Search Pending for Tiahuanaco "Underground Anamolies"

Archaeologists from the Tiahuanaco Archeological Research Center have discovered an underground pyramid at the site of the ancient fortress in western Bolivia, using ground-penetrating radar.

Meanwhile, the Bolivian government has announced excavations are set to begin this summer on the new find at the Kantatallita area of Tiahuanaco, about 40 miles west of La Paz. Using ground-penetrating radar, researchers say they’ve found “underground anomalies” that might be monoliths.

Ludwing Cayo, director of the Tiahuanaco Archeological Research Center told EFE News Agency that Tiahuanaco will be undergoing further investigations over the next five years. This is welcome news to some, as the site and stone monuments may have suffered from exposure weathering 4,000 meters above sea level.

It was the capital of an empire that extended into present-day Peru and Chile, flourishing from 300 to 1000 AD, and is believed to be one of the most important cities of ancient America.  Andean legends claim the area around Lake Titicaca was the cradle of the first humans on earth. According to the myths, Lord Viracocha, the creator of all things, chose it as the place of creation. The age of the Tiahuanaco ruins is unknown, but some researchers suggest that they date to 14,000 years BC.

Click here for the full article.

Civilization Timelines Keep Getting Earlier

Anyone studying the origins of human civilization on earth is aware of the earlier, earlier, earlier start-dates archaeologists are citing. The reasons are basically the discovery of previously unexplored sites and the enhanced technology enabling more precise dating of artifacts.

Here’s a wrap-up of some newer findings, especially the Gunung Padang site in Indonesia, first thought to be a natural hill but now revealed as a 300-foot step pyramid. According to The Mind Unleashed website:

The hill was actually not a natural hill but a 300-ft high step-pyramid. And what’s even more controversial is that the structure was much older than anyone imagined . . . Radiocarbon dated the terrace structures at around 500 to 1,500 BC, similar to previous estimates. 

. . . As the drills dug deeper, Natawidjaja continued to discover that the columnar basalt structures extended far beneath the surface and yielded much older dates. At depths of 90 feet and more, the material was found to be 20,000 BC to 22,000 BC years old. Using radiocarbon dating, he and his team proved that man-made megalithic structures and hence a prehistoric human civilization existed well into the Ice Age.

Gunung Padang is a recent addition to the growing list of archaeological sites proving that our history books regarding early civilizations are now hopelessly out of date.

Click here for the article.

New Research on Peruvian High-Elevation "Lost City"

Choquequirao is a truly “lost city,” abandoned around 1572 when the last Inca ruler, Tupac Amaru, was captured in the distant jungles, dragged back to Cusco and executed by Spanish colonial authorities.

Choquequirao’s ancient houses, temples, canals and walls were soon reclaimed by the silent, green, primeval forest only to be rediscovered and revealed in recent times. Located on the unpopulated side of the immense Apurimac Canyon, the region has remained disconnected from the farms, villages and roads.

In this account from Peruvian Times, archaeologist Gary Ziegler writes:

It is little known that Yale professor Hiram Bingham, the now famous scientific discoverer of Machu Picchu in 1911 was inspired to launch his return to Peru and archaeological explorations after a visit to Choquequirao in 1909. Bingham visited Choquequirao twice, the second time with a crew of surveyors, cartographers and specialists to produce the first map and scientific description.

Like many other Incan sites, Choquequiarao appears to have been carefully designed according to astronomical alignment with sacred rivers, mountains and celestial movements.

Click here to read the article.

More Uses Deduced for Antikythera

Scientists keep edging closer to determining the who, what and why of the Antikythera Mechanism recovered from an ancient shipwreck near Crete in 1901.

So far, we know the strange, complex assembly of bronze gears could accurately predict lunar and solar eclipses and tell the positions of planets throughout the solar system.

According to the New York Times:

Now a new analysis of the dial used to predict eclipses, which is set on the back of the mechanism, provides yet another clue to one of history’s most intriguing puzzles. 

Christián C. Carman, a science historian at the National University of Quilmes in Argentina, and James Evans, a physicist at the University of Puget Sound in Washington, suggest that the calendar of the mysterious device began in 205 B.C., just seven years after Archimedes died.  The mechanism was most likely housed in a wooden box and operated by a hand crank. The device itself bears inscriptions on the front and back. In the 1970s, the engravings were estimated to date from 87 B.C. But more recently, scientists examining the forms of the Greek letters in the inscriptions dated the mechanism to 150 to 100 B.C. 

Over the years scientists have speculated that the mechanism might have been somehow linked to Archimedes, one of history’s most famous mathematicians and inventors. In 2008, a group of researchers reported that language inscribed on the device suggested it had been manufactured in Corinth or in Syracuse, where Archimedes lived.

Click here to read the article.

Aboriginal Stories Tell of Rising Sea Levels

New research into early Aboriginal stories set along Australia's coast has detected evidence of dramatically rising shoreline waters over several thousand years. It seems that sea level about 20,000 years ago was 120 meters below its current level, rising 13,000 years ago to about 70 meters below current sea level. 

It seems today's sea level was finally reached only about 6,000 years ago. Linguists have also uncovered ancient Aboriginal tales about living where the Great Barrier Reef now stands.

How do we know that these stories are authentic? We suggest that because they all say essentially the same thing, it is more likely that they are based on observation," according to the article in The Conversation.com. "All tell of the ocean rising over areas that had previously been dry. None tell stories running the other way ~ of seas falling to expose land."

"We might expect to find comparable collections of sea-level rise stories from all parts of the globe, but we do not," it continues. "Perhaps they exist, but have been dismissed on account of an improbable antiquity by scholars adhering to the more orthodox view that oral traditions rarely can't survive more than a millennium."

Click here for the article.

Clovis DNA Points to Native-American Origins

The genetic sequence from a prehistoric baby in a 12,000-year-old Clovis burial site in Montana is providing significant data on the origins of the earliest Americans. Until now, archaeologists have had to rely mainly on tools made of stone and bone, and other artifacts to tell the story of human migration about 15,000 years ago to the New World.

Now that story is bolstered with some dramatic, ancient DNA, extracted from the remains of a 1-year-old boy who died in what is now Montana more than 12,000 years ago, according to a study described in Nature magazine.

"Clovis is what we like to refer to as an 'archaeological complex,' " says Michael Waters, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University.

That complex is defined by characteristic tools, he says.  

The Clovis artifacts were common for about 400 years, starting about 13,000 years ago. But at this point, there is only one set of human remains associated with those sorts of tools: that of the baby from Montana. "So this genetic study actually provides us with a look at who these people were," Waters says.

The most obvious conclusion from the study is that the Clovis people who lived on the Anzick site in Montana were genetically very much like Native Americans throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Image: Depiction of Clovis people, Mastodon State Park, Missouri

Click here for the article.

If Noah's Ark Existed, Was It Round?

After examining a 3,700-year-old clay tablet with instructions on how to build an ark, the expert who translated it says he doubts Noah’s Ark ever existed.

The ark instructions call for construction of a huge circular coracle, 3,600 square meters large and made like a giant rope basket strengthened with wooden ribs, waterproofed with bitumen inside and out. What’s described is a giant version of a craft the Babylonians knew very well, in daily use up to the late 20th century to transport people and animals across rivers, according to British Museum expert Irving Finkel.

According to the Guardian: "I am 107% convinced the ark never existed," Finkel said. The tablet gives a version of the ark story far older than the biblical accounts, and Finkel believes the explanation of how "holy writ appears on this piece of Weetabix," is that the writers of the Bible drew on ancient accounts encountered by Hebrew scholars during the Babylonian exile.

Texts about a great flood and the order by God to the one just man to build a boat and save himself, his family, and all the animals, clearly older than the Bible story, were first found in the Middle East in the 19th century. They caused both consternation and wild excitement, including an expedition to find the broken part of one tablet in a mountain of shattered clay fragments.

The tablet was brought to Finkel on a museum open day by Douglas Simmons, whose father, Leonard, brought it back to England in a tea-chest full of curios, after wartime service in the Middle East with the RAF.

Click here for the article.

More Paintings Rumored Near Lascaux

Another cave containing prehistoric paintings may exist just four kilometers from the famous Lascaux caves in southwestern France. The original cave art at Lascaux was found in 1940, and attracted hordes of visitors until it was closed to the public in 1983 to protect the artwork.

A group of teenagers near the town of Montignac discovered in 1940 a complex network of Paleolithic caves with a series of 17,000-year-old frescos. According to Archaeology News Network:

The rumors of a second cave covered in pre-historic artwork have been circulating for years, but it appears local authorities are now ready to take them seriously after one local family shared an extraordinary secret they had kept to themselves for half a century. 

According to French media reports this week, preliminary investigations by the town’s mayor, as well as authorities in the Dordogne region, have proved promising enough to warrant a more detailed probe into a patch of land 4 km from the site of the Lascaux caves. 

 “There’s no certainty, and we are still quite far from having the necessary evidence to confirm the existence of another decorated cave,” Montignac mayor Laurent Mathieu told French daily Le Figaro this week. 

 Despite that caution, however, Mathieu did confirm that the culture department of the Dordogne regional administration would soon be mapping out a 10-hectare area for “further research.” This region will also be placed under surveillance, to prevent amateur archaeologists from conducting their own, unsupervised investigations.

The possibility of a second discovery near the town came about in August, when an elderly local woman told the mayor that her husband – who had died in August – had come across a cave with prehistoric frescos back in 1962, but had covered the entrance for fear of bringing hassle on himself. The secret had stayed in the family for 51 years, until she finally shared it with the mayor.

Image: Researcher examining paintings in the original Lascaux chamber.

Click here for the article.

Did Rats Eradicate Easter Island Trees?

New speculation on what caused the demise of civilization on Easter Island gives the ancient islanders more credit for innovative adaptations to environmental problems, though ultimately the story ends on the same desolate note.

The updated theory and sequence of events come from anthropologists Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo from the University of Hawaii. According to NPR:

Professors Hunt and Lipo say fossil hunters and paleobotanists have found no hard evidence that the first Polynesian settlers set fire to the forest to clear land — what's called "large scale prehistoric farming." 

The trees did die, no question. But instead of fire, Hunt and Lipo blame rats . . . Polynesian rats (Rattus exulans) stowed away on those canoes, Hunt and Lipo say, and once they landed, with no enemies and lots of palm roots to eat, they went on a binge, eating and destroying tree after tree, and multiplying at a furious rate.

They say the rats played havoc with the island’s trees, causing a massive degrading of vegetation and eliminating several animal species. The NPR report concludes: “On Easter Island, people learned to live with less and forgot what it was like to have more. Maybe that will happen to us. There's a lesson here. It's not a happy one.”

Click here for the article.