Ancient Tides

Skeletal Remains Found of Pre-Incan Mass Sacrifice

2012-01-26T08:57:00.000-08:00

Several of the skeletons of willing sacrificial victims.

More than a hundred skeletons believed to be remains of victims of a ritual mass sacrifice have been discovered in a pit next to the ancient Huaca Las Ventanas pyramid in northern Peru. The pyramid is part of the pre-Incan Sicán site, the capital of the Lambayeque people—also known as the Sicán—who ruled Peru's northern coast from about A.D. 900 to 1100.

According to National Geographic:

Perhaps more than a hundred bodies—buried nude and some of them headless—lie in the newfound pit, according to Haagen Klaus, a bioarchaeologist at Utah Valley University in Orem who is studying the finds.

The bodies are almost all adult males, with the exception of two children, each accompanied by what appears to be an adult woman.

Despite the huge mass burial, the Sicán were not warmongers, Klaus stressed. Instead the Sicán culture used an economy based on trade to build an empire that, at its peak around A.D. 1000, spanned thousands of miles across what is now Ecuador and Peru.

All the dead in the newfound pit were likely willing participants from local communities engaged in a ritual that celebrated death so that "new life could emerge in the world," Klaus said in an email to National Geographic News."Sicán was holy ground, and only the most sanctified of religious rituals involving ancestors appear to have taken place there. Mass ritual sacrifice appears to be the most likely interpretation" of the discovery.”

Click here for the complete article.

Satyr Masks from Wine Ceremonies Recovered

2012-01-25T20:50:00.000-08:00

Two masks dating to 1 A.D. and found in a grave during excavations in the central Anatolian Necropolis site may shed light on ancient culture.

Anadolu University Archaeology Professor Taciser Sivas said the masks were the most beautiful historical findings of the year.

“The masks were broken, but we have repaired the broken pieces,” she explained. “There are horns of a mythical figure on one of the masks, symbolizing a satyr [a half-human and half-goat god]. The other is bigger and white, with black and red hair.”

Sivas said the masks symbolized abundance and plentitude at wine-harvest ceremonies and were still being produced through the end of the Roman period.

“Masks were used during religious ceremonies,” she added. “It is very significant the masks were found in Şarhöyük, as Eskişehir became the capital of Turkish world culture.”

Click here for the complete article.

Persistent Drought Ended City of Angkor

2012-01-24T15:14:00.000-08:00

Bayon temple at Angkor, constructed in the 12th century.

The ancient city of Angkor likely collapsed due to failure to battle drought, scientists find.

First established in the 9th century, Angkor was capital of the Khmer Empire, the major player in southeast Asia for nearly five centuries. It stretched over more than 385 square miles ~ the most extensive urban complex in the preindustrial world.

Suggested causes for the fall of the Khmer Empire in the late 14th to early 15th centuries have included war and exploitation of the land. Recent evidence suggests that prolonged droughts might have been linked to the decline of Angkor. For instance, tree rings from Vietnam suggest the region experienced long spans of drought interspersed with heavy rainfall.

To learn about how the Khmer managed their water, scientists analyzed a 6-foot-long core sample of sediment taken from the southwest corner of the largest Khmer reservoir, the West Baray, which could hold 1.87 billion cubic feet of water, more than 20 times the amount of stone making up the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Click here for the complete article.

Nebuchadnezzar Shows Up on Babel Stele

2012-01-23T14:07:00.000-08:00

Carving of Nebuchadnezzar is clearly visible on the right.

A team of scholars has discovered what might be the oldest representation of the biblical Tower of Babel. The inscription was carved between 604 and 562 BC on a black stone named the Tower of Babel stele.

The Tower of Babel stele stands out as one of "the stars in the firmament of the book," according to Andrew George, a professor of Babylonian at the University of London. The spectacular stone monument clearly shows the Tower and King Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled Babylon some 2,500 years ago.

Credited with the destruction of the temple of Solomon in 586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II was also responsible for sending the Jews into exile, according to the Bible. The first Babylonian king to rule Egypt, he is also famous for building the legendary Hanging Gardens, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world, and many temples all over Babylonia.

Click here for the complete article.

World's Oldest Astrology Board Discovered

2012-01-21T09:30:00.000-08:00

Representation of Cancer on the ivory board.

Researchers exploring a Croatian cave have discovered a 2,000-year-old astrology board, believed to be the oldest such astrologer’s tool ever found. Surviving portions include 30 ivory fragments engraved with the zodiac signs for Cancer, Gemini and Pisces.

According to LiveScience.com:

"This is probably older than any other known example," according to Alexander Jones, a professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. "It's also older than any of the written-down horoscopes that we have from the Greco-Roman world ~ we have a lot of horoscopes that are written down as a kind of document on papyrus or on a wall but none of them as old as this."

Archaeologists are uncertain of the board’s origins. Astrology originated in Babylon around 2,400 years ago. Around 2,100 years ago, it spread to the eastern Mediterranean, becoming popular in Egypt, which at the time was under the control of a dynasty of Greek kings.

"It gets modified very much into what we think of as the Greek style of astrology, which is essentially the modern style of astrology," Jones said. "The Greek style is the foundation of astrology that goes through the Middle Ages and into modern Europe, modern India (and) so on."

Radiocarbon dating shows that the ivory used to create the zodiac images dates back around 2,200 years ago, shortly before the appearance of this new form of astrology.

Click here for the complete article.

Click here for more photos of the board and cave.

Croatian cave where researchers found the board.

More Details Emerge on Cahokia Settlement

2012-01-14T14:38:00.000-08:00

Layout of Cahokia on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

Bit by bit, more information is being discovered related to the massive Native American mound settlement called Cahokia in western Illinois.

According to an article in Science:

A millennium ago, this strategic spot along the Mississippi River was an affluent neighborhood of Native Americans, set amid the largest concentration of people and monumental architecture north of what is now Mexico.

Back then, hundreds of well-thatched rectangular houses, carefully aligned along the cardinal directions, stood here, overshadowed by dozens of enormous earthen mounds flanked by large ceremonial plazas. … Cahokia proper was the only pre-Columbian city north of the Rio Grande, and it was large even by European and Mesoamerican standards of the day, drawing immigrants from hundreds of kilometers around to live, work, and participate in mass ceremonies.

Recent excavations have uncovered evidence of more than 500 thatched houses and workshops where residents created goods. Cahokia may have expanded out into a primitive metropolitan area that served as residence to tens of thousands of Native Americans, researchers believe.

Click here for an Atlantic article.

Click here for a London Daily Mail article and video.

Deforestation Brought on Mayan Demise

2012-01-09T11:45:00.000-08:00

Mayan ruins at Palenque, with regrown forests.

Severe deforestation the Mayans inflicted on their own environment hastened the end of their civilization in the 8^th and 9^th centuries, according to new research.

The deforestation in Central America contributed to drought, and researchers have long suspected that drought contributed to the end of Mayan society, along with internal conflicts and overpopulation.

According to LiveScience.com and MSNBC:

Using new reconstructions of vegetation stretching back 2,000 years, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies climatologist Benjamin Cook and colleagues found that forest-clearing by Mayan farmers worsened drought conditions in the area.

When the Mayans cleared forests, they exposed land surface with a higher albedo, or reflectivity, than the dark-green forest canopy. This land surface reflected energy back into the atmosphere rather than absorbing it, lessening the amount of energy on the land surface available to do things like convect water vapor to form clouds and thus rain. The result was a decline in precipitation by 10 percent to 20 percent.

With less rain, the soil dried out, so any extra energy went to warming the surface rather than evaporating water. The result was a rise in surface temperature by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit (0.5 degrees Celsius). The lack of rainfall and boost in heat would have been bad news for a society whose survival depended on their farmlands.

European invaders after 1492 destroyed the Mayan population by up to 90 percent in areas, and the result was a regrowth of forest as human pressures were reduced. Cave records confirm the pattern of drying during deforested periods and more precipitation when forests bounced back.

Click here for the complete article.

Significant Orkney Temple Predates Stonehenge

2012-01-08T18:44:00.000-08:00

Artist's conception of a section of the Ness of Brodgar.

A 5000-year-old temple in Orkney, at the northern tip of Britain, could be more important than Stonehenge, some archaeologists are saying. Known as the Ness of Brodgar, it may replace Stonehenge as the center of Neolithic culture.

So far, the remains of 14 Stone Age buildings have been excavated, but thermal geophysics technology has revealed that there are 100 altogether, forming a kind of temple precinct. The site also contains Britain’s earliest known wall paintings.

“The excavation of a vast network of buildings on Orkney is allowing us to recreate an entire Stone Age world,” according to Neil Oliver. “It’s opening a window onto the mysteries of Neolithic religion.”

Experts believe that the site will give us insights into what Neolithic people believed about the world and the universe.

Some parts of the temple are 800 years older than Stonehenge, which lies 500 miles to the south in Wiltshire. The site is very close to the Ring of Brodgar stone circle and the standing stones of Stenness, and is surrounded by a wall believed to have been 10-feet high.

Archaeologists found red zigzag lines on some of the buildings’ inner walls that they believe is Stone Age art – the oldest ever found. So far only around 10 per cent of the site has been examined – and it could take decades to uncover and analyse everything there.

Click here for the article and more photos.

Clues Unearthed on the "Golden Chiefs"

2011-12-28T18:05:00.000-08:00

Gold pendant found in tomb.

Recently found tombs in Central America are providing new clues about the “golden chiefs of Panama,” a mysterious, unnamed civilization.

"It's really a very spectacular find, probably the most significant" for this culture since the 1930s, when the nearby Sitio Conte site, also in central Panama, yielded a wealth of gold artifacts, anthropologist John Hoopes tells National Geographic. Until now, Sitio Conte provided the only major evidence of the golden-chiefs culture, which can be traced from about A.D. 250 to the 16th century, when Spanish conquerors arrived on the scene.

Dated between A.D. 700 and 1000, the new artifacts were excavated two miles from Sitio Conte, at a site called El Caño. A few years ago, archaeologist Julia Mayo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute decided to reinvestigate El Caño. Not long after digging had begun, in 2008, the team uncovered the skeleton of a high-ranking chief, clad in circular breastplates embossed with ghoulish faces, patterned arm cuffs, and a belt of large golden beads.

The most recent dig, in early 2011, uncovered a similarly adorned chief in a multilevel burial pit once sheltered by a wooden roof. Surrounding this golden chief are at least 25 carefully arranged bodies, making the assemblage the largest of the six El Caño burials revealed to date, according to National Geographic.

Click here for the complete article.

Linen Indicates Scroll's Likely Essene Authorship

2011-12-20T16:39:00.000-08:00

A Qumran cave near the site of the Essene settlement.

Analysis of fabrics found in caves at Qumran points to the Essenes sect as authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In all, some 200 textiles have been analyzed.

According to LiveScience.com:

The research reveals that all the textiles were made of linen, rather than wool, which was the preferred textile used in ancient Israel. Also they lack decoration, some actually being bleached white, even though fabrics from the period often have vivid colours. Altogether, researchers say these finds suggest that the Essenes, an ancient Jewish sect, "penned" some of the scrolls.

A breakthrough in studying these remains was made in 2007 when a team of archaeologists was able to ascertain that colorful wool textiles found at a site to the south of Qumran, known as the Christmas Cave, were not related to the inhabitants of the site. This meant researchers were able to focus on the 200 textiles found in the Dead Sea Scroll caves and at Qumran itself, knowing that these are the only surviving textiles related to the scrolls.

However, the analysis is not conclusive proof. An archaeologist who has excavated at Qumran told LiveScience that the linen could have come from people fleeing the Roman army after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and that they are in fact responsible for putting the scrolls into caves.

Click here for the complete article.

Egyptian Carvings Among World's Oldest

2011-12-16T16:34:00.000-08:00

Scientists have dated rock carvings found in Qurta, Egypt, to be between 15,000 and 23,000 years ago, making them the oldest Egyptian works of art known to exist and among the oldest art found anywhere.

These carvings offer views of animals that the Paleolithic hunters encountered ~ mostly the wild predecessors of the domestic cattle of today. Other carvings, called petroglyphs, depict hippos and gazelles. Humans are found, too, among the drawings, but usually they are shown only as stick figures.

The researchers said that the carvings have more in common with the drawings found in Lascaux, the cave in France, as opposed to the art of the Egyptian dynasties. The Lascaux cave paintings have been dated to 17,300 years ago, or about the same era as this new discovery in Egypt.

"As such, they're not considered as Egyptian art, because it predates the appearance of Egyptian culture," said Yale's Colleen Manassa, assistant professor of Egyptology. She added that it even pre-dates "by a long shot" the predynastic art that was the precursor to Egyptian art.

Click here for the complete article.

Stone Age Artist Studio May Go Back 100,000 Years

2011-12-14T18:47:00.000-08:00

Abalone shells and stone utensils were used to mix ochre.

Archaeologists have uncovered a 100,000-year-old “studio” in South Africa in which early humans apparently mixed some of the first known paint. Dwellers of the cave used stones for pounding and grinding colorful dirt enriched with a kind of iron oxide to a powder, known as ocher.

Based on artifacts in the cave, the artists then blended the ocher with the fat of mammal-bone marrow and a dash of charcoal. Traces of ocher were left on the tools, and samples of the reddish compound were collected in large abalone shells, where the paint was liquefied, stirred and scooped out with a bone spatula, according to the New York Times.

Archaeologists said that in the workshop remains they were seeing the earliest example yet of how emergent Homo sapiens processed ocher, one of the species’ first pigments in wide use, its red color apparently rich in symbolic significance. The early humans may have applied the concoction to their skin for protection or simply decoration, experts suggested. Perhaps it was their way of making social and artistic statements on their bodies or their artifacts.

The discovery reaches back to when modern Homo sapiens were known to have started using paint. Previously, no workshop older than 60,000 years had come to light, and the earliest cave and rock art began appearing about 40,000 years ago.

The well-known animal depictions of Cro-Magnon artists in the caves of Europe would come even later, the Times stated. The animals on the walls of Lascaux in France, for example, were painted some 17,000 years ago.

Click here for the complete article.

Göbekli Structures May Have Been Homes

2011-12-04T13:39:00.000-08:00

Ancient Turkish structures believed to be the world’s oldest temples may not have been religious buildings after all. Archaeologist Ted Banning of the University of Toronto says that the buildings found at Göbekli Tepe simply may have been houses for people.

The buildings at Göbekli were found in 1995 by Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute and colleagues from the Şanlıurfa Museum in Turkey. The oldest of the structures at the site are immense buildings with large stone pillars, many of which feature carvings of snakes, scorpions, foxes, and other animals.

According to PastHorizons.com:

The presence of art in the buildings, the substantial effort that must have been involved in making and erecting them, and a lack of evidence for any permanent settlement in the area, led Schmidt and others to conclude that Göbekli must have been a sacred place where pilgrims travelled to worship, much like the Greek ruins of Delphi or Olympia. If that interpretation is true it would make the buildings, which date back more than 10,000 years to the early Neolithic, the oldest temples ever found.

However, Banning offers an alternative interpretation that challenges some of Schmidt’s claims. He outlines growing archaeological evidence for daily activities at the site, such as flintknapping and food preparation.

“The presence of this evidence suggests that the site was not, after all, devoid of residential occupation, but likely had quite a large population,” Banning said.

Banning goes on to argue that the population may have been housed in the purported temples themselves. He disagrees with the idea that the presence of decorative pillars or massive construction efforts means the buildings could not have been residential space.

Click here for the complete article.

Spanish Site Remains Probable for Atlantis

2011-11-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

Atlantis map by 17th century scholar Athanasius Kircher.

As research continues, archaeologists and geologists are increasingly convinced that the fabled Atlantis is submerged in mud flats near Cadiz in southern Spain, the victim of a tsunami.

“This is the power of tsunamis,” Professor Richard Freund of the University of Hartford, Connecticut, leader of the international team, tells the London Mail. “It is just so hard to understand that it can wipe out 60 miles inland, and that's pretty much what we're talking about.”

According to Mail Online:

The team used a satellite photo of a suspected submerged city to find the site then surveyed it with a combination of deep-ground radar, digital mapping, and underwater technology. Buried in the vast marshlands of the Dona Ana Park they found a strange series of “memorial cities” built in Atlantis' image by the refugees who fled the destructive tsunami. Freund said the 'twist' of finding the memorial cities makes him confident Atlantis was buried in the mud flats.

“We found something that no one else has ever seen before, which gives it a layer of credibility,” Freund said, “especially for archaeology, that makes a lot more sense."

Click here for the complete article.

Views of Nebuchadnezzar's Ishtar Gate

2011-10-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

Here are scenes of the reconstructed Ishtar Gate at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The actual gate was built about 575 BC at the request of King Nebuchadnezzar II, who dedicated it to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. If you want to know more, here's the Wikipedia link.

Mexican Footprints May Be 25,000 Years Old

2011-10-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

Five human footprints that may be as old as 25,000 years have been discovered in Chihuahua in northern Mexico. Specialists say they could belong to the first men who lived in this region.

The footprints correspond to three adults and a child that probably lived in the caves that are located in the sierra, in the Valle de Ahuatos, eight kilometers from the town of Creel, in Chihuahua, according to Art Daily.

According to morphoscopic analysis, Footprint 1, by its longitude of 26 centimeters, corresponds to the right foot of a male adult, while Footprint 2 belongs to the left foot of another adult, but the gender is difficult to determine. Footprint 3 was made by the right foot of an infant three or four years old.

Footprints 4 and 5 are from another adult and represent the only pair that corresponds to the same person. These footprints are significant as they have six toes, which may be due a malformation, researchers said.

Click here for the complete article.

Photo shows one of the prints.

Ancient White Mayan Road Unearthed

2011-10-07T10:51:00.000-07:00

Archaeologists digging in El Salvador have unexpectedly unearthed a white road buried 1,400 years ago under volcanic ash. Known as a “sacbe” ~ or “white road” ~ it is six feet wide and was built around 600 AD from ash originating with an even earlier volcanic eruption.

“Until our discovery, these roads were only known from the Yucatan area in Mexico and all were built with stone linings, which generally preserved well,” says University of Colorado professor Payson Sheets, who discovered the nearby Mayan village of Ceren.

Click here for the complete article and photos.

Platform Might Lead to Aztec Ruler Tomb

2011-10-06T10:39:00.000-07:00

No Aztec ruler’s tomb has ever been found, but archaeologists are optimistic that the recent discovery of a ceremonial platform in Mexico City might lead them to such a tomb.

According to Latino Fox News:

Researchers have been on a five-year quest to find a royal tomb in the area of the Templo Mayor, a complex of two huge pyramids and numerous smaller structures that contained the ceremonial and spiritual heart of the pre-Hispanic Aztec empire.

"The historical records say that the rulers were cremated at the foot of the Templo Mayor, and it is believed to be on this same structure — the 'cuauhxicalco' — that the rulers were cremated," said archaeologist Raul Barrera.

"That is what the historical sources say," he said, referring to accounts written by Roman Catholic priests who accompanied the Spanish soldiers in the 1521 conquest. "Of course, now we have to find archaeological evidence to corroborate that."

The platform is about 15 yards in diameter and probably was built around A.D. 1469. It is still being unearthed and is covered with at least 19 serpent heads, each about a half-yard long.

Click here for the complete article.
Photo shows two of the platform's serpent heads.

Stonehenge Site Important Even Before Stones

2011-10-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

Newly unearthed evidence points to the Stonehenge area in England being an important site for Stone Age people thousands of years before the famous monolithic stones were erected.

A team of student archaeologists has uncovered a huge cache of artifacts belonging to hunter-gatherers from the middle of the Stone Age, including the remains of a gargantuan Mesolithic-era feast, which took place close to Stonehenge.The site has also yielded what are believed to be the oldest carved figurines yet found in the UK, indicating a continuity of human presence in what seems to have been a sacred spot for thousands of years.

According to the Independent:

With the tools were animal remains, including what Jacques and his team thought was a cow’s tooth, which they sent away for radiocarbon dating. The result was an astonishingly early date of around 6250 BC, firmly in the Mesolithic period and more than 3,000 years before construction on Stonehenge began. Further excavations ensued and, by the end of September 2011, the team had uncovered a rare Mesolithic hoard of more than 5,500 worked flints and tools from just two small trenches 35m away from each other. As well as the tools and tool production debris, large quantities of burnt flint were found, indicating a fire, and more than 200 cooked animal bones, which came not from a cow, but from at least one aurochs – a gigantic creature resembling a buffalo that is now extinct.

Archeologists are linking the recent finds to the mysterious Stonehenge “totem poles,” three colossal Mesolithic post holes found during the excavation of the Stonehenge car park some years ago ~ another clue that the area was important to people in the Mesolithic era.

Click here for the complete article.

Evidence of Mayan Contact with Extraterrestrials?

2011-10-01T13:44:00.000-07:00

The governments of Mexico and Guatamala are cooperating with filmmakers who contend there is proof of contact between the Mayan civilization and extraterrestrials.

"Mexico will release codices, artifacts and significant documents with evidence of Mayan and extraterrestrial contact, and all of their information will be corroborated by archaeologists," according to Raul Julia-Levy, producer of “Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond,” due for release next year.

Luis Augusto Garcia Rosado, minister of tourism for the Mexican state of Campeche, said new evidence has emerged "of contact between the Mayans and extraterrestrials, supported by translations of certain codices, which the government has kept secure in underground vaults for some time." He said among the evidence is proof of landings pads in the jungle that are 3,000 years old.

The Guatemalan government has joined the project as well, giving access to artifacts and newly discovered prophecies. While the Guatemalan government is not offering information about aliens, it has joined Mexico in supporting the project.

"Guatemala, like Mexico, is home to the ancient yet advanced Mayan civilization and has also kept certain provocative archeological discoveries classified, and now believes that it is time to bring forth this information in the new documentary," Guatemala's minister of tourism, Guillermo Novielli Quezada, said in a statement. He said the country was working with filmmakers "for the good of mankind."

Click here for the complete article.

Photo shows ancient Mayan sarcophagus lid with astronaut-like image.

Why Did Stone Age Brits Convert to Farming?

2011-09-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

Archaeologists are investigating islands around Britain in an attempt to settle debate about why the isles’ hunter-gatherers converted to farming about 6,000 years ago. The issue is whether the change was due to colonists moving into Britain or if the indigenous population adopted an agricultural lifestyle themselves.

According to the Independent:

The experts will be excavating three island groups in the western seaways ~ the Channel Islands, the Isles of Scilly and the Outer Hebrides ~ to understand what sailing across this area would have been like in 4,000 BC.

Fraser Sturt, from the Centre for Maritime Archaeology at the University of Southampton, said: "How people changed from hunter-gatherers to agricultural lifestyles is one of the big questions in archaeology. We know that the first signs of domestication occurred in the Middle East around 10,000 BC and reached France by 5,000 BC. However, it appears to be another 1,000 years before Neolithic farming activities reached Britain."

"We are investigating why this happened by looking at changing social practices, possible environmental impacts and the nature of maritime technology and communication."

Recent discovery of French pottery in Scotland suggests that colonization from the continent is a possible explanation for the shift. Studies show that the first colonists are likely to have travelled across the western seaways, but there has been very little excavation of the islands to prove this theory.

Click here for the complete article.

Search Intensifies in Dardanalles for Lost City

2011-09-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

The submerged city likely predates the ruins of Troy.

An archeological team has discovered a trove of ceramics and pottery estimated to be 7,000 years old in the vicinity of Erenkoy, on the Turkish shore. As a result, a search has intensified for a lost city submerged in the Dardanalles Strait.

According to National Turk:

The lost city lies in the sea floor in the Aegean entrance of the strait on the shores of Europen side. The professor said the pottery indicates the city is from around 5000 BC. “We believe the civilizations on the shores of Dardanelles and Bosphorus straits had been buried under water,” he said. “This latest mound discovered is also 90% under water and gives significant hints of the sea levels then.”

The lost city would be older than Troy. The latest discovery of the ancient city is as important as the ongoing digs in the Marmaray Project in Istanbul, the historians and scientists state.

Click here for the article.

Mystery 'Wheels' Seen Only from High Above

2011-09-14T10:38:00.000-07:00

Some of the wheels in Jordan's desert.

Thousands of mysterious ancient “geoglyphs” ~ similar in construction to Peru’s famous Nazca lines ~ have been found in the Middle East with the help of satellite-mapping technologies and aerial photography. According to LiveScience.com:

Referred to by archaeologists as "wheels," these stone structures have a wide variety of designs, with a common one being a circle with spokes radiating inside. Researchers believe that they date back to antiquity, at least 2,000 years ago. They are often found on lava fields and range from 82 feet to 230 feet (25 meters to 70 meters) across.

"In Jordan alone we've got stone-built structures that are far more numerous than (the) Nazca Lines, far more extensive in the area that they cover, and far older," said David Kennedy, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia.

Some of the wheels are found in isolation while others are clustered together. At one location, near the Azraq Oasis, hundreds of them can be found clustered into a dozen groups. "Some of these collections around Azraq are really quite remarkable," Kennedy said.

His research reveals that these wheels are part of a variety of stone landscapes, including stone structures used for killing animals, lines of stone cairns that run from burials, and a number of strange structures that meander across the landscape for up to several hundred feet and have no apparent practical use.

Click here for the complete article and a photo gallery.

An Inca Written Language: Yes or No?

2011-09-11T19:05:00.000-07:00

Machu Picchu as Bingham first encountered it in 1911.

From Slate.com

When the Yale University history lecturer Hiram Bingham III encountered the ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru 100 years ago, on July 24, 1911, archaeologists and explorers around the world (including Bingham himself) were stunned, having never come across a written reference to the imperial stone city. Of course, the absence of such historical records was in itself no great surprise. The Inca, a technologically sophisticated culture that assembled the largest empire in the Western Hemisphere, have long been considered the only major Bronze Age civilization that failed to develop a system of writing—a puzzling shortcoming that nowadays is called the "Inca Paradox."

The Incas never developed the arch, either—another common hallmark of civilization—yet the temples of Machu Picchu, built on a rainy mountain ridge atop two fault lines, still stand after more than 500 years while the nearby city of Cusco has been leveled twice by earthquakes. The Inca equivalent of the arch was a trapezoidal shape tailored to meet the engineering needs of their seismically unstable homeland. Likewise, the Incas developed a unique way to record information, a system of knotted cords called khipus (sometimes spelled quipus). In recent years, the question of whether these khipus were actually a method of three-dimensional writing that met the Incas' specific needs has become one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Andes.

To continue reading, click here.

Ancient Chinese Statue Continues to Baffle

2011-09-10T19:26:00.000-07:00

Curators and scholars continue to puzzle over an 11-inch-high burial figure that appears to be seated in a side-saddle position with a cloth draped across his face.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Made in China during the latter part of the eighth century, this unusual Tang dynasty burial figure today sits on a shelf in the Museo di Arte Orientale (MAO) of Turin, Italy, exuding as much mystery as he does energy. To date, nobody can say exactly who or what he is—his clothes, his pose, his expression don't add up. Even his manufacture is atypical: While almost all other known burial statuettes are hollow and cast in molds, this one is solid clay and appears to have been sculpted by hand.

For the moment, MAO has him down as "a Persian riding a camel or a horse," says Marco Guglielminotti Trivel, MAO's curator of East Asian art. And this is plausible enough. Formerly owned by the Agnelli Foundation, the figure's eyes are rounded, his nose aquiline, and though most figurines show a male rider straddling his mount, sidesaddle is not unheard of. The raised fists, Mr. Guglielminotti notes, might have held reins, while the face cover—as well as a flap of cloth over the back of his neck—would have protected against wind, sun and sand.

Not everyone agrees. Marcello Pacini, who acquired the statue at auction some 20 years ago for the Agnelli Foundation, says: "I have never seen a rider with such intensity in his eyes. His is the expression of a priest honoring a god, not that of a camel rider facing some banal complication." He thinks the mystery man may be a Zoroastrian priest feeding the sacred fire.

For the complete article, click here.

Greek's Oracles Relied on Nature's Signs

2011-09-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

"Priestess of Delphi," 1891, John Collier.

Oracles in ancient Greece relied greatly on natural phenomena ~ sounds, smells, the rustling of leaves ~ to glean information regarding the fate of individuals and nations alike. According to an article in the Greek journal, ekathimerini.com:

Unlike fortunetellers today … ancient soothsayers dealt less with making specific predictions about the future than offering assurances that particular decisions were correct or incorrect or that the gods looked favorably or unfavorably upon particular actions. Ancient augury took many forms, including the reading of flights of birds and the examination of sacrificial animals’ livers or other internal organs. Sometimes right and wrong, or favor and disfavor, were determined through the casting of lots -- like the rolling of dice today. Colored pebbles or animal bones (including pigs’ “knucklebones”) were commonly used in these divinations.

More formal, highly ritualized prophetic practices also took place in or beside certain ancient Greek temples. Among the gods associated with oracles and prophesies were Apollo and Zeus, whose sanctuaries at Delphi and Dodona were well-known in Greek lands and elsewhere in the Mediterranean world for their priests’ and priestesses’ strange abilities to convey divine pronouncements.

Click here for the complete article.

Researchers Explore Cahokian Coppersmithing

2011-06-14T17:06:00.000-07:00

Artist's rendition of Cahokian settlement.

Researchers have employed 600-year-old metalworking techniques to gain a better understanding of copper artifacts left behind by the Mississippians of the Cahokia Mounds, who lived in western Illinois from 700 until 1400 AD.

The researchers, from Northwestern University, were able to identify how the coppersmiths of Cahokia likely set up their workshop and the methods and tools used to work copper nuggets into sacred jewelry, headdresses, breastplates and other regalia.

"Metals store clues within their structure that can help explain how they were processed," said David Dunand of Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and co-author of the paper. "We were lucky enough to analyze small, discarded pieces of copper found on the ground of the excavated 'copper workshop house' in Cahokia and determine how the metal was worked by the Cahokians."

The researchers also tested theories that some archeologists had made about the coppersmiths' techniques. One idea was that they made large copper pieces, like ceremonial breastplates, by "laminating" sheets of copper together through a hammering technique. But the lamination could not be reproduced, even with much greater weights achievable with a modern press.

The other hypothesis ~ that the Cahokians used copper knobs or copper rivets and other mechanical devices to secure sheets of copper together ~ seems more likely.

Click here for the complete article.

Peru Launches Effort to Preserve Pre-Incan Site

2011-06-13T19:38:00.000-07:00

A cooperative effort of the Peruvian government and the Global Heritage Fund aims to conserve and restore the mysterious ancient site of Marcahuamachuco. Built over 1,600 years ago atop a mesa at 10,000 feet, archaeologists call the site ~ known for its impressively massive castillos and circular double-walled structures ~ the "Machu Picchu of the North."

According to Popular Archaeology:

Built around 400 A.D. and lasting until 800 AD, Marcahuamachuco was the center of a Pre-Incan civilization and thought to have been ancient Peru's most important economic, political, spiritual, and military center during that time period. Some of the site's functions still remain a mystery, but scholars suggest that it was a religious oracle for the population, later used as a sacred burial ground.

The site consists of several major compounds surrounded by curved stone walls, in some places as much as 12 meters high, with interior plazas, rooms and galleries that are interpreted by archaeologists to have served ceremonial and administrative functions.

But over the years, its impressive remains have fallen prey to the elements, both natural and human-derived, such as weathering, plant growth, livestock grazing, and lack of conservation.

"It is one of Peru's most important archaeological treasures, and like so many of the country's top heritage sites, it has suffered in the shadow of Machu Picchu for too long," says Jeff Morgan, executive director of the GHF. “With excellent potential to be one of the first UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the northern highlands of Peru, Marcahuamachuco will provide a major focus for economic development in an area with few opportunities for local communities."

Click here for the complete article.

Farming Came to Europe by Varied Routes

2011-06-11T13:54:00.000-07:00

How agriculture reached Europe from its origins in the Middle East some 11,000 years ago has remained a tantalizing mystery for scientists. Now a new DNA-based study suggests that Europe’s earliest farmers used two different routes.

According the magazine Science:

Some of this research, most notably in Germany, suggests that male farmers entering central Europe mated with local female hunter-gatherers ~ thus possibly resolving the contradiction between the Y chromosome and mtDNA results.

A team led by molecular anthropologist Marie Lacan of the Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, reports work on ancient DNA ~ both mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal ~ from more than two dozen skeletons found in the 1930s in a cave called Treilles in southern France. Archaeologists think Treilles is a communal gravesite because the bones add up to 149 individuals, 86 adults and 63 children.

They found that the female and male lineages seemed to have different origins. The mtDNA showed genetic markers previously identified as having deep roots in ancient European hunter-gatherer populations, but the Y chromosomes showed the closest affinities to Europeans currently living along the Mediterranean regions of southern Europe, such as Turkey, Cyprus, Portugal, and Italy.

The team also concluded that, in addition to the spread of farming into Central Europe suggested by the German studies, there appears to have been at least one additional route via southern Europe.

Click here for the complete article.

Homo Erectus Origins in Eurasia, Not Africa?

2011-06-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

Homo erectus models from Kenya National Museum.

Scientists are questioning the long-held belief that early humans migrated solely from Africa. An even earlier group of Homo erectus may have migrated instead from Eurasia to Africa.

Much of the new speculation regarding humans’ earliest migrations comes from Dmanisi, a major archaeological site in the mountains in the Republic of Georgia, between Europe and Asia. Evidence now points to human occupation there some 1.85 million years ago, substantially earlier than previously believed.

"The recently discovered data show that Dmanisi was occupied at the same time as ~ if not before ~ the first appearance of Homo erectus in east Africa," team leader Reid Ferring of the University of North Texas tells the Associated Press. "We do not know as yet what the first occupants looked like, but the implication is that they were similar to, or possibly even more primitive than those represented by Dmanisi's fossils."

The occupants of Dmanisi "are the first representatives of our own genus outside Africa, and they represent the most primitive population of the species Homo erectus known to date," according to David Lordkipanidze of the Georgia National Museum. The early humans at Dmanisi "might be ancestral to all later H. erectus populations, which would suggest a Eurasian origin of H. erectus."

Click here for complete article.

Clovis Killer-Comet Theory Now Deemed Impossible

2011-06-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

A tenacious theory that explained the disappearance of the Clovis people ~ arguably North America’s first humans ~ is being strongly disputed by scientists who say it’s impossible.

The hypothesis is that a speeding comet nearly 13,000 years ago was the culprit, spraying ice and rocks across the continent, killing the Clovis people and the mammoths they fed on, and plunging the region into a deep chill.

Now a host of scientific authorities are making the case that the comet theory is “bogus.” Researchers from multiple scientific fields are calling the theory one of the most misguided ideas in the history of modern archaeology, which begs for an independent review so an accurate record is reflected in the literature.

“It is an impossible scenario,” says Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., where he taps the world’s fastest computers for nuclear bomb experiments to study such impacts. His computations show the debris from such a comet couldn’t cover the proposed impact field. In March, a “requiem” for the theory even was published by a group that included leading specialists from archaeology to botany.

Click here for the complete article.

Genetics Identify Easter Island Settlers

2011-06-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

Genetic evidence is proving that South Americans helped settled Easter Island ~ one of the most remote islands in the world ~ centuries before Europeans reached it. Genetics has, for the first time, given support to elements of this controversial theory showing that while the remote island was mostly colonized from the west, there was also some influx of people from the Americas.

Genetics, archaeology and linguistics all show that as a whole, Polynesia was colonized from Asia, probably from around Taiwan. The various lines of evidence suggest people began migrating east around 5,500 years ago, reached Polynesia 2,500 years later, before finally gaining Easter Island after another 1,500 years.

Click here for the complete article.

More Research on Potential King Solomon Mine

2011-06-07T17:33:00.001-07:00

Aerial view of KEN, with fortress and slag mounds.

Archaeologists will return to a site southeast of the Dead Sea in September to continue investigating one of the largest copper mines of the ancient Middle East. Among other things, they hope to identify the ethnicity of the people who controlled the mines during the 10th century BC.

That’s the period when, based on the Biblical accounts, scholars have traditionally dated the kingdom of Edom, as well as that of David and Solomon of ancient Israel. Khirbat en-Nahas ~ usually shortened to KEN ~ is substantiated as the largest Iron Age (1200 - 500 BC) copper mining and smelting center in the southern Levant.

According to Popular Archaeology:

Recent radiocarbon dating has placed its age indisputably two centuries earlier than scholars had previously thought, pushing back the clock from the long-accepted dates assigned by archaeologists for the center and the kingdom of Edom in which it was located.

It also places its heyday squarely during the time when ancient Edom and the United Monarchy of Israel under kings David and Solomon, according to traditional interpretations of the Biblical account, dominated the region.

The significance of the discoveries at KEN fall within the context of a larger debate about chronology and the credibility of traditional interpretations about the existence of the kingdoms of David and Solomon as depicted in the Hebrew Bible.

Click here for the complete article.

Incan Fortresses Reveal War with Cayambe

2011-06-01T10:04:00.000-07:00

A gate of the Incan fortress of Quitoloma.

Archaeologists in northern Ecuador have discovered evidence of an Incan war with a neighboring people as part of excavation of two fortresses built 500 years ago. “We're seeing evidence for a pre-Columbian frontier, or borderline, that we think existed between Inca fortresses and Ecuadorian people's fortresses,” Samuel Connell of Foothill College in California, told LiveScience.

The team has identified an estimated 20 Inca-built fortresses and two forts built by the Cayambe, an Ecuadorian society. “We know that there are many, many fortresses throughout northern Ecuador that haven't been identified one way or the other," said Chad Gifford, of Columbia University, also a project director.

According to LiveScience.com:

The discoveries suggest that there is a ring of truth to stories that Spanish chroniclers told when they penetrated into South America during the 16th and 17th centuries. According to these stories, Incan ruler Huayna Capac sought to conquer the Cayambe. Using a “very powerful army,” he was hoping for a quick victory but ended up getting entangled in a 17-year struggle.

“Finding that their forces were not sufficient to face the Inca on an open battlefield, the Cayambes withdrew and made strongholds in a very large fortress that they had,” wrote Spanish missionary Bernabe Cobo in the 17th century. “The Inca ordered his men to lay siege to it and bombard it continuously; but the men inside resisted so bravely that they forced the Inca to raise the siege because he had lost so many men."

Finally, after many battles, the Inca succeeded in driving the Cayambe out of their strongholds and onto the shores of a lake.

The newly discovered Inca fortresses are built out of stone, contain platforms called ushnus, and are located on ridges about 10,000 feet above the ground.

Click here for the complete article.

Onset of Cold Likely Drove Vikings from Greenland

2011-05-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

Ruins of a Norse church in Greenland.

New research shows that a “Little Ice Age” likely prompted Norse Vikings to vacate their settlements in Greenland ~ which they had established around 980 AD ~ around the year 1100.

Researchers have recreated the climate during a span of 5,600 years, through the mid-1300s, using data from lakes near the Norse settlement in western Greenland. Cooling started around the year 1100, dropping 7 degrees Fahrenheit in 80 years. The change could have shortened the crop growing season and increased sea-ice levels enough to impede sea travel.

"This is the first quantitative temperature record from the area they were living in,” study researcher William D'Andrea, now at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, said in a statement. “So we can say there is a definite cooling trend in the region right before the Norse disappear.”

“Suddenly, year after year, you go into this cooling trend, and the summers are getting shorter and colder and you can't make as much hay. You can imagine how that particular lifestyle may not be able to make it,” D'Andrea said.

Disappearance of the Norse from Greenland could also be due to other factors, including their dependence on trade, combative relationships with their neighbors and sedentary lifestyle, the researchers said.

Click here for the complete article.

Trove of Mysterious Rock Art Found in Sudan Desert

2011-05-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

Wadi Abu Dom rock art depicting a rider and horned animal.

Dozens of rock art drawings that defy scientific explanation have been discovered in Sudan’s Bayuda Desert. Some were etched more than 5,000 years ago.

Archaeologists discovered 15 new rock art sites in an arid valley known as Wadi Abu Dom, 18 miles from the Nile. Some of the sites revealed just a single drawing while others have up to 30, said lead researcher Tim Karberg of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster in Germany.

According to LiveScience.com:

A number of the images appear to date back around 1,500 years ago, to a period when Christianity was spreading in Sudan. They include depictions of crosses, a church, which may show a nearby, ancient monastery called al-Ghazali, and one remarkable picture of a knight riding an animal with horns.

“One is a depiction of an armed rider, with a lance and a shield, a kind of knight depiction," Karberg said, suggesting this may be an image of St. George, the legendary soldier said to have slain a dragon.

Drawings of St. George are known from Sudan and texts discussing him have been found within the country. “Our texts attest to the popularity of the Saint in Christian Nubia,” wrote historian Gerald Brown, in a study he did on the subject.

The team also found detailed representations of cattle at Wadi Abu Dom that, based on rock drawings found at other sites, are probably from the late Bronze Age. During this time, more than 3,000 years ago, the northern parts of the country were occupied by the Egyptian empire.

Click here for the complete article.

Satellite Survey Pinpoints Numerous Pyramids

2011-05-24T19:49:00.000-07:00

Several of the new finds are in the area of Saqqara.

At least 17 pyramids, 1,000 tombs, and 3,000 settlements ~ all previously unknown ~ have been revealed through use of an infra-red satellite survey of Egypt. Initial excavations have confirmed some of the findings, including two of the suspected pyramids.

“We were very intensely doing this research for over a year,” Dr. Sarah Parcak tells the BBC. She has pioneered the work in space archaeology from a NASA-sponsored laboratory in Birmingham, Alabama. “I could see the data as it was emerging, but for me the a-ha moment was when I could step back and look at everything that we'd found.”

The team analyzed images from satellites orbiting 700km above the earth, equipped with cameras so powerful they can pinpoint objects less than 1m in diameter on the earth's surface. According to the BBC, ancient Egyptians built their houses and structures out of mud brick, which is much denser than the soil that surrounds it, so the shapes of houses, temples and tombs can be seen.

"These are just the sites [close to] the surface,” Parcak says. “There are many thousands of additional sites that the Nile has covered over with silt. This is just the beginning of this kind of work.”

Click here for the complete article and photos.

Colossal Statue of Amenhotep III is Unearthed

2011-05-20T10:51:00.000-07:00

A second of a pair of fallen statues of Amenhotep III ~ King Tut's grandfather ~ has been revealed at the tomb where he was buried. The statues probably toppled during an earthquake and are the only preserved examples of their size, reaching an estimated height of 59 feet.

One alabaster statue shows the Pharoah seated and wearing a Nemes headdress, a pleated kilt and a royal beard. The Nemes headdress is the striped cloth that drapes down behind a pharaoh's ears and over his shoulders.

The pair was discovered at Kom el-Hettan, on the west bank of Luxor. The statue is located in the passageway leading to the funerary temple's third gate, or pylon, some 656 feet behind the Colossi of Memnon, which guarded the first gate.

The statue pair are unique in their well-carved alabaster, according to Hourig Sourouzian, mission leader of the Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project. The stone, hewn in the quarries of Hatnub in Middle Egypt, was rarely used for such colossal statues.

Click here for the complete article.

Update on Search for Genghis Khan Tomb

2011-05-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

Armed with technologically advanced digital imaging gear, researchers have completed their second year of searching for the hidden tomb of Genghis Khan and are expected to announce their search results by the end of 2011.Twice as many researchers were involved in the second year effort, which covered several months of 2010.

According to Past Horizons.com:

Genghis Khan asked to be buried without markings and after he died, his body was returned to Mongolia and presumably to his birthplace in the Khentii Aimag. Many people assume he is buried somewhere close to the Onon River. According to legend, the funeral escort killed anything that crossed their path in order to conceal where he was finally buried. After the tomb was completed, the slaves who built it were put to death, and then the soldiers who killed them were themselves killed.

Click here for the complete article and an 8-minute video on the search effort.

Sling Bullets Sometimes Bore Insults

2011-05-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

Slingshot bullets recovered from the battlefields of Egypt, Greece and Rome often carried inscriptions designed to add insult to injury, according to archaeologist Amanda Kelly, a classics professor at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Slings ~ also known as sphendonetai ~ have been used in warfare from the Persian Wars and the endless fighting between Greek city states to Alexander the Great's campaigns and the Roman conquest of Britain. Julius Caesar said they were particularly useful against war elephants despite being a low-class division of light infantry, said Kelly.

According to SpaceWar.com:

Some bullets were marked with personalized images any soldier could recognise such as bovine heads. Others were more elaborate, bearing the names of army generals, cities or the blacksmiths who cast them in lead. And quite often, the missiles packed a verbal as well as a physical punch.

"Perhaps the most unexpected element is the humor involved," Kelly said. She cited examples of Athenian sling bullets that read "Take that" or Cypriot versions saying "This is yours." More advanced taunts speak of male genitalia, impregnation and other sexual references.

Click here for the complete article.

Hieroglyphic Stairway is Focus of More Research

2011-05-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

A section of the Guzman stairway at El Palmar.

Ancient Mayan writing continues to intrigue modern researchers and is now believed ~ through the use of magnificent pieces of art ~ to have been an important social act by which new kings established their place in their culture’s lineage.

The Maya told the stories of their parents, ancestors, founders, foes, captured enemies and military alliances on a variety of edifices, according to a recent National Geographic article, referring to Mayan writing as “ a unique feature of this culture that along with the perfection of their calendar has intrigued and mystified the world.”

It also states:

After the Classic period, there is a regional hiatus in writing, commemorative dates and construction. This initially led to the notion of the Maya “Collapse”. A term that has created more confusion than clarification since it implies the disappearance of a culture, but the Maya people never disappeared, and the term rather addresses a dissolution of government and society. Although we still don’t know much about the causes of the “collapse”, the following Post-Classic period, dated between 900-1200 AD, was a time of major change.

Much of the article refers to the recently discovered Guzman hieroglyphic stairway at El Palmar in Campeche, Mexico. The pyramid that holds the stairway was built between the 7th and 8th Centuries AD and a few decades after its construction a total of 90 blocks containing Maya glyphs were added, creating a stairway of six steps leading to a temple on top of the pyramid.

Click here for the complete article.

Sodom Search Shifts to North of Dead Sea

2011-05-02T09:01:00.000-07:00

New focus for finding Sodom is on an area northeast of the Dead Sea.

Scientists in search of the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are shifting their attention to the north side of the Dead Sea, based on new interpretations of the Biblical text. According to Popular Archaeology, attention has focused on “Zoar” as mentioned in Genesis 13:10. Using Zoar as their operative word, many scholars sought Zoar, but turned up nothing.

What is now emerging as the most promising new prospect for Sodom, according to a number of scholars, is a site called Tall el-Hammam located approximately 14 kilometers northeast of the Dead Sea in the fertile southern Jordan River Valley of Jordan. Nestled among lush agricultural fields, it is a mound (or Tall) that rises conspicuously from a ground space encompassing one square kilometer, a very large site by any comparison. Dr. Steven Collins of Trinity Southwest University began research related to Sodom by carefully examining the biblical text in Genesis, along with geographic study and intense, broad-based archaeological surveys. All indicators brought him to the location of Tall el-Hammam.

"If rigorous scholarship and responsible, objective archaeology confirm a link between Tall el-Hammam and Sodom or other possible biblical associations, then so be it,” Collins says. “If the same approach suggests that such connections are not warranted, then so be it. But we must not hide from the possibilities because of bias one way or the other.”

Click here for the complete article and video.

Bear's DNA May Settle Cave Art Dispute

2011-04-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

A small section of art in the Chauvet Cave.

Researchers have turned to the DNA of Europe’s long-extinct cave bear to solve controversy surrounding the age of the spectacular art in the Chauvet Cave of southeastern France.

Following its discovery in 1994, radiocarbon dating suggested the cave’s images were around 30,000 years old ~ nearly twice as old as the Lascaux cave art in southwestern France. The archaeological world rapidly was polarized, with many agreeing with the 30,000-year-old date, while other archaeologists said the dating was seriously flawed.

According to New Scientist:

To try to settle the controversy, Jean-Marc Elalouf of the Institute of Biology and Technology in Saclay, France, and his team have turned to the remains of cave bears. Along with mammoths and other huge mammals, cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) dominated the European landscape until the end of the last ice age.

The Chauvet cave contains several depictions of cave bears, and Elalouf argues that these must have been painted while the bears still thrived in the area. To pin down when the bears disappeared, his team collected 38 samples of cave bear remains in the Chauvet cave and analyzed their mitochondrial DNA.

They found that almost all the samples were genetically similar, suggesting the cave bear population was small, isolated and therefore vulnerable. Radiocarbon dating showed the samples were all between 37,000 and 29,000 years old, hinting that by the end of that period they were extinct, at least locally.

Martina Pacher of the Commission of Quaternary Research in Vienna, says cave bears became extinct at least 24,000 years ago. "So the results at Chauvet are not surprising, and I agree with their conclusions," she says.

Click here for the complete article.

More Evidence of Pre-Clovis American Settlement

2011-04-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

Examples of Clovis-era tools.

Thousands of 15,500-year-old stone tools unearthed over the past several years prove that the Clovis culture was not the first human population in the Americas, according to archaeologists writing in a recent issue of Science magazine.

According to the BBC:

A number of digs across the Americas in recent decades had already hinted that the "Clovis first" model was in serious trouble. But the huge collection of well-dated tools excavated from a creek bed 60km (40 miles) northwest of Austin (Texas) mean the theory is now dead, argue the Science authors.

"This is almost like a baseball bat to the side of the head of the archaeological community to wake up and say, 'Hey, there are pre-Clovis people here, that we have to stop quibbling and we need to develop a new model for peopling of the Americas'," Michael Waters, a Texas A&M University anthropologist, told reporters.

Hunter-gatherers were thought to have crossed from Siberia into Alaska via a land bridge that became exposed when sea levels dropped. Evidence indicates this occurred as far back as about 13,500 years. But an increasing number of archaeologists have argued there was likely to have been an earlier occupation based on the stone tools that began turning up at dig sites with claimed dates of more than 15,000 years.

Click here for the complete article.

Earliest Christ Image on Tiny Lead Book?

2011-04-16T19:16:00.000-07:00

The image experts are eager to examine more closely.

The image on the small leaden page may be of a bearded young man with flowing curly hair, possibly with a crown of thorns on his brow. After lying for nearly 2,000 years hidden in a cave in the Holy Land, the fine detail is difficult to determine.

But if genuine, this could be the first-ever portrait of Jesus Christ, possibly even created in the lifetime of those who knew him.

The extraordinary picture of one of the recently discovered hoard of up to 70 lead codices found in a cave in the hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee is one reason Bible historians are eager to examine the ancient artifacts. The tiny booklet is a little smaller than a credit card and is sealed on all sides, with a three-dimensional representation of a human head on both the front and the back. One appears to have a beard and the other is without.

Beneath both figures is a line of undeciphered text in an ancient Hebrew script. One of the booklets appears to bear the words ‘Savior of Israel’ ~ one of the few phrases so far translated.

Click here for the complete article.

Ancient Books May Reveal Early Christianity

2011-04-16T19:00:00.000-07:00

One of the ancient books, about the size of a credit card.

Their origin is still in question, but biblical scholars say that if 70 tiny ancient books are authentic, they may be as important as the Dead Sea Scrolls in understanding early Christianity.

**At least one biblical scholar has questioned the authenticity of these items. I'll post new evidence ~ pro or con ~ as the research continues.**

First discovered five years ago, the collection of books ~ their lead pages bound with wire ~ could unlock some of the secrets of the earliest days of Christianity. On pages not much bigger than a credit card, are images, symbols and words that appear to refer to the Messiah and possibly the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Adding to the intrigue, many of the books are sealed, prompting academics to speculate they are actually the lost collection of codices mentioned in the Bible’s Book Of Revelation.

According to the London Daily Mail:

The books were discovered five years ago in a cave in a remote part of Jordan to which Christian refugees are known to have fled after the fall of Jerusalem in 70AD. Important documents from the same period have previously been found there.

Initial metallurgical tests indicate that some of the books could date from the first century AD. This estimate is based on the form of corrosion which has taken place, which experts believe would be impossible to achieve artificially. If the dating is verified, the books would be among the earliest Christian documents, predating the writings of St Paul.

David Elkington, a British scholar of ancient religious history and archeology, and one of the few to have examined the books, says they could be “the major discovery of Christian history.”

“It is a breathtaking thought that we have held these objects that might have been held by the early saints of the Church,’ he said.

The mysteries between their ancient pages are not the only riddle. Today, their whereabouts are also a mystery. After their discovery by a Jordanian Bedouin, the hoard was subsequently acquired by an Israeli Bedouin, who is said to have illegally smuggled them across the border into Israel, where they remain. However, the Jordanian Government is now working at the highest levels to repatriate and safeguard the collection.

Click here for the complete article.

Search Under Way for Mesopotamian Marshands

2011-04-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

Euphrates flows through former Mesopotamian desert.

Ancient Sumerian scrolls noted that the first cities humans built between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were constructed on huge marshlands ~ an area today marked only by deserts and scattered settlements.

But below the surface, according to a team of researchers, lie what could be new evidence of the remains of ancient man-made systems and settlements that defined the beginnings of urbanization and the foundations of the great Mesopotamian civilizations that followed.

According to Popular Archaeology:

Preliminary surveys and investigations began last year when a team of three researchers, assistant professor of anthropology Carrie Hritz of Penn State University, Jennifer Pournelle, research assistant professor, School of the Environment, University of South Carolina, and Jennifer Smith, associate professor of geology, Washington University in St. Louis, carried out research of the Tigris-Euphrates delta region to find traces that would help them initiate an exploration of the connection between wetland resources and the emergence of some of the first cities.

They are looking at archaeological sites from the 4th millennium, B.C. up to the Islamic period.

"We were looking for evidence of past marshland and shoreline environments," said Hritz. "I and colleague Dr. Jennifer Pournelle, identified possible features such as possible ancient beach ridges on satellite imagery and were hoping to verify that on the ground. We found some evidence for preserved ancient field systems in the former marshes but were unable to provide a relative date."

"The early period of settlement is always linked to the development of agriculture." Hritz said at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archaeology on March 31. "Southern Mesopotamia is one of the earliest locations to provide evidence for the importance of irrigation agriculture in the rise of social complexity.”

Click here for the complete article.

New Effort Aimed at Solving Pueblo Mysteries

2011-04-14T18:04:00.000-07:00

Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde.

Archaeologists of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center are launching new investigations that could address several mysteries surrounding the Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest.

The Dillard site, located in the central Mesa Verde region in Colorado, is a Pueblo ceremonial center that dates from the 7th century AD. Based on surveys and test excavations, the site includes evidence of a "great kiva" ~ a room used by Pueblo Indians for religious purposes ~ measuring 10 meters in diameter and 1 meter deep, and at least several smaller structures called "pit-houses."

According to Popular Archeology:

The test excavations revealed the kiva to be one of the oldest public buildings in the Mesa Verde region. The site was first recorded during a survey in 1991 by Woods Canyon Archaeological Consultants (WCAC) preliminary to the construction of a private residential community. That survey also revealed evidence of more than 120 other pit-houses surrounding the core Dillard site, making the Dillard site and surrounding area one of the largest clusters of remains from this time period.

Says Dr. Shirley Powell, Vice President of Programs at the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center: "This new study will shed light on a pivotal, but under-investigated and poorly understood time in Pueblo history: the Basketmaker III period (AD 500 - 750). This period saw rapid population growth in the Mesa Verde region. The population boom ushered in an era of great technological advances and social change.

Through study and analysis of the recovered artifacts and revealed structures, the Crow Canyon team hopes to be able to answer key questions about this period that have escaped archaeologists for years, including where the people came from and how they made the transition from a foraging society to an agricultural one.

Click here for the complete article.

Many Ancient Marble Statues Were Painted

2011-04-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

Archer from Temple of Athena with painted surface.

Research at Stanford University is revealing that many ancient Greco-Roman sculptures were not displayed in their marble whiteness, but instead were brightly painted.

According to Past Horizons in interviewing the university’s Ivy Nguyen:

Though we still think of ancient Greece and Rome in terms of white marble sparkling under a hot Mediterranean sun, a new exhibition shows a Greco-Roman lady as she was meant to be seen – in technicolor. Not everyone may take to Stanford’s painted lady, but first impressions can change. “It’s very different – some have called it kind of garish,” admitted Nguyen, but she confesses that she’s gotten used to it.

We’ve always known that ancient statues were painted: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a vase, circa 360-350 B.C., depicting a man painting a statue of Herakles. The most important evidence is on the statues themselves – traces of paint that time did not wash from the creases and crevices in porous marble.

Nguyen’s research indicates the marble surfaces were painted, but cannot detect how many coats of paint the ancients may have applied to the sculptures.

Click here for the article and a video.

Turquoise-for-Chocolate Trades Linked American Cultures

2011-03-29T19:30:00.000-07:00

Cylinder jars from Chaco Canyon with cacao residue.

Trading turquoise for chocolate likely linked ancient societies in the southwestern U.S. with Mesoamerican cultures in southern Mexico and Central America.

New research reveals that the Pueblo people living in the Southwest drank a cacao-based beverage imported from Mesoamerican cultures. In fact, large numbers of people throughout Pueblo society apparently consumed cacao, from low-ranking farmers to elite residents of multistory pueblos.

“Since cacao was consumed by both Pueblo elites and nonelites, active trading for cacao must have occurred with Mesoamerican states,” says archaeologist Dorothy Washburn of the University of Pennsylvania. Pueblo groups and an ensuing Southwest society traded turquoise for Mesoamerican cacao for about five centuries, from around 900 to 1400, according to findings of Washburn’s research team.

According to Science News:

Initial evidence of cacao drinking in Chaco Canyon surprised many archaeologists, who long have assumed that cultures of the Southwest and Mesoamerica had minimal contact. Yet previous Pueblo finds in Chaco Canyon include macaw remains, copper bells and decorative items that must have come from Mesoamerica, remarks archaeologist Ben Nelson of Arizona State University in Tempe.

“To find that cacao consumption was much more widespread strengthens the case for regular exchange with populations in Mesoamerica,” Nelson says. He has argued that leaders of ancient Southwestern societies appropriated selected aspects of Mesoamerican cultures for their own purposes, perhaps to justify their power and prestige.

Other researchers have matched the turquoise from mines in New Mexico to that of turquoise found at several Mesoamerican sites, including the Maya site of Chichen Itza.

Click here for the complete article.

Authorship of Several Biblical Scriptures In Question

2011-03-27T17:38:00.000-07:00

Rembrandt's "Paul." Not such a misogynist after all?

The words “lie” and “Bible” aren’t often linked, but a leading biblical historian points out that the level of deception in the scriptures is much greater than most people think ~ especially regarding issues of authorship.

Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, says that the New Testament book of 2 Peter was not written by the apostle Peter, and that Paul wrote only seven of the 13 letters ascribed to him.

Regarding the impact of such fakery, Ehrman writes:

This may all seem like a bit of antiquarian curiosity, especially for people whose lives don't depend on the Bible or even people of faith for whom biblical matters are a peripheral interest at best. But in fact, it matters sometimes. Whoever wrote the book of 1 Timothy claimed to be Paul. But he was lying about that -- he was someone else living after Paul had died. In his book, the author of 1 Timothy used Paul's name and authority to address a problem that he saw in the church. Women were speaking out, exercising authority and teaching men. That had to stop. The author told women to be silent and submissive, and reminded his readers about what happened the first time a woman was allowed to exercise authority over a man, in that little incident in the garden of Eden. No, the author argued, if women wanted to be saved, they were to have babies (1 Tim. 2:11-15).

Largely on the basis of this passage, the apostle Paul has been branded, by more liberation minded people of recent generations, as one of history's great misogynists. The problem, of course, is that Paul never said any such thing. And why does it matter? Because the passage is still used by church leaders today to oppress and silence women. Why are there no women priests in the Catholic Church? Why are women not allowed to preach in conservative evangelical churches? Why are there churches today that do not allow women even to speak? In no small measure it is because Paul allegedly taught that women had to be silent, submissive and pregnant. Except that the person who taught this was not Paul, but someone lying about his identity so that his readers would think he was Paul.

Ehrman is author of bestsellers including Misquoting Jesus and Jesus, Interrupted. His latest is Forged: Writing in the Name of God ~ Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are.

Click here for the complete article.

First Public Showing for Mysterious Sculpture

2011-03-21T20:27:00.001-07:00

A mysterious sculpture ~ thought by some experts to predate the pyramids of Egypt ~ is being displayed publicly for the first time in hopes of attracting international attention and fresh insights into its origins.

No expert among the many consulted over the past decade can identify the sculpture's age or artistic tradition, nor can they decipher the "ancient, yet unidentifiable language" etched into the artwork.

The large limestone object depicting two entwined and perhaps emaciated figures, "could be one of the rarest finds of its kind," according to Clarence Epstein of Montreal’s Concordia University.

The two nude subjects ~ one a male and the other possibly a female holding a child ~ are depicted in a sitting position with abnormally large heads and elongated limbs. It was brought to Canada in the 1940s by Vincent and Olga Diniacopoulos, Greek immigrants from France who had amassed a world-class collection of antiquities gathered from Egypt, Israel and other ancient sites. The family's vast collection was donated about 10 years ago to Concordia.

The Diniacopouloses considered the mysterious sculpture the centerpiece of their collection. And while there is little documentation about the artwork's provenance, the couple had listed the object under the title "The Starving of Saqqara," referring to one of Egypt's largest burial grounds.

Click here for the complete article.
Click here for another article, with more photos and a video.

Ancient Israelites Worshipped Both God and His Wife

2011-03-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

Asherah, or Ishtar, on 2nd millennium BC terracotta relief.

Findings that the ancient Israelites worshipped Asherah ~ the wife of Yahweh, the Israelites’ god ~ is gaining new prominence among biblical scholars. Accounts of Yahweh and Asherah are in the Old Testament’s Book of Kings.

The first historian to mention that the ancient Israelites worshiped both Yahweh and Asherah was Raphael Patai in 1967. The theory has gained new prominence due to the research of Francesca Stavrakopoulou, who began her work at Oxford and is now a senior lecturer in the department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter.

According to Discovery News:

"You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God. But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: There is only one of Him," writes Stavrakopoulou in a statement released to the British media. "He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many ... or so we like to believe."

"After years of research specializing in the history and religion of Israel, however, I have come to a colorful and what could seem, to some, uncomfortable conclusion that God had a wife," she added.

Stavrakopoulou bases her theory on ancient texts, amulets and figurines unearthed primarily in the ancient Canaanite coastal city called Ugarit, now modern-day Syria. All of these artifacts reveal that Asherah was a powerful fertility goddess.

Asherah's connection to Yahweh, according to Stavrakopoulou, is spelled out in both the Bible and an 8th century B.C. inscription on pottery found in the Sinai desert at a site called Kuntillet Ajrud.

J. Edward Wright, president of both The Arizona Center for Judaic Studies and The Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, told Discovery News that he agrees several Hebrew inscriptions mention "Yahweh and his Asherah."

"Asherah was not entirely edited out of the Bible by its male editors," he added. "Traces of her remain, and based on those traces, archaeological evidence and references to her in texts from nations bordering Israel and Judah, we can reconstruct her role in the religions of the Southern Levant."

Asherah ~ known across the ancient Near East by various other names, such as Astarte and Istar ~ was "an important deity, one who was both mighty and nurturing," Wright continued.

Click here for the complete article.

Dreamtime Sees Origin of Life in Meteors

2011-03-20T11:34:00.000-07:00

Ancient Aboriginal cave drawing.

Aboriginal dreamtime stories were linking meteorites to the origins of life thousands of years before modern science reached the same conclusion.

Duane Hamacher of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, says the Arrernte and Luritja people of central Australia have an unusually strong focus on meteors, meteorites and impact craters and knew about the nightly and yearly movements of stars. Many of their folk tales and legends feature meteorites as origins of life.

According to Hamacher, one story spoke of life coming from two rocks that fell out of the sky. "These rocks were people described as stars falling to the ground; they were like Adam and Eve," he says. "Another described how the egg of life was accidently dropped from the sky, falling to the ground and breaking into pieces, bringing life to the Earth."

Hamacher says science has recently confirmed that amino acids ~ the basic building blocks of life ~ are transported to earth by comets and meteors.

Click here for the ABC Science article.

Jericho Tower Purpose Linked to Dwindling Daylight

2011-03-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

Section of ruins of Neolithic tower at Tel Jericho.

Two archaeologists from Tel Aviv University believe the purpose of the mysterious stone tower at Tel Jericho ~ one of the earliest stone monuments yet discovered in the human history ~ is linked to the summer solstice.

According to Live Science:

Now, after studying how the sun setting on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, interacted with the tower and the landscape around it, two archeologists from Tel Aviv University have concluded the 28-foot (8.5 meter) tower symbolized power and might.

"We suggest that the tower was built not just as a marker or a time-keeping device, but as a guardian against the dangers present in the darkness cast by a dying sun's last rays of light," write the researchers, Roy Liran and Ran Barkai, in the journal Antiquity. (After the summer solstice, the nights begin to grow longer.)

Their reconstruction revealed that, as the solstice sun set, the shadow of a hill to the west fell exactly on the Jericho tower before covering the village, suggesting the monument and the start of longer nights were linked.

The tower was built approximately 11,000 years ago as hunter-gatherer society in the region was moving toward an agricultural society.

"This was a time when hierarchy began and leadership was established," Barkai told the Jerusalem Post. "We believe this tower was one of the mechanisms to motivate people to take part in a communal lifestyle."

Click here for the Live Science article.

Dead Sea Search for Sodom and Gomorrah

2011-03-18T15:58:00.000-07:00

Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, artist John Martin, 1852.

A Russian company is reportedly searching the bottom of the Dead Sea for the remains of Sodom and Gomorrah. The search is a joint effort between Russia and Jordan, with the Russian company selected because of its special underwater exploration equipment that can stand up to the extreme salinity of the Dead Sea.

According to Archaeology News:

Biblical archaeologists have several theories as to where the Sodom and its associated cities were located. According to the Torah, God overturned Sodom, Gomorrah, and three other cities because of their degeneration, sin and iniquity, turning a once fertile plain into a stark wasteland. Abraham, who prayed for the cities, was unable to prevent God from mandating their destruction.

Archaeologists and geologists have suggested that a major earthquake or meteor storm might have been the means by which it occurred. Research has centered on the area around the Dead Sea, and the modern city of Sodom, and nearby Mount Sodom, which is made almost completely of rock salt, is considered the most likely site of the ancient cities.

Recent NASA photographs of the area ~ indicating that the bottom of the sea is littered with debris and objects not found in other bodies of water ~ are further evidence that the cities are on the Jordanian side of the sea.

Click here for the article.

Ruined Environment Caused Mayan Collapse

2011-03-16T20:51:00.000-07:00

Jungle consumes Mayan ruins.

Deforestation and damage to the agricultural system caused collapse of the Mayan civilization, according to a leading U.S. archaeologist.

“It was a collapse and not an abandonment, because the second is temporary, while the first represents an abandonment over the long term and the destruction of the social and economic system that maintains a state, as occurred in the region,” Dr. Richard D. Hansen said at the opening of the 3rd International Congress on Mayan Culture this week in the Caribbean city of Merida.

Hansen, senior scientist at the Institute for Mesoamerican Research in the Department of Anthropology at Idaho State University, said that the fall of cities including Nakbe, Wakna and Tintal occurred toward the end of the Pre-classic period due to the excessive exploitation of natural resources.

This was similar to what occurred at the end of the Classic period (AD 300-900) in cities such as Palenque, Copan and Tikal, due to environmental damage stemming from the excessive cutting of trees for fuel and production of stucco with which they covered the buildings.

He went on to say that the “‘conspicuous’ consumption of natural resources caused deforestation and damage to the agricultural system, which hindered cultivation of enough food to maintain a population that during that period reached around 1 million residents throughout the Basin.”

Hansen said his conclusion follows 30 years of study during which he collected archaeological evidence ~ including pollen, isotopes, ceramics, among other things ~ that allowed him to verify the environmental depredation.

Click here for the article.

Mesopotamian Cities Built on Marshland, Not Riverbanks

2011-03-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

Artist's conception of the ancient city of Uruk.

An American research team believes ancient Mesopotamian cities such as Uruk and Ur were not necessarily located on the banks of the region’s main rivers, but instead thrived in the lowland marshes fed by the rivers.

“Clearly, the earliest cities were not strung out along rivers like pearls on a strand,” says Dr. Jennifer Pournelle of the University of South Carolina. “Rather, they were spread across the river delta within and along the margins of marshlands.”

Pournelle last fall led the first American archaeological research team to visit Iraq in 25 years. Her group combines excavation records and archaeological site maps with aerial and satellite imagery in order to reconstruct ancient environments. They explored the lowlands of the Tigris-Euphrates river system in southern Iraq.

Most of the previous archaeological data in Iraq was collected from 1900 through the 1950s, when little attention was paid to plants and animals, she said. The environmental contexts for museum objects and architecture were largely undocumented. When recorded at all, they emphasized grain agriculture and domesticated livestock.

Click here for the complete article.

Evidence Points to Atlantis Site in Spain

2011-03-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

Artist's conception of Atlantis's multiple rings.

Researchers using satellite views of an ancient city submerged in southern Spain’s marshlands are claiming they may have located Atlantis. The site is 60 miles inland, just north of Cadiz. Following the researchers' scenario, a giant tsunami would have destroyed Atlantis millennia ago.

They believe the site may be Atlantis because it fits the age-old description of a multi-ringed metropolis, according to Richard Freund of the University of Hartford, Connecticut, the professor leading an international team searching for the true site of Atlantis.

Freund's discovery in central Spain of a strange series of “memorial cities” ~ built in Atlantis's image by its refugees after the city's destruction ~ gave researchers added proof, they say. Atlantis residents who did not perish in the tsunami fled farther inland and built new cities there.

While it is hard to know with certainty that the site in Spain in Atlantis, Freund said the finding the memorial cities makes him confident Atlantis was buried in the mud flats on Spain's southern coast. “We found something that no one else has ever seen before, which gives it a layer of credibility, especially for archeology, that makes a lot more sense,” he says.

Plato wrote about Atlantis some 2,600 years ago, describing it as “an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules,” as the Straits of Gibraltar were known in antiquity.

Click here for the Reuters article.

Cahokia Site's Significance Long Ignored

2011-03-05T11:10:00.000-08:00

Cahokia originally covered six square miles.

The mystery of the Cahokia Mounds ~ especially the neglect this incredibly historic site in western Illinois has endured ~ is the topic of a recent National Geographic article, “America’s Forgotten City.” It’s well worth reading. An excerpt:

Cahokia Mounds may not be aesthetically pristine, but at 4,000 acres (2,200 of which are preserved as a state historic site), it is the largest archaeological site in the United States, and it has changed our picture of what Indian life was like on this continent before Europeans arrived.

Cahokia was the apogee, and perhaps the origin, of what anthropologists call Mississippian culture—a collection of agricultural communities that reached across the American Midwest and Southeast starting before A.D. 1000 and peaking around the 13th century. The idea that American Indians could have built something resembling a city was so foreign to European settlers, that when they encountered the mounds of Cahokia—the largest of which is a ten-story earthen colossus composed of more than 22 million cubic feet of soil—they commonly thought they must have been the work of a foreign civilization: Phoenicians or Vikings or perhaps a lost tribe of Israel.

Even now, the idea of an Indian city runs so contrary to American notions of Indian life that we can't seem to absorb it, and perhaps it's this cognitive dissonance that has led us to collectively ignore Cahokia's very existence. Have you ever heard of Cahokia? In casual conversation, I've found almost no one outside the St. Louis area who has.

One of my favorite quotes from the article is: "If deciphering the story of history is contentious, try coming to agreement on the story of prehistory. 'You know what they say,' says Bill Iseminger, an archaeologist who has worked at Cahokia for 40 years. 'Put three archaeologists in a room and you get five opinions.'"

Click here for the complete article.

Ming Dynasty Mummy Remarkably Preserved

2011-03-03T10:49:00.000-08:00

The remarkably preserved mummy of a high-ranking woman believed to be from the Ming Dynasty was discovered recently when workers were expanding a street in eastern China.

Discovered about six feet below the road surface, the woman's features ~ from her head to her shoes ~ have retained their original condition, and have hardly deteriorated. The 700-year-old mummy was wearing traditional Ming dynasty costume, and also in the coffin were bones, ceramics, ancient writings and other relics.

The mummy, which was found in the city of Taizhou, in the Jiangsu Province, along with two other wooden tombs, offers a fascinating insight into life as it was back then.

This is the latest discovery after a lull of three years in the area. Indeed, between 1979 and 2008 five mummies were found, all in very good condition. Those findings raising the interest in learning the techniques of preservation funeral of this dynasty and customs in time to bury the dead.

Click here for the article and more photos.

Homo Sapiens' Journey to Modern Human

2011-03-02T11:30:00.000-08:00

Scholarly debate surrounds when “archaic Homo sapiens” emerged as the modern version of humans. American Scientist recently explored the topic in an article, “Refuting a Myth About Human Origins” by John J. Shea, professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University and a research associate with the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya.

In Europe, the oldest Homo sapiens fossils date to only 35,000 years ago. But studies of genetic variation among living humans suggest that our species emerged in Africa as long as 200,000 years ago. Scientists have recovered Homo sapiens fossils in contexts dating to 165,000 to 195,000 years ago in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley and Middle Awash Valley. Evidence is clear that early humans dispersed out of Africa to southern Asia before 40,000 years ago. Similar modern-looking human fossils found in the Skhul and Qafzeh caves in Israel date to 80,000 to 120,000 years ago. Homo sapiens fossils dating to 100,000 years ago have been recovered from Zhiren Cave in China. In Australia, evidence for a human presence dates to at least 42,000 years ago. Nothing like a human revolution precedes Homo sapiens’ first appearances in any of these regions. And all these Homo sapiens fossils were found with either Lower or Middle Paleolithic stone tool industries.

Shea delineates the various findings and frequently references his own take on the situation, as in:

For me, the most surprising aspect about the debate regarding when Homo sapiens became human is that archaeologists have not tested the core hypothesis that there were significant behavioral differences between the earliest and more recent members of our species. Because modernity is a typological category, it is not easy to test this hypothesis. One is either behaviorally modern or not. And, not all groups classified as behaviorally modern have left clear and unambiguous evidence for that modernity at all times and in all contexts. For example, expedient and opportunistic flintknapping of river pebbles and cobbles by living humans often creates stone tools indistinguishable from the pebble tools knapped by Homo habilis or Homo erectus. This similarity reflects the nature of the tool-making strategies, techniques and raw materials, not the evolutionary equivalence of the toolmakers. Thus, the archaeological record abounds in possibilities of false-negative findings about prehistoric human behavioral modernity.

Click here for the complete article.

Origin of More Stonehenge Rocks is Located

2011-02-25T20:20:00.000-08:00

19th Century engraving of Stonehenge's monoliths.

Scientists believe they have located the origin of a number of the famous bluestone monoliths forming the inner circle and horseshoe configurations at Stonehenge.

According to Culture 24:

One type of bluestone, the so-called spotted dolerite, was convincingly traced to the Mynydd Preseli area of North Pembrokeshire in the 1920s, but the origins of many of the others have remained a mystery. Now geologists at the museum in Cardiff believe they have identified the source of one of the rhyolite types.

A team led by Keeper of Geology Dr Richard Bevins has been using “standard petrographical techniques” and “laser ablation induction coupled mass spectrometry” on samples from Stonehenge and Pembrokeshire.

Their findings, which involve the application of zircon chemistry as a new tool for “provenancing rhyolitic lithics,” point to a source for the stones in an area north of the Mynydd Preseli range, in the vicinity of Pont Saeson.

The results may also provide some new clues about how and why the stones were transported to the Stonehenge area.

“It has been argued that humans transported the spotted dolerites from the high ground of Mynydd Preseli down to the coast at Milford Haven and then rafted them up the Bristol Channel and up the River Avon to the Stonehenge area,” explained Dr Bevins. “However, the outcome of our research questions that route, as it is unlikely that they would have transported the Pont Saeson stones up slope and over Mynydd Preseli to Milford Haven.”

Click here for the article.

Sumerian, Akkadian Languages Resuscitate History

2011-02-22T17:57:00.000-08:00

Sumer, 2600 BC, world's earliest record of music and instruments.

“We are resuscitating a dead civilization through the understanding of its dead languages,” says Gonzalo Rubio of current studies of the world’s first written languages, Sumerian and Akkadian. “ When one studies an economic document from ancient Mesopotamia, there are names of individuals entering a contract or making a purchase. These are all people who lived three or four thousand years ago, people whose names were forgotten and buried in the sand until modern scholars brought them back to a modicum of life in their articles and books.”

Rubio, an assyriologist at Pennsylvania State University, was interviewed by on LiveScience.com:

When an assyriologist holds a tablet inscribed with cuneiform characters, be it in Sumerian or in Akkadian, there is a chance that she or he may be the first person to read that text again after millennia of oblivion. Even if one is not the epigrapher who first looks at the tablets found at an archaeological site, even as a scholar reading texts at a museum, there is an overwhelming feeling of discovery and recovery, the excitement of bringing a civilization back to life by understanding it, text by text, tablet by tablet.

He said that, in terms of structure, Akkadian resembles Semitic languages such as Hebrew and Arabic, but that Sumerian actually is closer structurally to Native American languages.

Click here for the interview.

Nordic Petroglyphs Present Burial Mystery

2011-02-21T18:24:00.000-08:00

Footprint petroglyphs found beneath tomb.

During a recent, routine excavation of a Norwegian burial mound, archaeologists unexpectedly unearthed a group of Bronze Age petroglyphs. "We believe these are very special in a Norwegian context," says project manager Anne Haug of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

First found were the remains of two cremations, a burnt layer that contained fragments of bone. Underneath, archaeologists found petroglyphs, including eight drawings showing the soles of feet, with cross hatching and five shallow depressions. Two boat drawings and several other drawings of feet soles with toes were also found just south of the burial mound.

“This is a special discovery, and we are not aware of similar findings from Trøndelag County,” Haug says. “The tomb might have been deliberately constructed over the petroglyphs as part of funeral ritual. Based on the type of petroglyphs and especially the drawings of the foot soles, we have dated the artwork to the Bronze Age, about 1800 to 500 BCE.”

“Why there are foot sole drawings beneath the tomb is a puzzle. But if we interpret the find in terms of a fertility cult, it may be that the soles represent God and life-giving power. That means that you can have both life and death represented in one place,” she says.

Haug says that there was a similar discovery in Østlandet, an area called Jong in Bærum, where petroglyphs illustrating foot soles were found under a tomb that dated back to the Bronze Age.

Click here for the article.

Tools Indicate Earlier Migration from Africa to Arabia

2011-02-20T15:15:00.000-08:00

Jebel Faya, where the stone tools were found.

Ancient stone tools unearthed from a once-fertile area near the Persian Gulf indicate early humans migrated from Africa much earlier than previously thought. The artifacts from Jebel Faya and dated to 120,000 years ago, were created with several techniques, including “bifacial reduction” ~ removing material from two rock faces ~ that was abundant in Africa, but has never before been found in the Arabian Peninsula.

“When I looked at this material, none of it looked Near Eastern,” said Anthony Marks, an archaeologist with Southern Methodist University who analyzed the tools. “The more I looked at the material, the more it became clear that it had a connection with the kind of tools of East Africa.”

According to PBS:

Tools like this were believed to be used to kill and butcher animals, scrape fat from hides, make clothes from animal skin and create other, possibly wooden, tools. Scientists dated the artifacts with a technique called optically stimulated luminescence data.

“In essence, this is a technique which allows us to determine the time which has elapsed since sand grains were last exposed to sunlight,” said Simon Armitage, a professor of geography with Royal Holloway, University of London, and co-author on the study.

Additional evidence supports the theory that these tools belonged to a group of people that migrated from Africa to Arabia, scientists say. The standard model, which relies on data from mitochondrial DNA, says the first humans left Africa about 60,000 years ago, traveled to Arabia and eventually, about 50,000 years ago, arrived in Australia.

Marks says he’s skeptical that the migration occurred so quickly. “The earlier movement out of Africa makes a lot more sense to me.” Plus, 120,000 years ago, the now-aird area had been transformed by monsoon rains into lush grasslands with lakes and acacia trees. Briefly, sea levels were low and the Red Sea was relatively easy to cross.

Click here for the PBS article.

Click here for the BBC article.

Aspects of Indian Mounds Remain Mysterious

2011-02-18T15:30:00.000-08:00

Artist's conception of Etowah Mounds in Cartersville, Georgia.

Mound-building remains one of the greatest mysteries of early Native American culture in the Southeast and the expansive valleys bordering the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee rivers. Examiner.com recently published a concise overview of the mounds. According to the article:

Since most Indian mounds in the United States have been abandoned since 1600 AD or earlier, erosion, cultivation and exploratory excavations have radically changed their appearance from when they were in use. Visitors to historic sites, where mounds have been preserved, do not realize that they were once earthen buildings with brightly colored decorative motifs on the side. Most mounds also had large ceremonial ramps or at least wooden steps leading to the top. As a result, laymen often view the remnants of these huge structures as something akin to landscaping, rather than true forms of public architecture.

The article also notes that the mounds were built with human labor, and that the mound-building Native Americans had no beasts of burden or excavation machinery. Soil, clay, or stones were carried in baskets on the backs of laborers to the top or flanks of the mound and then dumped, and hundreds of thousands of man-hours of work were required to build each of the larger mounds.

Click here for the article.

Did Vikings Navigate with Polarized Sunlight?

2011-02-16T14:59:00.000-08:00

Viking navigators may have employed a sølarsteinn, or “sunstone,” capable of tracking polarized light to help them establish sailing directions even when the sun was hidden from view.

Early mention of such a practice is in the Icelandic sage of Sigurd and is now being researched to determine if polarized light did play a role in the wide-ranging journeys of Viking explorers. According to Nature News:

The saga describes how, during cloudy, snowy weather, King Olaf consulted Sigurd on the location of the Sun. To check Sigurd's answer, Olaf “grabbed a sunstone, looked at the sky and saw from where the light came, from which he guessed the position of the invisible Sun.” In 1967, Thorkild Ramskou, a Danish archaeologist, suggested that this stone could have been a polarizing crystal such as Icelandic spar, a transparent form of calcite, which is common in Scandinavia.

Scattering by air molecules in the atmosphere causes sunlight to become polarized, with the line of polarization tangential to circles centered on the Sun. So Ramskou argued that by holding a crystal such as calcite up to the sky and rotating it to check the direction of polarization of the light passing through it, the Vikings could have deduced the position of the Sun, even when it was hidden behind clouds or fog, or was just beneath the horizon.

Researchers now are updating studies done in 2005 on the potential use of a sunstone and polarized light.

Click here for the article.

St. Valentine's Day's Brutal History

2011-02-14T13:37:00.000-08:00

Depiction of Lupercalian festivities.

The ancient origins of St. Valentine’s Day are obscure. Historians see the celebration of the day stretching back to early Rome, with several embellishments ~ especially commercials ones ~ occurring in the succeeding centuries.

According to NRP:

From February 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.

The Roman romantics "were drunk. They were naked," says Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile.

The brutal fete included a matchmaking lottery, in which young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival – or longer, if the match was right.

The ancient Romans may also be responsible for the name. Emperor Claudius II executed two men named Valentine on February 14 of different years in the 3rd century AD. Their martyrdom was honored by the Catholic Church with the celebration of St. Valentine's Day.

Click here for the complete article.

Irish Monks in Iceland Even Before Vikings?

2011-01-27T18:12:00.000-08:00

Cross carved inside Icelandic cave similar to Scottish ones.

New archaeological discoveries show that Iceland was inhabited around 800 AD, nearly 70 years before the usual dating of its Viking settlement. Researchers believe these early inhabitants may have come from Irish monastic communities found throughout the Scottish islands at that time and described in Viking-Age and medieval texts.

“Questions surrounding Iceland’s first settlement in the early medieval period have been of longstanding interest for scholars,” says Professor Kristjan Ahronson of Prifysgol Bangor University in Wales. He led the team that made the discoveries.

As an example of the longstanding interest in this topic, Ahronson pointed to the University of Toronto’s Sir Daniel Wilson, who argued in 1851 that “when Norseman first visited Iceland in the latter half of the 9th century, it was uninhabited, but they discovered traces of the former presence of Irish monks.”

One discovery was made at Kverkarhellir cave, on the land of Seljaland farm in southern Iceland. Nearly 200 of these artificial caves have been found on the island. “Tool marks on the cave walls vividly illustrate the artificial nature of these sites,” said Professor Ahronson.

Click here for the complete article.

Smuggler Leads Police to Caligula's Tomb

2011-01-26T18:27:00.000-08:00

Caligula’s lost tomb has been found due to Italian police arrested a man smuggling a statue of the notorious Roman emperor recovered from the site.

Caligula ruled from 37 to 41 AD and was described by contemporaries as insane. He had sex with his sisters, appointed his horse as a consul and killed many for pleasure. He was killed by his Praetorian guard at 28.

According to The Guardian:

Officers from the archaeological squad of Italy’s tax police had a break last week after arresting a man near Lake Nemi, south of Rome, as he loaded part of a 2.5 metre statue into a lorry. The emperor had a villa there, as well as a floating temple and a floating palace; their hulks were recovered in Mussolini's time but destroyed in the war.

The police said the statue was shod with a pair of the "caligae" military boots favoured by the emperor – real name Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus; as a boy, Gaius accompanied his father on campaigns in Germany; the soldiers were amused he wore a miniature uniform, and gave him his nickname Caligula, or "little boot.”

The statue’s rare Greek marble, throne and god's robes convinced the police it came from the emperor's tomb. Under questioning, the tomb raider led them to the site, where excavations have begun.

Click here for the complete article.

Pyramid May Hold Two Secret Funeral Chambers

2011-01-24T17:40:00.000-08:00

French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin is calling for new scientific exploration of the Great Pyramid of Giza to locate two chambers housing funereal furniture plus a previously overlooked passage that enabled funeral parties to exit the pyramid.

Houdin says 3-D simulation and data from US egyptologist Bob Brier points to two secret chambers in the heart of the structure. The rooms would have housed furniture for use in the afterlife by the pharaoh Khufu, also known as Cheops in Greek, he told a press conference this week.

“I am convinced there are antechambers in this pyramid,” he said. “What I want is to find them.”

In March 2007, Houdin advanced the theory that the Great Pyramid had been built inside-out using an internal spiral ramp, as opposed to an external ramp as had long been suggested.

He proposed mounting a joint expedition of Egyptian antiquities experts and French engineers, using infrared, radar and other non-invasive methods to check out the hypothesis.

The idea was nixed by Egypt's antiquities department. A Canadian team from Laval University in Quebec will seek permission this year to carry out thermal imaging from outside the Pyramid to explore the theory, Houdin said.

Houdin said a pointer to the antechambers came from the existence of such rooms in the pyramid of Snefru, Khufu's father. It was possible a similar design was retained for the Great Pyramid.

Click here for the complete article.

Greek Drinking Parties Varied Through Ages

2011-01-20T17:59:00.000-08:00

Kylix cup from 600 BC shows men's drinking party.

Ancient Athenian cocktail parties ~ called symposia ~ went from being events exclusively for elites, to being open to all citizens, and then in the 4^th Century BC back to displays of conspicuous consumption most could not afford.

The wine cups used during these gatherings reflect this story, according to Kathleen Lynch, a University of Cincinnati professor of classics. The cups were central to the symposia, where every participant drank the same amount of wine mixed with water, as they reclined on couches or mattresses set in a circle or square, according to LiveScience.com.

"In the same way that the coffee mug with 'World's Greatest Golfer' in your kitchen cabinet speaks to your values and your culture, so, too, do the commonly used objects of the past tell us about that past," Lynch said.

As the social context went full circle from elite party to common practice and back again, the appearance of the cups evolved as well, from simple and stemless to a profusion of styles to knockoffs that imitated the appearance of silverwork.

From 1,100 to 700 B.C., the symposia were reserved for the elite, and grave markers for the very wealthy were even made to resemble the mixing bowls used to blend wine and water during the parties.

Click here for the complete article.

Artifacts Indicate Earlier Human Migration

2011-01-18T17:22:00.000-08:00

Two artifacts from United Arab Emirates indicate early human residents.

New research indicates that early humans may have left Africa earlier than previously thought, but still doesn’t answer if they got any farther than Arabia. The most comprehensive genetic data so far available, based on material called mitochondrial DNA, indicates that all modern humans outside Africa are descended from a single, small population that left Africa less than 60,000 years ago, but even that data may be unreliable.

According to the New York Times:

The present view, based on both archaeological and genetic evidence, holds that modern humans, although they first emerged in Africa some 200,000 years ago, were hemmed in by deserts and other human species like Neanderthals and did not escape to the rest of the world until some 50,000 years ago.

An archaeological team led by Hans-Peter Uerpmann of the University of Tübingen in Germany now reports the discovery of stone tools 127,000 years old from a site called Jebel Faya in what is now the United Arab Emirates, just south of the entrance to the Persian Gulf. If the new tools were made by modern humans, as the researchers assert, then modern humans got out of Africa much earlier than believed.

“This is a huge milestone, but unfortunately it raises more questions than it answers,” Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in England, tells the Times. The new finding ~ reported in Thursday’s issue of Science ~ points to a new level of importance of Arabia in understanding the human story.

Click here for the complete article.

Effort Focused on Protecting Buddha's Birthplace

2011-01-16T18:40:00.000-08:00

Emperor Ashoka's commemortive pillar at Lumbini.

UNESCO is coordinating an international team of archeologists in a three-year survey of the ruins of Buddha’s birthplace in Lumbini, Nepal. The project aims to identify the presence ~ or absence ~ of hidden archaeological deposits so that facilities related to pilgrimages can be located where they won’t damage valuable archaeological resources.

“This project offers a unique opportunity to investigate some of the earliest developmental phases of one of the world’s great religious traditions, and will introduce new scientific evidence into the debate surrounding the date of the Buddha’s birth,” said Robin Coningham, UNESCO Archaeological Expert and Professor of Archaeology, University of Durham.

Siddhartha Gautama, who later became Buddha, was born in 623 B.C. in the famous gardens of Lumbini. The Indian emperor Ashoka, a pilgrim to the site, erected a commemorative pillar there.

The three-year initiative is part of a larger project entitled “Strengthening the Conservation and Management of Lumbini, the Birthplace of Lord Buddha,” launched last year to address a number of issues and challenges facing the World Heritage site, including the deteriorating condition of the Marker Stone and the Ashokan Pillar, as well as inadequately mapped associated archaeological remains both within the site and in the adjacent areas.

Click here for the complete UN News Center article.

Armenian Cave Yields World's Oldest Winery

2011-01-15T18:11:00.000-08:00

The cave's wine press, in front of sign, and fermentation vat.

The Armenian site where a leather shoe believed to be the world’s oldest was found recently now has yielded what may be the world’s oldest winery. The site near the village of Areni ~ the same cave where the well-preserved 5,500-year-old shoe was unearthed ~ is an ancient burial site where winemaking may have been dedicated to the dead, and likely required removal of footwear.

Archaeologists have unearthed a wine press for stomping grapes, fermentation and storage vessels, drinking cups, and withered grape vines, skins, and seeds.

"This is the earliest, most reliable evidence of wine production," archaeologist Gregory Areshian of the University of California, Los Angeles, tells National Geographic. "For the first time, we have a complete archaeological picture of wine production dating back 6,100 years."

The prehistoric winemaking equipment was first detected in 2007, when excavations co-directed by Areshian and Armenian archaeologist Boris Gasparyan began at the Areni-1 cave complex.

The installation suggests the Copper Age vintners pressed their wine the old-fashioned way, using their feet, Areshian said. Juice from the trampled grapes drained into the vat, where it was left to ferment. The wine was then stored in jars ~ the cool, dry conditions of the cave making a perfect wine cellar.

Click here for the complete National Geographic article.

Famine May Have Lead to Camelot's Demise

2011-01-14T17:55:00.000-08:00

Section of South Cadbury Castle hillfort, looking south.

South Cadbury Castle often is associated with Camelot, the supposed site of King Arthur’s castle, and recent evidence points to famine having struck the area in the early 6^th century.

According to Arch News:

Excavations have shown that the site was indeed strengthened in the period formally known as the Dark Ages, at the time of the legendary Arthur. However, there is one question that remains an enigma – why was the site abandoned?

There is no archaeological evidence that shows there was destruction or an invasion at the site of South Cadbury at the beginning of the sixth century ~ it simply went out of use. Its abandonment is perplexing for it was strengthened and inhabited in the fifth century as evidenced by the pottery shards, but by the early sixth century it was uninhabited.

South Cadbury has undergone some extensive excavations, especially by Alcock (1965-1970), who tells us: “On the basis of archaeological evidence ~ and there is no other ~ the Cadbury II occupation had come to an end before 600 AD."

The Dark Ages is a part of English history where little is known except for constant raids from the continent by Germanic and other peoples trying to claim land following the withdrawal of the Romans. but the evidence for this area is lacking. With no evidence of fighting and the Wessex advance placed at a later date, it would appear that there is no other logical explanation as to the abandonment of these major sites.

Famine may be plausible and would certainly explain the abandonment of a site, or several, where no military action or raiding is visible in the archaeological record. It certainly would explain why people just moved away from an area and left no trace, according to Arch News.

Click here for the complete Arch News article.

Croatia Was Jumping-Off Point for Europe Farming

2011-01-12T15:40:00.000-08:00

New research points to southern Croatia as the hub for early farmers who spread their agrarian lifestyle from the Middle East into Europe. With the arrival nearly 8,000 years ago of settlers already adept at growing crops in the Middle East, farming sprouted swiftly along the coastal region called Dalmatia, says archaeologist Andrew Moore of Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.

Moore’s research team has uncovered evidence of intensive farming at Pokrovnik and Danilo Bitinj, two Neolithic settlements in Dalmatia. Plant cultivation and animal raising started almost 8,000 years ago at Pokrovnik and lasted for close to a millennium, according to radiocarbon dating of charred seeds and bones from a series of occupation layers.

According to Science News:

“Farming came to Dalmatia abruptly, spread rapidly and took hold immediately,” Moore says.

Other evidence supports a fast spread of sophisticated farming methods from the Middle East into Europe, remarks Harvard University archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef. Farming villages in western Greece date to about 9,000 years ago, he notes. Middle Eastern farmers exploited a wide array of domesticated plants and animals by 10,500 years ago, setting the stage for a westward migration, Bar-Yosef says.

The new research supports earlier discoveries supporting the idea that agricultural newcomers to southern Europe built villages without encountering local nomadic groups, Moore asserts. Earlier excavations at Neolithic sites in Germany and France raise the possibility that hunter-gatherers clashed with incoming villagers in northern Europe, he notes.

Click here for the complete article.

Migration Prompted Clothing 170,000 Years Ago

2011-01-09T20:29:00.000-08:00

Depiction of Neanderthals from National Museum of Natural History.

Researchers studying skin-crawling body lice have determined that humans began wearing clothing about 170,000 years ago, far earlier than the approximately 100,000 years previously believed.

Researchers sequenced the DNA of clothing lice to see when the bugs began diverging genetically from head lice, suggesting lice were adapting to life on cloth rather than skin and hair. Latest findings suggest modern humans started wearing clothes about 170,000 years ago, 70,000 years before migrating from Africa into colder climates and higher latitudes.

"I find it surprising that modern humans were tinkering with clothing probably long before they really needed it for survival," David Reed, associate curator of mammals at the Florida Museum of Natural History, told LiveScience. "But that tinkering really paid off when they finally left Africa and moved into Europe and Asia."

A past study of clothing lice in 2003 estimated humans first began wearing clothes about 107,000 years ago. However, the latest research form Reed and his colleagues includes new data, as well as calculation methods better suited to minimize errors in estimates.

Click here for the LiveScience article.

Magi Revelations Translated from Ancient Text

2010-12-25T17:14:00.000-08:00

The first English translation of a 1,700-year-old text ~ Revelation of the Magi ~ contends that Jesus told the Magi he has come to earth many times.

"Christ tells them, 'This is one of many occasions on which I have appeared to the peoples of the world,'" Brent Landau, teacher of Religious Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told ABC News. "So this text may even be saying that there are no non-Christian religions because Christ is the revelation behind everything."

Landau ~ author of The Revelations of the Magi: The Lost Tale of the Wise Men's Journey to Bethlehem ~ hypothesizes that the text is a sort of lost message about them from an early Christian community. "I think the thing that stunned me the most was what it seemed to be suggesting about the scope of Christ's revelation, if you will," he said.

The original text tells of the Magi’s trip to Bethlehem, probably along the Spice Road from China, and finding the infant in a cave. "The cave is filled with light," Landau said, describing the transcribed text. "They're kind of hesitant about this, but eventually the star...its light concentrates and reveals the small luminous human being, a star child, if you will ~ it's Christ."

Click here for the article that elaborates on the video above.

Mayan Temples Could Have Been Amplifiers

2010-12-24T17:31:00.000-08:00

Temples in the northern section of Palenque ruins.

Ancient Mayan buildings may have been design to amplify sounds to either enthrall or disorient audiences. Temples at the Mayan city of Palenque in central Mexico, for example, might have formed a kind of acoustic public-address system, projecting sound across great distances, according to a team led by archaeologist Francisca Zalaquett of the Unisersidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.

According to National Geographic:

Zalaquett's team recently discovered that Palenque's Northern Group of public squares and temples—built around roughly A.D. 600—is especially good at projecting the human voice as well as sounds like those that would have been made by musical instruments found at the site.

Performers and priests may have stood atop these temples or in specialized projection rooms, which still exist, to broadcast songs and chants throughout the squares. The Maya are known to have to held public rites to commemorate enthronements, births of nobles, and war victories as well as to honor deities, Zalaquett said.

The acoustics may have even been purposely enhanced by the strategic application of stucco coatings, Zalaquett's findings suggest. Measurements at some of the buildings still bearing stucco suggest it may have changed the absorption and reflection of sounds.

Click here for the complete article.

Older Chinese Town May Lie Beneath Ancient One

2010-12-20T17:19:00.000-08:00

Ceramic tiles recovered in 2003 from the 2,000-year-old site.

Archaeologists are hoping that sediment from a Yellow River flood has preserved a buried town as well as it did a smaller one discovered in 2003 in Sanyangzhuang in central China. The discovery in 2003 included four walled houses, wells, toilets, ponds and trees, all dating back more than 2,000 years to the Han Dynasty.

Efforts now are focused also on evidence of an even older agricultural field lying deeper than the 2003 discovery, plus the possibility of an even older and larger town buried about two miles away. “If these are preserved in the same way the houses are, it would really turn out to be a staggering development,” says Tristram Kidder of Washington University.

According to Discover News, the 2003 find was buried intact by 28 inches of flood sediments, which formed a protective layer over the village. Kidder thinks massive flooding from the Yellow River hit so quickly that people left behind everything, from large grinding stones to tiny coins.

Click here for the article.

Pompeii Skeletons Point to Earlier Syphilis

2010-12-18T18:06:00.000-08:00

Erotic scene from a Pompeii fresco.

Ongoing examination of a group of skeletons dating to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD is revealing considerable new information about early Roman life in Pompeii. The skeletons are the remains of a group of about 50 Pompeii residents who tried to escape the eruption by hiding in a basement storeroom filled with pomegranates.

Among the new findings are that syphilis likely existed in Pompeii, which overturns the previous belief that the disease was unknown in Europe before it was transmitted in the late 1400s by Columbus’s sailors.

Also, the skeletons show that people were taller than earlier believed and that their lifespans were longer.

Click here for the complete BBC article plus some videos.

Area of Early Civilization Now Beneath Persian Gulf?

2010-12-14T18:24:00.000-08:00

Now submerged area may be where moderns first interacted with Neanderthals.

Land now submerged under the Persian Gulf may have supported some of the earliest humans outside Africa some 75,000 to 100,000 years ago. The floodplain now under water would have been about the size of Great Britain, shrinking as water flooded the area. Then, about 8,000 years ago, the land would have been swallowed up by the Indian Ocean, researchers now say.

A new research study, detailed in the December issue of the journal Current Anthropology, has broad implications for aspects of human history. According to LiveScience.com:

For instance, scientists have debated over when early modern humans exited Africa, with dates as early as 125,000 years ago and as recent as 60,000 years ago (the more recent date is the currently accepted paradigm), according to study researcher Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in the U.K.

"I think Jeff's theory is bold and imaginative, and hopefully will shake things up," Robert Carter of Oxford Brookes University in the U.K. told LiveScience. "It would completely rewrite our understanding of the out-of-Africa migration. It is far from proven, but Jeff and others will be developing research programs to test the theory.

Viktor Cerny of the Archaeogenetics Laboratory, the Institute of Archaeology, in Prague, called Rose's finding an "excellent theory," in an email to LiveScience, though he also points out the need for more research to confirm it.

"Given the presence of Neanderthal communities in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates River, as well as in the eastern Mediterranean region, this may very well have been the contact zone between moderns and Neanderthals," Rose told LiveScience.

Click here for the complete article.

Arabic Island Site Reveals Early Christianity

2010-12-12T19:12:00.000-08:00

Portion of the island's Christian-settlement dig site.

Remains of a Christian monastery and church on Sir Bani Yas Island in the Arabian Gulf, believed to have been settled around 600 AD by a community of 40 monks, is now open to the public. Unearthed in the early 1990s, the site has valuable historical and religious significance.

"Twenty years ago, we had no idea that Christians came this far south and east in the Arabian Gulf," Dr Joseph Elders, the project's archaeological director, who began excavating the site nearly two decades ago, told The National. "This shows that Christianity had penetrated far further than we thought before. We don't have many monasteries from this period."

The monastery complex, a multi-building compound located on the eastern side of the 87-square-kilometre island, is the only pre-Islamic Christian site known in the UAE. Discovered in 1992 during an archaeological survey, the monastery is believed to have been an important destination for pilgrims travelling along a trade route to India.

"We think quite a lot of visitors came to the monastery," said Dr Elders. "These people wanted to be visited."

Christianity spread throughout the Gulf between the years 50 and 350, following the trade routes. The inhabitants of the 7th-century settlement probably belonged to the Nestorian Church, or Church of the East. Researchers believe the wealthy community was made up of a mixture of people from along the Gulf, and local residents who spoke Syriac and Arabic.

Click here for the complete article.

Ballgame Park Likely Mentioned in Sacred Book

2010-12-10T18:06:00.000-08:00

A section of the Tonina Ballgame court.

A ritual ballgame park in the Mayan city of Tonina ~ today known as Chiapas in Mexico ~ is likely the one described 1,500 years ago in the sacred book of the Mayas, the Popol Vuh. Newest evidence is the discovery of two scuptures there in the shapes of serpent’s heads and used as part of the ballgame.

Discovery of the two sculptures brings to four similar objects that have appeared since 1992, all of them in Palacio del Inframundo (Underworld Palace), at the Acropolis of Tonina.

Archaeologist Juan Yadeun Angulo, responsible for the Tonina Archaeological Project, told artdaily.org: “With this discovery, the Tonina Ballgame court, 70 meters long, becomes the only example in Mexico of how these ritual spaces were in the Classic period (200-900 AD), whose scoreboards were animal-shaped monuments.”

According to Yadeun, sculptures of snake heads were attached to the lateral walls of the court until 688 AD, representing the myth mentioned in Popol Vuh regarding astral movement, specifically the equinoxes, solstices and the Ecliptic, which is the orbit described by the Earth in its movement around the Sun.

Click here for the complete article.

Great Houses Indicate Chaco Social Hierarchy

2010-11-10T15:12:00.000-08:00

Ruins of a Chaco Great House.

Social hierarchies may have emerged within Southwestern Native American society as early as the 9th century. Researchers are using unpublished archival information and modern radiocarbon dating to do an updated archeological analysis on Pueblo mortuary sites within the Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico.

Chaco Canyon is famous for its unusual architecture and the dense packing of at least 15 multistory masonry pueblos, known as "great houses." The locale has long been considered a remarkable example of multifaceted culture in the prehistoric New World, but researchers remain divided over whether Chaco gave rise to chiefly societies, or if the society and buildings were cooperatively constructed.

Patterns of human remains and other artifacts found within the great house mortuaries suggests that the long-observed disparity in burial numbers between small houses and great houses in the canyon may be due to the presence of social hierarchies ~ suggesting that only Chaco elites were buried in great houses, where their status was legitimized through ritual links to ancestors and cosmological forces.

Click here for the PhysOrg.com article.

Amarna Was Sun-Worshiping City

2010-11-09T15:25:00.000-08:00

New evidence from ancient burial sites in the Egyptian city of Amarna indicate that it was a sun-worshipping city, according to Egyptologist Barry Kemp.

“Archeology is a moving frontier,” he says. “There are always more questions and uncertainties, as is the case in all humanities.” When Kemp and his colleagues unearthed bodies from the cemetery, the bodies’ orientation was towards the sun, characteristic of the city’s unique sun-worshipping religion.

At the time, most cities were polytheistic, but the pharaoh of Amarna established the city in order to exclusively worship the sun god in what Kemp called a unique “social experiment.”

Click here for the complete article.

DNA Traces European Farming Back to Near East

2010-11-08T14:58:00.000-08:00

New DNA evidence indicates immigrants from the ancient Near East brought farming to Europe and spread the practice to the region's hunter-gatherer communities. The new genetic study adds crucial information about how farming was introduced to Europe's nomadic hunter-gatherer societies almost 8,000 years ago.

An international research team has compared ancient DNA from the remains of Early Neolithic farmers at a burial site in central Germany with a large genetic database of European and Eurasian populations. They found a unique genetic signature suggesting "significant demographic input from the Near East during the onset of farming.”

Sometimes referred to as the Fertile Crescent, the Near East would include modern-day Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

The revolutionary element of this study was the addition of ancient DNA, explains Alan Cooper, director of the Centre for Ancient DNA, as previously researchers could only use genetic data from modern populations to examine this question.

"We have never had a detailed genetic view of one of these early farming populations - there's been a lot of inference around it, but it's all been guesswork" he says.

Click here for the complete ABC News article.

Newly Discovered Statue is Amenhotep III

2010-11-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

Archaeologists have unearthed the upper half of a red granite statue of a powerful pharaoh who ruled nearly 3,400 years ago.

Egypt antiquities chief Zahi Hawass says the statue was discovered on Thursday at the site of the funerary temple of Amenhotep III, one of the largest on the west bank of the Nile in the southern temple city of Luxor.

The statue portrays Amenhotep III with the falcon-headed sun god Re-Horakhti and exhibits the expert craftsmanship of ancient Egyptian artisans. Amenhotep III was the grandfather of the famed boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun.

Click here for a more detailed article.

More Evidence Points to Stone Age Beer

2010-11-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

Research for a half-century has indicated Stone Age farmers domesticated cereals not so much to fill their stomachs but to lighten their heads. Signs that people went to great lengths to obtain grains despite the hard work needed to make them edible ~ plus the knowledge that feasts were important community-building gatherings ~ support the idea that cereal grains were being turned into beer, says archaeologist Brian Hayden at Simon Fraser University in Canada.

Agriculture began in the Neolithic Period of the Stone Age about 11,500 years ago. Evidence suggests that until the Neolithic, cereals such as barley and rice constituted only a minor element of diets, most likely because they require so much labor to get anything edible from them.

"In traditional Mayan villages where I've worked, maize is used for tortillas and for chicha, the beer made there,” Hayden says. “Women spend five hours a day just grinding up the kernels.” However, sites in Syria suggest that people nevertheless went to unusual lengths at times just to procure cereal grains ~ up to 40 to 60 miles.

One might speculate, Hayden said, that the labor associated with grains could have made them attractive in feasts in which guests would be offered foods difficult or expensive to prepare, and beer could have been a key reason to procure the grains used to make them.

"It's not that drinking and brewing by itself helped start cultivation, it's this context of feasts that links beer and the emergence of complex societies," Hayden added.

Click here for the complete article.