Australia’s first marine Aboriginal archaeological site questioned
A new study from The University of Western Australia has challenged earlier claims that Aboriginal stone artefacts discovered off the Pilbara coast in Western Australia represent Australia’s first undisturbed underwater archaeological site.
Map of the Dampier Archipelago (Murujuga) showing locations of areas mentioned in the text. (Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data [2020] processed by Sentinel Hub).
The original findings were made in a study published in 2020 in PLOS ONE, by a team of archaeologists and scientists from Flinders University, UWA, James Cook University, ARA (Airborne Research Australia) and the University of York.
The team partnered with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation to locate and investigate stone scatters at two sites in the Dampier Archipelago.
The “underwater” sites at Cape Bruguieres included hundreds of stone tools found in an area that was dry land many thousands of years ago.
Co-author of the new paper, published in Geoarchaeology, geoarchaeologist Dr. Ingrid Ward from UWA’s School of Social Sciences, said it questioned two key claims made in the original paper—that the artefacts were “permanently submerged” and that they were “in situ” and had not been moved since their original deposition.
“In fact, the artefacts occur in a channel ponded well above the lowest tide, so are not permanently submerged,” Dr. Ward said.
“Further, past and present oceanographic and sediment transport processes indicate that the lithic artefact scatters have almost certainly been moved by waves and currents away from where they were first discarded.”
The new study was carried out in collaboration with UWA’s Dr. Piers Larcombe, Dr. Peter Ross of Flinders University and Dr. Chris Fandry of RPS Energy.
The multidisciplinary team examined the assumptions and claims made in the original paper, concluding that the analysis had been insufficient to justify its findings.
“It remains untested how old the artefacts are—they could be 200 years old, 2,000 years old or 20,000 years old—it is completely unknown at this stage,” Dr. Ward said.
Despite this, she said we could still learn a lot from reworked sites.
“For all archaeological sites, the scientific narrative depends on defensible interpretation, which means understanding the processes that have formed the sites we find today,” she said.
“Science progresses through repeated cycles of research, publication, challenge and correction, and papers that challenge ideas are a normal part of healthy science. Archaeological research of indigenous coastal and marine sites in Australia is still at an early stage.”
Enduring Mystery Surrounds the Ancient Site of Puma Punku
High up the Bolivian altiplano,’ south of Lake Titicaca and the ancient complex of Tiahuanaco, we find the ancient ruins of Puma Punku.
Believed to have been erected by the ancient Tiwanaku culture in the bronze age, between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago, the ancient site is home to some of the most fascinating ancient stone structures on the surface of the planet.
Shrouded in mystery, the archaeological site of Puma Punku is one of the biggest headaches for mainstream archaeologists who are unable to explain how ancient cultures cut and shaped granite stone to incredible precision, transported blocks of stones that weigh more than 50 tons, and placed them in a position like a puzzle so that not a single sheet of paper can fit between them.
But if that wasn’t enough of a mystery, there’s that LITTLE magnetic anomaly present at Puma Punku.
The question that arises here is… how on Earth did the ancients transport these massive blocks of stone, tens of tons in weight across 70 kilometres from their quarry to Puma Punku?
Puma Punku: reconstruction
The Magnetic Anomaly
This mysterious feature which makes Puma Punku even stranger was spotted by researcher and author Brien Foerster.
In a video uploaded onto his YouTube account, Brien Foerster takes us on a trip to the Bolivian Altiplano where he tours through Puma Punku and shows us how certain rocks at the site – Puma Punku’s Grey Stones – display magnetic anomalies.
These curious features have been completely ignored and left unattended by scholars who have studied Puma Punku in the past.
Here is another video where we can see the curious magnetic anomaly present on the grey stones of Puma Punku.
Still, think Puma Punku is just another ordinary ancient site? Think again.
Possible Medieval Children’s Cemetery Found in Southern Turkey
A furnace for commercial production and a child’s grave with glass bracelets and gifts inside has been found for the first time during this year’s excavations in the ancient city of Kelenderis, established on the Mediterranean coast in the southern province of Mersin 2,800 years ago.
Located next to a fisherman’s shelter in the Aydıncık district on the Mersin-Antalya highway, the excavation and restoration/conservation works started in 1987 in the ancient city of Kelenderis and have been ongoing for 35 years uninterruptedly.
For the first time, the skeleton of a child, who was buried with four solid glass bracelets on his arm, gifts, clothes and a wooden coffin, has been unearthed in the ancient city, where nearly 150 tombs have also been found around the Odeon over the last 35 years.
In addition, during the excavations conducted in the region, a furnace, which is thought to be used for tile production, was unearthed for the first time, documenting commercial production.
Speaking about the exciting discovery, the head of the excavations Mahmut Aydın said, “Excavations continue for 12 months of the year in the ancient city of Kelenderis. This year, we have completed the excavation and consolidation of the caves, the sitting area, and the supporting walls behind the Odeon structure.
Now we found a furnace that excites us. We knew for years that there was production here, but we couldn’t find the oven.
The oven is 1,300 years old. We think that roof tiles were produced inside the furnace. Because during the excavations we carried out last year and this year, a large number of roof tiles, dated to the seventh century, were found around the furnace.
Since the roof tiles were faulty, we found them scattered around it. When we completely empty the inside of the furnace, we might find even more faulty roof tiles.”
Speaking about the child’s grave, Aydın said, “We have previously uncovered nearly 150 tombs here, but none of them had burial gifts. In this one, we uncovered four glass bracelets, an inscription on a ceramic piece and a cup. This was a first.
At the same time, there were several baby graves around this child’s grave. We understand from here that a part of the Odeon was used as a children’s burial area.
When the carbon 14 analysis results come, we will be able to identify them more clearly. But we believe that this area was used as a burial area in the Middle Ages. As it is different from other burials, we will only be able to determine exactly when the child died with carbon 14 analysis.”
Indian Farmer Discovers 4,000-year-old Copper Weapons Buried Under a Field
We know India is a rich country when it comes to its heritage and culture. Although a lot of evidence has been lost, through destruction, loot or other reasons, findings from time to time prove that indeed India is a heritage-rich country.
It has given the world the teachings of Buddha to learn from, the richness of the Himalayas that make India the hub of a spiritual journey, and more.
In a recent finding, archaeologists in Agra have found nearly 4000-year-old weapons from beneath the ground in Mainpuri.
The weapons extracted include large swords, some close to 4 feet, and arms having sharp sophisticated shapes. The archaeologists have termed the finding ‘exciting’.
About the finding
According to reports, in the village of Ganeshpur in Mainpuri, a farmer was levelling his field when he found a large number of copper swords and harpoons beneath the soil.
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) found a variety of swords, some that archaeologists are calling “antenna swords and harpoons”, with a hook at the bottom.
Some of these weapons had a starfish-like shape. These copper hoards, 77 in number, possibly date back to 1600-2000 BC – the later stages of the Chalcolithic Age (the transition period between the Neolithic and Bronze Ages).
The findings according to Vasant Swarnkar, D.
In recent Excavations at Sanauli, Baghpat, UP under Dr SK Manjul, @ASIGoI finds Coffin Burials, furnaces & fascinating artefacts’. The present excavation is carried out to understand the extension of the burial site and also the habitation area in relation to earlier findings in 2018.
The Director of Conservation and spokesperson, suggest that the inhabitants of the area were engaged in fighting, much like the 2018 findings in Sanauli in Baghpat, although that was a burial site.
Earlier in 2018, the ASI in an excavation at Sanauli, Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh found coffin burials, furnaces, and fascinating artefacts.
In 2019, it carried out an excavation to understand the extension of the burial site and also the habitation area in relation to earlier findings.
The find will undergo Thermoluminescence dating, a technique usually used on pottery and other ceramic material. According to Director Swarnkar, similar discoveries have been made in the past in Sakatpur in Saharanpur, Madarpur in Moradabad, and Saifai district.
Ancient microbes may help us find extraterrestrial life forms
Using light-capturing proteins in living microbes, scientists have reconstructed what life was like for some of Earth’s earliest organisms. These efforts could help us recognize signs of life on other planets, whose atmospheres may more closely resemble our pre-oxygen planet.
Rendering of the process by which ancient microbes captured light with rhodopsin proteins.
The earliest living things, including bacteria and single-celled organisms called archaea, inhabited a primarily oceanic planet without an ozone layer to protect them from the sun’s radiation. These microbes evolved rhodopsins—proteins with the ability to turn sunlight into energy, using them to power cellular processes.
“On early Earth, energy may have been very scarce. Bacteria and archaea figured out how to use the plentiful energy from the sun without the complex biomolecules required for photosynthesis,” said UC Riverside astrobiologist Edward Schwieterman, who is co-author of a study describing the research.
Rhodopsins are related to rods and cones in human eyes that enable us to distinguish between light and dark and see colours. They are also widely distributed among modern organisms and environments like saltern ponds, which present a rainbow of vibrant colours.
Using machine learning, the research team analyzed rhodopsin protein sequences from all over the world and tracked how they evolved over time. Then, they created a type of family tree that allowed them to reconstruct rhodopsins from 2.5 to 4 billion years ago and the conditions that they likely faced.
Their findings are detailed in a paper published in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.
“Life as we know it is as much an expression of the conditions on our planet as it is of life itself. We resurrected ancient DNA sequences of one molecule, and it allowed us to link to the biology and environment of the past,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison astrobiologist and study lead Betul Kacar.
“It’s like taking the DNA of many grandchildren to reproduce the DNA of their grandparents. Only, it’s not grandparents, but tiny things that lived billions of years ago, all over the world,” Schwieterman said.
Modern rhodopsins absorb blue, green, yellow and orange light, and can appear pink, purple or red by virtue of the light they are not absorbing or complementary pigments. However, according to the team’s reconstructions, ancient rhodopsins were tuned to absorb mainly blue and green light.
Since ancient Earth did not yet have the benefit of an ozone layer, the research team theorizes that billions-of-years-old microbes lived many meters down in the water column to shield themselves from intense UVB radiation at the surface.
Blue and green light best penetrates water, so it is likely that the earliest rhodopsins primarily absorbed these colours. “This could be the best combination of being shielded and still being able to absorb light for energy,” Schwieterman said.
After the Great Oxidation Event, more than 2 billion years ago, Earth’s atmosphere began to experience a rise in the amount of oxygen. With additional oxygen and ozone in the atmosphere, rhodopsins evolved to absorb additional colours of light.
Rhodopsins today are able to absorb colours of light that chlorophyll pigments in plants cannot. Though they represent completely unrelated and independent light capture mechanisms, they absorb complementary areas of the spectrum.
“This suggests co-evolution, in that one group of organisms is exploiting light not absorbed by the other,” Schwieterman said. “This could have been because rhodopsins developed first and screened out the green light, so chlorophylls later developed to absorb the rest. Or it could have happened the other way around.”
Moving forward, the team is hoping to resurrect model rhodopsins in a laboratory using synthetic biology techniques.
“We engineer the ancient DNA inside modern genomes and reprogram the bugs to behave how we believe they did millions of years ago. Rhodopsin is a great candidate for laboratory time-travel studies,” Kacar said.
Ultimately, the team is pleased about the possibilities for research opened up by the techniques they used for this study. Since other signs of life from the deep geologic past need to be physically preserved and only some molecules are amenable to long-term preservation, there are many aspects of life’s history that have not been accessible to researchers until now.
“Our study demonstrates for the first time that the behavioural histories of enzymes are amenable to evolutionary reconstruction in ways that conventional molecular biosignatures are not,” Kacar said.
The team also hopes to take what they learned about the behaviour of early Earth organisms and use it to search the skies for signs of life on other planets.
“Early Earth is an alien environment compared to our world today. Understanding how organisms here have changed with time and in different environments is going to teach us crucial things about how to search for and recognize life elsewhere,” Schwieterman said.
6,000-Year-Old Settlement Found Outside Stonehenge Could “Rewrite British History”
The culture that built Stonehenge might be much older than previously thought. In research that could “rewrite” long-established British history, University of Buckingham archaeologists have discovered a 6,000-year-old Mesolithic settlement located close to the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge.
The discovery of the site, which predates Stonehenge by at least 1,000 years, has massive implications for scholarly understanding of the origins of British civilization.
What they found: History.com reports that the site at Blick Mead is about 1.5 miles from Stonehenge and contains “untouched samples of stone tools, flints and even evidence of possible Mesolithic structures — the only finds of their kind in the Stonehenge World Heritage site.”
The encampment may be proof that Blick Mead was occupied by humans well before Stonehenge was completed between 3,000 and 1,500 B.C., and that Britain had been settled by people before its land bridge to Europe was submerged under what we now call the English Channel more than 8,000 years ago.
Previously, archaeologists had assumed that the Stonehenge site was unoccupied prior to its construction. But the new dig site contains evidence of feasting in the form of aurochs carcasses, indicating that it might have been a meeting site of special significance for hunter-gatherer tribes. It is also located near a valuable natural spring.
“It’s the first proof of people living there earlier, and indicates that Stonehenge could have been planned for years,” a project spokesman told the Daily Mail. “It’s the first indication of a settlement, not just people passing through and dropping tools.”
“British prehistory may have to be rewritten,” dig leader David Jacques said in a press release. “This is the latest-dated Mesolithic encampment ever found in the U.K. Blick Mead site connects the early hunter-gatherer groups returning to Britain after the Ice Age to the Stonehenge area all the way through to the Neolithic in the late 5th millennium B.C.”
“Blick Mead could explain what archaeologists have been searching for centuries — an answer to the story of Stonehenge’s past,” he said.
This has been a big year for Stonehenge: University of Birmingham experts have released other major findings this year, including the results of a sophisticated surveying operation that revealed the Stonehenge site was much bigger than previously understood.
Instead of a standalone structure, the findings suggested that the monument was just the centrepiece of a far larger complex involving at least 17 chapels and hundreds of smaller features.
The survey revealed other secrets of Stonehenge, such as the existence of a burial mound constructed at least 4,000 to 5,000 years ago atop the ruins of a gigantic 6,000-year-old wooden “house of the dead.” New Scientist Sumit Paul-Choudhury writes that the hall was “used to store bodies that had been ritualistically defleshed and disassembled.”
But there’s one major problem: The BBC reports that scheduled tunnel construction to alleviate congestion on the nearby A303 roadway poses the potential to disrupt archaeological study of the site.
“Our only chance to find out about the earliest chapter of Britain’s history could be wrecked if the tunnel goes ahead,” Jacques said. Some researchers worry that the new tunnel could radically alter the local water table, potentially causing serious damage to subsurface relics that have been buried for millennia.
“There is nothing to celebrate about a proposal that would inflict at least a mile of massively damaging road building on the surface of our most iconic world heritage site,” Friends of the Earth spokesman Mike Birkin told the Guardian. “We have a global duty to safeguard the whole site. The international bodies who hold legal responsibility for world heritage sites have not even been consulted — and there are grave concerns about the damage a short tunnel could cause.”
Hopefully, the authorities can work out a plan that preserves Stonehenge and its remaining secrets for future study — because apparently, it still has much to teach us.
Timber From 17th-Century Spanish Shipwreck Discovered In Caves Off Oregon’s Coast
View of Nehalem Beach, where the ship was wrecked, with Neahkahnie Mountain in the distance Maritime Archaeological Society
In 1693, the Santo Cristo de Burgos, a Manila galleon loaded with silk, porcelain and beeswax, set sail from the Philippines on a trading expedition to Mexico. But the ship—and its valuable cargo—never reached its destination. Instead, the vessel ended up shipwrecked off the coast of Oregon, becoming one of roughly 3,000 ships lost in the region to date.
Over the next two centuries or so, explorers, merchants, Indigenous peoples, scholars and curious locals alike traded stories about the fabled wreck, which was “occasionally visible” along the Oregon shoreline, according to the Oregon Encyclopedia’s Cameron La Follette. In 1813 or 1814, fur trader Alexander Henry detailed how members of the Clatsop tribe frequently exchanged “lumps of beeswax, fresh out of the sand, which they collect on the coast … where the Spanish ship was cast away some years ago.” The fate of the ship’s crew is unclear, but Indigenous oral histories suggest that some survived the disaster.
Despite widespread interest in the 17th-century ship, tangible evidence of the so-called “Beeswax Wreck” remained elusive until recently.
Last week, reports Kristin Romey for National Geographic, a team spearheaded by the Maritime Archaeological Society (MAS) successfully recovered a dozen timbers from the Santo Cristo de Burgos’ wooden hull.
The find makes the vessel one of only three Manila galleons identified on the North American West Coast, as well as one of just three in the world with surviving wood pieces, per the Oregon Coast Beach Connection.
An amateur has found a new piece of timber from the Spanish galleon known as the Beeswax wreck. To date, many artifact fragments have been found on this rough coastline area, including pieces of Chinese porcelain. This image shows an unnamed wooden shipwreck have buried in a sand beach.
Fisherman Craig Andes brought the hull fragments to society’s attention in early 2020, just before the Covid-19 pandemic. He’d first noticed the pieces of wood while exploring sea caves near the beach town of Manzanita in 2013 but only decided to bring in experts after realizing that the smaller fragments were on the verge of being swept away.
Initially, the MAS team was sceptical of Andes’ discovery.
“I was convinced it was driftwood,” the society’s president, Scott Williams, tells National Geographic. “To think that 300-year-old ship timbers could survive the Oregon coast was just crazy.”
Then, however, testing revealed that the timbers came from an Asian tropical hardwood felled in the mid- to late-17th century—a result that prompted Williams and his colleagues to take a closer look at the caves. They confirmed Andes’ suspicions that summer but were unable to retrieve the pieces, as the caves are only accessible via water or a dangerous rock scramble.
Beeswax with a Spanish shipping mark from a lost Spanish galleon that washed up on the coast near Manzanita, Oregon. Courtesy of the Clatsop County Historical Society.
Thanks to weather- and Covid-related delays, the official recovery mission—funded in part by the National Geographic Society—didn’t take place until June 13. MAS archaeologists, staff from cultural resource management firm SEARCH Inc., and representatives of the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department and local sheriff’s offices secured the timbers in just 90 minutes, wrapping up the expedition before high tide.
“The last few timbers, I ended up staying behind to get those bundled up so I had to swim out to the jet ski because I got trapped where I couldn’t get out any other way,” archaeologist Stacy Scott tells KPTV Fox 12 Oregon.
According to a separate Oregon Coast Beach Connection report, the Santo Cristo de Burgos likely ran aground in shallow water, which rarely preserves shipwrecks. But storms and a massive tsunami in 1700 scattered pieces of the wreck, perhaps depositing the newly recovered timbers into the sea caves. Other possible explanations for the fragments’ improbable survival include the cold, less salty conditions of Oregon’s North Coast and shifting sands that buried and shielded the timbers, writes the Astorian’s Katie Frankowicz.
These Kangxi period Chinese porcelain fragments were part of the precious cargo carried by the unlucky Spanish galleon that sank off the Oregon coast nearly 300 years ago.
In the decades following the shipwreck, objects from the vessel washed ashore, fueling rumours of the enigmatic wreck’s existence. Per a timeline compiled by MAS, the flow of beeswax tapered off in the late 1860s, with an 85-pound chunk discovered in 1894 deemed “the largest piece found in 20 years.” Though locals at one point disagreed whether the wax was natural or came from a shipwreck, by 1920, most appeared to accept the latter scenario.
During the 20th century, the Beeswax Wreck became the stuff of local legend, spawning stories of buried treasure and perhaps even inspiring Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Goonies. Continued interest in the ship led to the launch of the Beeswax Wreck Project in 2006 and MAS’ formation in 2015.
Though the wooden pieces are a significant find, Williams tells the Astorian that archaeologists “haven’t found what we would call ‘The Wreck.’ We don’t know if something like ‘The Wreck’ exists.” Pieces of the galleon’s lower hull could still be hidden nearby; the team hopes to recover additional hull fragments from other caves in the near future.
“Will this answer big questions? Probably not,” says marine archaeologist James Delgado to the Astorian. “But it’s another step in a process that could potentially lead to further discovery.”
Mummified remains of a 30,000-year-old baby mammoth found in Canadian gold fields
A gold miner found a mummified baby woolly mammoth in the Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Traditional Territory in Yukon, Canada. According to a press release from the local government, the female baby mammoth has been named Nun cho ga by the First Nation Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in elders, which translates to “big baby animal” in the Hän language.
Nun cho ga Baby Woolly Mammoth found in Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Traditional Territory, Yukon, CanadaYukon Government
Nun cho ga is the most complete mummified mammoth discovered in North America.
Nun cho ga died and was frozen in permafrost during the ice age, over 30,000 years old, said the press release. She would have roamed the Yukon alongside wild horses, cave lions, and giant steppe bison.
The frozen mammoth was recovered by geologists after a young miner in the Klondike gold fields found the remains while digging up muck.
Dr. Grant Zazula, the Yukon government’s paleontologist, said the miner had made the “most important discovery in paleontology in North America,”reported The Weather Channel.
The baby mammoth was probably with her mother when it but ventured off a little too far and got stuck in the mud, Zazula told The Weather Channel.
Professor Dan Shugar, from the University of Calgary, part of the team who excavated the woolly mammoth, said that this discovery was the “most exciting scientific thing I have ever been part of.”
He described how immaculately the mammoth had been preserved, saying that it still had intact toenails, hide, hair, trunk, and even intestines, with its last meal of grass still present.
According to the press release, Yukon is renowned for its store of ice age fossils, but rarely are such immaculate and well-preserved finds discovered. Zazula wrote in the press release that “As an ice age paleontologist, it has been one of my lifelong dreams to come face to face with a real woolly mammoth.
“That dream came true today. Nun cho ga is beautiful and one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world.”
The woolly mammoth, about the size of the African elephant, roamed the earth until about 4,000 years ago.
Early humans, hunted them for food and used mammoth bones and tusks for art, tools, and dwellings. Scientists are divided as to whether hunting or climate change drove them into extinction.
