Archaeologists uncover coffins that have been shut for 2,500 years; it’s Saqqara again
In 2020, archaeologists in Egypt unsealed a mummy coffin sealed 2,500 years ago in front of a live audience in Egypt. The mummy was wrapped in an ornate burial cloth, which had been decorated to resemble a deceased priest’s face.
Egypt uncovers 2,500-year-old coffins
Greg Lewis, New Zealand’s ambassador to Egypt, also shared a video of unsealing the mummy coffin on Twitter.
According to a press release by Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, initially, three burial wells at different depths between 10 and 12 metres, with 13 coffins, were discovered in Saqqara.
Earlier in 2020, Archaeologists found 59 sealed wooden sarcophagi in the necropolis of Saqqara, south of Cairo near Memphis.
Saqqara is home to several pyramids, including the famous Giza Pyramids. It was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the 1970s.
Recently, another team of archaeologists in Saqqara uncovered a new trove of coffins that are believed to have been left untouched for 2,500 years.
The incredible dig at a cemetery in Saqqara uncovered mummies as well as statues of the gods Anubis, Amun, Min, Osiris, Isis, Nefertum, Bastet and Hathor – along with a headless statue of the architect Imhotep, who built the Saqqara pyramid. The coffins have been shut for 2,500 years
The team found hundreds of statues of ancient Egyptian gods — Anubis, Amun, Min, Osiris, Isis, Nefertum, Bastet, and Hathor. Besides the statues, the diggers also unearthed 250 ancient sarcophagi.
Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement that 250 coffins, 150 bronze statues, and other objects dating back to about 500 BC were found in Saqqara.
“The mission of the Supreme Council of Antiquities succeeded in discovering the first and largest cache of 150 bronze statues from the late period in the cemetery of the sacred animals in Saqqara, as well as burial wells containing 250 closed coloured wooden coffins containing mummies, which will be displayed in the Grand Egyptian Museum,” Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in an online statement.
Photos of the incredible finds have been shared on Facebook by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
Reports said the coffins were found in remarkably good condition in burial shafts. They contained mummies, amulets and smaller wooden boxes.
They will not be taken to the Grand Egyptian Museum, which is currently under construction near the Great Pyramids of Giza.
“We also found a statue of Imhotep … and we hope we can find his tomb soon,” Head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mostafa El-Waziri, told ABC News.
Imhotep was an Egyptian chancellor to the Pharaoh Djoser, possible architect of Djoser’s step pyramid, and high priest of the sun god Ra at Heliopolis. Very little is known of Imhotep as a historical figure.
Europe’s ‘largest ever’ land dinosaur was found on the Isle of Wight
Remains of Europe’s largest-ever land-based predator dinosaurs have been discovered on the Isle of Wight, scientists say.
The dinosaur was a two-legged, crocodile-faced predator and measured more than 10m long
Palaeontologists at the University of Southampton identified the remains, which measured more than 32ft (10m) long and lived 125 million years ago.
The prehistoric bones belonged to a two-legged, crocodile-faced, predatory spinosaurid dinosaur.
PhD student Chris Barker, who led the research, said it was a “huge animal”.
The remains, which include pelvic and tail vertebrae, were discovered on the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight.
The carnivore has been dubbed the “white rock spinosaurid”, after the geological layer in which the remains were found.
Bone fragments, including pelvic and tail vertebrae, have been discovered
The remains of the predator were found on the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight
“This was a huge animal, exceeding 10m in length and probably several tonnes in weight,” Mr Barker said.
“Judging from some of the dimensions, it appears to represent one of the largest predatory dinosaurs ever found in Europe – maybe even the biggest yet known.”
It would have lived at the beginning of a period of rising sea levels and would have stalked lagoonal waters and sandflats in search of food.
Co-author of the research, Darren Naish, said: “Because it’s only known from fragments at the moment, we haven’t given it a formal scientific name. We hope that additional remains will turn up in time.”
The dinosaur has been dubbed the “white rock spinosaurid”, after the geological layer in which the remains were found
Most of the fossils were found by Isle of Wight dinosaur hunter Nick Chase, who died just before the Covid pandemic.
Jeremy Lockwood, another co-author of the study and a PhD student at the University of Portsmouth and Natural History Museum, said: “I was searching for remains of this dinosaur with Nick and found a lump of the pelvis with tunnels bored into it – each about the size of my index finger.
“We think they were caused by bone-eating larvae of a type of scavenging beetle. It’s an interesting thought that this giant killer wound up becoming a meal for a host of insects.”
China’s mysterious 8,000-year-old structure ‘guarded by the military could hold key secrets
More than 100km outside the ancient city of Xi’an, among the overgrown forests, rise scores of pyramid-shaped mounds that have been shrouded in mystery for thousands of years. The West learnt about them when Fred Meyer Schroder, an American trader, first reported the enigma in 1912.
At the time, he was travelling through the Shaanxi Province with a guide, where he recorded a thorough description in his diary, noting he had seen one giant pyramid approximately 1,000 feet tall and nearly twice that size in length, surrounded by a number of smaller pyramids.
Fast-forward three decades and US Airforce pilot James Gaussman would be left mesmerised by a “pure white” structure spotted while flying over Asia, said to be twice the size of the Great Pyramid of Egypt.
He said: “The remarkable thing was the capstone, a huge piece of jewel-like material that could have been crystal.
“There was no way we could have landed, although we wanted to. We were struck by the immensity of the thing.”
Two years later, Colonel Maurice Sheahan, the Far Eastern director for Trans World Airline, reported the same experience.
China has a mysterious structure that could be key to understanding the country’s history.
China has a number of pyramid structures
In the early Nineties, German investigator Hartwig Hausdorf searched for the massive pyramid, but he was unsuccessful in finding it.
Instead, he found “the Chinese military meticulously patrolling the area,” according to reports.
Today, Google Earth will show anyone with the right coordinates evidence of not just one, but around 40 known pyramids, but not all are easily distinguishable to the human eye.
They are covered with trees and grass, and many date back 8,000 years. This region, in essence, is China’s version of both Egypt’s Giza and the Valley of the Kings in one, particularly because there is a huge amount of royalty rumoured to be beneath the surface that no one has disturbed.
Two farmers discovered the famous terracotta army of China’s First Emperor
As early as the 17th century, a Roman Jesuit wrote about the pyramids, and in 1785, the French orientalist and sinologist Joseph de Guignes wrote ‘An Essay in Which We Prove The Chinese Are an Egyptian Colony’.
Western archaeologists have, to this day, rarely been permitted to investigate the sites and some have claimed photos show shrubs have been deliberately planted to keep the secret under wraps.
But experts theorise there are almost certainly lost emperors and artefacts below the mounds that would dwarf Howard Carter’s 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun. In 1974, the world got a peek at a truly extraordinary history of China when two farmers were digging just outside Xi’an and discovered the famous terracotta army of China’s First Emperor – Qin Shi Huang.
There were legends that he had been buried inside a veritable mini-city with palaces, carriages, treasures, and anything else he’d need in the afterlife – and through luck, or fate, these farmers hit the jackpot. The site is so massive, that researchers are “going to be digging there for centuries,” archaeologist Kristin Romey told Live Science in 2012.
The mounds are shrouded in secrecy
Some can be seen on Google Earth
But the Emperor himself has never been found.
The authorities have opened up sites like the Han Yang Ling Mausoleum to tourists, but no one is allowed to excavate them.
Xi Jinping’s government say the technology does not exist yet to disturb the pyramids without damaging their contents, citing King Tut’s discovery for reference.
Dr Romey previously remarked: “It’s really smart what they’re doing.
“Think about all the information we lost just based on the excavation techniques of the 1930s.
“There’s so much additional [information] that we could have learned, but the techniques back then weren’t what we have now.
“Even though we may think we have great archaeological excavation techniques [at present], who knows, a century down the road if we open this tomb [they could be even better].”
Chinese strong “veneration of tradition” culture could mean they simply wish to leave their royalty at peace, which means there will be no choice but to watch them recede back into the Earth with their secrets – until someone decides otherwise.
But, due to the area being shrouded in secrecy, there are also doubts from some experts about whether the White Pyramid even exists.
Experts have squabbled over both the location and the feasibility of such a monumental structure.
Damaged pieces of rare Viking sword reunited after 1,200 years apart
Two pieces of an ornate Viking sword that had been separated for about 1,200 years have been reunited and still fit together like a puzzle. The pieces were discovered a year apart by amateur treasure hunters in Norway.
A researcher examines the remains of a Viking Age sword discovered in Norway.
The first finding occurred last year, when a metal detectorist in Stavanger, along Norway’s west coast, uncovered a small, odd piece of metal while poking around a farm.
The man handed the fragment over to the local archaeological museum and was unsure what it was — until this spring when his friend and fellow metal detectorist unearthed the rest of the artefact nearby.
Those two small chunks of metal turned out to be part of a massive Viking Age sword.
The sword is “of a rare type, known from Scandinavia but also found in Western Europe (in the areas known today as France, Britain and Ireland) and Eastern Europe, e.g. Hungary,” Ann Zanette Glørstad, an archaeologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, told Live Science in an email.
Though the blade is missing, the sword’s hilt is richly decorated with intricate carvings and gold and silver details. Each end of the cross-guard is shaped like an unidentified animal.
Based on its ornamentation, Glørstad thinks that the sword may have been forged in the Frankish Empire or England around 800 A.D.
However, it could possibly have been forged by a talented Norwegian smith who was inspired by Frankish weapons, she noted. Of the roughly 3,000 Viking swords recovered in Norway, only about 20 match the newly discovered weapon’s profile — and its owner remains a mystery.
Both ends of the crossguard depict an animal head.
The richly decorated hilt of the sword from the Viking era.
“We can only speculate as to whom it belonged,” Glørstad said.
“However, it was a highly decorative and impressive sword, and it must have belonged to someone with the means to acquire it, as well as someone who wanted to demonstrate their social status.”
Swords from this era sometimes had their owner’s names inscribed on the blade, according to the Art Institute Chicago(opens in new tab), but because this weapon’s blade is lost, archaeologists will have to rely on other clues to infer its owner’s identity.
The area has seen its share of Viking royalty; in 1883, the grave of a rich Viking queen was unearthed not far from where the sword was discovered.
“We knew that this area was of special importance, but that we should find something like this was very unexpected!” Håkon Reiersen, the acting head of the museum’s collection department, said in a translated statement(opens in new tab).
The sword has joined the collection at the Stavanger Museum of Archaeology, where it will be on display once it has been properly restored and preserved.
In the meantime, archaeology enthusiasts can follow the museum’s website(opens in new tab), and Instagram(opens in new tab) for updates on the sword’s restoration.
Metal detectorist unearths 2,000-year-old penis pendant
A metal detectorist recently discovered a silver, penis-shaped pendant in Kent, England that was likely worn around the neck to protect a person from misfortune around 1,800 years ago.
This Roman pendant made of silver depicts a penis. The streaks at the top appear to depict pubic hair.
Ancient Roman writers such as Marcus Terentius Varro (lived 116 B.C. to 27 B.C.) and Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23 to 79) mention how the phallus and representations of it are thought to have had the power to protect a person from evil.
Many depictions of the phallus have been found throughout the Roman Empire and scholars often believe that they were created to avoid bad luck.
The pendant (also called an amulet) is about 1.2 inches (3.1 centimetres) long, with a tiny ring at the top for a string (necklace) to go through. It dates back to a time when the Romans controlled England, between A.D. 42 and 410.
While such amulets in the shape of a penis were frequently seen throughout Roman Britain, they are typically made of copper-alloy rather than silver like the one from Kent, Lori Rogerson, a finds liaison officer with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), wrote in a report(opens in new tab) on the artefact.
“Being a higher-quality metal than copper-alloy, silver may have been thought to strengthen the phallus’ protective abilities,” Rogerson told Live Science in an email.
“We know that children were protected by these apotropaic [having the power to stop evil] devices, and the archaeological evidence suggests their use in Britain was very popular within the Roman army.”
Roman men, women, children and even animals wore pendants like this, in an effort to ward off the so-called evil eye, said Cyril Dumas, a scholar at Musée Yves Brayer who has researched and written about these artefacts. “This amulet is against the effects of ‘the evil eye,’ a personification of bad luck,” Dumas told Live Science in an email.
As for the choice of metal, perhaps the person who commissioned or bought the piece of jewellery had enough money for a higher-quality metal.
“The choice of silver as a material can be for many reasons, one of which is simply because the wearer could afford it and the pendant then also becomes an object of display,” Rob Collins a project manager and research coordinator at Newcastle University’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology, told Live Science in an email.
“However, I suspect that silver also has magical properties or affiliations associated with it as a material,” added Collins, who has studied and written about artefacts like this one.
Wendy Thompson found the penis pendant while metal-detecting.
Metal detectorist Wendy Thompson found the amulet on Dec. 31, 2020, and she reported her to find to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, a program run by the British Museum and National Museum Wales that tracks finds made by metal detectorists.
The artefact is now going through the treasure process required by U.K. law, which may result in it entering a museum collection in Britain.
Rusty saber, possibly wielded by medieval Turkish pirates, unearthed in Greece
A rusty medieval saber, or one-edged sword, unearthed at a fortified Christian monastery in northern Greece might be a deadly weapon that either raiding Turkish pirates or the monastery’s defenders wielded hundreds of years ago. The discovery of the saber is unusual, as iron weapons from this period usually quickly rust away.
Archaeologists think the one-edged curved sword — a type of saber — dates from a raid on the monastery that took place in the 14th century.
The style of this weapon, too, is unusual — but it turns out that such curved, one-edged swords were used both by Turks and Byzantines at around the time of the attack in the 14th century, said archaeologist Errikos Maniotis, a doctoral candidate at Masaryk University in Brno in the Czech Republic, who studied the sword.
“It’s hard to determine if the sword belonged to the Byzantine defenders, or to the probably Turkish [raiders],” Maniotis told Live Science in an email. “They both used similar weapons in this period.”
Maniotis is working with Theodoros Dogas, an archaeologist for the Ephorate of Antiquities of Chalcidice and Mount Athos, the region’s government archaeological agency, to excavate the medieval site, which is called the “Monastery of Agios Nikolaos of Chrysokamaros” in honour a local saint.
The ruins are located on the coast of the middle of the three prominent peninsulas of Chalkidiki (also called Chalcidice), about 40 miles (64 kilometres) southeast of the city of Thessaloniki on the northwest coast of the Aegean Sea.
But although the location by the sea is picture-perfect today, it hasn’t always been a peaceful place. The sword could be from any one of at least three military events that took place in the region in the 14th century alone, Maniotis and Dogas said.
The ruins of the monastery are in the middle of the three prominent peninsulas at Chalkidiki. Archaeologists think it was destroyed by fire during a raid in the 14th century.
Medieval monastery
Historical records mention a monastery at the site from at least the 11th century, although it’s not known if it was independent or a metochi — an “embassy church” of the Mount Athos monastery, a powerful establishment on the easternmost of the Chalkidiki peninsulas, Maniotis said.
Archaeologists briefly excavated the site in 2000 and 2001, when the one-edged sword was found; but the excavations this year have established that the monastery was surrounded by a sturdy wall made of granite rocks between 5.5 and 6 feet (1.7 to 2 meters) thick, Dogas said.
Such well-built monasteries and churches were often used as a local refuge during attacks, such as pirate raids. These ecclesiastical centres might also have had riches of their own, such as religious items made of gold, and often held a supply of grain, he said. In fact, archaeologists have found grain seeds in the lower levels of a tower at the monastery, which indicated it might have been used for food storage, Dogas noted.
The tower is now about 16 feet (5 m) high, but the research shows it was once much higher. There’s evidence the structure was badly damaged by fire at some point. Moreover, weapons, including axes, arrowheads and the one-edged sword, were discovered in the same archaeological layer as the fire damage.
This is “evidence that leads us to conclude that the tower was destroyed by strong fire after a raid,” the researchers wrote in an academic presentation given in Athens on May 27.
Archaeologists found a large number of glazed pottery vessels, mainly from the 14th century, in the same layer; and, based on their styles, the researchers reason the destruction probably occurred in the second half of the 14th century and possibly as late as the beginning of the 15th century.
The iron sword was badly damaged in the fire that destroyed the monastery and is badly corroded. But the assembly includes metal rings that were part of the scabbard that enclosed it.
Swords of this type, with a single sharp edge and a curve throughout its length, were used by both Byzantine soldiers who may have been defending the monastery and Turkish pirates or soldiers who may have been attacking it.
Well-built monasteries along the coast were often used as a refuge during pirate attacks, and archaeologists think it may have also been targeted for its stores of grain.
One-edged sword
Although the sword is distinctive, the archaeologists can’t tell for certain just who might have wielded it, or when. Sabers had been used in Turkish lands for centuries; for example, they are depicted in an illustrated Seljuk manuscript from the 13th century that is now held at the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul.
But research by the archaeologists has also shown such swords were used by Byzantine soldiers — perhaps those helping defend the monastery from a raid by Turkish pirates, for instance.
Icons of Byzantine saints from the 13th century depict curved, one-edged swords, and it’s known that Byzantine soldiers used the swords as early as the sixth century, after facing them while fighting the nomadic Avars and the Sassanid Persians, who had assimilated them from the warriors of the Eurasian steppes, the researchers wrote.
Maniotis and Dogas have identified three military actions in the 14th century that could have led to the sword being used there: attacks along the coast by Turkish pirates, which included the kidnapping in 1344 of administrators from the Mount Athos monastery; the occupation of the region from 1345 until about 1371 by the forces of the Serbian king Stefan Dušan, who aspired to conquer Byzantine territories in the West; and the siege of Thessalonica by Ottoman troops from 1383 until 1387, when the Chalkidiki region was often raided for food.
Maniotis can’t say for sure, but he thinks the sword may be of Turkish origin, and that it was used in a pirate raid on the monastery. It’s now in poor condition, having been bent during the attack that destroyed the monastery, although several metal rings from the scabbard that once contained it can still be seen.
Nearly 18 inches (45 centimetres) of the blade of the sword remain whole, but not enough to determine by its shape alone whether it is of Turkish or Byzantine origin, the researchers wrote.
But it has historical importance in any case: “this particular sword is the only find from this category of swords in a closed archaeological assembly in Greece,” the researchers wrote. “It may in fact be one of the few swords of the late Byzantine period found in Greece.”
The discovery of the sword and other artefacts from the excavations will be the subject of an upcoming research paper, Maniotis and Dogas said.
Study Suggests Chickens Were Domesticated 3,500 Years Ago
It turns out that chicken and rice may have always gone together, from the birds’ initial domestication to tonight’s dinner. In two new studies, scientists lay out a potential story of chicken’s origins.
Modern chickens originated around 3,500 years ago in Southeast Asia, later than previously thought, scientists say. Rice cultivation apparently spurred the transformation of wildfowl into a global menu item.
This poultry tale begins surprisingly recently in rice fields planted by Southeast Asian farmers around 3,500 years ago, zooarchaeologist Joris Peters and colleagues report. From there, the birds were transported westward not as food but as exotic or culturally revered creatures, the team suggests on June 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Cereal cultivation may have acted as a catalyst for chicken domestication,” says Peters, of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
The domesticated fowl then arrived in Mediterranean Europe no earlier than around 2,800 years ago, archaeologist Julia Best of Cardiff University in Wales and colleagues report on June 6 in Antiquity. The birds appeared in northwest Africa between 1,100 and 800 years ago, the team says.
Researchers have debated where and when chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) originated for more than 50 years. India’s Indus Valley, northern China and Southeast Asia have all been touted as domestication centres. Proposed dates for chickens’ first appearance have mostly ranged from around 4,000 to 10,500 years ago.
A 2020 genetic study of modern chickens suggested that domestication occurred among Southeast Asian red jungle fowl. But DNA analyses, increasingly used to study animal domestication, couldn’t specify when domesticated chickens first appeared.
Using chicken remains previously excavated at more than 600 sites in 89 countries, Peters’ group determined whether the chicken bones had been found where they were originally buried by soil or, instead, had moved downward into older sediment over time and thus were younger than previously assumed.
After establishing the timing of chickens’ appearances at various sites, the researchers used historical references to chickens and data on subsistence strategies in each society to develop a scenario of the animals’ domestication and spread.
The new story begins in Southeast Asian rice fields. The earliest known chicken remains come from Ban Non-Wat, a dry rice–farming site in central Thailand that roughly dates to between 1650 B.C. and 1250 B.C. Dry rice farmers plant the crop on upland soil soaked by seasonal rains rather than in flooded fields or paddies. That would have made rice grains at Ban Non-Wat fair game for avian ancestors of chickens.
These fields attracted hungry wild birds called red jungle fowl. Red jungle fowl increasingly fed on rice grains, and probably grains of another cereal crop called millet, grown by regional farmers, Peters’ group speculates. A cultivated familiarity with people launched chicken domestication around 3,500 years ago, the researchers say.
Chickens did not arrive in central China, South Asia or Mesopotamian society in what’s now Iran and Iraq until nearly 3,000 years ago, the team estimates.
Peters and colleagues have for the first time assembled available evidence “into a fully coherent and plausible explanation of not only where and when, but also how and why chicken domestication happened,” says archaeologist Keith Dobney of the University of Sydney who did not participate in the new research.
But the new insights into chickens don’t end there. Using radiocarbon dating, Best’s group determined that 23 chicken bones from 16 sites in Eurasia and Africa were generally younger, in some cases by several thousand years, than previously thought. These bones had apparently settled into lower sediment layers over time, where they were found with items made by earlier human cultures.
A researcher points to chicken bones from England that are more than 2,000 years old (middle), which lie between bones of larger modern chickens.
Archaeological evidence indicates that chickens and rice cultivation spread across Asia and Africa in tandem, Peters’ group says. But rather than eating early chickens, people may have viewed them as special or sacred creatures.
At Ban Non-Wat and other early Southeast Asian sites, partial or whole skeletons of adult chickens were placed in human graves. That behaviour suggests chickens enjoyed some social or cultural significance, Peters says.
In Europe, several of the earliest chickens were buried alone or in human graves and showed no signs of having been butchered.
The expansion of the Roman Empire around 2,000 years ago prompted more widespread consumption of chicken and eggs, Best and colleagues say. In England, chickens were not eaten regularly until around 1,700 years ago, primarily at Roman-influenced urban and military sites.
Overall, about 700 to 800 years elapsed between the introduction of chickens in England and their acceptance as food, the researchers conclude. Similar lag times may have occurred at other sites where the birds were introduced.
Ancient humans used Spanish caves for rock art for more than 50,000 years
Cueva de Ardales in Málaga, Spain, is a famous site containing more than 1,000 prehistoric cave paintings and engravings. It also includes artefacts and human remains. But since its discovery in 1821, after an earthquake unearthed the entrance, the way ancient humans used the cave has been a mystery.
Excavation area in Cueva de Ardales with evidence from the Middle Palaeolithic period.
New research, published in PLoS ONE, on items from the first excavation has shed light on prehistoric Iberia’s human inhabitants. Archaeologists from Spain, Germany and Denmark collaborated to analyse the paintings, relics and human bones from the cave.
Combining radiometric dating – measuring the presence of radioactive elements such as carbon-14 to determine the age of remains – with other analyses of artefacts from the site, the researchers have determined the first occupants of Cueva de Ardales, arriving more than 65,000 years ago, were likely Neanderthals.
Lithics from the Middle Paleolithic layers of zone 3. A: Quartzite core or heavy-duty tool, B: Blade, C: Levallois flake, D: Sidescraper.
Modern humans came to use the cave around 30,000 years later. This timeframe coincides with the disappearance of Homo neanderthalensis some 40,000 years ago.
Homo sapiens used the cave sporadically until as recently as the beginning of the Copper Age, around 7,000 years ago.
Rock art is believed to be an indication of humankind’s first attempts to understand, rationalise and abstract the external world.
Our ability to imagine and communicate through language, writing, science, art and abstractions are likely consequences of such leaps in ancient human culture.
The authors write: “Our research presents a well-stratified series of more than 50 radiometric dates in Cueva de Ardales that confirm the antiquity of Palaeolithic art from over 58,000 years ago. It also confirms that the cave was a place of special activities linked to art, as numerous fragments of ochre were discovered in the Middle Palaeolithic levels.”
The oldest examples of cave art in the Málaga site include abstract signs such as dots, fingertips and hand stencils created with red pigment. Later artwork involves more complex paintings and figures such as animals.
Human remains indicate the use of the cave as a burial place in the Holocene – the period of geological time since the end of the last major glacial epoch, or “ice age”, around 12,000 years ago.
There is limited evidence of domestic activities at Cueva de Ardales, suggesting humans were not residing in the cave.
The team’s findings confirm that Cueva de Ardales is a site of immense symbolic value.
The Iberian Peninsula holds more than 30 other caves with similar rock art, making the region a key locality for investigating the history and culture of ancient humans in Europe.
