a study on p. 912 has dropped a bombshell on their field, by presenting the most persuasive case yet that our vanished cousins had the cognitive capacity to create art. Once seen as brute cavemen, Neandertals have gained stature as examples of sophisticated technology and behavior have turned up in their former territory across Europe. But few researchers imagined them engaging in one of the most haunting practices in human prehistory: creating paintings—vehicles for symbolic expression—in the darkness of caves.

Now, archaeologists may have to accept that Neandertals were the original cave artists. A team of dating experts and archaeologists reports that simple creations—the outline of a hand, an array of lines, and a painted cave formation—from three caves in Spain all date to more than 64,800 years ago, at least 20,000 years before modern humans reached Europe. Shells from a fourth Spanish cave, pigment-stained and pierced as if for use as body ornaments, are even older, a team including several of the same researchers reports in a second paper, in Science Advances. Some researchers had already attributed the shells to Neandertals, but the new dates leave little doubt.

The shells amount to only a handful and might have been perforated naturally, causing some researchers to question their significance. Not so the paintings. "Most of my colleagues are going to be stunned," says Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who was not involved in either study. "People saw cave painting as a major gap between Neandertals and modern humans. This discovery reduces the distance."

Just how much is the question. João Zilhão of the University of Barcelona in Spain, an author of both papers, has spent years pressing the case that Neandertals were the mental equals of modern humans, and he sees the newly dated paintings and shells as full vindication. "I'd like to see the expression on some faces as they read the papers," he says. Hublin, who accepts that Neandertals were cognitively sophisticated but believes their cultural achievements fell short of modern humans', is impatient with what he sees as Zilhão's absolutism. "What is the goal—to say that Neandertals were just like modern humans? That is a very far stretch."

And some researchers, trying to absorb findings that fly in the face of their longtime view of Neandertals, aren't sure what to think. "I find [it] incredibly challenging," says Shannon McPherron of MPI, whose own work has cast doubt on claims that Neandertals buried their dead or made systematic use of fire. The new dates, he says, have "shattered my model of Neandertal behavior."

With rare exceptions, cave art could not be directly dated until recently, making it hard to challenge the assumption that the artists were modern humans. For one thing, most cave paintings lack organic residues that can be dated by the radioactive decay of carbon isotopes. But in the early 2000s, scientists devised an alternative dating strategy based on the thin layer of calcite that can form when groundwater seeps down a cave wall and across a painting. The water contains a smattering of uranium atoms that decay into a distinctive isotope of thorium, which accumulates in the calcite over millennia. Grind a few flecks of calcite off a cave painting, measure the ratio of uranium and thorium isotopes, and you can read out the age of the calcite. The underlying painting must be at least that old—and could be much older.

It's not easy, says MPI's Dirk Hoffmann, who was among the first to apply uranium-thorium dating to cave paintings and is the first author of both papers. "The challenge is to find these calcites. You need a wall where you occasionally have a little water coming in that deposits calcite without damaging the painting." Then comes the "nerve-wracking" task of scraping off the calcite without marring the pigment, and the painstaking analysis of a sample of few milligrams. Hoffmann and his colleagues applied the technique to cave art across Italy, France, Portugal, and Spain. Most of the dates fell within the European reign of modern humans, which began 40,000 to 45,000 years ago. But in the three cases described in Science, the paintings are far too old to have been made by them.

"To me the biggest question is how good is the dating," says Harold Dibble of the University of Pennsylvania, who has long challenged claims of sophisticated Neandertal behavior. But others see little reason for doubt. Multiple samples from each painting yielded consistent results, and in several cases Hoffmann and his colleagues analyzed scrapings from increasing depths in the calcite layer. The dates grew older as they approached the pigment, adding credibility. "I am confident that the [uranium-thorium] dates are correct," says Rainer Grün, an expert in the technique at Griffith University in Nathan, Australia, who did not take part in the work.

Zilhão predicts that other cave paintings will prove equally ancient, if not more so. "This is just scratching the surface of an entirely new world." He cites two other finds as evidence of a long Neandertal tradition of art and ritual. One is a pair of corral-shaped structures, the larger one more than 6 meters across, assembled from broken stalagmites and scorched by fire, found by cavers more than 300 meters deep in Bruniquel Cave in France. In 2016, a French-led team reported in Nature that the structures were built some 175,000 years ago—presumably by Neandertals, perhaps for ritual purposes. And then there are the colored shells from Cueva de los Aviones, a sea cave in southern Spain, where Hoffmann's uranium-thorium dating of a calcite crust covering the objects has just yielded an age of more than 115,000 years.

But was this Neandertal artistic creativity equivalent to the art and symbolism practiced by modern humans? At sites across Africa, our direct ancestors were making shell beads and etching abstract designs into egg shells and minerals 80,000 years ago and more. Neandertal achievements were fully comparable, Zilhão insists, and to suggest otherwise implies a double standard.

Hublin disagrees. The startling new dates for the paintings "show that Neandertals had the same potential as modern humans in a number of domains," he acknowledges. But he and others see differences in cognition and culture that even the new research does not erase. And Hublin notes that soon after their arrival in Europe, "modern humans replaced [Neandertals], and there are reasons."

Like the gap between these two kinds of humans, the rift among Neandertal experts has narrowed. But it has not yet closed.

Quote from: Valmy on February 22, 2018, 10:24:37 PM
Didn't we already know that?

QuoteNow, archaeologists may have to accept that Neandertals were the original cave artists. A team of dating experts and archaeologists reports that simple creations—the outline of a hand, an array of lines, and a painted cave formation—from three caves in Spain all date to more than 64,800 years ago, at least 20,000 years before modern humans reached Europe. Shells from a fourth Spanish cave, pigment-stained and pierced as if for use as body ornaments, are even older, a team including several of the same researchers reports in a second paper, in Science Advances. Some researchers had already attributed the shells to Neandertals, but the new dates leave little doubt.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 22, 2018, 10:52:45 PM

Quote from: Valmy on February 22, 2018, 10:24:37 PM
Didn't we already know that?

Lots of new evidence for abstract thinking for Neanderthals has come to light in the last decade and a half, but I don't think cave paintings as been one of them.

Quote from: mongers on February 25, 2018, 09:40:46 AM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 22, 2018, 10:52:45 PM

Quote from: Valmy on February 22, 2018, 10:24:37 PM
Didn't we already know that?

Lots of new evidence for abstract thinking for Neanderthals has come to light in the last decade and a half, but I don't think cave paintings as been one of them.

I wonder if this forum will be quoted in a similar vane in the far distant future?  :hmm:

Quote from: KRonn on February 25, 2018, 09:24:32 AM

QuoteNow, archaeologists may have to accept that Neandertals were the original cave artists. A team of dating experts and archaeologists reports that simple creations—the outline of a hand, an array of lines, and a painted cave formation—from three caves in Spain all date to more than 64,800 years ago, at least 20,000 years before modern humans reached Europe. Shells from a fourth Spanish cave, pigment-stained and pierced as if for use as body ornaments, are even older, a team including several of the same researchers reports in a second paper, in Science Advances. Some researchers had already attributed the shells to Neandertals, but the new dates leave little doubt.

Interesting find. What really intrigues me is why and how the Neanderthals went extinct.

Quote from: Valmy on February 25, 2018, 11:47:23 PM
I figured they went extinct through vigorous inter-breeding.

Quote from: The Brain on February 26, 2018, 04:21:13 AM
You don't risk dying from breeding unless you're a woman or a Qing emperor.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 26, 2018, 04:00:25 AM

Quote from: Valmy on February 25, 2018, 11:47:23 PM
I figured they went extinct through vigorous inter-breeding.

Huge migration doesn't have to be hostile. Even interbreeding with them will wipe them out if they're outnumbered enough.

Quote from: HVC on February 26, 2018, 09:10:30 AM
Sapiens were really good at killing mega fauna. Do nederthals (and apes in general count as mega fauna? We're bigger than most of our primate cousins)

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 25, 2018, 05:25:17 PM

Quote from: KRonn on February 25, 2018, 09:24:32 AM

QuoteNow, archaeologists may have to accept that Neandertals were the original cave artists. A team of dating experts and archaeologists reports that simple creations—the outline of a hand, an array of lines, and a painted cave formation—from three caves in Spain all date to more than 64,800 years ago, at least 20,000 years before modern humans reached Europe. Shells from a fourth Spanish cave, pigment-stained and pierced as if for use as body ornaments, are even older, a team including several of the same researchers reports in a second paper, in Science Advances. Some researchers had already attributed the shells to Neandertals, but the new dates leave little doubt.

Interesting find. What really intrigues me is why and how the Neanderthals went extinct.

Due to the glacial conditions of west eurasia, the Neanderthals simply could not maintain a population as near as large as the H. sapiens could in Africa. A large enough migration could simply roll over them, even if they were cognitively their equal.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 25, 2018, 05:25:17 PM

Quote from: KRonn on February 25, 2018, 09:24:32 AM

QuoteNow, archaeologists may have to accept that Neandertals were the original cave artists. A team of dating experts and archaeologists reports that simple creations—the outline of a hand, an array of lines, and a painted cave formation—from three caves in Spain all date to more than 64,800 years ago, at least 20,000 years before modern humans reached Europe. Shells from a fourth Spanish cave, pigment-stained and pierced as if for use as body ornaments, are even older, a team including several of the same researchers reports in a second paper, in Science Advances. Some researchers had already attributed the shells to Neandertals, but the new dates leave little doubt.

Interesting find. What really intrigues me is why and how the Neanderthals went extinct.

Due to the glacial conditions of west eurasia, the Neanderthals simply could not maintain a population as near as large as the H. sapiens could in Africa. A large enough migration could simply roll over them, even if they were cognitively their equal.

Quote from: HVC on February 26, 2018, 11:09:21 AM
How much interbreeding is needed to get 2% Neanderthal dna in western Europeans? I mean could it have just been a bunch of ice age brains out there?

Quote from: Razgovory on February 26, 2018, 10:58:53 AM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 25, 2018, 05:25:17 PM

Quote from: KRonn on February 25, 2018, 09:24:32 AM

QuoteNow, archaeologists may have to accept that Neandertals were the original cave artists. A team of dating experts and archaeologists reports that simple creations—the outline of a hand, an array of lines, and a painted cave formation—from three caves in Spain all date to more than 64,800 years ago, at least 20,000 years before modern humans reached Europe. Shells from a fourth Spanish cave, pigment-stained and pierced as if for use as body ornaments, are even older, a team including several of the same researchers reports in a second paper, in Science Advances. Some researchers had already attributed the shells to Neandertals, but the new dates leave little doubt.

Interesting find. What really intrigues me is why and how the Neanderthals went extinct.

Due to the glacial conditions of west eurasia, the Neanderthals simply could not maintain a population as near as large as the H. sapiens could in Africa. A large enough migration could simply roll over them, even if they were cognitively their equal.

Why would a large population migrate to an area that could not support them?

Quote from: KRonn on February 26, 2018, 11:42:36 AM
Good point. Could be that as the glaciers receded the H. Sapiens moved in and the Neanderthals had already been decimated by the previous harsher conditions, and/or the H. Sapiens had become better able to adapt to more harsh conditions.

Quote from: Ed Anger on February 26, 2018, 07:55:55 PM
I went back in time and killed off the Neanderthals. Mystery solved.

Quote from: The Brain on February 27, 2018, 02:26:31 AM

Quote from: Ed Anger on February 26, 2018, 07:55:55 PM
I went back in time and killed off the Neanderthals. Mystery solved.

But you waited until 1945 to kill Hitler? You're worse than him.

QuoteBoy unearths treasure of the Danish king Bluetooth in Germany

A 13-year-old boy and an amateur archaeologist have unearthed a "significant" trove in Germany which may have belonged to the Danish king Harald Bluetooth who brought Christianity to Denmark.

René Schön and his student Luca Malaschnitschenko were looking for treasure using metal detectors in January on northern Rügen island when they chanced upon what they initially thought was a worthless piece of aluminium.

But upon closer inspection, they realised that it was a piece of silver, German media reported.

Over the weekend, the regional archaeology service began a dig covering 400 sq metres (4,300 sq ft). It has found a hoard believed to be linked to the Danish king Harald Gormsson, better known as "Harry Bluetooth", who reigned from around AD958 to 986.

Braided necklaces, pearls, brooches, a Thor's hammer, rings and up to 600 chipped coins were found, including more than 100 that date back to Bluetooth's era, when he ruled over what is now Denmark, northern Germany, southern Sweden and parts of Norway.

"This trove is the biggest single discovery of Bluetooth coins in the southern Baltic Sea region and is therefore of great significance," the lead archaeologist, Michael Schirren, told national news agency DPA.

The oldest coin is a Damascus dirham dating to 714 while the most recent is a penny dating to 983.

The find suggests that the treasure may have been buried in the late 980s – also the period when Bluetooth was known to have fled to Pomerania, where he died in 987.

"We have here the rare case of a discovery that appears to corroborate historical sources," said the archaeologist Detlef Jantzen.

Bluetooth is credited with unifying Denmark. The Viking-born king also turned his back on old Norse religion and introduced Christianity to the Nordic country.

But he was forced to flee to Pomerania after a rebellion led by his son Sven Gabelbart.

Bluetooth's lasting legacy is found today in smartphones and laptops – the wireless Bluetooth technology is named after him, and the symbol is composed of the two runes spelling out his initials RB.

Quote from: Malthus on April 16, 2018, 09:55:04 AM
I love the fact that Bluetooth technology got that name because the developer of the system was a big fan of The Long Ships. What an awesome book that is!  :D

Quote from: Maladict on February 28, 2018, 08:10:34 AM
Which Minoan palace are you?
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mlleerika/which-minoan-palace-are-you-26wtd?utm_term=.kdmAqP58B#.xuQ6ayEmP (https://www.buzzfeed.com/mlleerika/which-minoan-palace-are-you-26wtd?utm_term=.kdmAqP58B#.xuQ6ayEmP)


I got Zakros   <_<

Quote from: Jacob on April 16, 2018, 12:17:10 PM

Quote from: Malthus on April 16, 2018, 09:55:04 AM
I love the fact that Bluetooth technology got that name because the developer of the system was a big fan of The Long Ships. What an awesome book that is!  :D

Really? I did not know that.

And that's a great book, yes :)

QuoteAt this time, Intel proposed that the SIG be called by the "codename" Bluetooth until the SIG's marketing group would come up with a formal technology name. When asked about the name Bluetooth, I explained that Bluetooth was borrowed from the 10th century, second King of Denmark, King Harald Bluetooth; who was famous for uniting Scandinavia just as we intended to unite the PC and cellular industries with a short-range wireless link.

Where did I hear about the name Bluetooth? This originated on an earlier business trip to Toronto, Canada where Ericsson's Sven Mathesson and I were presenting our technology proposal to an existing SIG; Sven pitching as MC-Link, and me pitching as Biz-RF.

After having our proposal firmly rejected, we went on a pub crawl through wintrily, blustery Toronto. Being a big history fan, I would trade stories of history with Sven.

Now Sven knew lots about radios, but not too much about history, but he had read this book (which at a later date he gave me a copy) called the Longships by Frans G. Bengtsson and would relate the history through this story.

In this book a couple of Danish warriors travel the world looking for adventure, and the king during this time was Harald Bluetooth.

When I got home from this business trip, a history book I had ordered called the The Vikings by Gwyn Jones" had arrived. Thumbing through the book, I found this (see Figure 2) picture of a giant rock, or runic stone, which depicted the chivalry of Harald Bluetooth, the guy which Sven just told me about!

Quote
Discovery of 14,000-Year-Old Toast Suggests Bread Can Be Added to Paleo Diet

George Dvorsky
Yesterday 3:00pm
•Filed to: Ancient bread

Archaeologists have uncovered the earliest evidence of bread-making at a site in northeastern Jordan. Dating back some 14,400 years, the discovery shows that ancient hunter-gatherers were making and eating bread 4,000 years before the Neolithic era and the introduction of agriculture. So much for the "Paleo Diet" actually being a thing.

Bread-making predates agriculture, according to a new study published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That's quite the revelation, given the conventional thinking that bread only appeared after the advent of farming. The discovery means that ancient hunter-gatherers were using the wild ancestors of domesticated cereals, such as wild einkorn and club-rush tubers, to make flatbread-like food products. What's more, the new paper shows that bread had already become an established food staple prior to the Neolithic period and the Agricultural Revolution.

A research team led by Amaia Arranz-Otaegu from the University of Copenhagen analyzed fragments of charred food remains found at a Natufian hunter-gatherer site in northeastern Jordan called Shubayqa 1. The remains of the burnt bread, found in two ancient basalt-stone fireplaces, were radiocarbon dated to 14,400 years ago, give or take a couple of hundred years. This corresponds to the early Natufian period and the Upper Paleolithic era. The Natufian culture lived in the Levant, a region in the Eastern Mediterranean, from around 14,600 to 11,600 years ago.

Prior to this discovery, the oldest known bread came from the 9,500-year-old settlement of Çatalhöyük, located in Anatolia, Turkey. Çatalhöyük dates back to the Neolithic era, a time when ancient humans had already settled in permanent villages and developed farming. The bread found at Shubayqa 1 pre-dates the Çatalhöyük bread by around 5,000 years, and it's now the oldest example of bread-making in the archaeological record.

For the study, the researchers analyzed 24 charred fragments of bread from the Shubayqa 1 excavation site using a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Using SEM, the researchers were able to obtain the high resolution images required for studying the fine structures embedded within the charred materials. These images were compared to experimentally produced bread, allowing the researchers to identify the archaeological specimens. SEM analysis is quite time consuming, and the researchers only managed to analyze 24 fragments out of a total of 600 pieces that appear to be bread or bread-like remains.

Tobias Richter, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen and a co-author of the new study, said the discovery was surprising on a number of levels.

"First, that bread predates the advent of agriculture and farming—it was always thought that it was the other way round," Richter told Gizmodo. "Second, that the bread was of high quality, since it was made using quite fine flour. We didn't expect to find such high-quality flour this early on in human history. Third, the hunter-gatherer bread we have does not only contain flour from wild barley, wheat and oats, but also from tubers, namely tubers from water plants (sedges). The bread was therefore more of a multi-grain-tuber bread, rather than a white loaf."

Richter said the method used for identifying the bread fragments is new, and that other researchers should use the technique to re-analyze older archaeological collections to search for even earlier examples of bread production.

"I think it's quite important to recognize that bread is such a hugely important staple in the world today," said Richter. "That it can now be shown to have started a lot earlier than previously thought is quite intriguing, I think, and may help to explain the huge variety of different types of breads that have evolved in different cultures around the world over the millennia.

Dorian Fuller, an archaeobotanist at the University College London and a co-author of the new study, said it's highly plausible that hunter-gatherers were able to make bread without the benefit of agriculture.

"Bread at it its most basic is flour, water, and dry heat. The flour should also ideally include some protein, such as gluten, that occurs in wheat to hold the batter together and provide elasticity," Fuller told Gizmodo. "So this requires a suitable flour, and wild wheats and barleys contain gluten."

In addition, the necessary equipment to produce flour, like stone tools to pulverize grains, were already in existence by the time this ancient bread was made, as some of the oldest examples date back 25,000 years or more. "So the fact that people would have ground stuff to process it is not surprising," said Richter. Lastly, the third element to making bread—dry, baking heat—would likely exist in a culture without ceramics, which describes this particular culture at the time.

Ehud Weiss, an archaeobotanist at Bar-Ilan University who wasn't involved with the new study, says the new paper describes a significant discovery.

"One of the interesting aspects of reconstructing our ancestors' diet is the technology they used," Weiss told Gizmodo. "Here, it is clear these people grinded and mixed several types of foodstuff, cereals, and root food to create a baked product."

Weiss says it's important to remember that caloric return was a major issue with hunter-gatherers' diet, especially in challenging environments. Ground and baked foodstuffs have a higher glycemic index (GI) than raw food, where GI is a relative ranking of carbohydrates in foods according to how they affect blood glucose levels.

"Today, we use GI as a tool to avoid food that will add too much sugars to our blood stream," said Weiss. For hunter-gatherers who struggle in hostile environments to gain more energy from their food, the situation is, of course, the opposite. The ability to increase the caloric return from their food is, therefore, an important step in the development of human nutrition."

Francesca Balossi Restelli from the Sapienza University of Rome, also not involved with the new study, wasn't surprised by the finding, saying a discovery of this nature was expected.

"Certainly, finding charred remains of flour products is the much-needed demonstration of what the large quantity of mortars, pestles, and moulders were already showing us," Restelli told Gizmodo. "If people were cultivating plants, if they had mortars, then they must have been baking 'bread-like' foods. The discovery described in the PNAS article is thus certainly extremely meaningful, but not totally unexpected. It is very nice news, as it confirms today's trend of thought and research."

University of Cambridge archaeobotanist Martin Jones is excited about the new paper, both for what it tells about about the dietary habits of paleolithic humans, and in the use of a new technique to study the bits and pieces of plant material left behind by ancient humans.

"If we listen to many of the familiar narratives about how humans ate before the advent of agriculture, we hear a great deal about animals, and a bit about seafood," Jones told Gizmodo. "We have got nowhere near as far with understanding how they worked with plants, and it is beginning to come clear that plant-based cuisine is very old indeed, and very significant."

"Looking at pulverized plant material is still quite novel," Jones said. "We archaeobotanists understandably feel more confident about identifying plants before they have been mashed to a pulp. But the SEMs here show how much cellular pattern is still discernible, and how fruitful it can be to persevere and give it a closer look."

As a final note, this study reminds us, yet again, that the so-called Paleo Diet isn't an actual thing, or at the very least, not a coherent, unified diet that existed across multiple populations of paleolithic peoples. What's more, this study doesn't tell us which particular ancestral diet was the "healthiest," and it's doubtful that archaeology can tells us anything meaningful in this regard. When it comes to a balanced, healthy diet, you should listen to the experts: Eat lots of vegetables and fruit, choose whole grains, get your protein, and avoid highly processed foods, especially those with added sugar.

Quote400-year-old shipwreck 'discovery of decade' for Portugal
Catarina Demony

CASCAIS, Portugal (Reuters) - Archaeologists searching Portugal's coast have found a 400-year-old shipwreck believed to have sunk near Lisbon after returning from India laden with spices, specialists said on Monday.

"From a heritage perspective, this is the discovery of the decade," project director Jorge Freire said. "In Portugal, this is the most important find of all time."

In and around the shipwreck, 40 feet (12 meters) below the surface, divers found spices, nine bronze cannons engraved with the Portuguese coat of arms, Chinese ceramics and cowry shells, a type of currency used to trade slaves during the colonial era.

Found on Sept. 3 off the coast of Cascais, a resort town on the outskirts of Lisbon, the shipwreck and its objects were "very well-preserved," said Freire.

Freire and his team believe the ship was wrecked between 1575 and 1625, when Portugal's spice trade with India was at its peak.

In 1994, Portuguese ship Our Lady of the Martyrs was discovered near Fort of Sao Juliao da Barra, a military defense complex near Cascais.

"For a long time, specialists have considered the mouth of the Tagus river a hotspot for shipwrecks," said Minister of Culture Luis Mendes. "This discovery came to prove it."

The wreck was found as part of a 10-year-old archaeological project backed by the municipal council of Cascais, the navy, the Portuguese government and Nova University of Lisbon.

Quote

Dinosaurs Had Birdlike Lungs

A new study proposes that all dinosaurs shared a basic lung anatomy which may have given them an evolutionary edge

By Brian Switek on October 25, 2018
Some of the most fascinating, and contentious, aspects of dinosaur life are the parts we can't see. What I'm talking about are the soft tissues of animals like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops - the muscles, organs, nerves, and other squishy bits that decayed away long ago. But the wonderful thing about dinosaur bones - dinosaur skeletons - is that they interacted with and supported many of the missing parts we're so curious about. Know what to look for and clues about what rotted away can still be retrieved. As Robert Brocklehurst, Emma Schachner, and William Sellers point out in a new study, it's just this kind of anatomical outline that can tell us a little more about non-avian dinosaur lungs.

Before getting to the ancient bones, however, it's best to start with the present. Birds are living dinosaurs, and we know that they have fantastically complex respiratory systems that involve a system of air sacs as well as lungs and a windpipe. These anatomical balloons often invade and indent bone, and it's exactly this kind of coordination between bodily systems that has allowed paleontologists to identify air sac systems in saurischian dinosaurs (that is, the family that includes theropods like Velociraptor and sauropods such as Apatosaurus). But what about the lungs themselves? Did non-avian dinosaurs have lungs similar to those of modern birds, or does the avian lung have a more recent evolutionary origin?

Here, once again, the present is the key to the past. The researchers studied the pulmonary and surrounding skeletal anatomy of birds and crocodylians with an eye to how the soft and osteological tissues are influenced by each other, and this dataset was compared to skeletal details of non-avian dinosaurs and the protodinosaur Silesaurus. If the anatomy of vertebrae of birds and crocodiles is related to lung anatomy in birds and crocodylians, in other words, then that anatomical connection should allow the lung anatomy of extinct dinosaurs to be reconstructed.

As might be expected given their different modes of life and over 235 million years of separate evolutionary trajectories, bird and crocodile lung anatomy differed significantly. This is a useful finding, given that non-avian dinosaurs could then be categorized as more crocodile-like or as more bird-like in pulmonary anatomy. And what the researchers found was that all the non-avian dinosaurs in the study, as well as Silesaurus, had vertebrae that created a "furrowed" ceiling of the thorax and is associated with a more bird-like lung that's immobile along the top surface. All dinosaurs had lungs that were more bird-like than crocodile-like.

This doesn't mean that all dinosaurs were just big birds. (Very non-bird like dinosaurs like Triceratops were part of this study, as well as those closely related to the origin of birds.) Rather, as the anatomists point out, the results indicate that the ancestral condition for dinosaurs was "a dorsally immobile lung, strongly partitioned into gas-exchanging and ventilatory regions." Modifications from that basic setup - perhaps kept conservative in ornithischian dinosaurs and highly modified with air sac systems in saurischians - allowed for the respiratory diversity that paleontologists are now assessing and studying.

And this might have something to do with the origin of dinosaurs themselves. The physiological consequences of having more bird-like lungs likely made non-avian dinosaurs more efficient at taking up oxygen from the air than other vertebrates, Brocklehurst and colleagues write, an advantage when atmospheric oxygen levels sometimes dropped. Dinosaur lung anatomy may have given them a significant survival advantage, and perhaps could be a key to why the "terrible lizards" emerged triumphant to rule the world through the Jurassic and Cretaceous.

QuoteBody of handless man discovered by site of buried porpoise

Archaeologists on tiny island of Chapelle Dom Hue puzzling over mysterious finds

Wed 21 Nov 2018 09.53 EST
First published on Wed 21 Nov 2018 08.05 EST

The mystery surrounding a tiny island where a porpoise was apparently carefully buried in a medieval grave has deepened after the remains of a handless figure were unearthed.

Archaeologists digging at a religious island retreat have been puzzling over the porpoise find for months, and the discovery of the figure, possibly a monk or drowned person, has added to the sense of wonder over what was taking place there half a millennium ago.

Results of tests on the porpoise have recently come back and suggest it was buried on the island of Chapelle Dom Hue, off the west coast of Guernsey, in the 15th century.

While the tests were being done, archaeologists spotted a human toe bone exposed in a cliff edge about 10 metres from the porpoise site. When they went back again, a foot had begun to appear as wind and rain eroded the cliff.

They began to dig and found a near-complete human skeleton. Philip de Jersey, a States of Guernsey archaeologist, said the body could be that of a monk as it was believed the island was used by residents from a nearby monastery seeking solitude.

De Jersey said the body was oriented roughly east to west, suggesting a Christian burial. Copper and bone buttons were found, possibly indicating that the person was probably clothed when buried.

The man was just 5ft and his skull was badly damaged. But the most intriguing detail is the lack of hands. De Jersey said: "He is lacking hands and wrist bones, which is mysterious. There are medical reasons a person could lose their hands such as leprosy but the toes are in such good condition it seems unlikely."

It is also possible that the body was not formally buried but is that of a drowned person, possibly a sailor, that may have washed up on the island centuries ago and by chance been buried. De Jersey said: "It may be that it was a body that had been floating around and the hands had been nibbled. The feet might have had footwear on and so be protected."

The bones would be analysed next year to try to find out more about the person – and any possible link to the porpoise, he said.

Quite why the porpoise was buried so carefully on the island is a mystery. The marine creatures were eaten in medieval times but it would have been easier to dispose of the remains in the sea, which is only a few metres from the site.

De Jersey said it was possible that a monk hid the body of the porpoise because he was not supposed to have it, or that the body was placed in the hole in salt to preserve it and had been forgotten.

Another intriguing theory is that the animal had some sort of religious significance to the people who used the island.

Quote from: Oexmelin on November 25, 2018, 02:47:23 PM
The Staffordshire hoard has a great website. I can't seem to post picture, but have a look, it's spectacular.

https://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/?fbclid=IwAR0XGlwPnwhXQe0guq3-WBMqudjjcAVIhOKpFY5K_CZ5vyol6ahWqaAmvAk

QuoteBut he doesn't see how long-distance trading networks could have propelled its spread. "If you get the plague, you don't go and travel a few hundred kilometres. You die."

QuoteEuropeans' First Contact With Iroquois Happened up to 100 Years Later Than Expected

By Roni Dengler | December 5, 2018 5:51 pm 

Scientists excavate the "Mantle" Native American settlement, a key archaeological site in Ontario, Canada. A new set of radio carbon dates questions the historical accounts of when Europeans made first contact with Native Americans. (Credit: Archaeological Services Inc.)

A new study shows the historical dates of key archaeological sites associated with Europeans' first contact with indigenous communities are off by nearly 100 years. The discovery "dramatically rewrites" the history of northeastern North America, researchers report today in the journal Science Advances.

"It will really change how we understand the history ... of this entire period, just before and during early contact with European civilization," Sturt Manning, a paleoclimate scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who led the new research, said.

Estimating Error

Archaeologists have long used the presence of European artifacts such as glass beads or certain types of metal to establish dates for Iroquois indigenous sites in upstate New York and Ontario, Canada. If a European object was a site, the imported object provided the date of the site. But, if there were no imported objects, archaeologists assumed the site must be from before Europeans arrived there.

"This seemed deeply questionable in terms of logic," Manning said. "It assumes that somehow these items are evenly traded across a vast geographic area...and that all of the relevant indigenous communities wanted to have these items."

But until now there's been little other evidence to go on. In the new study, Manning and colleagues took advantage of a radiocarbon dating technology called accelerated mass spectrometry or AMS. AMS enabled the researchers to directly date wood charcoal and other organic matter from the historic sites.

Historical Shift

The scientists first tested their dating technique at a site in southern Ontario known as Warminster. Historians are reasonably confident about the date of this site thanks to a well-known French explorer named Samuel de Champlain who visited the area in 1615. When the researchers assessed the remains of a wood post at the site, they found it dated from around 1590 to 1620, "so exactly when we thought [Champlain] could have visited," Manning said.

Then the team dated three Iroquois sites that Champlain did not visit. The three locations are in the same drainage along the Rouge River east of Toronto and have little if any European artifacts. Excavators have only found one European object and a fragment of another at the third of the three sites known as Mantle, the largest fully excavated Iroquois site yet.

When Manning and colleagues dated plant material from each of these sites, they found the radiocarbon evidence placed the sites 50 to 100 years later than previous estimates based on the absence of European goods. The Mantle site's historically accepted date is approximately 1500-1550, for example, but the site dates to between 1596 and 1618 according to the radiocarbon estimate. For context, the Jamestown settlement was founded in 1607.

The authors wrote that their finding implies that "Key processes of violent conflict, community coalescence, and the introduction of European goods all happened much later and more rapidly than previously assumed."

"There now needs to be a major effort directed towards testing and dating a whole range of indigenous sites," Manning said.

Quote

Shanidar Cave in Iraq once sheltered at least 10 Neanderthals.

New remains discovered at site of famous Neanderthal 'flower burial'
By Elizabeth CulottaJan. 22, 2019 , 3:45 PM

For tens of thousands of years, the high ceilings, flat earthen floor, and river view of Shanidar Cave have beckoned to ancient humans. The cave, in the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq, once sheltered at least 10 Neanderthals, who were unearthed starting in the 1950s. One skeleton had so many injuries that he likely needed help to survive, and another had been dusted with pollen, suggesting someone had laid flowers at the burial. The rare discovery ushered in a new way of thinking about Neanderthals, who until then had often been considered brutes. "Although the body was archaic, the spirit was modern," excavator Ralph Solecki wrote of Neanderthals, in Science, in 1975. But some scientists doubted the pollen was part of a flower offering, and others questioned whether Neanderthals even buried their dead.

In 2014, researchers headed back to Shanidar to re-excavate, and found additional Neanderthal bones. Then, last fall, they unearthed another Neanderthal with a crushed but complete skull and upper thorax, plus both forearms and hands. From 25 to 28 January, scientists will gather at a workshop at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom to discuss what the new finds suggest about Neanderthal views of death. Science caught up with archaeologist and team co-leader Christopher Hunt of Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom to learn more.

Q: Why re-excavate?

A: Shanidar has yielded very important and sometimes controversial evidence, but all of the excavation evidence is old. So a key issue is testing Solecki's hypotheses of burial and ritual activity. Our project is led by archaeologists  Graeme Barker, Tim Reynolds, and me. We have been working in the cave since 2014, reassessing the work done by Solecki, dating his layers, and doing all the modern science not available to him.

Q: Why did you want to be part of the excavation?

A: I was motivated by the work of pollen expert Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, who recovered clumps of pollen close to one skeleton. She interpreted this as evidence for the placing and burial of flowers around the body. I think her evidence is plausible, but other explanations are also at least equally possible. The new find is adjacent to the "flower burial" body, so we have a unique opportunity to test her observations.

Q: What did you discover?

A: We located fragmentary human bone 2 years ago, but could not excavate—we were at the end of a season, and there were 2 meters of cave sediment containing both archaeology and huge boulders above it. So we covered it and left it. Last summer, we noticed what appeared to be a fresh disturbance nearby, so we made the decision to excavate. We had to lift out one 3-ton boulder without disturbing anything below it, plus several smaller ones. Human bone specialist Emma Pomeroy, who joined the University of Cambridge this month, was the first person to see the skull as she was troweling. She knew pretty quickly what it was. On first seeing the partly exposed skull, my immediate thought was that this was likely the crowning moment of my 40-year career.

The bones of the new skeleton fit together as they would have in life. The lower body and legs would have extended into the block of sediment containing the "flower burial," which also contained partial remains of two other adults, both female, and a fragment of a juvenile. Whether the new find relates to one of these individuals is unclear. Analysis has a long way to go, but we should be able to test the hypothesis of the "flower burial," as well as doing all the great science-based things you can do with a Neanderthal these days!


This crushed Neanderthal skull was unearthed last fall at Shanidar cave in Iraq, right next to the "flower burial" excavated in the 1950s. GRAEME BARKER
Q: How old are the new remains?

A: Solecki thought about 80,000 years, but we await dates from the [University of] Oxford [dating] laboratory. For now, the broad envelope of 60,000 to 90,000 years is about as good as gets.

Q: So, were the skeletons buried intentionally, with ritual, or not?

A: Ritual is almost impossible to prove to everyone's satisfaction. What is clear is that the cluster of bodies at the "flower burial" came to rest in a very restricted area, but not quite at the same geologic level, and therefore likely not quite at the same time. So that might point to some form of intentionality and group memory as Neanderthals returned to the same spot over generations. But I don't want to go beyond that, because most of the analyses are still to be done.

Q: What's the next step—are you trying to extract DNA from the bones?

A: Yes. We expect that modern techniques ... will allow us to understand better the evolutionary relationships, group territories, and diet of these individuals. We are seeking funding for further work, because we have a whole season's worth of analyses to do, and we are aware of further Neanderthal remains. We'd like more dates and to try to extract DNA from the sediment itself as well.

Q: Is security a concern?

A: The team was at Shanidar in 2014 when the ISIS [Islamic State group] advance got uncomfortably close, and evacuation became necessary. But the Kurdish Peshmerga have a base at Shanidar, and they and reps from the Kurdish regional government's Directorate of Antiquities have looked after us splendidly. Shanidar is an immense source of national pride for the Kurds, because the resistance against Saddam [Hussein] was partly run from there.

Digging at Shanidar is a bit like digging on the Cenotaph in London or the Arlington National Monument in the USA. Thousands of day-trippers visit on a regular basis. We see exuberant dancing, picnics, and wedding parties as well as quiet people with flowers and photos, and many school and college groups. They have been delightful, but at times we have been overwhelmed by the sheer demand to participate in selfies, and we have been concerned that curious visitors might trample on important evidence without realizing. The Antiquities Directorate has erected a stout fence, which helps.

Q: What's the day-to-day work like on-site?

A: Grueling—we have been out there digging hard in the cold during torrential spring rains and in 50⁰C summer heat. Everything has to be carried up from, and down to, base camp, on a flight of more than 240 steps. We have wet-sieved and floated almost every cubic centimeter of cave sediments. As someone who has worked on caves for 35 years, this is by far the most difficult site I have ever worked on! It has become ever clearer to us that Ralph Solecki's achievement was immense and that his—and our—work at Shanidar will offer challenges and insights for many years to come.

Quote from: Admiral Yi on December 21, 2018, 07:26:31 PM
Your part of the continent has the best-looking Indians in North America.

Quote from: viper37 on December 21, 2018, 07:09:04 PM
the magazine article makes a common mistake in transcribing the names in the study (well written).

Iroquois = Haudenosaunee, a confederacy of six nations (Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga, Seneca and post-European contact Tuscarora).

Iroquoians = language and cultural family of North Eastern America, including the Iroquois, Hurons, Petuns, Cherokees and some others.


The Mantle site is a Huron-Wendat archeological site as well as Warminster.  Ontario was Wendat territory.  Iroquois were closer to New England.  It's a pretty significant site for the Wendake community, near Quebec city. (and they have a lovely musuem) :) 

Hurons were the good guys, gentle, caring indians, allied with the French.
Iroquois were the demonic, barbaric, soulless indians allied with the English.

Or so I've been told.

;)

Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 20, 2018, 09:48:54 PM
Very interesting.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2018/12/05/new-dates-change-history-of-indigenous-iroquois-first-contact-europeans/#.XBxUCKoUkc8

QuoteEuropeans' First Contact With Iroquois Happened up to 100 Years Later Than Expected

By Roni Dengler | December 5, 2018 5:51 pm 

Scientists excavate the "Mantle" Native American settlement, a key archaeological site in Ontario, Canada. A new set of radio carbon dates questions the historical accounts of when Europeans made first contact with Native Americans. (Credit: Archaeological Services Inc.)

A new study shows the historical dates of key archaeological sites associated with Europeans' first contact with indigenous communities are off by nearly 100 years. The discovery "dramatically rewrites" the history of northeastern North America, researchers report today in the journal Science Advances.

"It will really change how we understand the history ... of this entire period, just before and during early contact with European civilization," Sturt Manning, a paleoclimate scientist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who led the new research, said.

Estimating Error

Archaeologists have long used the presence of European artifacts such as glass beads or certain types of metal to establish dates for Iroquois indigenous sites in upstate New York and Ontario, Canada. If a European object was a site, the imported object provided the date of the site. But, if there were no imported objects, archaeologists assumed the site must be from before Europeans arrived there.

"This seemed deeply questionable in terms of logic," Manning said. "It assumes that somehow these items are evenly traded across a vast geographic area...and that all of the relevant indigenous communities wanted to have these items."

But until now there's been little other evidence to go on. In the new study, Manning and colleagues took advantage of a radiocarbon dating technology called accelerated mass spectrometry or AMS. AMS enabled the researchers to directly date wood charcoal and other organic matter from the historic sites.

Historical Shift

The scientists first tested their dating technique at a site in southern Ontario known as Warminster. Historians are reasonably confident about the date of this site thanks to a well-known French explorer named Samuel de Champlain who visited the area in 1615. When the researchers assessed the remains of a wood post at the site, they found it dated from around 1590 to 1620, "so exactly when we thought [Champlain] could have visited," Manning said.

Then the team dated three Iroquois sites that Champlain did not visit. The three locations are in the same drainage along the Rouge River east of Toronto and have little if any European artifacts. Excavators have only found one European object and a fragment of another at the third of the three sites known as Mantle, the largest fully excavated Iroquois site yet.

When Manning and colleagues dated plant material from each of these sites, they found the radiocarbon evidence placed the sites 50 to 100 years later than previous estimates based on the absence of European goods. The Mantle site's historically accepted date is approximately 1500-1550, for example, but the site dates to between 1596 and 1618 according to the radiocarbon estimate. For context, the Jamestown settlement was founded in 1607.

The authors wrote that their finding implies that "Key processes of violent conflict, community coalescence, and the introduction of European goods all happened much later and more rapidly than previously assumed."

"There now needs to be a major effort directed towards testing and dating a whole range of indigenous sites," Manning said.

QuoteIn 2012, archaeologists revealed that they had discovered a forged wrought iron axehead of European origin which had been carefully buried in a long-house at the centre of the village site. It is believed that the axe originated from a Basque whaling station in the Strait of Belle Isle (Newfoundland and Labrador), and was traded into the interior of the continent a century before Europeans began to explore the Great Lakes region.[4] "It is the earliest European piece of iron ever found in the North American interior."[5] 

Quote from: KRonn on January 24, 2019, 04:00:51 PM
In Massachusetts there was also a large war between Massachusetts Indians and the colonists in the late 1600s. King Pillip's War. It was one of the most ruinous wars which destroyed the Indians as a power and laid waste to the Mass Bay economy, taking a long time to recover. I've read accounts expressing the sentiment that if the Indians hadn't been so ravaged by European diseases they might have been able to defeat the Massachusetts colony.

Quote from: derspiess on January 24, 2019, 07:26:19 PM
Glad you both survived :hug:

Quote
When Modern Men Throw Ancient Weapons

Scientists have shown that Neanderthals' spears weren't half bad, in capable hands.

ED YONG
JAN 25, 2019

On a very cold January morning, in an athletic field in central England, Annemieke Milks watched as six javelin-throwers hurled a pair of wooden spears. Their target was a hay bale, "meant to approximate the kill zone of a large animal, like a horse," says Milks, an archaeologist at University College London. And their spears were replicas of the oldest complete hunting weapons ever found—a set of 300,000-year-old, six-and-a-half-foot sticks found in a mine at Schöningen, Germany.

The athletes managed to throw their replicas over distances of 65 feet. That's a far cry from modern javelin feats—the world record for men, set in 1996, is 323.1 feet. But it's twice what many scientists thought that primitive spears were capable of. It suggests that, contrary to popular belief, early spear-makers—Neanderthals, or perhaps other ancient species like Homo heidelbergensis—could probably have hunted their prey from afar. 

"This experiment convincingly shows that in the hands of skilled users, spears are capable of killing at greater distances than previously thought," says Jayne Wilkins, an archaeologist at the University of Cape Town. "This matters because it challenges a long-held idea" about the evolution of human weaponry. 

It's abundantly clear that Neanderthals and other early hominins were capable hunters who made and used spears. But many researchers have argued that such weapons were too heavy and clunky to be thrown quickly or accurately, and could only be thrust into prey from close range. "The general consensus has been that they were limited to ranges of 10 meters," or about 32 feet, Milks says.

According to this view, long-distance kills became possible only when modern humans invented specialized tools like spear-throwers, atlatls, or bows. Those superior weapons gave their bearers—our ancestors—an advantage over other hominin species, allowing them to safely bring down dangerous game that Neanderthals were forced to engage at close quarters. Perhaps that partly explains why the latter went extinct, while modern humans thrived.

But to Milks, this narrative always had a glaring problem. "We don't have good data on how hand-delivered spears performed, so we can't make a valid comparison," she says. "The 10-meter distance was repeated over and over again, but not backed up with much evidence." It came from an influential ethnographic review that considered the spear-throwing skills of many modern populations, but didn't include adept groups such as the Tasmanian and Tiwi peoples of Australia. And it was bolstered by studies and anecdotal reports in which spears were thrown by anthropologists—hardly a decent stand-in for a skilled Neanderthal hunter.

For example, John Shea, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University, told me that he regularly takes his students into an athletic field and asks them to throw replica Schöningen spears at him. "If they hit me, I pledge to give them $20," he said. "I've been doing this 'experiment' for 25 years, and I've neither got so much as a scratch on me nor parted with any cash. The spears come sailing in so low and slow I can usually just step sideways out of the way, bat them away with a stick, or if I am feeling really cocky, catch them in midair."

A German sport scientist and javelin-thrower named Hermann Rieder had more success: In a small study, he managed to hit targets from around 16 feet away and suggested that the spears were useful weapons at longer distances. (A Wikipedia entry that cites his study and claims that "athletes could throw replicas up to 70 meters" is almost certainly wrong.)

To get more thorough data, Milks asked Owen O'Donnell, an expert in reconstructing ancient technology, to create the best possible replicas. He made two from spruce—the same wood as in the Schöningen spears. He built them to the same weight—1.67 and 1.76 pounds, respectively. And he finished them with stone tools to give them an authentic texture.

"I've been asked a lot if I threw in my own experiments," Milks says. "But that wouldn't tell us anything, other than that I'm a bad thrower." Instead, she gave the spears to six trained javelin-throwers, whom she filmed with high-speed cameras. The participants hurled the spears both far and fast. It's sometimes said that heavy spears would slow mid-flight and hit their targets with dull thuds. But Milks found that the replicas slowed very little, and landed with a kinetic wallop comparable to projectiles launched by bows or spear-throwing tools.

But Steve Churchill, an anthropologist from Duke University, notes that the javelin-throwers only hit their target a quarter of the time, and less so at the farthest distances. He's also unclear as to how many of those "hits" would have been strong enough to, say, penetrate an animal's hide. In his own experience (and he freely admits that he's not a trained thrower), Schöningen replicas wobble a lot and tend to strike targets at glancing angles. They might fly far, in other words, but do they fly true? "This is a very good study," he says, but "I don't see a lot here to convince me that the Schöningen spears were effective long-range weapons."

Milks counters that professional javelin-throwers go for distance, and aren't trained to hit targets. Despite that, some of them clearly got the sense that the heavy spears behave unusually, vibrating along their axis and flexing on impact. The more experienced athletes compensated for this by putting spin on the spears. "That brought home how important it is to use skilled throwers," Milks says. "What I really want to do now is to go to hunter-forager groups and have them show us what these spears are capable of. They use spears from age 6, which is something I can't replicate with javelin athletes."

"There's also a hypothesis that these spears required a lot of training, and a big robust body to use them properly," she adds. Spear-throwers and bows may have given their users an edge not because they launched projectiles farther or faster, but because they could be picked up more easily, by more members of a group. As technology, they weren't inherently superior, just more user-friendly. "That's an idea that's worth going forward with," Milks says. 

This isn't to say that Neanderthals would have always thrown their spears. Last year, the archaeologist Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser analyzed Neanderthal-inflicted wounds on the fossil remains of two deer; after a whirlwind forensic analysis, she concluded that the animals were killed by spears thrust from below, not thrown from above. Neanderthals, she told me, hunted cattle in their prime, hibernating cave bears, and entire herds of horses or reindeer. "That these very different prey species, living in very different environments, necessitated very high flexibility in hunting tactics is a given," she said.

Indeed, the Schöningen finds attest to that flexibility. Some spears could have been thrown, but others had kinks in them and were tapered only at one end. "That wasn't a throwing spear," Milks says. "It looks like [Neanderthals] had a collection of different technology at that site."

The weapons are only half the story, too. There's also the matter of their wielders, and some researchers have argued that Neanderthals were anatomically incapable of a strong throw. Milks believes that the "evidence for that is quite weak," although she admits that her study of human javelin-throwers says nothing about the throwing arm of Neanderthals.



Despite that, experiments like hers are very welcome, says Katerina Harvati of the University of Tubingen. "It is really essential to understanding the behavior of Neanderthals and other Pleistocene ancestors, and to accurately interpreting archaeological findings such as the extremely rare spears from Schöningen. This study goes a long way to clarifying how those spears may have been used."

Last year, Harvati and her colleagues busted another common misperception about Neanderthals: that they were especially prone to traumatic head injuries, perhaps because of their proclivity for close-range hunts. In fact, they were no more likely to get bonked on the head than contemporaneous humans. "Studies like these," Jayne Wilkins says, "add to a mounting body of evidence against the old-fashioned idea that Neanderthals had only subhuman capacities, employed ineffective technologies, and were continuously struggling for survival."

Quote from: Caliga on January 24, 2019, 05:26:17 PM

Quote from: KRonn on January 24, 2019, 04:00:51 PM
In Massachusetts there was also a large war between Massachusetts Indians and the colonists in the late 1600s. King Pillip's War. It was one of the most ruinous wars which destroyed the Indians as a power and laid waste to the Mass Bay economy, taking a long time to recover. I've read accounts expressing the sentiment that if the Indians hadn't been so ravaged by European diseases they might have been able to defeat the Massachusetts colony.

:yes:

The town that garbon and I used to live in was attacked during King Philip's War.  In fact I think most towns in Massachusetts at that time were raided.

Quote from: Oexmelin on January 27, 2019, 10:48:19 PM
Check out Jill Lepore's The Name of War, if you are interested in the topic.

Quote from: KRonn on January 28, 2019, 08:18:58 PM

Quote from: Oexmelin on January 27, 2019, 10:48:19 PM
Check out Jill Lepore's The Name of War, if you are interested in the topic.

Looks good, thanks for the info.

"About The Name of War
Winner of the Bancroft Prize

King Philip's War, the excruciating racial war—colonists against Indians—that erupted in New England in 1675, was, in proportion to population, the bloodiest in American history. Some even argued that the massacres and outrages on both sides were too horrific to "deserve the name of a war."

QuoteAncient switch to soft food gave us an overbite—and the ability to pronounce 'f's and 'v's
By Ann GibbonsMar. 14, 2019 , 2:00 PM

Don't like the F-word? Blame farmers and soft food. When humans switched to processed foods after the spread of agriculture, they put less wear and tear on their teeth. That changed the growth of their jaws, giving adults the overbites normal in children. Within a few thousand years, those slight overbites made it easy for people in farming cultures to fire off sounds like "f" and "v," opening a world of new words.

The newly favored consonants, known as labiodentals, helped spur the diversification of languages in Europe and Asia at least 4000 years ago; they led to such changes as the replacement of the Latin patēr to Old English faeder about 1500 years ago, according to linguist and senior author Balthasar Bickel at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The paper shows "that a cultural shift can change our biology in such a way that it affects our language," says evolutionary morphologist Noreen Von Cramon-Taubadel of the University at Buffalo, part of the State University of New York system, who was not part of the study.

Postdocs Damián Blasi and Steven Moran in Bickel's lab set out to test an idea proposed by the late American linguist Charles Hockett. He noted in 1985 that the languages of hunter-gatherers lacked labiodentals, and conjectured that their diet was partly responsible: Chewing gritty, fibrous foods puts force on the growing jaw bone and wears down molars. In response, the lower jaw grows larger, and the molars erupt farther and drift forward on the protruding lower jaw, so that the upper and lower teeth align. That edge-to-edge bite makes it harder to push the upper jaw forward to touch the lower lip, which is required to pronounce labiodentals. But other linguists rejected the idea, and Blasi says he, Moran, and their colleagues "expected to prove Hockett wrong."

First, the six researchers used computer modeling to show that with an overbite, producing labiodentals takes 29% less effort than with an edge-to-edge bite. Then, they scrutinized the world's languages and found that hunter-gatherer languages have only about one-fourth as many labiodentals as languages from farming societies. Finally, they looked at the relationships among languages, and found that labiodentals can spread quickly, so that the sounds could go from being rare to common in the 8000 years since the widespread adoption of agriculture and new food processing methods such as grinding grain into flour.

Bickel suggests that as more adults developed overbites, they accidentally began to use "f" and "v" more. In ancient India and Rome, labiodentals may have been a mark of status, signaling a softer diet and wealth, he says. Those consonants also spread through other language groups; today, they appear in 76% of Indo-European languages.

Linguist Nicholas Evans of Australian National University in Canberra finds the study's "multimethod approach to the problem" convincing. Ian Maddieson, an emeritus linguist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, isn't sure researchers tallied the labiodentals correctly but agrees that the study shows external factors like diet can alter the sounds of speech.

The findings also suggest our facility with f-words comes at a cost. As we lost our ancestral edge-to-edge bite, "we got new sounds but maybe it wasn't so great for us," Moran says. "Our lower jaws are shorter, we have impacted wisdom teeth, more crowding—and cavities."

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 14, 2019, 07:49:46 PM
Neat!

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/ancient-switch-soft-food-gave-us-overbite-and-ability-pronounce-f-s-and-v-s

QuoteAncient switch to soft food gave us an overbite—and the ability to pronounce 'f's and 'v's
By Ann GibbonsMar. 14, 2019 , 2:00 PM

Don't like the F-word? Blame farmers and soft food. When humans switched to processed foods after the spread of agriculture, they put less wear and tear on their teeth. That changed the growth of their jaws, giving adults the overbites normal in children. Within a few thousand years, those slight overbites made it easy for people in farming cultures to fire off sounds like "f" and "v," opening a world of new words.

The newly favored consonants, known as labiodentals, helped spur the diversification of languages in Europe and Asia at least 4000 years ago; they led to such changes as the replacement of the Latin patēr to Old English faeder about 1500 years ago, according to linguist and senior author Balthasar Bickel at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The paper shows "that a cultural shift can change our biology in such a way that it affects our language," says evolutionary morphologist Noreen Von Cramon-Taubadel of the University at Buffalo, part of the State University of New York system, who was not part of the study.

Postdocs Damián Blasi and Steven Moran in Bickel's lab set out to test an idea proposed by the late American linguist Charles Hockett. He noted in 1985 that the languages of hunter-gatherers lacked labiodentals, and conjectured that their diet was partly responsible: Chewing gritty, fibrous foods puts force on the growing jaw bone and wears down molars. In response, the lower jaw grows larger, and the molars erupt farther and drift forward on the protruding lower jaw, so that the upper and lower teeth align. That edge-to-edge bite makes it harder to push the upper jaw forward to touch the lower lip, which is required to pronounce labiodentals. But other linguists rejected the idea, and Blasi says he, Moran, and their colleagues "expected to prove Hockett wrong."

First, the six researchers used computer modeling to show that with an overbite, producing labiodentals takes 29% less effort than with an edge-to-edge bite. Then, they scrutinized the world's languages and found that hunter-gatherer languages have only about one-fourth as many labiodentals as languages from farming societies. Finally, they looked at the relationships among languages, and found that labiodentals can spread quickly, so that the sounds could go from being rare to common in the 8000 years since the widespread adoption of agriculture and new food processing methods such as grinding grain into flour.

Bickel suggests that as more adults developed overbites, they accidentally began to use "f" and "v" more. In ancient India and Rome, labiodentals may have been a mark of status, signaling a softer diet and wealth, he says. Those consonants also spread through other language groups; today, they appear in 76% of Indo-European languages.

Linguist Nicholas Evans of Australian National University in Canberra finds the study's "multimethod approach to the problem" convincing. Ian Maddieson, an emeritus linguist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, isn't sure researchers tallied the labiodentals correctly but agrees that the study shows external factors like diet can alter the sounds of speech.

The findings also suggest our facility with f-words comes at a cost. As we lost our ancestral edge-to-edge bite, "we got new sounds but maybe it wasn't so great for us," Moran says. "Our lower jaws are shorter, we have impacted wisdom teeth, more crowding—and cavities."

QuoteWhen humans switched to processed foods after the spread of agriculture, they put less wear and tear on their teeth.

Quote


Archaeology
Nile shipwreck discovery proves Herodotus right – after 2,469 years
Greek historian's description of 'baris' vessel vindicated by archaeologists at sunken city of Thonis-Heraclion
Dalya Alberge

Sun 17 Mar 2019 08.30 GMT

In the fifth century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt and wrote of unusual river boats on the Nile. Twenty-three lines of his Historia, the ancient world's first great narrative history, are devoted to the intricate description of the construction of a "baris".

For centuries, scholars have argued over his account because there was no archaeological evidence that such ships ever existed. Now there is. A "fabulously preserved" wreck in the waters around the sunken port city of Thonis-Heracleion has revealed just how accurate the historian was.

"It wasn't until we discovered this wreck that we realised Herodotus was right," said Dr Damian Robinson, director of Oxford University's centre for maritime archaeology, which is publishing the excavation's findings. "What Herodotus described was what we were looking at."

In 450 BC Herodotus witnessed the construction of a baris. He noted how the builders "cut planks two cubits long [around 100cm] and arrange them like bricks". He added: "On the strong and long tenons [pieces of wood] they insert two-cubit planks. When they have built their ship in this way, they stretch beams over them... They obturate the seams from within with papyrus. There is one rudder, passing through a hole in the keel. The mast is of acacia and the sails of papyrus..."

Robinson said that previous scholars had "made some mistakes" in struggling to interpret the text without archaeological evidence. "It's one of those enigmatic pieces. Scholars have argued exactly what it means for as long as we've been thinking of boats in this scholarly way," he said.


But the excavation of what has been called Ship 17 has revealed a vast crescent-shaped hull and a previously undocumented type of construction involving thick planks assembled with tenons – just as Herodotus observed, in describing a slightly smaller vessel.

Originally measuring up to 28 metres long, it is one of the first large-scale ancient Egyptian trading boats ever to have been discovered.

Robinson added: "Herodotus describes the boats as having long internal ribs. Nobody really knew what that meant... That structure's never been seen archaeologically before. Then we discovered this form of construction on this particular boat and it absolutely is what Herodotus has been saying."

About 70% of the hull has survived, well-preserved in the Nile silts. Acacia planks were held together with long tenon-ribs – some almost 2m long – and fastened with pegs, creating lines of 'internal ribs' within the hull. It was steered using an axial rudder with two circular openings for the steering oar and a step for a mast towards the centre of the vessel.

Robinson said: "Where planks are joined together to form the hull, they are usually joined by mortice and tenon joints which fasten one plank to the next. Here we have a completely unique form of construction, which is not seen anywhere else."

Alexander Belov, whose book on the wreck, Ship 17: a Baris from Thonis-Heracleion, is published this month, suggests that the wreck's nautical architecture is so close to Herodotus's description, it could have been made in the very shipyard that he visited. Word-by-word analysis of his text demonstrates that almost every detail corresponds "exactly to the evidence".

Quote from: Malthus on March 15, 2019, 08:27:59 AM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 14, 2019, 07:49:46 PM
Neat!

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/03/ancient-switch-soft-food-gave-us-overbite-and-ability-pronounce-f-s-and-v-s

QuoteAncient switch to soft food gave us an overbite—and the ability to pronounce 'f's and 'v's
By Ann GibbonsMar. 14, 2019 , 2:00 PM

Don't like the F-word? Blame farmers and soft food. When humans switched to processed foods after the spread of agriculture, they put less wear and tear on their teeth. That changed the growth of their jaws, giving adults the overbites normal in children. Within a few thousand years, those slight overbites made it easy for people in farming cultures to fire off sounds like "f" and "v," opening a world of new words.

The newly favored consonants, known as labiodentals, helped spur the diversification of languages in Europe and Asia at least 4000 years ago; they led to such changes as the replacement of the Latin patēr to Old English faeder about 1500 years ago, according to linguist and senior author Balthasar Bickel at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The paper shows "that a cultural shift can change our biology in such a way that it affects our language," says evolutionary morphologist Noreen Von Cramon-Taubadel of the University at Buffalo, part of the State University of New York system, who was not part of the study.

Postdocs Damián Blasi and Steven Moran in Bickel's lab set out to test an idea proposed by the late American linguist Charles Hockett. He noted in 1985 that the languages of hunter-gatherers lacked labiodentals, and conjectured that their diet was partly responsible: Chewing gritty, fibrous foods puts force on the growing jaw bone and wears down molars. In response, the lower jaw grows larger, and the molars erupt farther and drift forward on the protruding lower jaw, so that the upper and lower teeth align. That edge-to-edge bite makes it harder to push the upper jaw forward to touch the lower lip, which is required to pronounce labiodentals. But other linguists rejected the idea, and Blasi says he, Moran, and their colleagues "expected to prove Hockett wrong."

First, the six researchers used computer modeling to show that with an overbite, producing labiodentals takes 29% less effort than with an edge-to-edge bite. Then, they scrutinized the world's languages and found that hunter-gatherer languages have only about one-fourth as many labiodentals as languages from farming societies. Finally, they looked at the relationships among languages, and found that labiodentals can spread quickly, so that the sounds could go from being rare to common in the 8000 years since the widespread adoption of agriculture and new food processing methods such as grinding grain into flour.

Bickel suggests that as more adults developed overbites, they accidentally began to use "f" and "v" more. In ancient India and Rome, labiodentals may have been a mark of status, signaling a softer diet and wealth, he says. Those consonants also spread through other language groups; today, they appear in 76% of Indo-European languages.

Linguist Nicholas Evans of Australian National University in Canberra finds the study's "multimethod approach to the problem" convincing. Ian Maddieson, an emeritus linguist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, isn't sure researchers tallied the labiodentals correctly but agrees that the study shows external factors like diet can alter the sounds of speech.

The findings also suggest our facility with f-words comes at a cost. As we lost our ancestral edge-to-edge bite, "we got new sounds but maybe it wasn't so great for us," Moran says. "Our lower jaws are shorter, we have impacted wisdom teeth, more crowding—and cavities."

Not sure this part is correct:

QuoteWhen humans switched to processed foods after the spread of agriculture, they put less wear and tear on their teeth.

In ancient agriculture, grain gad to be ground to be eaten. This process usually left bits of sand in the resulting food, which wore at teeth more than a hunter-gatherer's diet of cooked meat and gathered berries, grubs and seeds. In areas where wheat was gathered, the advent of agriculture made little difference to teeth - what mattered most was how grain was processed (using mortars = bad teeth; agriculturalists were more likely to use mortars.)

Paper on this topic:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16353225

Quote from: Oexmelin on January 27, 2019, 10:48:19 PM
Check out Jill Lepore's The Name of War, if you are interested in the topic.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 17, 2019, 08:30:45 AM


It seems from the dating that labiodentals didn't enter languages immediately after agriculture was established ten thousand years ago. They started to spread between 2000 and 500 BC, which would be explainable by having more advanced agricultural processing.

QuoteThe emmer was taken from a silo [7] in which it had been stored after threshing and winnowing. The spikelets were moistened and pounded by men in mortars [8] in order to separate the chaff from the grain. The bran was removed and probably used as animal feed.
     The grinding was mostly women's work and took hours of hard labour kneeling down every day, often causing disability. Only the amount of meal used each day was prepared. They fought tedium by singing chants such as "May the gods give my master strength and health" [4] (or that is what their master, who left the record of these words, would have liked them to sing.)
    slave girl grinding corn Until the Middle Kingdom mills were placed on the floor, later they were raised onto workbenches, rendering the milling process somewhat less tiresome. The mill was a simple trough with two compartments. The grain was poured into the top compartment and by rubbing and crushing it with a grindstone, moved into the lower partition. Since the Roman Period rotary mills have been known [2].
     After sieving, the larger particles were poured back into the top for further grinding. The sieves made from rushes and the like, were not very efficient and allowed grains of sand and little flakes of stone to remain in the flour, especially when soft mill stones were used.
    This way of preparing the flour caused severe abrasion of the teeth above all of those who depended upon bread as their main source of nourishment (David, p.148). But it affected all classes: Amenhotep III for instance suffered badly from his teeth.

Quote
A tomb underground etruscan, old almost 24 centuries, with a skeleton surrounded by dishes, it has just been discovered in the south of Aléria (Haute-Corse), a first for 40 years that is "a key to understanding" of this mediterranean civilization to the influence of age in Antiquity.

It is on private land at a place called Lamajone and two meters deep in a necropolis of the roman period that the scientists of the national Institute of preventive archaeological research (Inrap) have unearthed the tomb "which dates back to the years 300 to 350 before Christ," after the type of ceramics found -jugs with scenery, explained Laurent Vidal, the head of these excavations, during a visit press site.

These excavations, which began in June 2018 and a cost of 1.5 million euros to the State, were first allowed to go 130 tombs of the roman period, along with their occupants and many items of jewellery from clay, made a muddy Tuesday by a fine rain and cold.

But it is the discovery of a handful of steps giving access to a corridor six meters long, leading into the hypogeum, a burial chamber of an etruscan carved into the rock a little more than a cubic metre, which brings a lot of hope. For the time being, a skeleton, 17 ceramics and two items of bronze "could be a mirror", which were half dug up, explains Laurent Vidal.

"A single individual is based on the substrate surrounded by furniture cover funeral, it is positioned on the left side, the head oriented to the East," described by the anthropologist Catherine Pigeade.

Is it a woman, a man, a notable ? Impossible to say but Ms. Pigeade hope to discover, through the study of anthropology, which began in situ and the research on DNA, gender, age, social rank as well as potential deficiencies or diseases.

– 'Missing link' –

"It has been many decades that this type of burial had not been discovered in the mediterranean area", explains to the AFP Franck Léandri, regional director of cultural Affairs.

The latest discoveries of this type dates back to the years 60-70, when 179 tombs of culture etruscan with this type of tomb in the basement would have been excavated at Casabianda, just 800 metres from the site of excavation by the archaeologists John and Laurence Jehasse. Dated between 500 and 259 av J.-C, these burials had been unearthed, with more than 4,000 objects – vases, jewellery, weapons, utensils, etc. – that can be admired today at the departmental museum of Aleria, neighbor.

The new find, "this is a key of understanding, it will enable us to reinterpret all the tombs discovered forty years ago with the modern methods of investigation, it is a kind of missing link with what you had before, such as scientific data", welcomes Mr Léandri.

For the time being, the priority is to protect the objects and bones, which have spent more than 2.300 years under the earth. "It is necessary to consolidate the remains as they were discovered," said the AFP Marina Biron, curator-restorer of the Inrap, which is dealing with the same pit excavations or in the barrack yard adjoining, where she first gestures to conservatives.

A race against the clock is launched to collect these historic resources during the fifteen days of excavations that remain before the field is returned to its owner, and that discoveries start to deliver their secrets in the laboratory.

Laurent Vidal "hope that the analysis of each vase will determine what they contain" and to "distinguish the perfume vases vases wine".

But already, the interest is international: "It is a subject to european and mediterranean that we share with the Italians, the English, the Americans and the Germans", stressed Dominique Garcia, the president of the Inrap, including the chairs of etruscology in Chicago, New York, Berlin or the Sorbonne.

The Etruscans ruled over a vast territory formed by the region of Tuscany and the Lazio until the Ist century before J.-C., prior to their integration in the roman Republic.

Quote from: dps on March 28, 2019, 11:59:16 PM
God lord, the grammar in parts of that article is terrible.

Quote from: grumbler on March 29, 2019, 05:31:33 AM

Quote from: dps on March 28, 2019, 11:59:16 PM
God lord, the grammar in parts of that article is terrible.

Google translate doesn't do grammar.

Quote from: dps on March 28, 2019, 11:59:16 PM
God lord, the grammar in parts of that article is terrible.

Quote from: crazy canuck on April 01, 2019, 07:03:30 PM
Bayeau tapestry could be the best hoax in history

https://www.historyhit.com/is-the-bayeux-tapestry-a-fake/

Quote from: HVC on April 01, 2019, 07:20:48 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on April 01, 2019, 07:03:30 PM
Bayeau tapestry could be the best hoax in history

https://www.historyhit.com/is-the-bayeux-tapestry-a-fake/

Almost got me. Almost :lol:

Quote from: crazy canuck on April 01, 2019, 07:03:30 PM
Bayeau tapestry could be the best hoax in history

https://www.historyhit.com/is-the-bayeux-tapestry-a-fake/ (https://www.historyhit.com/is-the-bayeux-tapestry-a-fake/)

Quote from: viper37 on April 02, 2019, 01:09:58 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on April 01, 2019, 07:03:30 PM
Bayeau tapestry could be the best hoax in history

https://www.historyhit.com/is-the-bayeux-tapestry-a-fake/ (https://www.historyhit.com/is-the-bayeux-tapestry-a-fake/)

Since it's April 2nd, I totally forgot about the date, until I reached the end of the article when they said they would cut it in small pieces :D

Had I read the subtext below William's portrait, that would have been a serious clue though :D

Quote from: Malthus on April 02, 2019, 01:12:57 PM

Quote from: viper37 on April 02, 2019, 01:09:58 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on April 01, 2019, 07:03:30 PM
Bayeau tapestry could be the best hoax in history

https://www.historyhit.com/is-the-bayeux-tapestry-a-fake/ (https://www.historyhit.com/is-the-bayeux-tapestry-a-fake/)

Since it's April 2nd, I totally forgot about the date, until I reached the end of the article when they said they would cut it in small pieces :D

Had I read the subtext below William's portrait, that would have been a serious clue though :D

I was hoping they found someone had stitched "Kilroy was here" on the back.  :D

Quote
Excavations in southeast Asia have unearthed a previously unreported hominin species named Homo luzonensis. The discovery has implications for ideas about early hominin evolution and dispersal from Africa.

Homo sapiens is the only living species of a diverse group called hominins (members of the human family tree who are more closely related to each other than they are to chimpanzees and bonobos). Most extinct hominin species are not our direct ancestors, but instead are close relatives with evolutionary histories that took a slightly different path from ours. Writing in Nature, Détroit et al.1 report the remarkable discovery of one such human relative that will no doubt ignite plenty of scientific debate over the coming weeks, months and years. This newly identified species was found in the Philippines and named Homo luzonensis after Luzon, the island where bones and teeth from individuals of this species were excavated from Callao Cave. Specimens of H. luzonensis were dated to minimum ages of 50,000 and 67,000 years old, which suggests that the species was alive at the same time as several other hominins belonging to the genus Homo, including Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo floresiensis.

[...]

Quote from: jimmy olsen on April 11, 2019, 09:02:21 AM
I think this definitely points to an early dispersal of homo from Africa.

Quote from: Barrister on April 10, 2019, 02:16:30 PM
Tim at least would have put it in the right thread: :contract:

http://languish.org/forums/index.php/topic,10671.0.html

QuoteThe ancestors of the people who built Stonehenge travelled west across the Mediterranean before reaching Britain, a study has shown.

Researchers compared DNA extracted from Neolithic human remains found across Britain with that of people alive at the same time in Europe.

The Neolithic inhabitants were descended from populations originating in Anatolia (modern Turkey) that moved to Iberia before heading north.

They reached Britain in about 4,000BC.

Quote from: Valmy on April 17, 2019, 11:30:51 AM
I don't think many Turks were living in Anatolia prior to 1071 AD.

Quote from: Razgovory on April 17, 2019, 11:54:19 AM
Wait, I thought we already knew this. :huh:

Quote
Researchers have translated famous ancient symbols in a temple in Turkey, and they tell the story of a devastating comet impact more than 13,000 years ago.

Cross-checking the event with computer simulations of the Solar System around that time, researchers in 2017 suggested that the carvings could describe a comet impact that occurred around 10,950 BCE - about the same time a mini ice age started that changed civilisation forever.

This mini ice age, known as the Younger Dryas, lasted around 1,000 years, and it's considered a crucial period for humanity because it was around that time agriculture and the first Neolithic civilisations arose - potentially in response to the new colder climates. The period has also been linked to the extinction of the woolly mammoth.

But although the Younger Dryas has been thoroughly studied, it's not clear exactly what triggered the period. A comet strike is one of the leading hypotheses, but scientists haven't been able to find physical proof of comets from around that time.

The team from the University of Edinburgh in the UK say these carvings, found in what's believed to be the world's oldest known temple, Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey, show further evidence that a comet triggered the Younger Dryas.

"I think this research, along with the recent finding of a widespread platinum anomaly across the North American continent virtually seal the case in favour of [a Younger Dryas comet impact]," lead researcher Martin Sweatman told Sarah Knapton from The Telegraph at the time.

"Our work serves to reinforce that physical evidence. What is happening here is the process of paradigm change."

The translation of the symbols also suggests that Gobekli Tepe wasn't just another temple, as long assumed - it might have also been an ancient observatory.

"It appears Gobekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky," Sweatman told the Press Association.

"One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event – probably the worst day in history since the end of the Ice Age."

The Gobekli Tepe is thought to have been built around 9,000 BCE - roughly 6,000 years before Stonehenge - but the symbols on the pillar date the event to around 2,000 years before that.

The carvings were found on a pillar known as the Vulture Stone (pictured below) and show different animals in specific positions around the stone.
[...]

Quote from: viper37 on May 02, 2019, 05:33:36 PM
Ancient Carvings Show Evidence of a Comet Swarm Hitting Earth Around 13,000 Years Ago  (https://www.sciencealert.com/ancient-carvings-in-turkey-show-a-comet-hitting-earth-changing-civilisation-forever)

Quote
Researchers have translated famous ancient symbols in a temple in Turkey, and they tell the story of a devastating comet impact more than 13,000 years ago.

Cross-checking the event with computer simulations of the Solar System around that time, researchers in 2017 suggested that the carvings could describe a comet impact that occurred around 10,950 BCE - about the same time a mini ice age started that changed civilisation forever.

This mini ice age, known as the Younger Dryas, lasted around 1,000 years, and it's considered a crucial period for humanity because it was around that time agriculture and the first Neolithic civilisations arose - potentially in response to the new colder climates. The period has also been linked to the extinction of the woolly mammoth.

But although the Younger Dryas has been thoroughly studied, it's not clear exactly what triggered the period. A comet strike is one of the leading hypotheses, but scientists haven't been able to find physical proof of comets from around that time.

The team from the University of Edinburgh in the UK say these carvings, found in what's believed to be the world's oldest known temple, Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey, show further evidence that a comet triggered the Younger Dryas.

"I think this research, along with the recent finding of a widespread platinum anomaly across the North American continent virtually seal the case in favour of [a Younger Dryas comet impact]," lead researcher Martin Sweatman told Sarah Knapton from The Telegraph at the time.

"Our work serves to reinforce that physical evidence. What is happening here is the process of paradigm change."

The translation of the symbols also suggests that Gobekli Tepe wasn't just another temple, as long assumed - it might have also been an ancient observatory.

"It appears Gobekli Tepe was, among other things, an observatory for monitoring the night sky," Sweatman told the Press Association.

"One of its pillars seems to have served as a memorial to this devastating event – probably the worst day in history since the end of the Ice Age."

The Gobekli Tepe is thought to have been built around 9,000 BCE - roughly 6,000 years before Stonehenge - but the symbols on the pillar date the event to around 2,000 years before that.

The carvings were found on a pillar known as the Vulture Stone (pictured below) and show different animals in specific positions around the stone.
[...]

Quote from: Malthus on May 03, 2019, 08:56:25 AM


I'm gonna call nonsense on that.  :lol:

Carvings show a bunch of fierce animals. We have no idea what they stand for. Could be gods, could be tribal totems, could literally be anything.

Sure, could be astronomical signs. That just joins the line of various things they could stand for.

This sort of thing reminds me very much of the Motel of the Mysteries:

http://onlinecampus.fcps.edu/media2/Social_Studies/WHGII_2010/Era1Topic2/Resources/Motel_of_Mysteries.pdf

QuoteThe Gobekli Tepe is thought to have been built around 9,000 BCE - roughly 6,000 years before Stonehenge - but the symbols on the pillar date the event to around 2,000 years before that.

QuoteAn image of a headless man on the stone is also thought to symbolise human disaster and extensive loss of life following the impact.

Quote from: Razgovory on May 03, 2019, 03:13:26 PM
Spellus went there.  He noted that the animals depicted on the stele were all lived in forests and that in the surrounding area there were very few trees left.

Quote from: Razgovory on May 03, 2019, 11:32:04 AM
The people Gobekeli Tepe must have had phenomenal memories if they could remember the exact location of the stars two thousand years before.

QuoteAncient Sea Rise Tale Told Accurately for 10,000 Years
Aboriginal stories of lost islands match up with underwater finds in Australia

By John Upton, Climate Central on January 26, 2015

Melbourne, the southernmost state capital of the Australian mainland, was established by Europeans a couple hundred years ago at the juncture of a great river and a wind-whipped bay. Port Phillip Bay sprawls over 750 square miles, providing feeding grounds for whales and sheltering coastlines for brine-scented beach towns. But it's an exceptionally shallow waterway, less than 30 feet in most places. It's so shallow that 10,000 years ago, when ice sheets and glaciers held far more of the planet's water than is the case today, most of the bay floor was high and dry and grazed upon by kangaroos.

To most of us, the rush of the oceans that followed the last ice age seems like a prehistoric epoch. But the historic occasion was dutifully recorded—coast to coast—by the original inhabitants of the land Down Under.

Without using written languages, Australian tribes passed memories of life before, and during, post-glacial shoreline inundations through hundreds of generations as high-fidelity oral history. Some tribes can still point to islands that no longer exist—and provide their original names.

That's the conclusion of linguists and a geographer, who have together identified 18 Aboriginal stories—many of which were transcribed by early settlers before the tribes that told them succumbed to murderous and disease-spreading immigrants from afar—that they say accurately described geographical features that predated the last post-ice age rising of the seas.

"It's quite gobsmacking to think that a story could be told for 10,000 years," Nicholas Reid, a linguist at Australia's University of New England specializing in Aboriginal Australian languages, said. "It's almost unimaginable that people would transmit stories about things like islands that are currently underwater accurately across 400 generations."

How could such tales survive hundreds of generations without being written down?

"There are aspects of storytelling in Australia that involved kin-based responsibilities to tell the stories accurately," Reid said. That rigor provided "cross-generational scaffolding" that "can keep a story true."

Reid and a fellow linguist teamed up with Patrick Nunn, a geography professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast. They combed through documented Aboriginal Australian stories for tales describing times when sea levels were lower than today. The team analyzed the contours of the land where the stories were told and used scientific reconstructions of prehistoric sea levels to date the origins of each of the stories—back to times when fewer than 10 million people were thought to have inhabited the planet.

Nunn has drafted a paper describing sea level rise history in the 18 identified Aboriginal Australian stories, which he plans to publish in a peer-reviewed journal. He's also scouring the globe for similar examples of stories that describe ancient environmental change.

"There's a comparably old tradition among the Klamath of Oregon that must be at least 7,700 years old—it refers to the last eruption of Mount Mazama, which formed Crater Lake," Nunn said. "I'm also working on ancient inundation stories and myths from India, and I've been trying to stimulate some interest among Asian scholars."

The highlights of the results of the trio's preliminary analysis of six of the ancient Australian tales was presented during an indigenous language conference in Japan. The stories describe permanent coastal flooding. In some cases, they describe times when dry land occupied space now submerged by water. In others, they tell of wading out to islands that can now only be reached by boat.

"This paper makes the case that endangered Indigenous languages can be repositories for factual knowledge across time depths far greater than previously imagined," the researchers wrote in their paper, "forcing a rethink of the ways in which such traditions have been dismissed."

Port Phillip Bay
Numerous tribes described a time when the bay was mostly dry land. An 1859 report produced for the state government described tribal descendants recalling when the bay "was a kangaroo ground." The author of that report wrote that the descendents would tell him, "Plenty catch kangaroo and plenty catch opossum there." The researchers determined that these stories recount a time when seas were about 30 feet higher than today, suggesting that the stories are 7,800 to 9,350 years old.

Kangaroo Island
The Ngarrindjeri people tell stories of Ngurunderi, an ancestral character steeped in mythology. In one of their stories, Ngurunderi chased his wives until they sought refuge by fleeing to Kangaroo Island—which they could do mostly by foot. Ngurunderi angrily rose the seas, turning the women into rocks that now jut out of the water between the island and the mainland. Assuming this dark tale is based on true geographical changes, it originated at a time when seas were about 100 feet lower than they are today, which would date the story at 9,800 to 10,650 years ago.

Tiwi Islands
A story told by the Tiwi people describes the mythological creation of Bathurst and Melville islands off Australia's northern coastline, where they live. An old woman is said to have crawled between the islands, followed by a flow of water. The story is interpreted as the settling of what now are islands, followed by subsequent flooding around them, which the researchers calculate would have occurred 8,200 to 9,650 years ago.

Rottnest, Carnac and Garden Islands
An early European settler described Aboriginal stories telling how these islands, which can still be viewed from the shores of Perth or Fremantle, "once formed part of the mainland, and that the intervening ground was thickly covered with trees." According to at least one story, the trees caught fire, burning "with such intensity that the ground split asunder with a great noise, and the sea rushed in between, cutting off these islands from the mainland." Based on the region's bathymetry, the researchers dated the story back 7,500 to 8,900 years ago.

Fitzroy Island
Stories by the original residents of Australia's northeastern coastline tell of a time when the shoreline stretched so far out that it abbuted the Great Barrier Reef. The stories tell of a river that entered the sea at what is now Fitzroy Island. The great gulf between today's shoreline and the reef suggests that the stories tell of a time when seas were more than 200 feet lower than they are today, placing the story's roots at as many as 12,600 years ago.

Spencer Gulf
Spencer Gulf was once a floodplain lined with freshwater lagoons, according to the stories told by the Narrangga people. Depending on which parts of the large inlet near Adelaide that are referred to by the stories, they could be between 9,550 and 12,450 years old.

This article is reproduced with permission from Climate Central. The article was first published on January 25, 2015.

QuoteBurial chamber of a wealthy nobleman in Prittlewell shows Anglo-Saxon Essex in new light quote]

Quote from: viper37 on May 09, 2019, 03:02:00 PM
Britain's equivalent to Tutankhamun found in Southend-on-Sea  (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/09/britains-equivalent-to-tutankhamun-found-in-southend-on-sea)

QuoteBurial chamber of a wealthy nobleman in Prittlewell shows Anglo-Saxon Essex in new light quote]

Quoteworkers unearthed an Anglo-Saxon princely burial chamber in Prittlewell, Essex, between a main road and a railway line, with an Aldi supermarket and the Saxon King pub just nearby.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 09, 2019, 05:33:00 PM
Best part:

Quoteworkers unearthed an Anglo-Saxon princely burial chamber in Prittlewell, Essex, between a main road and a railway line, with an Aldi supermarket and the Saxon King pub just nearby.

Always trust the publican.

QuoteRome (AFP) - A team of archaeologists have discovered a secret chamber decorated with detailed frescoes during restoration work at Emperor Nero's Domus Aurea or Golden Palace constructed two millennia ago.

The team came across an opening leading to a room covered with depictions of mythical creatures including centaurs and the god Pan, officials from the Colosseum archeological park, supervising the work, told AFP on Friday.

The archaeologists have dubbed the chamber, which will require excavation with much of it buried and just its vault currently visible, Sala della Sfinge, or the Room of the Sphinx and say it is a significant discovery.

The find offers a tantalising glimpse into "the atmosphere of the 60s of the first Century AD in Rome," the Colosseum officials said, adding that what could be seen of the vault was "very visible and fairly well preserved."

Set against a white background can be seen "red-edged squares finessed with yellow-ochre lines and golden bands punctuated by a dense series of floral elements," the officials said.

Each of the tiles depicts different types of animal form -- from panthers to birds, centaurs and a sphinx, while others show musical instruments.

The archaeologists were working on a nearby area of the complex set beneath a hill next to the Colosseum in ancient Rome's historic centre when they chanced upon the chamber.

Architects and archaeologists secured the site once home to a gigantic landscaped palace and consolidated the frescoes with a view to embarking upon a further stage of excavation to reveal the room in its full splendour.

Built between AD 64 and 68, the immense complex, which other Roman emperors later built on, comprises buildings, gardens and an artificial lake.

After Nero, who legend has it played the fiddle during the AD 64 fire which laid waste much of the centre of the Roman Empire, died in AD 68, his successors tried to destroy races of his rule. Emperor Trajan had the Domus Aurea covered over with soil and built baths over it while Vespasian set in train construction of the Colosseum where the ornamental lake had been.

In the intervening centuries, much of the site was abandoned and today only few traces remain visible of what was a huge estate and of which only a fraction has been excavated with much of it lying under today's modern bustling city.

Part of the site was discovered by Renaissance artists including Raphael, some of whom managed to slide down on ropes and squeeze themselves through a hole in the ceiling to gaze upon magnificent frescoes which would inspire their own works.

Quote3% of the Neanderthal genome that is putatively introgressed from ancient humans, and estimate that the gene flow occurred between 200-300kya.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 10, 2019, 07:43:16 PM
A seemingly modern skull found in Greece that's 210k years old. Evidence is rapidly pilling up of an early H. sapiens migration into Eurasia that ultimately failed.

Quote from: Maladict on August 29, 2019, 06:20:35 AM
Also, General Gudin may have been found in Russia.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49508521

QuoteA nearly complete cranium from Ethiopia reveals the face of Australopithecus anamensis, the oldest known species of Australopithecus.

Quote from: Maladict on August 29, 2019, 06:17:14 AM
Cool video of HMS Terror. It's in amazing shape.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-49490400/franklin-expedition-new-footage-of-wreck-of-hms-terror

Quote from: Maladict on August 29, 2019, 06:17:14 AM
Cool video of HMS Terror. It's in amazing shape.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-49490400/franklin-expedition-new-footage-of-wreck-of-hms-terror

Quote from: Threviel on August 29, 2019, 01:01:01 PM
That's interesting groggy, I've never actually looked up numbers, according to wiki the Russians had a peak mobilised size at around 900' and the Grande Armee something like 700'. Seeing as the Russians always had fought hard and well it really seems like extreme hubris on Nappys side to invade.

Quote from: Threviel on August 29, 2019, 01:01:01 PM
That's interesting groggy, I've never actually looked up numbers, according to wiki the Russians had a peak mobilised size at around 900' and the Grande Armee something like 700'. Seeing as the Russians always had fought hard and well it really seems like extreme hubris on Nappys side to invade.

Quote from: Threviel on August 29, 2019, 01:01:01 PM
That's interesting groggy, I've never actually looked up numbers, according to wiki the Russians had a peak mobilised size at around 900' and the Grande Armee something like 700'. Seeing as the Russians always had fought hard and well it really seems like extreme hubris on Nappys side to invade.

Quote from: Valmy on August 29, 2019, 01:29:24 PM
Yeah well it was extreme hubris to think he could just conquer Spain as well. But really it was more desperation than hubris, he really had no idea how he was going to beat the British yet he urgently needed to do so.

Quote from: Malthus on August 29, 2019, 12:43:35 PM
Here's to hoping the journals are still in place inside the captain's cabin, and are still legible. 

Quote from: Threviel on August 29, 2019, 02:39:23 PM
So you are saying that France did not invade Spain?

Oh, and did he not start aggressive wars the same way that Bismarck did not start the Franco-Prussian one? I have a hard time believing that Nappy was some peace-loving hippie forced into wars.

Quote from: Threviel on August 29, 2019, 02:39:23 PM
So you are saying that France did not invade Spain?

QuoteOh, and did he not start aggressive wars the same way that Bismarck did not start the Franco-Prussian one? I have a hard time believing that Nappy was some peace-loving hippie forced into wars.

Quote from: viper37 on August 29, 2019, 11:12:57 AM
An ancestor - or relative - to Lucy has been found:
https://www.livescience.com/nearly-complete-lucy-ancestor-skull-unearthed.html

QuoteA nearly complete cranium from Ethiopia reveals the face of Australopithecus anamensis, the oldest known species of Australopithecus.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 30, 2019, 04:21:39 AM

Quote from: viper37 on August 29, 2019, 11:12:57 AM
An ancestor - or relative - to Lucy has been found:
https://www.livescience.com/nearly-complete-lucy-ancestor-skull-unearthed.html

QuoteA nearly complete cranium from Ethiopia reveals the face of Australopithecus anamensis, the oldest known species of Australopithecus.

Very important find
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/38-million-year-old-skull-puts-new-face-little-known-human-ancestor-species-180973006/

Quote from: Malthus on November 25, 2018, 03:53:22 PM
My pure speculation: it was the horde collected by a non-Christian warlord, who had won a significant battle against a Christian Anglo-Saxon monarch, and was about to fight another such battle - which he lost, spectacularly badly.

Reason:

1 - the horde is, as noted, mostly gold stripped from military gear. No feminine jewelry at all. This suggests gold taken in battle. 

2 - most of the gold was stripped from swords. This suggests depersonalizing these weapons, perhaps to distribute the swords, minus the gold, to a war-band's followers. The gold could then be used by the leader to attract more followers.

Quote3 - among the gold were Christian objects - crosses and what may be a Bible cover. These had been treated purely as loot, the crosses crumpled up, the Bible cover ripped off. This suggests that the losers were Christian (an army accompanied by a priest carrying crosses and a Bible, perhaps). This also suggests that the winners were not Christian, as they would, if Christian, be more likely to treat Christian treasures more respectfully.

4 - Obviously, the collecter of the hoard must have won at least one major battle, to have access to the equipment of lots of high ranking warriors - presumably looted from their dead bodies. The loot is way more than an individual warrior could have collected. This suggests the leader of a war-band.

5 - Why was the loot buried and not collected again? Perhaps it was buried in secret on the eve of another battle, so it would not be lost if the owner had to make a run for it. That it was never collected suggests that the owner lost the battle, and was killed - together with everyone who knew where the loot was buried (otherwise it would have been dug up again).

Quote from: jimmy olsen on September 29, 2019, 12:11:51 AM
The infamous skull racks of Tenochtitlan have been found, larger than a basketball court, they would have held thousands of skulls at a time.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital

Quote from: Oexmelin on September 29, 2019, 03:06:16 PM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on September 29, 2019, 12:11:51 AM
The infamous skull racks of Tenochtitlan have been found, larger than a basketball court, they would have held thousands of skulls at a time.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods-hundreds-skulls-reveal-massive-scale-human-sacrifice-aztec-capital

That is quite amazing. And great timing too, as my students will be reading Inga Clendinnen's Aztecs in a week.

Quote from: Malthus on October 03, 2019, 07:37:17 AM
My brother is working on this project (he's in the back row on the left in the team picture):

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/oct/03/ancient-scrolls-charred-by-vesuvius-could-be-read-once-again

It would be awesome if this worked!

Quote from: Valmy on October 03, 2019, 10:10:51 AM
I thought it was interesting that the documents they were most looking forward to potentially finding was previously unknown Sappho and a treatise on getting wasted by Marc Antony :lol:

Quote from: Tamas on October 04, 2019, 05:28:43 AM
Could we just be accurate and call him Marcus Antonius please? :P

Quote from: Tamas on October 04, 2019, 05:28:43 AM
Could we just be accurate and call him Marcus Antonius please? :P

Quote from: Tonitrus on October 18, 2019, 04:56:24 PM
Not as old as most of the stuff in this thread...but still old, and history, and kinda cool.  :)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-50102210

QuoteInfants from 2100 years ago found with helmets made of children's skulls

A team of researchers from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Universidad Técnica de Manabí in Ecuador has found and reported on ancient infant skulls that were excavated at a site in Salango, Ecuador. In their paper published in the journal Latin American Antiquity, the group describes how the infant skulls were encased in the skulls of older children.

The researchers note that the human head was often a powerful symbol for many early South American cultures, which might explain what they found. While on a dig in Salango, Ecuador, the researchers came across and unearthed the remains of 11 people buried at the site approximately 2100 years ago. The people that lived there at the time were called Guangala—the researchers also found multiple artifacts in addition to the bones.

The researchers report that among the remains they found were two infants, each with the skull of an older child fitted over their head—like a helmet. One of the infants was believed to have been approximately 18 months old at the time of death—its skull helmet came from a second child who was believed to have been approximately four to 12 years old at the time of death. The other infant was believed to have been approximately six to nine months old at death, and its skull helmet was believed to have come from a child approximately two to 12 years old at death. It is not yet known if the deceased children were related to one another, or the reason skulls were used as helmets for deceased infants. The researchers did note that the skull helmets fit snugly, which, they suggest, could indicate a simultaneous burial of the infant and the child that donated the skull helmet.

The researchers note that the find is the only known instance of using children's skulls as helmets for infants as part of a burial ceremony. They also note that it was possible that those who buried them were attempting to confer some sort of protection in the afterlife. They also note that it was possible the infant and/or the child involved in the ceremony were part of a ritual meant to calm a nearby active volcano, though they also suggest either of the deceased young ones could have died as a result of starvation due to the aftereffects of the volcanic eruption.

Quote from: Sheilbh on November 21, 2019, 06:59:01 PM
Don't steal treasure guys:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/21/detectorists-hid-find-that-rewrites-anglo-saxon-history

Quote from: Sheilbh on November 21, 2019, 06:59:01 PM
Don't steal treasure guys:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/21/detectorists-hid-find-that-rewrites-anglo-saxon-history

Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 22, 2019, 06:54:47 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on November 21, 2019, 06:59:01 PM
Don't steal treasure guys:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/21/detectorists-hid-find-that-rewrites-anglo-saxon-history

Is metal detectorists actually a real word?

Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 22, 2019, 06:54:47 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on November 21, 2019, 06:59:01 PM
Don't steal treasure guys:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/21/detectorists-hid-find-that-rewrites-anglo-saxon-history

Is metal detectorists actually a real word?

Quote from: garbon on November 22, 2019, 07:15:51 AM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 22, 2019, 06:54:47 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on November 21, 2019, 06:59:01 PM
Don't steal treasure guys:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/21/detectorists-hid-find-that-rewrites-anglo-saxon-history

Is metal detectorists actually a real word?

I believe the term 'metal detectorists' is comprised of two words.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on December 11, 2019, 02:27:45 AM
Did I really never post this story? A search for Philistines says no.

Incredible discovery, first cemetery of the Philistines. We had almost no burials of them at all before.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/07/bible-philistine-israelite-israel-ashkelon-discovery-burial-archaeology-sea-peoples/

Genetic testing says they match Iron Age populations from Greece, Spain and Sardinia. But they quickly mixed with the local Canaanites.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ancient-dna-sheds-new-light-biblical-philistines-180972561/

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 11, 2019, 03:53:40 PM
The Aegean migration/refugee hypothesis receives corroboration, but at the same time numbers were not overwhelming as the immigrants quickly mingled with and were subsumed by the natives from a genetic perspective.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on December 11, 2019, 03:53:40 PM
The Aegean migration/refugee hypothesis receives corroboration, but at the same time numbers were not overwhelming as the immigrants quickly mingled with and were subsumed by the natives from a genetic perspective.

Quote from: Razgovory on December 12, 2019, 05:11:54 PM
Well it's not exactly a period of history with good records.  The best we have concerning this time period is from the Egyptians and their kings were prone to absurd boasting.  The Pharaoh claimed that Egypt was invaded outsiders around this time and he defeated them.  And then decided to just let them stay after words.  That seems suspect.

Quote from: crazy canuck on December 12, 2019, 05:32:33 PM
And others theorize that Ramsses III was unimpressive himself and compensated with exaggerated claims about dealing with the Sea Peoples when in fact, by that time, he was really only dealing with some pirate raiders.

Quote from: Agelastus on December 12, 2019, 05:19:33 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on December 12, 2019, 05:11:54 PM
Well it's not exactly a period of history with good records.  The best we have concerning this time period is from the Egyptians and their kings were prone to absurd boasting.  The Pharaoh claimed that Egypt was invaded outsiders around this time and he defeated them.  And then decided to just let them stay after words.  That seems suspect.

I'm not sure "let" is the word - Egyptian historiography was very big on how successful the naval battle was, whereas there's no real mention of the land battle (the Sea Peoples were supposed to be launching both land and sea assaults according to the texts concerning the pre-battle period.) I've seen at least one Egyptologist suggest that the losses in the land battle were so pyrrhic that they had to concentrate on the naval battle in the iconography. They may not have had the strength to pursue the survivors of the Sea Peoples.

And after Ramesses III? Well, none of his successors seem to have been particularly inspiring - many of them having very short reigns, and at least one dying of smallpox suggesting epidemic conditions at the time.

Quote from: Razgovory on December 12, 2019, 08:04:16 PM

Quote from: Agelastus on December 12, 2019, 05:19:33 PM

Quote from: Razgovory on December 12, 2019, 05:11:54 PM
Well it's not exactly a period of history with good records.  The best we have concerning this time period is from the Egyptians and their kings were prone to absurd boasting.  The Pharaoh claimed that Egypt was invaded outsiders around this time and he defeated them.  And then decided to just let them stay after words.  That seems suspect.

I'm not sure "let" is the word - Egyptian historiography was very big on how successful the naval battle was, whereas there's no real mention of the land battle (the Sea Peoples were supposed to be launching both land and sea assaults according to the texts concerning the pre-battle period.) I've seen at least one Egyptologist suggest that the losses in the land battle were so pyrrhic that they had to concentrate on the naval battle in the iconography. They may not have had the strength to pursue the survivors of the Sea Peoples.

And after Ramesses III? Well, none of his successors seem to have been particularly inspiring - many of them having very short reigns, and at least one dying of smallpox suggesting epidemic conditions at the time.

That's my point.  We don't even know if the Egyptians won.   Ramesses II claimed to have won the battle of Kadesh.  So did the Hittites.  Someone was lying.  The same thing could be the case for the Sea People.  Hell, for all we know the Sea People were mercenaries working for the Pharaoh and were paid by the Pharaoh by letting them settle in Egypt.  The whole battle story could have been concocted to avoid the shame of relying on foreign soldiers.  With sources from the late Bronze age it can be difficult to take anything at face value.

Quote from: Razgovory on December 12, 2019, 11:16:12 PM
My point was that historical records from this era are scarce and often of suspect veracity.

Quote from: Razgovory on December 12, 2019, 11:16:12 PM
My point was that historical records from this era are scarce and often of suspect veracity.

Quote
n Iron Age chariot burial found in Yorkshire, England, is reshaping archaeologists' understanding of Celtic art and weaponry.

As Mike Laycock reports for the York Press, researchers uncovered the Celtic warrior's elaborate grave while conducting excavations at a housing development in the town of Pocklington last year. The soldier, who was at least 46 years old when he died, was laid to rest atop a shield placed in an upright chariot drawn by two horses.

Per Melanie Giles, an archaeologist at the University of Manchester, the shield—dated to between 320 and 174 B.C.—is "the most important British Celtic art object of the millennium."

Experts unveiled the shield, which has been newly cleaned and conserved, earlier this month. The full results of the team's investigation will be published in spring 2020.

Paula Ware, an archaeologist who worked on the project, tells Laycock the shield was made in the La Tène style typical of early Celtic art. It depicts organic forms like mollusk shells, as well as triskele, or triple spiral designs that draw the eye to the shield's raised center. Unlike other Iron Age shields found across Europe, the artifact has a scalloped edge.

[...]

Quote from: viper37 on December 17, 2019, 10:21:26 AM
Celtic chariot found in England (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/celtic-chariot-grave-found-england-includes-horses-and-elaborate-shield-180973730/)

QuoteThe team found the remains of a 17- to 25-year-old man who had been ritually impaled with 10 iron and bone spears about 200 feet away from the warrior's burial site. Pieces of a broken shield were scattered across this younger individual's grave.

Quote from: Valmy on December 17, 2019, 07:43:24 PM
Human sacrifice you think? Though I wonder how they could figure he was ritually impaled.

Quote from: viper37 on December 18, 2019, 03:38:29 AM

Quote from: Valmy on December 17, 2019, 07:43:24 PM
Human sacrifice you think? Though I wonder how they could figure he was ritually impaled.

Probably because there were iron and bone spears coming through his chests? :P

Had he been killed elsewhere, these would have been removed.

Quote from: Valmy on December 18, 2019, 08:41:58 AM
Maybe he was the Rasputin of the Iron Age and they just needed to make sure he was really dead.

Quote from: Malthus on December 18, 2019, 09:50:47 AM
Ra-ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen ...

Quote from: Valmy on December 24, 2019, 02:15:49 AM

Quote from: Malthus on December 18, 2019, 09:50:47 AM
Ra-ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen ...

Alexandra was a prudish bore of a woman. I think people decided to start that rumor just to have something to talk about regarding the royals.

Quote from: Malthus on December 24, 2019, 09:57:31 AM

Quote from: Valmy on December 24, 2019, 02:15:49 AM

Quote from: Malthus on December 18, 2019, 09:50:47 AM
Ra-ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen ...

Alexandra was a prudish bore of a woman. I think people decided to start that rumor just to have something to talk about regarding the royals.

You are undermining my trust in Bony M as a source for learning Russian history.  :cry:

Next you will tell me Rasputin wasn't Russia's greatest love machine.  :mad:

Quote from: Malthus on January 13, 2020, 08:54:36 AM
I hope they increase security over the tomb - now that everyone knows there is a pile of priceless objects inside it.

Quote from: Malthus on January 13, 2020, 08:54:36 AM
I hope they increase security over the tomb - now that everyone knows there is a pile of priceless objects inside it.

Quote from: Oexmelin on January 13, 2020, 02:48:07 PM

Quote from: Malthus on January 13, 2020, 08:54:36 AM
I hope they increase security over the tomb - now that everyone knows there is a pile of priceless objects inside it.

Apparently, the lid weighs more than a few tons. Which is why they did not even attempt to open the tomb.

QuoteThe tomb of the emperor in St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna is considered a major work of late Gothic architecture. According to the researchers, a complete opening of the tomb was not possible without some degree of damage.

Quote from: Oexmelin on January 13, 2020, 06:23:11 PM
Perhaps. But to get through the slab may take quite a bit of effort, and attract quite a bit of attention in St. Stephen's Cathedral. One hopes.

Quote

In other gold related news, an analysis of a gold bar found in 1981 during a construction project in Mexico all but confirms it was part of Moctezuma's treasure, melted by Cortez and famously mostly lost during the Spaniard's retreat from Tenochtitlan.

https://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFKBN1Z90EA?fbclid=IwAR1uc51frTSiqtJ0ArlS9KmvJF5iE8bPPT656erjlP3V6_mUtg1ty7iprpI

Quote from: Tamas on January 14, 2020, 09:15:01 AM
So I guess the Aztecs did not make gold bars?

Quote from: The Brain on January 14, 2020, 03:57:57 PM
Was it lost during the Nacho Triste?

Quote from: The Brain on January 14, 2020, 03:57:57 PM
Was it lost during the Nacho Triste?

QuoteDr. Loh has not discovered something entirely new. Indeed, his method mixes together ideas dating back thousands of years to the Babylonians. But this is not how modern algebra textbooks present the topic.

"To find out that there's this trick from thousands of years ago that you can import into here is amazing to me," Dr. Loh said. "I wanted to share that as widely as possible."

Quote from: crazy canuck on February 05, 2020, 11:58:27 AM
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/science/quadratic-equations-algebra.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Science

Kind of archaeology related - trick Babylonians used to solve equations inspired this new method.

QuoteDr. Loh has not discovered something entirely new. Indeed, his method mixes together ideas dating back thousands of years to the Babylonians. But this is not how modern algebra textbooks present the topic.

"To find out that there's this trick from thousands of years ago that you can import into here is amazing to me," Dr. Loh said. "I wanted to share that as widely as possible."

Quote from: Malthus on February 05, 2020, 03:20:02 PM
Neolithic well is allegedly oldest human built wooden structure ever discovered:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/04/europe/wooden-well-oldest-czech-republic-scli-intl-scn/index.html

QuoteSecret doorway in Parliament leads to historical treasure trove
By Brian Wheeler Political reporter

A forgotten passageway used by prime ministers and political luminaries - and closed up by Victorian labourers - has been uncovered in Parliament.

Historians working on the renovation of the House of Commons found the lost 360-year-old passageway, hidden in a secret chamber.

The doorway was created for the coronation of Charles II, in 1660, to allow guests access to a celebratory banquet in Westminster Hall, the building next to the modern day Commons chamber.

It was used by generations of MPs and political notables, such as the diarist Samuel Pepys, as the main entrance to the Commons but was blocked up before being concealed within the thick walls of the ancient building.

It was briefly rediscovered in 1950, during repairs to bomb damage, but then sealed off again and forgotten about - until now.

"To say we were surprised is an understatement - we really thought it had been walled-up forever after the war," said Mark Collins, Parliament's Estates Historian.

Liz Hallam Smith, historical consultant to Parliament's architecture and heritage team, said: "I was awestruck, because it shows that the Palace of Westminster still has so many secrets to give up.

"It is the way that the Speaker's procession would have come, on its way to the House of Commons, as well as many MPs over the centuries, so it's a hugely historic space."

The current occupant of the Speakers chair, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, said: "To think that this walkway has been used by so many important people over the centuries is incredible. I am so proud of our staff for making this discovery."

A brass plaque, erected in Westminster Hall in 1895, marks the spot where the doorway once was but, says Dr Hallam Smith, "almost nothing was known about it".

It lay behind thick masonry, on the hall side, and wooden panelling, running the full length of a Tudor cloister, on the other side.

Up until three years ago, the cloister had been used as offices by the Labour Party, and before that, a cloakroom for MPs.

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/0D9B/production/_111038430_hoc-4crop.jpg)
The west Cloister where the door to the chamber was discovered

It was Dr Hallam Smith who discovered evidence of small, secret access door that had been set into the cloister's panelling, during Parliament's last major renovation in 1950.

"We were trawling through 10,000 uncatalogued documents relating to the palace at the Historic England Archives in Swindon, when we found plans for the doorway in the cloister behind Westminster Hall.

"As we looked at the panelling closely, we realised there was a tiny brass key-hole that no-one had really noticed before, believing it might just be an electricity cupboard."

The team turned to Parliament's locksmith for help and, with some difficulty, he was able to open the wood panel door, to reveal a tiny, stone-floored chamber, with a bricked-up doorway on the far wall.

They discovered the original hinges for two wooden doors 3.5m high, that would have opened into Westminster Hall.

They also found graffiti dating back to the rebuilding of Parliament, in a neo-Gothic style, following the fire in 1834 which destroyed much of the medieval palace.

The scrawled pencil marks, left by men who helped block the passageway on both sides in 1851, read: "This room was enclosed by Tom Porter who was very fond of Ould Ale."

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/34AB/production/_111038431_hoc-3.jpg)
Pencil graffiti dating back to the 1850s is still visible

It then names the witnesses of "the articles of the wall" - evidently architect Sir Charles Barry's masons who had joined bricklayer's labourer Thomas Porter in a toast to mark the room's enclosure.

The men can be traced in the 1851 census returns as Richard Condon, James Williams, Henry Terry, Thomas Parker and Peter Dewal.

Finally the graffiti notes: "These masons were employed refacing these groines...[ie repairing the cloister] August 11th 1851 Real Democrats."

This reference to "real democrats" suggests the group were part of the Chartist movement, which campaigned for every man aged 21 to have a vote, and for would-be MPs to be allowed to stand even if they did not own property.

"Charles Barry's masons were quite subversive," said Dr Hallam Smith.

"They had been involved in quite a few scraps as the Palace was being built. I think these ones were being a little bit bolshie but also highly celebratory because they had just finished the first major restoration of these beautiful Tudor cloisters."

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/A9DB/production/_111038434_brickcrop.jpg)
Part of the bricked-up doorway in the hidden chamber

The team are keen to trace the descendants of Tom Porter and his colleagues, and have already discovered that the workers lived in lodgings near Parliament.

There was another surprise for the team when they entered the passageway - they were able to light the room.

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/1461B/production/_111038438_bulb.jpg)
The bulb that still worked after 70 years

A light switch - probably installed in the 1950s - illuminated a large Osram bulb marked 'HM Government Property'. The team is eager to learn more about the history of this hardy bulb.

Dr Collins said further investigations made him certain the doorway dated back at least 360 years.

(https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/5BBB/production/_111038432_hoc-5crop.jpg)
The plaque in Westminster Hall may not be entirely accurate, the team believes

Dendrochronology testing revealed that the ceiling timbers above the little room dated from trees felled in 1659 - which tied in with surviving accounts that stated the doorway was made in 1660-61 for the coronation banquet of Charles II.

This is in contrast to the words on the brass plaque in Westminster Hall, which state the passageway was used in 1642 by Charles I, when he attempted to arrest five MPs, which the researchers believe is not accurate.

Dr Collins said the plans that led to their discovery will now be digitised as part of Parliament's Restoration and Renewal programme.

"The mystery of the secret doorway is one we have enjoyed discovering - but the palace no doubt still has many more secrets to give up," he added.

"We hope to share the story with visitors to the palace when the building is finally restored to its former glory, so it can be passed on down the generations and is never forgotten again."

QuoteDiets of a Lost Civilization
Material pulled from ceramic sherds reveals the favored foodstuffs in the 8,000-year-old city of Çatalhöyük in Turkey

By Lorraine Boissoneault
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
OCTOBER 8, 2018

remnant artifacts where humans once lived, learning about changes over time. With ceramics, she says, "you either love it or you don't."

That divide over sherds is especially notable at Çatalhöyük, a famous Neolithic town in Anatolia, Turkey. Rosenstock worked as one of the principal investigators at the West Mound area of Çatalhöyük, where the population appears to have declined and then disappeared around 5700 B.C. Compared to the East Mound—the more famous part of the prehistoric city—the West Mound is flush with pottery.

"You have like one sherd per bucket of earth that you dig [on the East Mound]," Rosenstock says. The population then shifted to the West Mound "around 6000 B.C." and the amount of pottery "explodes to kilos and dozens of kilos of ceramics that you dig out of the soil."

Broken bits of bowls and jars remain, some with decorations such as vibrant red stripes. But for the most part, Rosenstock remained uninterested in the shattered vessels—until another researcher noticed something odd. Calcified deposits were found in the ceramic vessels but nowhere else. If those deposits showed up on other objects, like bones or human-made tools, they would likely have been a product of the environment where they were buried. But deposits found exclusively on the inside of the ceramics pointed to another explanation.

"It was really clear that this must have to do with the stuff that was inside this bowl," Rosenstock says. She wasn't sure what to do about the strange finding until she learned about the work of Jessica Hendy. An archaeologist from the University of York, Hendy's research involves extracting proteins from dental calculus on fossilized teeth and analyzing the molecules to learn about the diets of ancient humans. When Rosenstock approached Hendy to discuss applying the same method to the flaky material on the inside of the Çatalhöyük ceramics, Hendy was eager to dive in.

Potsherd Food
Examples of calcified deposits from modern and ancient vessels at Çatalhöyük. a Examples of CaCO3 accretions from a modern tea water pot with extensive calcified deposits used near the research project compound Çatalhöyük, b a close-up of calcified deposits, c a relatively intact vessel (not analyzed in this study) demonstrating bowl shape and extent of calcified deposits and d a selection of four sherds analyzed in this study showing deposits adhering to the inside surface of the ceramic sherds. (Jessica Hendy et al.)
The results of that years-long collaboration are described in a new paper in Nature Communications, revealing just how effective dirty dishes can be in helping archaeologists decode the past.

"This is the oldest successful use of protein analysis to study foods in pottery that I'm aware of," Hendy says in an email. "What's particularly significant is the level of detail we were able to see from the culinary practices of this early farming community."


The potsherds yielded proteins from numerous plants—barley, wheat, peas and bitter vetch—as well as the blood and milk of several species of animal, including cows, sheep and goats. Of even greater interest to the researchers was the precision with which they could identify the proteins. They didn't just see barley, but could identify the specific signature of endosperms, the edible part of the plant. The material was stored in ceramic containers in a way that suggests it was probably used to make some kind of porridge.

The milk offered even more insight, as the researchers could distinguish whey from other parts of the liquid—and in one jar they found only whey, indicating the ancient Anatolians were actively transforming the milk into something like cheese or yogurt. "Here we have the earliest insight into people doing this kind of milk processing," Hendy says. "Researchers have found milk in pottery in earlier times, but what's exciting about this find and this technique is that we can see actually how people are processing their dairy foods, rather than simply detecting its presence or absence."

Caroline Solazzo, who works on protein analysis in textiles at Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute, was impressed by the study. "The work was done by a very good team of experts in ancient proteomics studies," Solazzo says. "It seems that proteins can be better extracted from the accumulation of visible residues in the crust than from the ceramic wall, which is an interesting result for future studies of this type."


To identify the proteins, Hendy and her team took samples from the potsherds and put them through a mass spectrometry machine. This "shotgun" approach is different from past protein analyses, which involved looking for specific proteins rather than doing a catch-all examination. Proteins are made of specific chains of amino acids. Some proteins, like osteocalcin (which is found in bone), are made of only a couple dozen amino acids, while others form chains of thousands of the building blocks. To decipher the protein puzzle left behind in the jars from Çatalhöyük, Hendy and her team compared their results to a database of known proteins.

Reliance on a reference catalogue is one of the hurdles of this type of research, because the analysis is only as good as the database. Such archives tend to contain lots of data on commercially significant species like wheat, Hendy says, whereas less common plants remain underrepresented. Due to gaps in the data, the researchers couldn't identify everything in the batch—but they still managed to unlock a wealth of information.

Hendy and Rosenstock aren't the first ones to use proteins as windows into ancient life. In 2008, researchers looked at proteins trapped in clay pots that belonged to the Inupiat of Alaska around 1200 A.D. They found signs of seal muscle in the vessel, providing evidence of the Alaskan native's diet. And bioarchaeologist Peggy Ostrom managed to extract proteins from the 42,000-year-old leg bone of a horse discovered in Juniper Cave, Wyoming.

The question of how long such proteins survive is hard to answer at this point, because the technique is so new. Rosenstock and Hendy speculate that the proteins survived in their potsherds thanks to limescale buildup on the vessels (think of the white buildup around your faucets or tea kettles). But scientists won't know just how long proteins can survive until they pull samples from many more sites of different ages and different environments.

"We would love to use this technique to identify the diverse cuisines of past societies and how culinary traditions have spread around the world," Hendy says.

As for Rosenstock, she'd like to learn more about whether certain foods at Çatalhöyük were always eaten together for reasons of nutrition—the way rice and beans create a more nutritious meal together due to the combination of amino acids. She also says that after this exciting discovery, her mind is finally changed about potsherds. "It got me really interested in ceramics, in the end."

Quote from: Malthus on February 05, 2020, 03:20:02 PM
Neolithic well is allegedly oldest human built wooden structure ever discovered:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/04/europe/wooden-well-oldest-czech-republic-scli-intl-scn/index.html

Quote from: Maximus on February 29, 2020, 10:30:40 AM

Quote from: Malthus on February 05, 2020, 03:20:02 PM
Neolithic well is allegedly oldest human built wooden structure ever discovered:

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/04/europe/wooden-well-oldest-czech-republic-scli-intl-scn/index.html

Must have been well-built.

QuoteIsraeli Archaeologists Find Hidden Pattern at 'World's Oldest Temple' Göbekli Tepe

Neolithic hunter-gatherers who erected massive monoliths in central Turkey 11,500 years ago had command of geometry and a much more complex society than previously thought, archaeologists say

The enigmatic monoliths built some 11,500 years ago at Göbekli Tepe have been puzzling archaeologists and challenging preconceptions about prehistoric culture since their discovery in the 1990s. Chiefly, how could hunter-gatherers with a supposedly primitive societal structure build such monumental stone circles on this barren hilltop in what is today southeastern Turkey? How could a largely nomadic society at the dawn of agriculture marshal the resources and know-how to create what its discoverers have dubbed the oldest known temple in the world?

If anything, a discovery by Israeli archaeologists suggests the Göbekli Tepe construction project was even more complex than previously thought, and required an amount of planning and resources thought to be impossible for those times. Their study of the three oldest stone enclosures at Göbekli Tepe has revealed a hidden geometric pattern, specifically an equilateral triangle, underlying the entire architectural plan of these structures.

This implies that, in contrast to the prevailing assumption among Göbekli researchers until now, these three circles were planned as a single unit and possibly built at the same time, say archaeologists Gil Haklay and Avi Gopher of Tel Aviv University.

Thus, thousands of years before the invention of writing or the wheel, the builders of Göbekli Tepe evidently had some understanding of geometric principles and could apply them to their construction plans, concludes the study published in January in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.

"The initial discovery of the site was a big surprise and we are now showing that its construction was even more complex than we thought," says Haklay, an Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist and a PhD candidate at Tel Aviv University.

The first phase of construction at Göbekli Tepe, or "potbellied hill" in Turkish, has been dated to between 12,000 and 11,000 years ago. This is the earliest part of the Neolithic, also known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (or PPNA), around the time people in the Northern Levant began domesticating plants and animals, launching the Agricultural Revolution.

The site's builders erected several concentric stone circles, setting into the walls massive T-shaped pillars that reached almost six meters in height, many of which were decorated with reliefs of animals and other motifs. These circles appear to have been built around pairs of pillars positioned roughly in their center.

Only four circles from the PPNA, dubbed enclosures A, B, C, and D, have been excavated so far, but surveys have shown there are at least 15 more scattered around the hill, as well as half a dozen other similar unexplored sites across southeastern Turkey.

An unexpected pattern

The new study focused on enclosures B,C, and D, which are known to be slightly older than A. Based on the assumption that such a massive construction project would have been beyond the capacities of the small, non-sedentary groups that usually comprise hunter-gatherer societies, most scholars have assumed that all the circles at Göbekli Tepe had to have been built gradually over a long period of time.

"There is a lot of speculation that the structures were built successively, possibly by different groups of people, and that one was covered up while the next one was being built. But there is no evidence that they are not contemporaneous," Haklay tells Haaretz.

Haklay, who formerly worked as an architect, applied a method called architectural formal analysis, which is used to trace the planning principles and methods used in the design of existing structures.

Using an algorithm, he identified the center points of the three irregular stone circles. Not surprisingly, those points fell roughly mid-way between the pair of central pillars in each enclosure. What was surprising, however, was that those three points could be linked to form a nearly perfect equilateral triangle. Specifically, the vertices are about 25 centimeters away from forming a perfect triangle with sides measuring 19.25 meters each.

"I certainly did not expect this," Haklay recalls. "The enclosures all have different sizes and shapes so the odds that these center points would form an equilateral triangle by chance are very low."

The finding confirms previous research by Haklay and Gopher at other sites showing that architects in the Neolithic or even in the late Paleolithic didn't build shelters and homes haphazardly but had the ability to apply rudimentary geometric principles and create standard units of measurement.

At Göbekli Tepe, the discovery of the pattern is evidence of a complex abstract design that could not be realized without first creating a scaled floor plan, Haklay says. At a time when the invention of writing was millennia away, this could be accomplished, for example, by using reeds of equal length to create a rudimentary blueprint on the ground, he suggests.

"Each enclosure subsequently went through a long construction history with multiple modifications, but at least in an initial phase they started as a single project," the archaeologist concludes. "The implication is that a single project at Göbekli Tepe was three times larger than previously thought and required three times as much manpower – a level that is unprecedented in hunter-gatherer societies."

Suddenly, social stratification

The construction would have required hundreds or maybe thousands of workers and could be taken to mark the birth of a more stratified society, with a level of sophistication previously seen only in later, sedentary groups of farmers, says Gopher, an archaeology professor at Tel Aviv University and Haklay's PhD advisor.

"This is where it starts: The sharing instinct of hunter-gatherer societies is reduced and inequality is growing; someone is running the show – I don't know if it's shamans or political leaders, but this is a society that has an architect and somebody who initiates a project like this and has the power to make it happen," Gopher says.

The new study is "an amazing contribution to the understanding" of this enigmatic site, says Anna Belfer-Cohen, an archaeology professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and an expert on late prehistory. However, given that there are many stone circles at Göbekli Tepe and other sites nearby that have yet to be excavated, we don't know if the same conclusions can be applied to all these enclosures, cautions Belfer-Cohen, who did not take part in the study.

"These three enclosures may have been built together, but it doesn't mean that the others were not constructed as single units, perhaps by different groups," she says. "We have only uncovered the tip of the iceberg of this phenomenon, but it is more likely that there were many different groups that considered this entire area sacred and converged on it to erect the enclosures, rather than a single group that went crazy and just constructed these complexes day and night."

The new world order

How and why Neolithic hunter-gatherers would mobilize the massive resources needed to build Göbekli Tepe and other sites like it is the subject of much speculation. While some researchers have interpreted the structures as residential spaces, most archaeologists see little evidence of this and consider the sheer monumentality of the complex and the richness of its iconography as evidence of a ritual purpose.

The massive T-shaped pillars and the reliefs on them – animal and human-like - have been interpreted as totems: perhaps representations of protective spirits, possibly long-deceased ancestors, some of whom were believed to take on animal form. The idea that the zoomorphic and anthropomorphic images may represent the venerated dead was reinforced by the recent discovery of modified skull fragments buried at the site, which many researchers consider to be evidence of ancestor cults (similarly to the interpretation of stone masks found throughout the Levant from about 9,000 years ago).

The identification of the hidden geometrical pattern strengthens the interpretation of Göbekli Tepe as a cultic site, say Haklay and Gopher. The southern side of the triangle runs through the central stone pillars of enclosures B and C, creating a base for the polygon. The axis perpendicular to this line runs through the entire site and ends in the center of enclosure D, which can be interpreted as the top of the pyramid.

This suggests that the builders understood and wished to represent the idea of a hierarchy, perhaps intending to crystalize the new order of a less equal and more stratified society, Haklay and Gopher maintain.

The stratification was not limited to human relations: it suggests a change in the perceived relationship between humans and nature, the archaeologists suggest. That's because of what is found at the top of the triangle, at the center of enclosure D.

While the site's signature T-shaped pillars have all been interpreted as stylized human figures, the central monoliths of enclosure D are the only ones that are clearly anthropomorphic, bearing reliefs of hands, a belt, and possibly a loincloth. Placing these human depictions at the top of this triangle would have been a powerful message, and represented an ideological departure from the animal-centric canons of Paleolithic art.

"In Paleolithic art humans are rare, and this is true here as well, but you start to see change, the beginning of an anthropocentric world view in which animals and plants are no longer equal to humans but are subordinated to them," Gopher tells Haaretz.

In other words, Göbekli Tepe may have been designed, consciously or unconsciously, to represent and perhaps explain humanity's growing ability to manipulate its environment, which, in the coming centuries, would lead to the first domesticated crops in this very region, the researchers say.

"The end of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is more of an ideological transformation than an economic or technological one," Gopher maintains. "Hunter-gatherers cannot domesticate anything, it's against their world view, which is based on equality and trust. Once that ideology changes, the entire structure of society is transformed and a new world is born."

Quote"Hunter-gatherers cannot domesticate anything, it's against their world view, which is based on equality and trust. ..."

Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2020, 03:54:13 AM
Also, who domesticated the first domesticated animals and plants?

Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2020, 03:54:13 AM

Quote"Hunter-gatherers cannot domesticate anything, it's against their world view, which is based on equality and trust. ..."

They told Gopher this? Can Love Boat be trusted? :hmm:

Also, who domesticated the first domesticated animals and plants?

Quote from: The Brain on April 27, 2020, 04:21:56 AM
This guy is obviously a fantasist, but even more generally I think it's a bit ridiculous how people with training (who should know better) project their own wishes on the noble savages of prehistory, instead of looking at the evidence.

One thing that may have contribued slightly (even if it's not the main cause, which is retardism), is that people's impression of hunter-gatherers are colored by those groups who remained into modern eras, typically in very resource-poor environments that made nomadism and small groups essential. The sedentary hunter-gatherers who lived on prime real estate (which was often later taken over by agriculturalists) may have more closely resembled agriculturalists than some people suggest.

IIRC one place where sedentary hunter-gatherers remained into modern times is the Pacific Northwest. My understanding is that they weren't exactly Kumbaya Central.

QuoteWe've just found the largest and oldest Mayan monument yet
Humans 3 June 2020
By Michael Marshall

The oldest and largest known monument built by the Mayan civilisation has been found in Mexico. Called Aguada Fénix, it is a huge raised platform 1.4 kilometres long.

Aguada Fénix was built around 1000 BC, centuries before the Maya began constructing their famous stepped pyramids. Its design suggests that early Mayan societies were fairly egalitarian and didn't have a powerful ruling class.

The Mayan civilisation flourished in the Americas before European colonisation. The Maya built huge cities and had an advanced knowledge of astronomy, but their civilisation collapsed around 800 AD.

Daniela Triadan at the University of Arizona in Tucson and her colleagues have described for the first time how they conducted an airborne survey using lidar, a remote sensing method that uses lasers to create a 3D map of the surface below, to scan the ground in Tabasco state in south-east Mexico.

They found 21 sites for conducting Mayan ceremonies, all centred on rectangular earthen platforms running roughly north to south.

Aguada Fénix is the largest. The main rectangular platform is made of soil and is 1413 metres long, 399 metres wide and 10 to 15 metres high. It is surrounded by smaller constructions, including additional platforms, causeways and reservoirs.

From ground level, the artificial nature of Aguada Fénix isn't obvious, says Triadan. "You think you're just walking uphill on natural terrain." But the lidar revealed its true scale. "We were like, holy cow," she says.

Building Aguada Fénix was a huge task. The team estimates that between 3.2 and 4.3 million cubic metres of earth were used, requiring 10 to 13 million person-days of work. "It would have taken probably thousands of people," says Triadan.

However, there is no evidence that people were coerced into doing the work. Triadan says Aguada Fénix may have been built by semi-nomadic people drawn from many kilometres around who collaborated and worked together. Other ancient monuments, including Göbekli Tepe in Turkey and Poverty Point in Louisiana, seem to have been built in the same way.


The flat and open design of Aguada Fénix seems to have been built with egalitarianism in mind. "The whole construction itself seems to be this communal open space," says Triadan.

There is no sign of monuments made for members of a powerful ruling class, such as large statues, Triadan says. In contrast, later Mayan pyramids were built by a society that had acquired a powerful ruling class who stood at the top of the pyramid, meaning others had to look up to them.

Journal reference: Nature, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2343-4

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2245181-weve-just-found-the-largest-and-oldest-mayan-monument-yet/#ixzz6OUFxVMil

QuoteHowever, there is no evidence that people were coerced into doing the work

Quote from: The Brain on June 05, 2020, 06:23:08 AM

QuoteHowever, there is no evidence that people were coerced into doing the work

Out of curiosity, to what extent is such evidence typically... er... in evidence at other ancient sites?

Quote from: viper37 on June 09, 2020, 11:37:17 AM

Quote from: The Brain on June 05, 2020, 06:23:08 AM

QuoteHowever, there is no evidence that people were coerced into doing the work

Out of curiosity, to what extent is such evidence typically... er... in evidence at other ancient sites?

mass graves for slaves, maybe?

Quote from: Sheilbh on June 09, 2020, 11:49:31 AM

Quote from: viper37 on June 09, 2020, 11:37:17 AM

Quote from: The Brain on June 05, 2020, 06:23:08 AM

QuoteHowever, there is no evidence that people were coerced into doing the work

Out of curiosity, to what extent is such evidence typically... er... in evidence at other ancient sites?

mass graves for slaves, maybe?

Or accommodation - I don't think they found any dwellings?

Quote from: The Brain on June 09, 2020, 11:54:14 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on June 09, 2020, 11:49:31 AM

Quote from: viper37 on June 09, 2020, 11:37:17 AM

Quote from: The Brain on June 05, 2020, 06:23:08 AM

QuoteHowever, there is no evidence that people were coerced into doing the work

Out of curiosity, to what extent is such evidence typically... er... in evidence at other ancient sites?

mass graves for slaves, maybe?

Or accommodation - I don't think they found any dwellings?

My understanding is that it can be difficult to distinguish between graves or dwellings of the poor and those of slaves, at ancient sites.

Quote from: crazy canuck on June 09, 2020, 12:52:54 PM

Quote from: The Brain on June 09, 2020, 11:54:14 AM

Quote from: Sheilbh on June 09, 2020, 11:49:31 AM

Quote from: viper37 on June 09, 2020, 11:37:17 AM

Quote from: The Brain on June 05, 2020, 06:23:08 AM

QuoteHowever, there is no evidence that people were coerced into doing the work

Out of curiosity, to what extent is such evidence typically... er... in evidence at other ancient sites?

mass graves for slaves, maybe?

Or accommodation - I don't think they found any dwellings?

My understanding is that it can be difficult to distinguish between graves or dwellings of the poor and those of slaves, at ancient sites.

And so what does the absence of either tell you?

Quote from: crazy canuck on June 09, 2020, 12:59:14 PM
Ah, so it must have been slave labour because no evidence of slaves has been found.

QuoteNative American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement

The possibility of voyaging contact between prehistoric Polynesian and Native American populations has long intrigued researchers. Proponents have pointed to the existence of New World crops, such as the sweet potato and bottle gourd, in the Polynesian archaeological record, but nowhere else outside the pre-Columbian Americas1,2,3,4,5,6, while critics have argued that these botanical dispersals need not have been human mediated7. The Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl controversially suggested that prehistoric South American populations had an important role in the settlement of east Polynesia and particularly of Easter Island (Rapa Nui)2. Several limited molecular genetic studies have reached opposing conclusions, and the possibility continues to be as hotly contested today as it was when first suggested8,9,10,11,12. Here we analyse genome-wide variation in individuals from islands across Polynesia for signs of Native American admixture, analysing 807 individuals from 17 island populations and 15 Pacific coast Native American groups. We find conclusive evidence for prehistoric contact of Polynesian individuals with Native American individuals (around AD 1200) contemporaneous with the settlement of remote Oceania13,14,15. Our analyses suggest strongly that a single contact event occurred in eastern Polynesia, before the settlement of Rapa Nui, between Polynesian individuals and a Native American group most closely related to the indigenous inhabitants of present-day Colombia.

QuoteLost medieval sacristy uncovered at Westminster Abbey
Remains of hundreds of bodies also discovered at site used as burial ground for monks

(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3f61bb9da65076406a0da225b1bb059ec2711359/0_0_1000_750/master/1000.jpg?width=605&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=517b304046a4173167b42b709c9b4f93)
The skeleton of monk discovered at Westminster Abbey, London. Photograph: Westminster Abbey
Mark Brown Arts correspondent
Sun 23 Aug 2020 13.40 BST
Last modified on Sun 23 Aug 2020 20.37 BST

A lost medieval sacristy used by 13th-century monks has been uncovered in the grounds of Westminster Abbey along with the bones of hundreds, if not thousands, of buried bodies.

"You do have to be careful where you're walking," said archaeologist Chris Mayo, pointing to a fragment of skull poking out of the sandy soil. "You can see from the ground there are burials everywhere."

Mayo has led a team working on one of the abbey's biggest archaeological projects, one that has had the aim of uncovering the foundations of the Great Sacristy on its North Green, facing the busy Victoria Street.

The sacristy was built in the 1250s by Henry III during his reconstruction of the abbey that was built by Edward the Confessor.

It was the place where monks kept their vestments, altar linens, chalices and other sacred items used in mass.

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Detail from a painting by Pietro Fabris showing the former Great Sacristy at the centre. Photograph: Westminster Abbey

Before that the site was used as a burial ground for monks, one of whom – still in remarkable condition – has been carefully and temporarily uncovered in his chalk-lined grave by the archaeological team.

The sacristy was repurposed as a domestic dwelling and in 1740, being in a perilous state, it was demolished. (<_<)

It was later uncovered and recorded in 1869 in a project directed by the celebrated architect Sir George Gilbert Scott whose buildings include the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras station in London. At the time he was the Abbey's Surveyor of the Fabric.

The team from Pre-Construct Archaeology has been working since January, with a three-month lockdown break, to understand the site better as part of a wider building project.

Authorities at the abbey want to construct a building on the site to house new welcoming, ticketing and security facilities, which they say will allow visitors to enter through the grand Great West Door, the entrance used by monarchs and royal brides but not the public.

To build on the site, the abbey wanted to fully understand the medieval footprint – hence the dig.

As the dig nears completion and before the site is covered, the Guardian was invited along to take a look. Mayo said the aim of fully exposing and recording the superstructure of the Great Sacristy had been achieved with the foundations clearly revealed.

Much had been learned and discovered with one significant find being a stoup, or basin, which was probably used by monks in Edward the Confessor's church to wash their hands as they entered. It was found upturned and reused in the 13th-century foundations.

Other finds include a lead pipe, which would have supplied water to the monastery and probably dates from the 13th century.

Many fragments of medieval painted wall plaster have been found, suggesting the walls of the Great Sacristy were decorated with handpainted red, white and black flowers.

The team also found a large number of 18th-century domestic objects, including china plates, chamber pots, glass drinking vessels and an assortment of combs and brushes.

Not surprisingly given its past as a known burial ground before the sacristy and during the 18th century, lots of human remains have been discovered.

There must be "hundreds if not thousands", Mayo said, adding "this will be the case right the way across the Abbey site. Ultimately the Abbey's grounds once went much further still... this whole area was awash with burials. If you dug a hole underneath the supreme court you'd find a few burials as well."

As with many archaeological digs there have also been moments of excitement, followed by juddering letdown.

A stacked grave was found leading to speculation that it could be some of the regicides, the men involved in the execution of Charles I whose bodies Charles II ordered to be taken from the abbey and thrown in a pit. Unfortunately the dates meant that was not possible.

The discovery of an impressive medieval sarcophagus also raised hopes that the team could have found the remains of someone in charge of the Great Sacristy.

"What we've found is that the individual has been taken out and the sarcophagus has been re-used as a drain," said a disappointed Mayo. "It does take some of the gloss off."

Quote from: Sheilbh on August 24, 2020, 10:13:52 AM
[
Edit: Although - query if these graves were "lost" if they've been known for 300 years :hmm:

Quote from: The Brain on August 24, 2020, 10:52:04 AM
Not in the Biblical sense.

Quote
The summer of 2019 was unusually scorching across Europe and beyond, and things have only grown more intense in the already hot and dry region of Extremadura in Spain. Months into an official drought that could be developing into a mega-drought, local farmers are facing the loss of hundreds of millions of euros. Many think this is just a sign of things to come.

Droughts, and the way that they strip the land of plant cover and drain lakes and reservoirs, for all the problems they cause, are often a boon for archaeologists. The water level of the Valdecañas Reservoir in the province of Cáceres has dropped so low that it is providing an extraordinary glimpse into the past.

"All my life, people had told me about the dolmen," says Angel Castaño, a resident of Peraleda de la Mata, a village just a couple miles from the reservoir, and president of the local cultural association. "I had seen parts of it peeking out from the water before, but this is the first time I've seen it in full. It's spectacular because you can appreciate the entire complex for the first time in decades."

The dolmen he's talking about is known as the Dolmen of Guadalperal, the remains of a 7,000-year old megalithic monument consisting of around 100 standing stones—some up to six feet tall—arranged around an oval open space. It takes hours of hiking to get to the dolmen, which is now a few dozen yards away from the edge of the tranquil blue water. Visitors today are more likely to see deer than guards. Traces of aquatic plant life in the sand show that the site is dry and accessible only temporarily.

"When we saw it, we were completely thrilled," Castaño says. "It felt like we had discovered a megalithic monument ourselves."

Archaeologists believe the dolmen was likely erected on the banks of the Tagus River in the fifth millennium BC, as a completely enclosed space, like a stone house with a massive cap stone on top. And though it had been known, perhaps even damaged, by the Romans, it had faded beyond memory until German archaeologist Hugo Obermaier led an excavation of the site in the mid-1920s. Obermaier's work wasn't published until 1960, but by then the tide of the 20th century was on its way to the ancient site.

In his quest to modernize Spain, Francisco Franco's regime carried out a number of massive civil engineering projects, including a dam and reservoir that flooded the Dolmen of Guadalperal in 1963. Archaeological studies and environmental impact reports before such projects weren't regular practice at the time, says Primitiva Bueno Ramirez, a specialist in prehistory at the University of Alcalá. "You couldn't believe how many authentic archaeological and historic gems are submerged under Spain's man-made lakes."

The Valdecañas Reservoir brought water and electricity to underdeveloped parts of western Spain, but that came at a cost. "The flooding was tragic on many levels," says Castaño. "From the historic point of view, it drowned these megalithic monuments and most of the remains of a Roman city called Augustóbriga. [Portions of the ruins were relocated to a nearby hilltop.] From the human point of view, an inhabited town was flooded and people were forced to move out of their homes."

[...]

QuoteScientists find intact brain cells in skull of man killed in Vesuvius eruption nearly 2,000 years ago

A section of vitrified brain tissue from the remains of a young man who died in AD 79 after Mount Vesuvius erupted.

(CNN)The brain cells of a young man who died almost 2,000 years ago in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius have been found intact by a team of researchers in Italy.
The discovery was made when the experts studied remains first uncovered in the 1960s in Herculaneum, a city buried by ash during the volcanic eruption in AD 79.
The victim, who was found lying face-down on a wooden bed in a building thought to have been devoted to the worship of the Emperor Augustus, was around 25 years old at the time of his death, according to the researchers.

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Pier Paolo Petrone, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Naples Federico II who led the research, told CNN that the project started when he saw "some glassy material shining from within the skull" while he was working near the skeleton in 2018. In a paper published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, Petrone and his colleagues revealed that this shiny appearance was caused by the vitrification of the victim's brain due to intense heat followed by rapid cooling. Speaking about this process, Petrone said: "The brain exposed to the hot volcanic ash must first have liquefied and then immediately turned into a glassy material by the rapid cooling of the volcanic ash deposit."
After subsequent analysis including the use of an electron microscope, the team found cells in the vitrified brain, which were "incredibly well preserved with a resolution that is impossible to find anywhere else," according to Petrone. The researchers also found intact nerve cells in the spinal cord, which, like the brain, had been vitrified. The latest findings were published in the American journal PLOS One.

Guido Giordano, a volcanologist at Roma Tre University who worked on the study, told CNN that charred wood found next to the skeleton allowed the researchers to conclude that the site reached a temperature of more than 500 degrees Celsius (932 degrees Fahrenheit) after the eruption.
Referring to the latest findings, Giordano said the "perfectness of preservation" found in vitrification was "totally unprecedented" and was a boon to researchers.
"This opens up the room for studies of these ancient people that have never been possible," he said.
The team of researchers -- archaeologists, biologists, forensic scientists, neurogeneticists and mathematicians from Naples, Milan and Rome -- will continue studying the remains.

They want to learn more about the vitrification process -- including the exact temperatures victims were exposed to, as well as the cooling rate of the volcanic ash -- and also hope to analyze proteins from the remains and their related genes, according to Petrone.
The former task is "crucial for the evaluation of the risk by the relevant authorities in the event of a possible future eruption of Vesuvius, the most dangerous volcano in the world, which looms over 3 million inhabitants of Naples and its surroundings," Petrone said.

Quote from: Syt on October 15, 2020, 03:54:38 PM
How do the Golgafrinchams factor into that replacement?

Quote from: Admiral Yi on October 15, 2020, 05:49:29 PM
Maybe the earlier groups were too damn fugly.

Quote from: Malthus on October 15, 2020, 06:27:31 PM
Heh. 😄

In all seriousness though - many years ago when I was in university, the "pots or people" controversy was a big deal, namely - did the widespread "Beaker People" (known from the distinctive beaker-shaped pottery they included as burial goods) really represent a new group of people, or did the burial practices and other cultural traits diffuse across Europe with only a few folks actually physically moving?

In the olden days, there was certainly some evidence that they were different (for one, the skull shaped looked different on average - but that is hardly infallible) and later, isotope analysis of teeth showed that some individuals moved, like the "Amesbury Archer". He grew up somewhere in the Alps. But that sone individuals moved didn't answer the question ... only large scale genetic studies could do that.

Quote from: mongers on October 15, 2020, 06:37:46 PM

Quote from: Malthus on October 15, 2020, 06:27:31 PM
Heh. 😄

In all seriousness though - many years ago when I was in university, the "pots or people" controversy was a big deal, namely - did the widespread "Beaker People" (known from the distinctive beaker-shaped pottery they included as burial goods) really represent a new group of people, or did the burial practices and other cultural traits diffuse across Europe with only a few folks actually physically moving?

In the olden days, there was certainly some evidence that they were different (for one, the skull shaped looked different on average - but that is hardly infallible) and later, isotope analysis of teeth showed that some individuals moved, like the "Amesbury Archer". He grew up somewhere in the Alps. But that sone individuals moved didn't answer the question ... only large scale genetic studies could do that.

He's in our Salisbury museum, very well presented and a great story.

IIRC his burial includes the earliest gold artefacts found in the UK,two small finger guards?

Quote from: Valmy on October 15, 2020, 05:15:07 PM
My guess would be infectious disease arrived with the newcomers in the previous instances.

QuoteFrom the Archives: Archaeologists working beneath Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Sun unearthed artifacts that may have been meant to consecrate its construction around A.D. 200, including a greenstone mask similar to those found in the tombs of Maya rulers.

QuoteChilling find shows how Henry VIII planned every detail of Boleyn beheading

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The execution of Anne Boleyn, on 19 May, 1536, was conducted by a French swordsman to limit her pain. Photograph: Bettmann Archive

Archives discovery shows the calculated nature of the execution and reinforces the image of the king as a 'pathological monster'
Dalya Alberge
Sun 25 Oct 2020 08.00 GMT

It is a Tudor warrant book, one of many in the National Archives, filled with bureaucratic minutiae relating to 16th-century crimes. But this one has an extraordinary passage, overlooked until now, which bears instructions from Henry VIII explaining precisely how he wanted his second wife, Anne Boleyn, to be executed.

In this document, the king stipulated that, although his queen had been "adjudged to death... by burning of fire... or decapitation", he had been "moved by pity" to spare her the more painful death of being "burned by fire". But he continued: "We, however, command that... the head of the same Anne shall be... cut off."

Tracy Borman, a leading Tudor historian, described the warrant book as an astonishing discovery, reinforcing the image of Henry VIII as a "pathological monster". She told the Observer: "As a previously unknown document about one of the most famous events in history, it really is golddust, one of the most exciting finds in recent years. What it shows is Henry's premeditated, calculating manner. He knows exactly how and where he wants it to happen." The instructions laid out by Henry are for Sir William Kingston, constable of the Tower, detailing how the king would rid himself of the "late queen of England, lately our wife, lately attainted and convicted of high treason".

Boleyn was incarcerated in the Tower of London on 2 May 1536 for adultery. At her trial, she was depicted as unable to control her "carnal lusts". She refuted the charges but was found guilty of treason and condemned to be burned or beheaded at "the King's pleasure".

Most historians agree the charges were bogus – her only crime had been her failure to give Henry a son. The most famous king in English history married six times in his relentless quest for a male heir. He divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Boleyn – the marriage led him to break with the Catholic church and brought about the English Reformation. Boleyn did bear him a daughter, who became Elizabeth I.

In recent years, the story of Boleyn's life and death have reached a new audience thanks to Hilary Mantel's bestselling saga tracing the life of Thomas Cromwell, a blacksmith's son who became one of Henry VIII's most trusted advisers. In the Booker-prize-winning Bring Up the Bodies, she explored the destruction of Boleyn, writing of her execution: "Three years ago when she went to be crowned, she walked on a blue cloth that stretched the length of the abbey... Now she must shift over the rough ground... with her body hollow and light and just as many hands around her, ready to retrieve her from any stumble and deliver her safely to death."

The warrant book reveals that Henry worked out details such as the exact spot for the execution ("upon the Green within our Tower of London"), making clear Kingston should "omit nothing" from his orders.

Borman is joint chief curator for Historic Royal Palaces, the charity that manages the Tower of London, among other sites. She will include the discovery in her forthcoming Channel 5 series, The Fall of Anne Boleyn, which begins in December.

She had visited the National Archives to study the Anne Boleyn trial papers when archivist Sean Cunningham, a Tudor expert, drew her attention to a passage he had discovered in a warrant book. Most of these warrants are "just the minutiae of Tudor government", she said. "They're pretty dull. The Tudors were great bureaucrats, and there are an awful lot of these warrant books and account books within the National Archives... It's thanks to Sean's eye for detail that it was uncovered."

Borman argues that, despite the coldness of the instructions, the fact Henry spared Boleyn from being burned – a slow, agonising death – was a real kindness by the standards of the day. A beheading with an axe could also involve several blows, and Henry had specified that Boleyn's head should be "cut off', which meant by sword, a more reliable form of execution, but not used in England, which is why he had Cromwell send to Calais for a swordsman.

Henry's instructions were not followed to the letter, though, partly due to a series of blunders, Borman said. "The execution didn't take place on Tower Green, which is actually where we still mark it at the Tower today. More recent research has proved that... it was moved to opposite what is today the Waterloo Block, home of the crown jewels."

She added: "Because we know the story so well, we forget how deeply shocking it was to execute a queen. They could well have got the collywobbles and thought we're not going to do this. So this is Henry making really sure of it. For years, his trusty adviser Thomas Cromwell has got the blame. But this shows, actually, it's Henry pulling the strings."

Quote
Study finds indications of life on Doggerland after devastating tsunamis
Scientists suggest parts of expanse that once connected Britain to mainland Europe survived waves and had settlements
Esther Addley
Tue 1 Dec 2020 00.01 GMT
Last modified on Tue 1 Dec 2020 12.23 GMT

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View across the Wash estuary from Snettisham in Norfolk. Photograph: Simon Stirrup/Alamy Stock Photo

Breaking away from Europe has never been straightforward.

Eight thousand years ago, a series of enormous tsunamis swept through the North Sea and struck the coast of what is now Britain, with devastating effects.

The landmass had previously been connected to continental Europe by a huge expanse known as Doggerland, which had allowed early Mesolithic hunter gatherers to migrate northwards, but rising sea levels had already flooded much of the connecting land. So huge was the tsunami event, many scientists believed it had finally swept away Doggerland for good.

Now a new analysis of the seabed and its sediments suggests that some parts of Doggerland survived the waves as a scattered archipelago of islands.

That matters, argue the British and Estonian scientists behind the research, because the land that remained could have been a staging post for the first Neolithic farmers to settle in Britain thousands of years later, and may still carry the archaeological traces of their early settlements, even if they, too, are now under the sea.

The research, the scientists hope, could also feed into planning against similar future events as the North Sea becomes ever more developed.

"If you were standing on the shoreline on that day, 8,200 years ago, there is no doubt it would have been a bad day for you," said Vincent Gaffney, professor of landscape archaeology at the University of Bradford. "It was a catastrophe. Many people, possibly thousands of people, must have died."

The cataclysmic event, known as the Storegga slides, hit around 6150BC and were triggered by enormous underwater landslips off the coast of Norway. While their date and cause are well established, the devastation they caused has not been fully understood because much of the evidence is now deep under water.

After 15 years of extensive mapping of the area, the researchers were able to identify former river valleys and lakes across Doggerland, and sink sedimentary cores deep into the seabed. One core, obtained off what is now the north coast of Norfolk at the Wash estuary, contained sedimentary evidence of the flood – the first such evidence from the southern North Sea.

The team's research showed that in places the tsunamis had swept up to 25 miles (40km) inland along valleys and low-lying areas, but that dense woodlands and hills may have protected other parts of the region. While most of Doggerland was inundated, the archipelago survived for millennia, until it too was swallowed by rising sea levels caused by climate change.

If sedimentary evidence for the period is hard to find, archaeological remains from Doggerland's early occupiers are even more elusive. However, Gaffney said the people of the area may have been more settled than is often assumed of hunter-gatherer societies.

Such assumptions have inevitably been based on the evidence that has been found on (present day) land, he said, "but this [was] not the optimal area to live in. It's on the coastlines, on the great plains, where there are so many more resources and where habitation may have been a bit different."

Rather than being permanently on the move "with lifestyles which are short, brutish and nasty", he said, the people of Doggerland may have been able to settle semi-permanently in coastal areas that were richer in resources.

Gaffney added: "We can't see [the evidence for their settlements], because the area is enormous, and it's covered by tens of metres of sea and marine silt." By using topographic and seismic data, however, the scientists were able to predict where settlements were most likely to have been located, and potentially where the first farmers later made contact.

"That's a global first. There is nothing, anywhere in the world, like the amount of work that has happened over the last decade in the North Sea," said Gaffney.

Plans for large-scale development of the area, particularly in offshore wind farms, offer a "phenomenal opportunity" to find out more, he added. "I'm sure many archaeologists will be working with wind farms to find out about this absolutely unique archaeological resource, just off our coast."

The research is published in the December issue of the journal Antiquity.

QuoteStunning dark ages mosaic found at Roman villa in Cotswolds
Fifth-century discovery suggests break with Rome did not cause steep decline in living standards for all

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An archaeologist works on the mosaic at Chedworth Roman villa. Photograph: Stephen Haywood/National Trust
Steven Morris
@stevenmorris20
Thu 10 Dec 2020 00.01 GMT

Life at the start of the dark ages in Britain is generally thought of as a pretty uncomfortable time, an era of trouble and strife with the departure of Roman rulers resulting in economic hardship and cultural stagnation.

But a stunning discovery at the Chedworth Roman villa in the Cotswolds suggests that some people at least managed to maintain a rich and sophisticated lifestyle.

National Trust archaeologists have established that a mosaic at the Gloucestershire villa was probably laid in the middle of the fifth century, years after such homes were thought to have been abandoned and fallen into ruin.

The mosaic, found in what may have been a summer dining room, is not quite as splendid as the ones at the villa dating to Roman times, but it seems to show the residents were clinging on to a very decent standard of living.

Martin Papworth, a National Trust archaeologist, said the find was hugely exciting. He said: "The fifth century is a time which marks the beginning of the sub-Roman period, often called the dark ages, a time from which few documents survive, and archaeological evidence is scarce."

Four hundred years of Roman rule ended in Britain in about 410AD. Papworth said: "It has generally been believed that most of the population turned to subsistence farming and, after the break with Rome, Britannia's administrative system broke down into a series of local fiefdoms.

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Aerial view of the mosaic. Photograph: Mike Calnan/National Trust

"What is so exciting about the dating of this mosaic at Chedworth is that it is evidence for a more gradual decline. The creation of a new room and the laying of a new floor suggests wealth, and a mosaic industry continuing 50 years later than had been expected."

The fifth-century mosaic is of an intricate design. Its outer border is a series of circles alternately filled with flowers and knots. It is of poorer quality than the fourth-century ones found at the villa and others like it. There are several mistakes, suggesting the skills of the craftspeople were being eroded. But it is nevertheless an attractive floor.

The identities of the people living at the villa in this era are lost in the mists of time. "They could have been dignitaries, people with money, influence and friends in high places," said Papworth.

He suggested it was also possible that the area was not so badly affected by hostile raids that were taking place in the north and east. "It is interesting to speculate why Chedworth villa's owners were still living in this style well into the fifth century. It seems that in the West Country, the Romanised way of life was sustained for a while."

It was possible to date the mosaic thanks to traces of carbon found in a trench dug to build a wall to create the room the mosaic was found in. Dating the carbon strongly suggested the wall was built between 424 and 544 AD. The mosaic was laid in the newly created room after the wall was built.

Stephen Cosh, who has written about Britain's known Roman mosaics, said:"I am still reeling from the shock. It will be important to research further sites in the region to see whether we can demonstrate a similar refurbishment at other villas which continued to be occupied in the fifth century. But there is no question that this find at Chedworth is of enormous significance – it's tremendously exciting."

Quote from: Tamas on December 10, 2020, 04:49:01 AM
Maybe it was that the truly great craftsmen never settled in a remote place like Britain and had to be called over even during the best of times. Business had to be more booming for them in the centre of the Empire.

Quote from: Malthus on December 01, 2020, 11:16:19 AM
The great unanswered question of the archaeology of Great Britain is what actually happened to the hunter-gatherer population, and what happened to the Neolithic population. Both appear to have been almost entirely displaced (hunter gatherers by Neolithic, Neolithic by "Beaker People"), with very little genetic survival - a displacement that hasn't happened since (for example, the Anglo-Saxon invasion did not lead to genetic displacement).

Was the preceding population killed off? There is no evidence for a massacre (at least, none found).  Outcompeted for land, without killing off? Introduced diseases? No one knows. It seems unlikely that the Neolithic farmers would have even been capable of massacring hunter-gatherers - perhaps they just gradually took over all the best land and, over time, pushed the hunter gatherers to the margins. It is also very odd that there was little or no intermarriage (judging by genetic legacy). The disappearance of the Neolithic farmers is even more odd.

QuoteMysterious carvings and evidence of human sacrifice uncovered in ancient city

Discoveries at the sprawling site have archaeologists rethinking the roots of Chinese civilization.

BY BROOK LARMER
PUBLISHED AUGUST 6, 2020

THE STONES DIDN'T give up their secrets easily. For decades, villagers in the dust-blown hills of China's Loess Plateau believed that the crumbling rock walls near their homes were part of the Great Wall. It made sense. Remnants of the ancient barrier zigzag through this arid region inside the northern loop of the Yellow River, marking the frontier of Chinese rule stretching back more than 2,000 years.

But one detail was curiously out of place: Locals, and then looters, began finding in the rubble pieces of jade, some fashioned into discs and blades and scepters. Jade is not indigenous to this northernmost part of Shaanxi Province—the nearest source is almost a thousand miles away—and it was not a known feature of the Great Wall. Why was it showing up in abundance in this barren region so close to the Ordos Desert?

When a team of Chinese archaeologists came to investigate the conundrum several years ago, they began to unearth something wondrous and puzzling. The stones were not part of the Great Wall but the ruins of a magnificent fortress city. The ongoing dig has revealed more than six miles of protective walls surrounding a 230-foot-high pyramid and an inner sanctum with painted murals, jade artifacts—and gruesome evidence of human sacrifice.

Before excavations were suspended earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, archaeologists uncovered 70 stunning relief sculptures in stone—serpents, monsters, and half-human beasts that resemble later Bronze Age iconography in China.

Even more astonishing: Carbon-dating determined that parts of Shimao, as the site is called (its original name is unknown), date back 4,300 years, nearly 2,000 years before the oldest section of the Great Wall—and 500 years before Chinese civilization took root on the Central Plains, several hundred miles to the south.

Shimao flourished in this seemingly remote region for nearly half a millennium, from around 2300 B.C. to 1800 B.C. Then, suddenly and mysteriously, it was abandoned.

None of the ancient texts that have helped guide Chinese archaeology mention an ancient city so far north of the so-called "cradle of Chinese civilization," much less one of such size, complexity, and intense interaction with outside cultures. Shimao is now the largest known Neolithic settlement in China—its 1,000-acre expanse is about 25 percent bigger than New York City's Central Park—with art and technology that came from the northern steppe and would influence future Chinese dynasties.

Together with recent discoveries at other prehistoric sites nearby and along the coast, Shimao is forcing historians to rethink the beginnings of Chinese civilization—expanding their understanding of the geographical locations and outside influences of its earliest cultures.

"Shimao is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of this century," says Sun Zhouyong, director of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology and leader of the dig at Shimao. "It gives us a new way of looking at the development of China's early civilization."

Designed for danger
The first impression of Shimao, even as a partially excavated site in the barren hills above the Tuwei River, is of a city designed to face constant danger. The city was built in a conflict zone, a borderland dominated for thousands of years by warfare between herders of the northern steppe and farmers of the central plains.

To protect themselves from violent rivals, the Shimao elites molded their oblong 20-tiered pyramid on the highest of those hills. The structure, visible from every point of the city, is about half the height of Egypt's Great Pyramid at Giza, which was built around the same time (2250 B.C.). But its base is four times larger, and the Shimao elites protected themselves further by inhabiting the top tier of the platform, which included a 20-acre palatial complex with its own water reservoir, craft workshops, and, most likely, ritual temples.

Radiating out from Shimao's central pyramid were miles of inner and outer perimeter walls, an embryonic urban design that has been echoed in Chinese cities through the ages. The walls alone required 125,000 cubic meters of stone, equal in volume to 50 Olympic swimming pools—a huge undertaking in a Neolithic society whose population likely ranged between 10,000 and 20,000. The sheer size of the project leads archaeologists to believe that Shimao commanded the loyalty—and labor—of smaller satellite towns that have recently been discovered in its orbit.

More than 70 stone towns from the same Neolithic era, known as the Longshan period, have now been unearthed in northern Shaanxi province. Ten of them are in the Tuwei river basin, where Shimao is located. "These satellite villages or towns are like moons circling around the Shimao site," Sun says. "Together they laid a solid social foundation for the early state formation at Shimao."

Shimao's fortifications are astonishing not just for their size but also for their ingenuity. The defensive system included barbicans (gates flanked by towers), baffle gates (allowing only one-way entry), and bastions (a projecting part of the wall allowing defensive fire in multiple directions). It also employed a "mamian" ("horse-face") structure whose angles drew attackers into an area where defenders could pummel them from three sides—a design that would become a staple of Chinese defensive architecture.

Inside the stone walls, Sun's team found another unexpected innovation: wooden beams used as reinforcement. Carbon-dated to 2300 B.C., the still-intact cypress beams represented a method of construction that scholars previously thought had only begun in the Han Dynasty—more than 2,000 years later.

Grisly discovery
The most grisly discovery came underneath the city's eastern wall: 80 human skulls clustered in six pits—with no skeletons attached. (The two pits closest to the East Gate, the city's principal entrance, contained exactly 24 skulls each.) The skulls' number and placement suggest a ritual beheading during the laying of the wall's foundation—the earliest known example of human sacrifice in Chinese history. Forensic scientists determined that almost all of the victims were young girls, most likely prisoners who belonged to a rival group.

"The scale of ritual violence observed at Shimao was unprecedented in early China," says Li Min, an archaeologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has visited and written extensively about Shimao. The skulls at Shimao foreshadowed the massive human sacrifice that became what Li calls "a defining attribute of Shang civilization" many centuries later (from around 1600 to 1046 B.C.) before succeeding dynasties put an end to the practice.

The skulls are just one indication that the East Gate marked the entrance to a different world. Anyone walking across the threshold—above the buried sacrificial pits—would have been awed by more immediately visible signs. Several stone blocks in the high terrace walls were carved with lozenge designs, making them appear like enormous eyes gazing down at the East Gate. Wedged into the stone walls at regular intervals were thousands of pieces of black and dark green jade, shimmering ornaments that served both to ward off evil and to project the power and wealth of Shimao elites. The abundance of jade artifacts suggests that Shimao, with no source of its own, imported large quantities from distant trading partners.


Despite its seeming remoteness today, Shimao was not insulated from the outside world. It exchanged ideas, technology, and goods with a wide range of other cultures, from the Altai steppe to the north to coastal regions near the Yellow Sea.

"What is significant is that Shimao, along with many other areas, shows that China's civilization has many roots and does not emerge just from the growth in the Central Plains on the middle Yellow River," says Jessica Rawson, a professor of Chinese Art and Archaeology at the University of Oxford. "Several features were taken from the world beyond even today's northern China—for example, stone structures, that have more relation to the steppe than to the Central Plains. Other features are herded animals for subsistence, oxen and sheep and metallurgy. These are actually very important technologies that China adopted and incorporated seamlessly into their culture."

Many artifacts found at Shimao could only have come from distant lands. Besides the jade, archaeologists also found the remains of alligator skins, which must have come from a swampier region much farther south. Alligator-skin drums were likely used during ritual ceremonies, one sign of the vital role music played in Shimao palace life.

Another discovery flummoxed Sun and his team: 20 identical pieces of bone, thin, smooth, and curved. The archaeologists guessed that these were combs or hairpins, until a musical scholar deduced that the bones were the earliest examples of a primitive reed instrument known in Chinese as the mouth reed and more colloquially as the Jew's harp.

"Shimao is the birthplace of the mouth reed," says Sun, noting that the instrument spread to more than 100 ethnic groups across the world. "It is an important discovery that provides valuable clues to explore the early flows of population and culture."

Mysteries and clues
Only a small fraction of Shimao has been excavated so far, so the discoveries keep coming. Along with the stone carvings uncovered last year, archaeologists found evidence of human busts and statues that were once set into the walls around the East Gate. We are only beginning to understand what the carvings might signify, says UCLA's Li Min, but the anthropomorphic representations are "a very innovative and rare attempt."

So much about Shimao remains cloaked in mystery, including its name. Archaeologists are still trying to understand how its economy functioned, how it interacted with other prehistoric cultures, and whether its elites possessed a writing system. "That would solve a long-standing mystery," says Sun.

There are some clues, however, to why Shimao was abandoned after 500 years. It wasn't earthquake, flood, or plague. A war might have helped drive them out, but scientists see more evidence that climate change played a pivotal role.

In the third millennium B.C., when Shimao was founded, a relatively warm and wet climate drew an expanding population into the Loess Plateau. Historical records show a rapid shift from 2000 to 1700 B.C. to a drier and cooler climate. Lakes dried up, forests disappeared, deserts encroached, and the people of Shimao migrated to parts unknown.

The once-distant tongue of the Ordos Desert now laps at the banks of the Tuwei River, just below the entrance to Shimao. The ancient site is shrouded in dust and rocks and silence. Yet, after 4,300 years, one of the world's oldest cities is no longer lost to history, no longer abandoned. Its stones have given up a precious load of secrets, challenging our understanding of the earliest period of Chinese civilization. Many more revelations are sure to come.

Quote from: The Brain on December 22, 2020, 04:05:06 AM
That's awesome. :)

QuoteThe Skeletons at the Lake

Genetic analysis of human remains found in the Himalayas has raised baffling questions about who these people were and why they were there.

In the winter of 1942, on the shores of a lake high in the Himalayas, a forest ranger came across hundreds of bones and skulls, some with flesh still on them. When the snow and ice melted that summer, many more were visible through the clear water, lying on the bottom. The lake, a glacial tarn called Roopkund, was more than sixteen thousand feet above sea level, an arduous five-day trek from human habitation, in a mountain cirque surrounded by snowfields and battered by storms. In the midst of the Second World War, British officials in India initially worried that the dead might be the remains of Japanese soldiers attempting a secret invasion. The apparent age of the bones quickly dispelled that idea. But what had happened to all these people? Why were they in the mountains, and when and how had they died?

In 1956, the Anthropological Survey of India, in Calcutta, sponsored several expeditions to Roopkund to investigate. A snowstorm forced the first expedition to turn back, but two months later another expedition made it and returned to Calcutta with remains for study. Carbon dating, still an unreliable innovation, indicated that the bones were between five hundred and eight hundred years old.

Indian scientists were intensely interested in the Roopkund mystery. The lake, some thought, was a place where holy men committed ritual suicide. Or maybe the dead were a detachment of soldiers from a thirteenth-century army sent by the Sultan of Delhi in an ill-fated attempt to invade Tibet, or a group of Tibet-bound traders who had lost their way. Perhaps this was hallowed ground, an open-air cemetery, or a place where victims of an epidemic were dumped to prevent contagion.

People in the villages below Roopkund had their own explanation, passed down in folk songs and stories. The villages are on the route of a pilgrimage to honor Nanda Devi, a manifestation of Parvati, a supreme goddess in Hinduism. The pilgrimage winds up through the foothills of the Trisul massif, where locals believe that the goddess lives with her husband, Shiva. It may be the longest and most dangerous pilgrimage in India, and a particularly perilous section—the Jyumra Gali, or Path of Death—runs along a ridge high above Roopkund. As the villagers tell it, long ago Nanda Devi left her home to visit a distant kingdom, where she was treated discourteously by the king and queen. Nanda Devi cursed the kingdom, unleashing drought and disaster, and infesting the milk and rice with maggots. In order to appease the goddess, the royal couple embarked on a pilgrimage. The king, who liked his entertainments, took along a bevy of dancing courtesans and musicians, in violation of the ascetic traditions of the pilgrimage. Nanda Devi was furious at the display of earthly pleasures, and she shoved the dancing girls down into the underworld. The pits into which they are said to have sunk are still visible high on a mountainside. Then, according to the legend, she sent down a blizzard of hail and a whirlwind, which swept all the pilgrims on the Path of Death into the lake. Their skeletons are a warning to those who would disrespect the goddess.

This story is retold in "Mountain Goddess," a 1991 book by the American anthropologist William Sax. Now a professor at Heidelberg University, he stumbled upon a reference to the lake and the bodies as an undergraduate, in the nineteen-seventies, and was fascinated. He and a friend travelled to the hamlet of Wan, the settlement closest to Roopkund, where a local man agreed to guide them up the pilgrim trail to the lake. The trail climbs through deep forests, emerging above the tree line, at eleven and a half thousand feet, into meadows carpeted with wildflowers. To the north is a vast wall of Himalayan peaks, some of the highest in the world. From there, the route follows steep ridgelines and leads past an ancient stone shrine, festooned with bronze bells and tridents and containing a statue of the elephant deity Ganesha. Then, at fifteen thousand feet, it goes over a pass and up a series of switchbacks through scree to Roopkund. The lake, about a hundred and thirty feet across and ten feet deep, is an emerald jewel nestled in a bowl of rock and ice. (In Hindi, roop kund means "beautifully shaped lake.") Almost as soon as Sax and his companions arrived, they were engulfed by a blizzard and stumbled around the bone-strewn cirque in whiteout conditions, calling for one another and nearly adding their own bodies to the charnel ground.

Exhausted and feverish, Sax barely made it back to Wan with his companions, and spent ten days recovering in his guide's stone hut. Yet his passion for the place was undimmed. He went on to write a doctoral thesis about the local traditions surrounding Nanda Devi. In the late eighties, he went on the pilgrimage himself, the only Westerner to have done so at that time, after which he published "Mountain Goddess." The book describes how the Himalayas, "associated for thousands of years in India's literatures with famous pilgrimage places and powerful, ascetic renouncers," became the setting for followers to show devotion to the goddess by "giving suffering" to their bodies.

In 2005, Sax was featured in a National Geographic documentary about the lake. The Indian media company that made the film assembled a team of archeologists, anthropologists, geneticists, and technicians from research laboratories in India and the U.K. to collect and study the bones. In the decades since Sax first visited, the lake had become a popular destination in the trekking community and the site was being ruined. Bones had been stolen; others had been rearranged in fanciful patterns or piled in cairns. Almost none of the skeletons were intact, and it was impossible to tell which bones belonged together or where they had originally lain. Nature had added to the confusion, churning and fracturing the bones with rock slides and avalanches. But a recent landslide had exposed a cache of fresh bones and artifacts. Under a slab of rock, the team found the remains of a woman, bent double. The body was intact and still had skin and flesh. The scientists removed tissue samples for testing, shot video, and collected bones and artifacts. The team estimated that the area contained the remains of between three hundred and seven hundred people.

The scientific analysis swiftly discounted most of the prevailing theories. These were not the remains of a lost army: the bones were from men, women, and children. Aside from a single iron spearhead, no weapons were found, and there was no trace of horses. The bones showed no evidence of battle, ritual suicide, murder, or epidemic disease. Nor was Roopkund a cemetery: most of the individuals were healthy and between eighteen and thirty-five years old. Meanwhile, the team's geographic analysis laid to rest the idea of traders lost in the mountains, establishing that no trade route between India and Tibet had ever existed in the area. Although the Tibetan border is only thirty-five miles north of Roopkund, the mountains form an impassable barrier. Besides, no trade goods or beasts of burden were found with the bodies. Artifacts retrieved included dozens of leather slippers, pieces of parasols made of bamboo and birch bark, and bangles made of seashells and glass. Devotees of Nanda Devi carry parasols and wear bangles on the pilgrimage. The dead, it appeared, were most likely pilgrims.

DNA analysis showed that all the victims appeared to have a genetic makeup typical of South Asian origin. Bone and tissue samples were sent to Oxford University for carbon dating. The new dates, far more accurate than the 1956 ones, formed a tight cluster in the ninth century. Tom Higham, who performed the analysis, concluded that the victims had perished in a single event and had "died instantaneously within hours of one another." Meanwhile, a team of bioarcheologists and paleopathologists noted the presence of two distinct groups: there were "rugged, tall" people with long heads and also some "medium height, lightly built, round headed" people, who displayed a curious shallow groove across the vault of the skull. The scientists concluded that the dead represented two populations: a group of tall Brahmans from the plains of India and a company of shorter, local porters, whose skulls were marked by years of carrying heavy loads with a tumpline looped over their heads.

The investigation also revealed that three or possibly four skulls had compression fractures on the crown that had probably occurred at the time of death. "It is not a weapon injury," the researchers noted, but came "from a blow from a blunt and round heavy object." This stretch of the Himalayas is notorious for hailstorms, which destroy crops and damage property. The team concluded that, around the year 800 A.D., a group of pilgrims were caught in a storm on the exposed ridge above Roopkund and were pummelled to death by giant hailstones. Over the years, landslides and avalanches had rolled the bodies down the steep slope into the lake and the surrounding area. Not only did the mystery of Roopkund appear to be solved; it also seemed that the local tales of Nanda Devi's wrath had originated in an actual event.

Last year, however, Nature Communications published the baffling results of a new study conducted by sixteen research institutions across three continents. Genetic analysis and new carbon dating revealed that a significant proportion of the Roopkund remains belonged to people from somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, most likely near Crete, and that they had perished at the lake only a couple of centuries ago.

India is an ideal country for studying human genetics, ancient and modern. There are fewer cultural barriers to handling human biological materials than in many parts of the world, and Indian scientists have eagerly pursued research into the peopling of the subcontinent. Geneticists have sampled the DNA of hundreds of living populations, making India one of the most genetically mapped countries in the world. In 2008, David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard, made the first of many trips to the country, and visited a leading life-science research institution, the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, in Hyderabad. While there, he discussed someday collaborating on a more detailed study of the Roopkund bones with the center's director, Lalji Singh, and Kumarasamy Thangaraj, a geneticist who had headed up the previous DNA analysis. By the time work began, in 2015, the team, led by the Reich lab and the laboratory in Hyderabad, also included researchers at Pennsylvania State University, the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and the Anthropological Survey of India, where many of the Roopkund bones reside.

Not long before the covid-19 pandemic shut down the U.S., I visited Reich at Harvard Medical School. His office is a minimalist space with a whiteboard, a table, and a wall of glass looking across Avenue Louis Pasteur to the red brick façade of the Boston Latin School. Reich is a lean, fit man in his mid-forties who speaks with rapid, quiet precision. His self-deprecating manner conceals a supremely self-confident iconoclast who is not averse to toppling received wisdom, and his work has attracted criticism from some anthropologists, archeologists, and social scientists. The Reich lab, the foremost unit in the country for research into ancient DNA, is responsible for more than half the world's published data in the field. Having so far sequenced the DNA of more than ten thousand long-dead individuals from all over the globe, the lab is almost halfway through a five-year project to create an atlas of human migration and diversity, allowing us to peer deep into our past. The work has produced startling insights into who we are as a species, where we have come from, and what we have done to one another. Hidden in the human genome is evidence of inequality, the displacement of peoples, invasion, mass rape, and large-scale killing. Under the scrutiny of science, the dead are becoming eloquent.

Last year, Reich led a team of more than a hundred researchers who published a study in Science that examined the genomes of some two hundred and seventy ancient skeletons from the Iberian Peninsula. It's long been known that, from around 2500 to 2000 B.C., major new artistic and cultural styles flourished in Western and Central Europe. Archeologists have tended to explain this development as the result of cultural diffusion: people adopted innovations in pottery, metalworking, and weaponry from their geographic neighbors, along with new burial customs and religious beliefs. But the DNA of Iberian skeletons dating from this period of transformation told a different story, revealing what Reich describes as the "genetic scar" of a foreign invasion.

In Iberia during this time, the local type of Y chromosome was replaced by an entirely different type. Given that the Y chromosome, found only in males, is passed down from father to son, this means that the local male line in Iberia was essentially extinguished. It is likely that the newcomers perpetrated a large-scale killing of local men, boys, and possibly male infants. Any local males remaining must have been subjugated in a way that prevented them from fathering children, or were so strongly disfavored in mate selection over time that their genetic contribution was nullified. The full genetic sequencing, however, indicated that about sixty per cent of the lineage of the local population was passed on, which shows that women were not killed but almost certainly subjected to widespread sexual coercion, and perhaps even mass rape.

We can get a sense of this reign of terror by thinking about what took place when the descendants of those ancient Iberians sailed to the New World, events for which we have ample historical records. The Spanish conquest of the Americas produced human suffering on a grotesque scale—war, mass murder, rape, slavery, genocide, starvation, and pandemic disease. Genetically, as Reich noted, the outcome was very similar: in Central and South America, large amounts of European DNA mixed into the local population, almost all of it coming from European males. The same Y-chromosome turnover is also found in Americans of African descent. On average, a Black person in America has an ancestry that is around eighty per cent African and twenty per cent European. But about eighty per cent of that European ancestry is inherited from white males—genetic testimony to the widespread rape and sexual coercion of female slaves by slaveowners.

In the Iberian study, the predominant Y chromosome seems to have originated with a group called the Yamnaya, who arose about five thousand years ago, in the steppes north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. By adopting the wheel and the horse, they became powerful and fearsome nomads, expanding westward into Europe as well as east- and southward into India. They spoke proto-Indo-European languages, from which most of the languages of Europe and many South Asian languages now spring. Archeologists have long known about the spread of the Yamnaya, but almost nothing in the archeological record showed the brutality of their takeover. "This is an example of the power of ancient DNA to reveal cultural events," Reich told me.

It also shows how DNA evidence can upset established archeological theories and bring rejected ones back into contention. The idea that Indo-European languages emanated from the Yamnaya homeland was established in 1956, by the Lithuanian-American archeologist Marija Gimbutas. Her view, known as the Kurgan hypothesis—named for the distinctive burial mounds that spread west across Europe—is now the most widely accepted theory about Indo-European linguistic origins. But, where many archeologists envisaged a gradual process of cultural diffusion, Gimbutas saw "continuous waves of expansion or raids." As her career progressed, her ideas became more controversial. In Europe previously, Gimbutas hypothesized, men and women held relatively equal places in a peaceful, female-centered, goddess-worshipping society—as evidenced by the famous fertility figurines of the time. She believed that the nomads from the Caspian steppes imposed a male-dominated warrior culture of violence, sexual inequality, and social stratification, in which women were subservient to men and a small number of élite males accumulated most of the wealth and power.

The DNA from the Iberian skeletons can't tell us what kind of culture the Yamnaya replaced, but it does much to corroborate Gimbutas's sense that the descendants of the Yamnaya caused much greater disruption than other archeologists believed. Even today, the Y chromosomes of almost all men of Western European ancestry have a high percentage of Yamnaya-derived genes, suggesting that violent conquest may have been widespread.

The team members of the Roopkund study planned a variety of tests for the bones. DNA sequencing would show the ancestry of the victims and whether they were related to one another, and carbon dating would estimate when they died. The researchers would test for disease, and analyze the chemistry of the bones to determine the victims' diet and where they might have grown up. Under sterile conditions, the scientists in Hyderabad drilled into long bones and teeth, producing a powder. Vials of this were sent to Harvard and to other labs in India, the United States, and Germany.

An ancient human bone is packed with DNA, but, in many cases, ninety-nine per cent or more of that is not human. It is the DNA of billions of microbes that colonized the body during the decomposition after death. To tease the tiny fraction of human DNA from this mass of microbial debris requires a chemical ballet of enormous delicacy, and the risk of contamination is high. Stray DNA molecules from people who handled the remains can ruin an entire sample.

David Reich's lab has a "clean room" for extracting and processing DNA from human tissue. Personnel pass through a dressing area, where they don a full-body clean suit with booties and hood, double pairs of nitrile gloves (the inner one sealed to the suit with tape around the wrists), a hairnet, a face mask, and a plastic shield. The clean room is maintained at positive pressure, which keeps the airflow directed outward, to curtail the entry of airborne DNA. After anything is touched in the room, the outer pair of gloves must be stripped off and a fresh pair put on, in order to prevent the transfer of DNA from surface to surface. Intense ultraviolet light shines whenever the room is empty, to destroy stray DNA. The light is shut off when the lab is occupied, because it burns human skin and eyes.

When I visited, a technician was working on a nubbin of bone from an ancient Roman who lived in Belgium. The whine of a sandblaster filled the air as she removed excess bone from a tiny treasure chest of DNA—a spiral cavity in the inner ear called the cochlea. The bone in which the cochlea is embedded is the densest in the body, and provides the best source of preserved DNA in ancient remains. DNA this old breaks up into short strands. Getting enough to sequence requires complex processes, one of which involves placing samples in a machine that produces a polymerase chain reaction, copying the fragments up to a billion times. The lab doesn't sequence the entire DNA molecule, much of which is repetitious and uninformative, but maps about a million key locations.

Reich had asked a graduate student in his lab, Éadaoin Harney, to take charge of the Roopkund project. Her role was to analyze the Roopkund DNA, wrangle the worldwide team, assemble the results, and write the resulting paper as its lead author. (She has since taken a job as a postdoctoral researcher at the genomics firm 23andMe.) By the middle of 2017, it was apparent that the Roopkund bones belonged to three distinct groups of people. Roopkund A had ancestry typical of South Asians. They were unrelated to one another and genetically diverse, apparently coming from various areas and groups in India. Roopkund C was a lone individual whose genome was typical of Southeast Asia. It was the Roopkund B group, a mixture of men and women unrelated to one another, that confounded everyone. Their genomes did not look Indian or even Asian. "Of all places in the world, India is one of the places most heavily sampled in terms of human diversity," Reich told me. "We have sampled three hundred different groups in India, and there's nothing there even close to Roopkund B."

Harney and Reich began exploring the ancestry of the Roopkund B group, comparing the genomes with hundreds of present-day populations across Europe, Asia, and Africa. The closest match was with people from the Greek island of Crete. "It would be a mistake to say these people were specifically from Crete," Reich said. "A very careful analysis showed they don't match perfectly. They are clearly a population of the Aegean area." The Roopkund B group made up more than a third of the samples tested—fourteen individuals out of thirty-eight. Since the bones at the lake were not collected systematically, the finding hinted that the Mediterranean group in total might have been quite large. One-third of three hundred, the lower estimate of the Roopkund dead, is a hundred people.

As bizarre as the result seemed, it nonetheless matched an analysis of bone collagen that the Max Planck Institute and the Harvard lab had done on the same individuals, to determine their diet. Dietary information is stored in our bones, and plants, depending on how they fix carbon during photosynthesis, create one of two chemical signatures—C3 or C4. A person who eats a diet of C3 plants, such as wheat, barley, and rice, will have isotope ratios of carbon in their bones different from those of a person eating a diet high in millets, which are C4. Sure enough, the analysis of Roopkund bone collagen revealed that, in the last ten or so years of their lives, the Roopkund A people ate a varied C3 and C4 diet, typical for much of India; Roopkund B ate a mostly C3 diet, typical of the Mediterranean.

During the study, the Reich lab had divided up its bone-powder samples, sending one portion to the carbon-14-dating laboratory at Penn State. (Doing this rather than having the Penn State samples sent straight from Hyderabad was a way of insuring that the labs were working on the same individuals.) When the carbon-dating results came back, there was another surprise: there appeared to have been multiple mass-death events at Roopkund. The Roopkund A individuals probably died in three or possibly four incidents between 700 and 950 A.D. The Roopkund B group—from the Mediterranean—likely perished in a single event a thousand years later. Because carbon-14 dating is difficult to interpret for the period between 1650 and 1950, the deaths could have occurred anytime during that span, but with a slightly higher probability in the eighteenth century. The lone person of Southeast Asian ancestry in Roopkund C died around the same time.

The eighteenth-century date was so unexpected that Reich and Harney at first thought it might be a typo, or that the samples had been contaminated. Harney wrote up the findings, in a paper co-authored by twenty-seven other scientists. She told me, "We hoped that after the paper was published someone would come forward with information that would help us determine what might have happened at Roopkund—some historian or a person with knowledge of a group of European travellers who vanished in the Himalayas around that time."

When William Sax learned of the results, he was incredulous. He had spent years in the mountain villages below the lake, among the devotees of Nanda Devi. The women consider themselves to be keepers of the goddess's memory, and Sax had recorded and translated many of their songs and stories of the pilgrimage. He feels certain that if a large party of travellers, especially foreign travellers, had died at Roopkund in recent centuries, there would have been some record in folklore. After all, despite the new study's surprises, the Roopkund A group was not inconsistent with the earlier findings.

"I never heard a word, not a hint of a story, no folktale or anything," Sax told me. "And there's absolutely no reason to be up there if they weren't on the pilgrimage." The idea of a group of eighteenth-century Greeks on a Hindu pilgrimage seemed far-fetched. A simpler explanation would be that the Roopkund B bones somehow got mixed up while sitting in storage. "It is quite possible that these bones were contaminated," he said, and the researchers were simply taking their provenance on trust: "They didn't actually collect them themselves." Having been fascinated with the region's way of life for four decades, he also found the scientists' perspective lacking. "This isn't just a story about bones," he said. "It's also a story about human beings and religious devotion."

Many anthropologists and archeologists are uneasy about the incursion of genomics into their domain and suspicious of its brash certainties. "We're not schooled in the nuances," Reich admitted to me. "Anthropologists and geneticists are two groups speaking different languages and getting to know each other." Research into human origins and the differences between populations is always vulnerable to misuse. The grim history of eugenics still casts a shadow over genetics—a field with limitless appeal for white supremacists and others looking to support racist views—even though, for half a century, geneticists have rejected the idea of large hereditary disparities among human populations for the great majority of traits. Genetic science was vital in discrediting racist biological theories and establishing that racial categories are ever-shifting social constructs that do not align with genetic variation. Still, some anthropologists, social scientists, and even geneticists are deeply uncomfortable with any research that explores the hereditary differences among populations. Reich is insistent that race is an artificial category rather than a biological one, but maintains that "substantial differences across populations" exist. He thinks that it's not unreasonable to investigate those differences scientifically, although he doesn't undertake such research himself. "Whether we like it or not, people are measuring average differences among groups," he said. "We need to be able to talk about these differences clearly, whatever they may be. Denying the possibility of substantial differences is not for us to do, given the scientific reality we live in."

In 2018, Reich published a book, "Who We Are and How We Got Here," about how genetic science is revolutionizing our understanding of our species. After he presented material from the book as an Op-Ed in the Times, sixty-seven anthropologists, social scientists, and others signed an open letter on BuzzFeed, titled "How Not to Talk About Race and Genetics." The scholars complained that Reich's "skillfulness with ancient and contemporary DNA should not be confused with a mastery of the cultural, political, and biological meanings of human groups," and that Reich "critically misunderstands and misrepresents concerns" regarding the use of such loaded terms as "race" and "population."

Reich's lab now has an ethics-and-outreach officer, Jakob Sedig, whose job is to work with some of the cultural groups being studied, to understand and respond to their sensitivities. "We are mapping genetic groups to archeological cultures," Sedig, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Colorado, explained. "How we're defining these groups genetically is not how they see themselves culturally. We don't want to discredit other people's beliefs, but we don't want to censor our research based on those beliefs. There's no one answer. You need a dialogue from the beginning."

Reich acknowledges that geneticists need to be careful about how they discuss their work. He said that the majority of archeologists and anthropologists welcome the insights that genetic research provides, although "there are a small number of Luddites who want to break our machines." In our conversations, Reich emphasized that the findings of geneticists were almost always unexpected and tended to explode stereotypes. "Again and again, I've found my own biases and expectations to be wrong," he said. "It should make us realize that the stories we tell ourselves about our past are often very different from the reality, and we should have humility about that." When I asked him for examples, he mentioned the origin of "white people"—light-skinned people from Europe and parts of western Asia. He assumed (as did most scientists) that whites represented a stable lineage that had spread across western Eurasia tens of thousands of years ago and established a relatively homogeneous population. But his research showed that as recently as eight thousand years ago there were at least four distinct groups of Europeans, as genetically different from one another as the British are from the Chinese today, some with brown skin color. As he put it in an e-mail, " 'White people' simply didn't exist ~8,000 years ago."

Around 500 B.C., the Greek traveller Scylax of Caryanda is said to have journeyed through parts of the Indian subcontinent and sailed down the Indus River. In his writings, known only from secondary sources, Scylax called the river Indos, from which the English name for the subcontinent derives. Alexander the Great invaded India in 326 B.C., having previously swept through what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan. His armies traversed the Indus plains and reached as far as the Beas River before turning back. There was lasting Hellenic influence in the region for centuries, although the eventual decline of Greek civilization largely brought direct contact with Greece to an end.

Perhaps, the Roopkund researchers thought, there might be a tribe or a group in India descended from Greeks. Alexander left behind commanders and soldiers in some of the territories he conquered, many of whom stayed. Members of the Kalash tribe, in northern Pakistan, claim to be descendants of Alexander's soldiers. (This was the inspiration for Rudyard Kipling's story "The Man Who Would Be King.") The Kalash are a distinct people with their own language and an ancient, animistic religion. Genetic research suggests that the Kalash have a Western European origin, and one disputed study found Greek heritage. On investigation, Reich's team found that the modern genetic profile of the Kalash did not resemble that of Roopkund B. Two centuries before Christ, parts of northern India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan formed the Indo-Greek Kingdom, the easternmost state of the Hellenic world. But, again, Roopkund B didn't resemble any populations living there now.

Could Roopkund B have come from an unsampled population in India descended from Greeks or a related group? In this scenario, an enclave of migrants to India never admixed with South Asians, and retained their genetic heritage. But the genetics of Roopkund B, showing no sign of isolation or inbreeding, ruled this out, too. And then there was the stubborn fact that the Roopkund B people ate a diet more consistent with the Mediterranean than with India. The evidence pointed to one conclusion: they were Mediterranean travellers who somehow got to Roopkund, where they died in a single, terrible event. And yet the historians I consulted, specialists in South Asian and Greek history and authorities in the history of Himalayan mountaineering, said that, in recent centuries, there was no evidence of a large group of unrelated people from the eastern Mediterranean—men and women—travelling in the Himalayas before 1950.

Since the study was published, one of the most determined investigators of the mystery has been a recently retired archeologist named Stuart Fiedel, whose main research focus is the migration of Paleo-Americans into the New World from Asia. "I hate unsolved mysteries," Fiedel told me. "It makes zero sense that a party of male and female Greek islanders would be participating in a Hindu pilgrimage around 1700 or 1800. That's because, one, there is no documented presence of any substantial Greek communities in northern India at those times, and, two, there is no record of Europeans converting to Hinduism or Buddhism in those periods."

He sent Harney and Reich a string of e-mails proposing alternatives to the Mediterranean theory. Fiedel contends that the mitochondrial DNA lineages and the Y-chromosomal DNA lineages of the Roopkund B group are rare or absent in the population of the Greek islands, but are relatively common in Armenians and other peoples of the Caucasus. His preferred hypothesis is that the Roopkund B people were Armenian traders. Armenians travelled widely in Tibet, India, and Nepal during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, trading in pearls, amber, and deer musk, a precious ingredient in perfume. Several large Indian cities have Armenian communities that go back centuries. "They might have been hanging with some major Hindu party trying to sell them stuff," Fiedel said. Noting that nothing of value was found on the bodies, he speculated that the travellers were killed by Thuggees, a cult of robbers and murderers whose fearsome reputation in British India gave us the word "thug." Thuggees were said to attach themselves to travellers or groups of pilgrims, gaining their trust and then robbing and murdering them on a remote stretch of road. "The Thuggees would make off with kids," Fiedel said. "Everybody in the Roopkund B population is mature. There isn't any gold on the skeletons, no rings, necklaces, or anklets on the victims. Who removed those things? And they were dumped in water. The Thuggees would dump people in water."

Reich and Harney reject Fiedel's genetic interpretation. Reich wrote back to him saying that the full DNA from Roopkund B was "extremely different from Armenians both modern and ancient." What's more, scholars increasingly view British reports about Thuggees as inaccurate or embellished, reflecting the colonialist fear and incomprehension of the country they occupied. Some historians question whether the Thuggees even existed.

Reich and Fiedel did agree, however, that Sax's suspicion that the bones could have simply been mixed up was unsustainable. A jumble of bones from a poorly curated storage area would not have the consistency of age, type, diet, and genetics displayed by the Roopkund B remains. The data would be all over the map. Besides, even if these bones were proved to have been mislabelled, that would merely create another mystery: how did a bunch of eighteenth-century Greek bones get into a storage vault in India?

For the time being, Roopkund holds its secrets, but it remains possible that an answer will eventually be found. Veena Mushrif-Tripathy, a bioarcheologist on the previous study and a co-author of the new one, pointed out that Roopkund is so remote and inhospitable—in 2003, when she and her colleagues went to collect bones, altitude sickness forced her to turn back—there has never been a systematic archeological investigation of the site. All the bones studied so far have been picked up haphazardly, a flawed way of sampling that often skews results. A careful excavation, she believes, might solve the mystery, especially if it is able to plumb the lake itself. The water is frozen most of the year, so the skeletons and artifacts visible on the lake bed have been kept safe from looters and souvenir hunters. "Inside the lake, you can get more preserved bones with soft tissues," she said. "And if they are Greek people we should get some artifacts or tools or something which we can trace back to Greece."

And what of Nanda Devi? The new study established that multiple groups had died at the lake centuries apart. Did everyone die in hailstorms? Mushrif-Tripathy thinks that a hailstorm was probably involved in one mass death but that most people had likely just died of exposure. According to Ayushi Nayak, who performed the isotopic bone analyses at the Max Planck Institute, Hindu pilgrims sometimes go barefoot and thinly clothed to sacred sites in the Himalayas as a spiritual challenge. Completing the pilgrimage in this way is a sign that the goddess favors you and wants you to survive. In other words, most of the Roopkund dead probably perished as Sax almost did, when he was an undergraduate—staggering around in a sudden blizzard and looking for their companions. ♦

Quote from: Malthus on January 09, 2021, 07:02:56 PM
This is definitely odd - in Brazil, a bunch of tunnels have been found. Some are up to 2000 feet long, and big enough to walk upright in, and some even larger. Some are complex networks of tunnels and chambers ... turns out, they were most likely carved out by extinct giant ground sloths! Probably by generations of them.

Why? No one has the slightest idea.

Giant ground sloths would hardly need a network of tunnels to protect them from predators. Even if they did, much smaller excavations would have sufficed. It's a real mystery what advantage carving out such an elaborate system gave them.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/get-lost-in-mega-tunnels-dug-by-south-american-megafauna

Quote from: Maladict on January 28, 2021, 05:57:01 AM
Dramatised story of the Sutton Hoo discovery out on Netflix tomorrow. Reviews sound promising.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dig_(2021_film)

Quote from: Malthus on January 09, 2021, 07:02:56 PM
This is definitely odd - in Brazil, a bunch of tunnels have been found. Some are up to 2000 feet long, and big enough to walk upright in, and some even larger. Some are complex networks of tunnels and chambers ... turns out, they were most likely carved out by extinct giant ground sloths! Probably by generations of them.

Why? No one has the slightest idea.

Giant ground sloths would hardly need a network of tunnels to protect them from predators. Even if they did, much smaller excavations would have sufficed. It's a real mystery what advantage carving out such an elaborate system gave them.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/get-lost-in-mega-tunnels-dug-by-south-american-megafauna

Quote from: Malthus on January 09, 2021, 07:02:56 PM
Giant ground sloths would hardly need a network of tunnels to protect them from predators.

Quote
Even if they did, much smaller excavations would have sufficed. It's a real mystery what advantage carving out such an elaborate system gave them.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/get-lost-in-mega-tunnels-dug-by-south-american-megafauna

Quote from: jimmy olsen on January 29, 2021, 08:45:36 AM
Purple dyed textiles from Iron age Israel found

https://phys.org/news/2021-01-glimpse-wardrobe-king-david-solomon.amp

Quote from: jimmy olsen on January 29, 2021, 08:45:36 AM
Purple dyed textiles from Iron age Israel found

https://phys.org/news/2021-01-glimpse-wardrobe-king-david-solomon.amp

Quote from: Syt on December 28, 2020, 06:22:30 AM
Some here might be aware of the Asian lake which is known to be home to many, many skeletons, usually believed to have died during a massive hail storm. Seems there's a wrinkle to the case: DNA says a number of the skeletons are Greek in origin, from 18th century. Interesting article about the research and the genetic vs archaeological side of the question:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/14/the-skeletons-at-the-lake (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/14/the-skeletons-at-the-lake)

QuoteSyria 'finds body of archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad beheaded by IS'

Syrian authorities believe they have found the body of a top archaeologist who was killed by the Islamic State (IS) group in 2015 while he tried to protect the ancient city of Palmyra.

Militants publicly beheaded Khaled al-Asaad, 82, after he refused to disclose the location of valuable artefacts.

State media reported that his body was thought to be among three discovered in Kahloul, east of Palmyra.

DNA tests will be carried out to confirm their identities.

The brutal murder was one of a series of atrocities committed by IS militants during the two periods they were in control of the Unesco World Heritage site.

Khaled al-Asaad devoted more than 50 years of his life to Palmyra, which is located at an oasis in the Syrian Desert north-east of Damascus.

The highly-regarded archaeologist retired as the site's head of antiquities in 2003, but he continued to carry out research there until it fell to IS.

Three of his sons and his son-in-law, who are also archaeologists, escaped to the capital with hundreds of valuable artefacts from the museum in the nearby modern town of Tadmor as the militants approached. But Asaad insisted that he would not leave his home.

"I am from Palmyra," he said, "and I will stay here even if they kill me."

Asaad was later detained by IS and interrogated about the locations of other artefacts that had been hidden. He was beheaded in a square in Tadmor that August after refusing to co-operate.

Activists circulated a photograph purportedly showing his body tied to a pole, with a placard beside it accusing him of being Palmyra's "director of idolatry".

Unesco's then-Director-General, Irina Bokova, said at the time that IS had killed Asaad "because he would not betray his deep commitment to Palmyra".

In the weeks that followed the murder, IS destroyed several iconic parts of Palmyra from the 1st and 2nd Centuries that it considered idolatrous.

The Temple of Baalshamin and the cella and surrounding columns of the Temple of Bel were blown up, as were the ancient city's triumphal arch and seven funerary towers at its necropolis.

After recapturing the site in late 2016, militants destroyed the tetrapylon - a group of four pillared structures - and part of the Roman Theatre.

Government forces have controlled the area since March 2017, but reconstruction work has been limited because of the ongoing civil war.

IS once held 88,000 sq km (34,000 sq miles) of territory stretching from western Syria to eastern Iraq and imposed its brutal rule on almost eight million people.

The group was driven from its last part of land in 2019, but the UN estimates that more than 10,000 militants remain active in Syria and Iraq.

They are believed to be organised in small cells and they continue to carry out deadly attacks in both countries.

QuoteSue Takes on the Sutton Hoo Helmet | Curator's Corner S6 E5

You didn't think Sue only did swords did you?

The excavations at Sutton Hoo during 1939 were unique for a number reasons. We're not sure the exact number of reasons (like Irving, maths really isn't our thing), but there were definitely enough for Netflix to make an original, dramatized version of it in the form of 'The Dig'. A ship burial of this level of wealth has not been found before or since in England, and excavations were conducted under the shadow of the United Kingdoms impending involvement in World War Two.

Though a great number of exceptional objects were found in the mound at Sutton Hoo, none have captured the public imagination like the Sutton Hoo helmet. And tonight, for the first time in 10 years, we got to get the incredibly delicate helmet out of its display case, and hopefully do it justice (it was incredibly intimidating to film with).

QuoteIslamic 12th-century bathhouse uncovered in Seville tapas bar

(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ab5dc637ed5134c9ad7bb4901bb871e3a47f698b/0_0_3150_2100/master/3150.jpg?width=1020&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=1df97ca76250876dd2aab68429f447c9)
The bathhouse was discovered in a popular tapas bar in the heart of Seville. Photograph: Paco Puentes/El Pais

Dazzling geometric motifs dating from Almohad caliphate discovered during renovation of city's bar
Sam Jones in Madrid
@swajones
Thu 18 Feb 2021 05.00 GMT

A magnificently decorated 12th-century Islamic bathhouse, replete with dazzling geometric motifs and skylights in the form of eight-pointed stars, has emerged, a little improbably, from the walls and vaulted ceilings of a popular tapas bar in the heart of the southern Spanish city of Seville.

Last summer, the owners of the Cervercería Giralda – which has been pouring cañas and copas near Seville's cathedral since 1923 – decided to take advantage of local roadworks and the coronavirus pandemic to set about a long-delayed renovation.

Although local legend and the odd historical document had suggested the site may once have been an ancient hammam, most people had assumed the Giralda's retro look was down to the neomudéjar, or Islamic revival style, in which the architect Vicente Traver built the bar and hotel above it in the early 1920s.

"There was talk that there were baths here, but not all the historians were convinced and some thought it was all much later," said Antonio Castro, one of the Giralda's four co-owners. "We were doing some works and got an archaeologist in, and that's how the baths were discovered."

(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f6565b9635a531ea7865c7bcdf058f268f8a26e9/0_0_4032_3024/master/4032.jpg?width=940&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=0292b050282abd5bdb9db689ccc7f746)
The hammam discovered in Seville. Photograph: Álvaro Jiménez

The archaeologist, Álvaro Jiménez, knew of the rumours. But, like many others, he had always imagined them to be fanciful. One day last July, however, the team were gently chipping their way through the plaster that covered the ceiling when they uncovered a skylight in the form of an eight-pointed star.

"As soon as we saw one of the skylights, we knew what it was; it just couldn't have been anything but a baths," said Jiménez. "We just had to follow the pattern of the skylights."

Their explorations soon uncovered an exquisite piece of design dating back to the 12th century when the Almohad caliphate ruled much of what are now Spain and Portugal as well as a large swath of north Africa.

"Decoratively speaking, these baths have the largest amount of preserved decoration of any of the known baths on the Iberian peninsula," said the archaeologist.

"Absolutely everything here is decorated, and, luckily, it's survived. The background is white lime mortar engraved with geometric lines, circles and squares. On top of that you have red ochre paintings of eight-pointed stars and eight-petalled multifoil rosettes. Those two designs alternate and entwine and adapt to the different geometric shapes of the skylight holes."

(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e87a6a578a990aea1455962ebd804db33f2b9d1a/0_0_4032_3024/master/4032.jpg?width=620&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=ba769335aec9362baae618795daa1e87)
Uncovered detail and decoration. Photograph: Álvaro Jiménez

While a lot of whitewash still needs to be cleaned to disclose the red paint beneath, the hammam-cum-bar has now been conserved and repaired and the Giralda is due to open once again in two or three weeks.

Jiménez, who described the "kind of a fateful alignment of different things", said the baths and the bar have "been reborn and become something wonderful; it was the right people, the right time, and a bit of luck".

Castro and his partners are looking forward to a new chapter in the Giralda's long history. But they are also toasting the foresight of Vicente Traver.

"This was a pretty well-known bar before, but now people will be able to come in and have a beer or a glass of wine in a bar that's also a 12th-century hammam," said Castro. "It's a good thing that the architect back in the 1920s respected the baths – others might have chucked everything out, so we're grateful to him."

Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 22, 2021, 10:03:07 AM
Evidence of ancient slavs using germanic runic script?
https://www.rferl.org/amp/early-slavs-archeological-discovery-runes-alphabet-germanic-lany-czech/31110277.html

Quote from: Valmy on February 22, 2021, 10:42:21 AM
If this was invented in the 1800s what was being referred to by Celts or Germans before then?

Quote from: Valmy on February 22, 2021, 02:03:50 PM
Though after some thought I guess if people do think that somehow these generalized cultural groups were like nations or something that does explain the rather bizarre and weird fixation the French have on the Celtic tribes who lived in the transalpine Gaul. "Our ancestors the Gauls" as if there was:

1. Anything particularly French about being descended from Celtic tribes. I mean practically everybody in western Europe can claim that.

2. Anybody in what is today France that ever referred to themselves as "Gauls" except in a broad sense like we might think of ourselves as English speakers or something. And even then it was probably only a distinction they thought of when interacting with the Romans.

So that is a hold over from that time.

QuoteAlso I realized that you were not really saying that there was not such a thing as Celtic or Germanic or Slavic cultured tribes just that it is not too surprising that a Slavic one would also have influences from Germanic tribes as, like you say, it was not like these were hard and fast rules. Just kind of a general cultural influence. The Slavic tribe would not be all "I am a proud Slav and thus would never use these Germanic writings! No sir" because that was not really a big part of identity in some kind of national sense.

QuoteWent antiquing today and found what I thought were some cute letters but turns out

Quote from: Valmy on March 02, 2021, 03:33:03 PM
It is nice when you are out there doing your bit for the air force to know your girlfriend is getting plenty of threesomes back home.

Quote from: Valmy on March 02, 2021, 03:33:03 PM
It is nice when you are out there doing your bit for the air force to know your girlfriend is getting plenty of threesomes back home.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 02, 2021, 07:05:14 PM

Quote from: Valmy on March 02, 2021, 03:33:03 PM
It is nice when you are out there doing your bit for the air force to know your girlfriend is getting plenty of threesomes back home.

That page was found by itself, it was not necessarily connected to Charles.

Quote from: Valmy on March 02, 2021, 07:11:10 PM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 02, 2021, 07:05:14 PM

Quote from: Valmy on March 02, 2021, 03:33:03 PM
It is nice when you are out there doing your bit for the air force to know your girlfriend is getting plenty of threesomes back home.

That page was found by itself, it was not necessarily connected to Charles.

Then why did you mislead me by posting them together? Here I had this whole story about a love boyfriend just happy his significant other was well taken care of and loved while he was away in my mind and then you snatch it away.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 03, 2021, 04:16:14 AM
That's how it was in the original tweet.
The page came out of that stack.

Quote
A society that existed over 4,000 years ago, in modern-day Spain, may have been governed by women.

A woman who was adorned with a silver crown and buried with other jewelry in the early Bronze age settlement, challenges the view that men exclusively exercised state power, archeologists say, in a new study published this week in the journal Antiquity .

"The La Almoloya discoveries have revealed unexpected political dimensions of the highly stratified El Argar society, showing features that are unique in the contemporaneous Western Mediterranean and continental Europe," the study authors write.

The remains were uncovered at the La Almoloya site, on the south-east side of the Iberian peninsula, which served as a hub of the El Argar society, one of the first civilizations in the region to forge bronze, build urban centres and erect palaces.

[...]

Quote from: Tyr on March 13, 2021, 07:26:25 AM
Hasn't this been a long standing theory on pre indo European people?
Albeit mostly in the north.

Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2021, 11:01:24 AM
Yeah and if we dug up Athens without knowing anything else about it and found the Parthenon with the huge statue of Athena in it we might also think ancient Athens had progressive social values.

Quote from: crazy canuck on March 14, 2021, 02:04:49 PM
This discussion would be so much better if people actually read the article that was linked.

Quote from: Valmy on March 14, 2021, 03:07:28 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on March 14, 2021, 02:04:49 PM
This discussion would be so much better if people actually read the article that was linked.

It just wouldn't be a discussion about an article without CC completely baselessly claiming nobody read it.

Does this kind of nonsense make a conversation better? I guess you think so since you never get tired of saying it.

Quote from: Valmy on March 13, 2021, 11:01:24 AM
Yeah and if we dug up Athens without knowing anything else about it and found the Parthenon with the huge statue of Athena in it we might also think ancient Athens had progressive social values.

Quote from: Malthus on March 15, 2021, 10:31:06 AM
Reminds me of the "Motel of the Mysteries". That's a book about future archeologists uncovering a perfectly preserved motel room from the 20th century, and making plausible sounding but totally wrong interpretations of everything they find inside. 😉

Quote from: Malthus on March 15, 2021, 10:31:06 AM
Reminds me of the "Motel of the Mysteries". That's a book about future archeologists uncovering a perfectly preserved motel room from the 20th century, and making plausible sounding but totally wrong interpretations of everything they find inside. 😉

Quote from: Malthus on March 15, 2021, 10:31:06 AM
Reminds me of the "Motel of the Mysteries". That's a book about future archeologists uncovering a perfectly preserved motel room from the 20th century, and making plausible sounding but totally wrong interpretations of everything they find inside. 😉

Quote from: Malthus on March 15, 2021, 10:31:06 AM
Reminds me of the "Motel of the Mysteries". That's a book about future archeologists uncovering a perfectly preserved motel room from the 20th century, and making plausible sounding but totally wrong interpretations of everything they find inside. 😉

Quote from: Maladict on March 15, 2021, 04:31:33 PM

Quote from: Malthus on March 15, 2021, 10:31:06 AM
Reminds me of the "Motel of the Mysteries". That's a book about future archeologists uncovering a perfectly preserved motel room from the 20th century, and making plausible sounding but totally wrong interpretations of everything they find inside. 😉

It's the running joke among archaeologists, labeling anything not instantly recognizable as religious/ceremonial.

Quote from: Malthus on March 16, 2021, 04:11:57 PM

Quote from: Maladict on March 15, 2021, 04:31:33 PM

Quote from: Malthus on March 15, 2021, 10:31:06 AM
Reminds me of the "Motel of the Mysteries". That's a book about future archeologists uncovering a perfectly preserved motel room from the 20th century, and making plausible sounding but totally wrong interpretations of everything they find inside. 😉

It's the running joke among archaeologists, labeling anything not instantly recognizable as religious/ceremonial.

My favorite example: this Roman artifact was clearly used for something, or symbolized something, but no one knows what! Perhaps they are "ceremonial objects" (or perhaps they were used for knitting gloves).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron

(My theory: as a former AD&D player ... these were clearly used to play the Gallo-Roman version of AD&D. 😄)

QuoteTripod base of a table with lion heads and paws. Medium: Marble. 1st half of 1st cent. BC, Pompeii, I.6.11.

Quote from: Malthus on March 16, 2021, 04:11:57 PM

Quote from: Maladict on March 15, 2021, 04:31:33 PM

Quote from: Malthus on March 15, 2021, 10:31:06 AM
Reminds me of the "Motel of the Mysteries". That's a book about future archeologists uncovering a perfectly preserved motel room from the 20th century, and making plausible sounding but totally wrong interpretations of everything they find inside. 😉

It's the running joke among archaeologists, labeling anything not instantly recognizable as religious/ceremonial.

My favorite example: this Roman artifact was clearly used for something, or symbolized something, but no one knows what! Perhaps they are "ceremonial objects" (or perhaps they were used for knitting gloves).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron)

(My theory: as a former AD&D player ... these were clearly used to play the Gallo-Roman version of AD&D. 😄)

Quote from: viper37 on March 19, 2021, 03:11:26 PM

Quote from: Malthus on March 16, 2021, 04:11:57 PM

Quote from: Maladict on March 15, 2021, 04:31:33 PM

Quote from: Malthus on March 15, 2021, 10:31:06 AM
Reminds me of the "Motel of the Mysteries". That's a book about future archeologists uncovering a perfectly preserved motel room from the 20th century, and making plausible sounding but totally wrong interpretations of everything they find inside. 😉

It's the running joke among archaeologists, labeling anything not instantly recognizable as religious/ceremonial.

My favorite example: this Roman artifact was clearly used for something, or symbolized something, but no one knows what! Perhaps they are "ceremonial objects" (or perhaps they were used for knitting gloves).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_dodecahedron)

(My theory: as a former AD&D player ... these were clearly used to play the Gallo-Roman version of AD&D. 😄)

One day, an archeologist from the future will find discolored rubik cubes and they will all wonder what was that :P

Quote
This idea goes against a hypothesis, dating back to the 1960s, known as the "Man-The-Hunter model."

For a long time, it was assumed that hunting in prehistoric societies was primarily carried out by men. Now a new study adds to a body of evidence challenging this idea. The research reports the discovery of a female body, buried alongside hunting tools, in the Americas some 9,000 years ago.

The woman, discovered in the Andean highlands, was dubbed Wilamaya Patjxa individual 6, or "WPI6". She was found with her legs in a semi-flexed position, with the collection of stone tools placed carefully next to them. These included projectile points – tools that were likely used to tip lightweight spears thrown with an atlatl(also called a spear thrower). The authors argue that such projectile points were used for hunting large animals.

WPI6 was between 17 and 19 years old at time of death. It was an analysis of substances known as "peptides" in her teeth – which are markers for biological sex - that showed that she was female. There were also large mammal bones in the burial fill, demonstrating the significance of hunting in her society.

Excavations at Wilamaya Patjxa. Randall Haas

The authors of the study, published in Science Advances, also reviewed evidence of other skeletons buried around the same period in the Americas, looking specifically at graves containing similar tools associated with big-game hunting. They found that of the 27 skeletons for which sex could be determined, 41% were likely female.

The authors propose that this may mean that big-game hunting was indeed carried out by both men and women in hunter-gatherer groups at that time in the Americas.
Competing hypotheses

This idea goes against a hypothesis, dating back to the 1960s, known as the "Man-The-Hunter model", which is increasingly being debunked. It suggests that hunting, and especially big game hunting, was primarily, if not exclusively, undertaken by male members of past hunter-gatherer societies.

The hypothesis is based on a few different lines of evidence. Probably most significantly, it considers recent and present-day hunter-gatherer societies to try to understand how those in the deeper past may have been organised.

The stereotypical view of hunter-gatherer groups is that they involve a gendered division of labour, with men hunting and women being more likely to stay nearer home with young children, or fish and forage, though even then there is some variation. For example, among Agta foragers in the Philippines women are primary hunters rather than assistants.

Some present day hunter-gatherers still use atlatls today, and some people also enjoy using atlatls in competitive throwing events, with women and children regularly taking part. Archaeologists studying data from these events suggest that atlatls may well have been equalisers – facilitating hunting by both women and men, possibly because they reduce the importance of body size and strength.

The new study further debunks the hypothesis, adding to a few previous archaeological findings. For example, at the 34,000-year-old site of Sunghir in Russia, archaeologists discovered the burial of two youngsters – one of whom was likely a girl of around nine to 11 years old. Both individuals had physical abnormalities, and were buried with 16 mammoth ivory spears – an incredible offering of what were probably valuable hunting tools.

The Andes Mountains. Picture of the Andes Mountains.

In 2017, a famous burial of a Viking warrior from Sweden, discovered early in the 20th century and long assumed to be male, was discovered to be biologically female. This finding caused a significant and somewhat surprising amount of debate, and points to how our own modern ideas of gender roles can affect interpretations of more recent history too.

It has been argued that distinguishing between "boys jobs and girls jobs", as one former British prime minister put it, could have evolutionary advantages. For example, it can allow pregnant and lactating mothers to stay near to a home base, keeping themselves and youngsters protected from harm. But we are increasingly learning that this model is far too simplistic.

With hunting being a keystone to survival for many highly mobile hunter-gatherer groups, community-wide participation also makes good evolutionary sense. The past, as some say, is a foreign country, and the more evidence we have, the more variable human behaviour looks to have been.

Quote from: PDH on March 22, 2021, 06:07:48 PM
Anthropologists have known women hunted for a long time.  Beyond the societies today where women are the primary hunters with as in the Philippines, net hunting and hunting of small burrowing critters are often hunted by majority women or mixed groups.  Most of the protein eaten came from women hunting. 

The prestige hunting among groups like the San are men, but that is not the majority of protein taken in.  The concept of "Man the Hunter" has been debunked for decades among Anthropologists - hunting does not explain why more complex social groups went from sexually selected roles to sexual hierarchies.