Spanish Site Remains Probable for Atlantis

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."

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Views of Nebuchadnezzar's Ishtar Gate

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

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.

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Photo shows one of the prints.

Ancient White Mayan Road Unearthed

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.

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Platform Might Lead to Aztec Ruler Tomb

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.

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Photo shows two of the platform's serpent heads.

Stonehenge Site Important Even Before Stones

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.

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Evidence of Mayan Contact with Extraterrestrials?

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."

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

Why Did Stone Age Brits Convert to Farming?

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.

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Search Intensifies in Dardanalles for Lost City

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.

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Mystery 'Wheels' Seen Only from High Above

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. 

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An Inca Written Language: Yes or No?

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.

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Ancient Chinese Statue Continues to Baffle

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.

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